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[MrRoboto75]

he could order the secretary of homeland security

did he appoint one?  I forget what he has at this point

[hector13]

Kirstjen... something or other.

PPE: Kirstjen Nielsen. I've seen a press conference she did recently in which she basically said they're not doing anything wrong because they're just following the law.

So... is there actually a law which says to wrest children away from their families, or is it just this "we can't keep the kids of adults we're prosecuting with the adults" thing?

[Baffler]

I feel I should mention that when Trump talks about Democrats choosing not to solve the problem this is what he's referring to. I have to agree too. Too much of our immigration policy is controlled by what amounts to executive fiat. The executive who can (and probably will) do a complete rewrite of what their predecessor established and keep the whole apparatus in confusion. Bringing it onto the books will inject some desperately needed stability but despite how uncontroversial McConnell's bill is in reality Schumer wants to ramble on about hypothetical riders and to "keep the focus on Trump," and I suspect is also wanting to eventually get control of the broken system, so that will not be possible.

[Dunamisdeos]

I feel I should mention that when Trump talks about Democrats choosing not to solve the problem this is what he's referring to. I have to agree too. Too much of our immigration policy is controlled by what amounts to executive fiat. The executive who can (and probably will) do a complete rewrite of what their predecessor established and keep the whole apparatus in confusion. Bringing it onto the books will inject some desperately needed stability but despite how uncontroversial McConnell's bill is in reality Schumer wants to ramble on about hypothetical riders and to "keep the focus on Trump," and I suspect is also wanting to eventually get control of the broken system, so that will not be possible.

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the good guys.

Asked if that meant Democrats would not support a bill backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to keep immigrant families together while seeking asylum on the U.S. border, Schumer said they want to keep the focus on Trump.

[EnigmaticHat]

Kirstjen... something or other.

PPE: Kirstjen Nielsen. I've seen a press conference she did recently in which she basically said they're not doing anything wrong because they're just following the law.

So... is there actually a law which says to wrest children away from their families, or is it just this "we can't keep the kids of adults we're prosecuting with the adults" thing?

I believe if all parents are imprisoned prior to trial because they can't make bail, then the kids do get processed by the system.  I don't know exactly what that means but we do have some kind of system in place so if parents are arrested kids aren't just wandering the streets homeless.

However seeking asylum isn't a crime and entering the country illegally to seek asylum is a misdemeanor.  A parent accused of a misdemeanor is not going to have a high bail (if they have one at all).  So for asylum seekers, no, they're defying all precedent and shitting on both US procedure and at least one international treaty on refugees.

Even that's generous tho.  Immigrants are treated differently because they don't have the same rights as citizens.  That's the only reason that ICE is allowed to put people in a prison camp who have not yet been found guilty of a crime.  99% sure there is no law on the books stating that illegal aliens have to be imprisoned.  They simply have no constitutional rights so they CAN be imprisoned.  ICE can be as nice or mean as they want here.  Its the same reason Guantanamo Bay wasn't prohibited by US domestic law (only by treaties).

Additionally, dragging kids away from their parents, putting the kids themselves in prison, and then making them wear a number like a Nazi concentration camp is absolutely not standard anywhere in US law.  I don't think even the army has ever done that shit, WW2 and Vietnam included.  The fact that ICE enthusiastically complied with an order to do this says very bad things about them.

[nenjin]

That sucks. Dems talk a lot about putting partisanship aside when it really matters. But apparently making a deal with the devil to save the childrens is too much.

I think the point that Trump could over turn this directive at any point is a reasonable explanation though. They're asking democrats to deliver the party that started this shit a feel good win. I would be hard pressed to vote for that myself. It's like a guy stabbing you then asking for a parade when he puts a bandage on the wound. Wouldn't need a parade if you hadn't fucking stabbed me in the first place.

But I guess in cognitive dissonance America, this is acceptable now.

[EnigmaticHat]

The dems proposed their own law to make this illegal.  Not only did Republicans do this unilaterally but they were given their own chance to cross the aisle.  Also unless I'm seriously missing something, they don't need democratic support to change the law.

