Tents Hurt Illegal Alien Families And Republican Optics

Southwest Border Photos

The Trump Administration has constructed the first of what is to be multiple large tents to house children near El Paso, Texas.  After announcing the decision on Thursday, it was revealed on Friday that the first of the tents was already constructed and was housing 100 children.  The timing indicates that either the DHS is an incredibly efficient organization or that the decision and construction was kept secret until it was fully operational.

Texas Democrat Representative Cesar Blanco, in whose district the construction has taken place, responded quickly.  Per the Texas Tribune:

“There is clearly a lack of transparency, and clearly this administration is in a hurry to set these tent cities up without any input from the local community, without any input from any kind of third party,” he said.

Blanco said his office has requested a site tour to inspect the facility and have some of his questions answered.

“We don’t want to go two weeks from now,” he said “We want to have access immediately. It’s 100 degrees out, these are out there in tents, so we want to make sure we have access as soon as possible.”

To be clear, every one of the people housed in this facility is a lawbreaker.

They are also a nightmare for both the illegals and the Republican Party.  The illegals, because families are being torn apart and people do desperate things to protect their family, or when their family is threatened.  There has already been one Honduran man who has committed suicide in jail as a result of having his three-year old son taken from him. (The Hill)

From the perspective of some of these illegals, they are coming to the U.S. in an effort to save their families from threats of violence.  Then, when they arrive, a previously unknown policy is seizing the children that they just abandoned their homes and traveled thousands of miles to save.  Raised with little faith in a government, they have no reason to believe that the U.S. Government is ever going to give them back.  And, in fact, the U.S. Government might not be able to; small children have gone missing or died after being entrusted to U.S. custody and then remanded to unverified guardians.  (CNN)  Contrary to the Democrat positioning, this was happening under Obama as well. It is not a Republican failing, it is a governmental failing.

The other side of the argument holds that the immigration system is out of control, and that prior actions have done nothing to stem the tide.  A growth in the U.S. economy as measured by the surge in the Dow and a continued drop in reported unemployment numbers have made the U.S. very attractive to people wishing to work here both in legal and criminal labors.  Just as MS-13 members and other criminals have hidden with the influx of peaceful border crossers, peaceful border crossers have hidden with the group of people honestly seeking asylum.  All of them are here illegally, and something must be done to prevent more situations like MS-13 infiltrating a Maryland middle school, threatening faculty and recruiting “tweens” for drug and sex practices.  (Fox News)

The Trump administration has not changed the policy of separating children.  That has always happened, and such children were housed in places used for unaccompanied minors.  What it has changed is the prosecution of asylum seekers.  The Flores Consent Decree established that unaccompanied children could only be detained for 20 days, after which time they must be placed into the custody of an American.  Asylum applications require research that typically takes far longer than 20 days.  Historically, families were kept together and the asylum seekers were allowed to stay in America during the process.  (National Review)

This process was being abused by the migrant workers who were portraying themselves as asylum seekers to get preferential treatment, and the gang members and criminal opportunists who were portraying themselves as simple migrant workers.

The Trump Administration made a sweeping decision: prosecute everyone.  Even if it’s an obvious asylum seeker, prosecute them.  This will keep the infiltrators in jail, and the asylum seekers will be able to go free afterward.

The problem is that a broad policy like this results in infants and small children being taken from the families; and asylum applications from the border, while they are expected to be processed within 180 days, often take two to three years to process (Nolo)  That is two to three years of an adult sitting in jail, wondering what’s happening to their kids.  Even if their applications are accepted, they’re getting into a situation where someone else may have raised their baby from the time of being a few months old, seen that child walk for the first time, the first words, been diaper trained, and taught a new culture (possibly traditional American, possibly not) and then having to take that child back.

Asylum seekers are going to be torn apart by this.  So will the Administration, and by extension, the Republicans.  The Democrats stepped on a political mine weeks ago when they circulated a widely-seen picture of caged kids and attributed it to the Trump administration, only to discover that the photo had been taken during the Obama era.  This decision is handing them the hammer that they thought they had with the caged children photo.  Tents in Texas bring to mind the Japanese internment for some, and Democrat activists are trying to ensure that image is expanded.  This, after only two days announced and when only one has actually been raised and is housing children:

(Twitchy ignores the fact that he decisively won his lawsuit against Trump, and has thus garnered a large following among Democrats.)

Every overheated or mistreated child, every act of child-on-child violence in the tent, every suicide from a child or asylum-seeking parent, every child who is assigned to an abusive foster parent is going to be used to hammer the Republican party.

This is a very complicated issue with human lives on the line.  Simple answers, whether Obama’s effective open-borders or Trump’s zero-tolerance prosecutions, are attempts to enjoy political expedience at the expense of those lives.

About the opinions in this article…

Any opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this website or of the other authors/contributors who write for it.

About AlienMotives 1991 Articles
Ex-Navy Reactor Operator turned bookseller. Father of an amazing girl and husband to an amazing wife. Tired of willful political blindness, but never tired of politics. Hopeful for the future.

1 Trackback / Pingback

  1. Tuesday Trump Tweets

Comments are closed.