Or they might get hit by buses, get kidnapped, fall into rivers, starve, get recruited by human traffickers, be shot by police, freeze to death, or become evangelicals.
You can't rationally pretend there is some moral equivalence here. At least in the current situation there are people generally trying to take care of them, however incompetently.
You're right. To state that the detention center were made miserable as deterence and that isn't malicious is also fucked, though. Because if making it bad so people stop coming is a solution, then why not just let them roam free, because that's pretty bad, too.
I don't think borders should even exist, but I understand we live in a situation where they do. But clearly the US has and continues to make terrible decisions in regards to immigration. The worst decision, I think, is the amount of effort that goes into stopping it, rather than making it easier or clearer.
I have been an illegal immigrant before, and I can tell you first-hand that it is a stressful, vulnerable, and hard system to escape, especially when governments work to punish the immigrant and not what got them there - in my case a dishonest company, and in these kids' case their parents/whoever sent them and those that enabled the exchange (in my case an agent and in these cases, whoever buys the kid a plane ticket).
You would think that having children, separated from their parents, being locked in cages would be enough to energize the US into doing something actually good for once. But instead the conversation got shoved into the realm of political debate and blame instead of what it should be: a clear moral blunder that we, the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, can correct.