Edit: and this isn't law (see my previous post).  The only reason this is legal is because no one thought to specifically make it illegal.  The law certainly does not encourage this behavior.

[Baffler]

I think the point that Trump could over turn this directive at any point is a reasonable explanation though. They're asking democrats to deliver the party that started this shit a feel good win. I would be hard pressed to vote for that myself. It's like a guy stabbing you then asking for a parade when he puts a bandage on the wound. Wouldn't need a parade if you hadn't fucking stabbed me in the first place.

But I guess in cognitive dissonance America, this is acceptable now.

They're asking Democrats to cooperate in actually fixing the problem instead of just ignoring it like they used to. here. The relevant section:

What is the law regarding the treatment of migrant children?
A two-decade-old court settlement, the Flores settlement, and a law called the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (2013) both specify how the government must treat migrant children. They require that migrant children be placed in "the least restrictive environment" or sent to live with family members. They also limit how long families with children can be detained; courts have interpreted that limit as 20 days. Previous administrations have released families to meet these requirements. President Trump has said the law requires him to separate families, which is not true. His advisers have presented a more complicated argument for how the law requires family separation. "The laws prohibit us from detaining families while they go through prosecution," Nielsen said on Monday — a reference to the 20-day limits on how long children can be detained. Therefore, she says, "we cannot detain families together." She argues that that leaves the administration with the options of not enforcing the law, which it rejects, or separating families. But immigration advocates and legal experts say that there are other options, including those that previous administrations have chosen.

The law, originally intended to correct the problem where kids were being released back into the custody of human traffickers, set a very short time limit for how long they can be detained. Too short, in most cases, to determine what's going on, and so they just released them. Not even deported, just released. To buy the necessary time to actually enforce the law as it's written and they're bound to follow, they're exploiting a loophole. Separating them allows time for going through the process because they're technically no longer detaining a family.

This is not a problem that an executive order can fix. The "fix" the Democrats are insisting Trump applies is to go back to just releasing people.

[Dunamisdeos]

It's not important that these facilities have been in use since long before the Trump administration, or that they are housed in conditions that frankly are nicer than my school or even the summer camps I went to as a kid were, or that their stay is temporary, or that there is literally nowhere else to send or keep them when they arrive.

What DOES matter is that we now have an opportunity to use this longstanding problem as a bludgeon against people we don't like. Nobody in our leadership cares one whit for these children, they care about exploiting children for political capital. Absolutely nobody cared enough to even CHECK until we realized Trump was bad and we could use these kids to get at him.

If both sides have proposed a deal that could end this, and both sides turned them down, then neither side is actually interested in ending this.

[EnigmaticHat]

I think the point that Trump could over turn this directive at any point is a reasonable explanation though. They're asking democrats to deliver the party that started this shit a feel good win. I would be hard pressed to vote for that myself. It's like a guy stabbing you then asking for a parade when he puts a bandage on the wound. Wouldn't need a parade if you hadn't fucking stabbed me in the first place.

But I guess in cognitive dissonance America, this is acceptable now.

They're asking Democrats to cooperate in actually fixing the problem instead of just ignoring it like they used to. here. The relevant section:

What is the law regarding the treatment of migrant children?
A two-decade-old court settlement, the Flores settlement, and a law called the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (2013) both specify how the government must treat migrant children. They require that migrant children be placed in "the least restrictive environment" or sent to live with family members. They also limit how long families with children can be detained; courts have interpreted that limit as 20 days. Previous administrations have released families to meet these requirements. President Trump has said the law requires him to separate families, which is not true. His advisers have presented a more complicated argument for how the law requires family separation. "The laws prohibit us from detaining families while they go through prosecution," Nielsen said on Monday — a reference to the 20-day limits on how long children can be detained. Therefore, she says, "we cannot detain families together." She argues that that leaves the administration with the options of not enforcing the law, which it rejects, or separating families. But immigration advocates and legal experts say that there are other options, including those that previous administrations have chosen.

The law, originally intended to correct the problem where kids were being released back into the custody of human traffickers, set a very short time limit for how long they can be detained. Too short, in most cases, to determine what's going on, and so they just released them. Not even deported, just released. To buy the necessary time to actually enforce the law as it's written and they're bound to follow, they're exploiting a loophole. Separating them allows time for going through the process because they're technically no longer detaining a family.

This is not a problem that an executive order can fix. The "fix" the Democrats are insisting Trump applies is to go back to just releasing people.

You're quoting that vastly out of context.  Those centers were originally meant to handle children that had no legal guardians.  From your own article:

For 15 years, ORR has handled the "care and placement" of unaccompanied migrant children. Until recently, that usually meant minors who crossed into the U.S. alone.

Even if that weren't the case, Democrats have had the ability to unilaterally write laws for 2 years out of the past 17.  And even during those 2 years they had to deal with senate fillibuster.  They have had the will and desire to reform immigration for most of that time, but Republicans can't cooperate with them on that because then they'll be ousted in their own primaries.  You're walking lockstep with the Trump party line here and using the same deceptive tactics they are.  I think you should stop.

Edit: "This is not a problem an executive order will fix."  Mind explaining that?  Every analysis I've heard of this contradicts that statement.

[EnigmaticHat]

Oh, and most of the people who are newly detained under Trump's zero tolerance policy either came forward willingly or were asylum seekers.  Under Obama they would have lived their life at home waiting for a ruling on their case.

On top of that, people who previously would have been deported without a criminal sentence are now being given one.  Meaning that instead of reducing the amount of illegal aliens in the country Trump is actively increasing it, but its okay, because these guys will be in prison.  And we're making these brand spanking new private prisons so they can legally be used as slave labor because why not.  One of the last things Obama did was investigate private prisons and decide to phase out all private prison use at the federal level.  But sure, we're all equally at fault for this.

[Baffler]

-snip-

By "This is not a problem an executive order will fix" I mean just that. Executive orders cannot circumvent a clear legal mandate. If the law requires that detention of families not last longer than x number of days there is nothing the President can do about that except angle for loopholes like they're doing here, or again do what Obama did and just choose not to enforce the law. For the rest of your post, I confess that I'm not sure what you're even talking about. Separating them as a matter of course is new but the places they're sending them to aren't matters somehow, or have I missed the point entirely?

You're walking lockstep with the Trump party line here and using the same deceptive tactics they are.  I think you should stop.

Neat!

-snip-

-snip-

Imprisoning illegal aliens instead of just deporting them is a bit silly.

-snip-

It's also worth pointing out that this is just speculation, and until the proposed order is released we can't really say all that much about it.

[redwallzyl]

Then again, why should we be criminally prosecuting illegal immigrants instead of just... deporting them? Why the kangaroo court?

It's generally justified with "deterrence." Same shit they use to justify dumping said people in dangerous border cities at night with no possessions. But it's okay because 'they should not tried to cross' is apparently justification for anything up to and including theft, rape, abuse, murder, and mass murder and I'm not kidding with that one. Such justice, much moral high ground. Truly we are the pinnacle of greatness.

Have I mentioned my seething hatred for US border policy?

[Reelya]

Putting up walls to stop the free flow of labor goes against all the basic tenets of free-market philosophy. It's the same as the bible: they cherry pick which parts to cite and when to adhere to it or ignore it.

[redwallzyl]

Putting up walls to stop the free flow of labor goes against all the basic tenets of free-market philosophy. It's the same as the bible: they cherry pick which parts to cite and when to adhere to it or ignore it.

That's why they liked the status quo of permanent second class easily exploitable migrants. They get to pretend they are moral and law abiding while simultaneously getting there cheap labor. All at the cost of human suffering and to the general disadvantage of society. Trumps blatant racism and populism has thrown a wrench in their nice little system and not in a good way.