Honest question

dnc said:

HardlyClothed said:

Southerndawg said:

Obama did enforce the law for awhile, and he did take some heat for it. Political expediency won out under him though, he used his pen and phone to practically gut enforcement. Trump's admin is simply returning to enforcing the law. Fact is that there should only be negative consequences for illegals entering the country, not incentives. That's been a big part of the problem.

Unsurprisingly you have it completely wrong. Obama tripled ICE’s budget and deported more people than any other president in an effort to cut a deal with the right on immigraion, which will be a stain on his legacy.

There is no law mandating that children be separated from their parents at the border. It is a “zero tolerance” policy change that was initiated in April. The Trump admin is being as cruel as possible to pressure democrats to give him a friendly immigration deal. Keep justifying 10,000+ migrant children held in cages not knowing when they will see their parents again, it’s a great look.

hr, yk

Sledog said:

dnc said:

HardlyClothed said:

Southerndawg said:

Obama did enforce the law for awhile, and he did take some heat for it. Political expediency won out under him though, he used his pen and phone to practically gut enforcement. Trump's admin is simply returning to enforcing the law. Fact is that there should only be negative consequences for illegals entering the country, not incentives. That's been a big part of the problem.

Unsurprisingly you have it completely wrong. Obama tripled ICE’s budget and deported more people than any other president in an effort to cut a deal with the right on immigraion, which will be a stain on his legacy.

There is no law mandating that children be separated from their parents at the border. It is a “zero tolerance” policy change that was initiated in April. The Trump admin is being as cruel as possible to pressure democrats to give him a friendly immigration deal. Keep justifying 10,000+ migrant children held in cages not knowing when they will see their parents again, it’s a great look.

hr, yk

dnc said:

Senator Ben Sasse posted the best synopsis of the situation I've seen so far. Really interested to see what kind of solution he presents.

Many Nebraskans this weekend asked me about the kids at the border. Here’s a short version of what I told them. This is a bit over-simplified, but these are broad brushstrokes of how I understand the situation at present:

1) Family separation is wicked. It is harmful to kids and absolutely should NOT be the default U.S. policy. Americans are better than this.

2) This bad new policy is a reaction against a bad old policy. The old policy was “catch-and-release.” Under catch-and-release, if someone made it to the border and claimed asylum (whether true or not, and most of the time it wasn’t true), they were released into the U.S. until a future hearing date. Many folks obviously don’t show up at these hearings, so this became a new pathway into the U.S.

3) Catch-and-release – combined with inefficient deportation and other ineffective policies – created a magnet whereby lots of people came to the border who were not actually asylum-seekers. This magnet not only attracted illegal immigrants generally, but also produced an uptick in human trafficking across our border. (We now also have some limited evidence of jihadi recruiters spreading word about how to exploit the southwestern border.)

4) Human trafficking organizations are not just evil; they’re also often smart. Many quickly learned the “magic words” they needed to say under catch-and-release to guarantee admission into the U.S. Because of this, some of the folks showing up at the border claiming to be families are not actually families. Some are a trafficker with one or more trafficked children. Sometimes border agents can identify this, but many times they aren’t sure.

5) Any policy that incentivizes illegal immigration is terrible governance. But even more troubling is that catch-and-release rewarded traffickers, who knew they could easily get their victims to market in the U.S.

6) This foolish catch-and-release policy had to be changed. But changing from catch-and-release does not require adopting the wicked family separation policy. The choice before the American people does not have to be “wicked versus foolish.”

7) The administration’s decision to separate families is a new, discretionary choice. Anyone saying that their hands are tied or that the only conceivable way to fix the problem of catch-and-release is to rip families apart is flat wrong. There are other options available to them. The other options are all messy (given that some overly prescriptive judges have limited their administrative options), but there are ways to address this that are less bad than the policy of family separation they’ve chosen.

8) There are many senior folks in the administration who hate this policy, and who want to do something better.

9) But some in the administration have decided that this cruel policy increases their legislative leverage. This is wrong. Americans do not take children hostage, period.

So what happens next? Obviously the Congress is broken and clearly bears much of the blame for a broken immigration system. We have many different problems clustered together: The border is too porous. Our asylum and refugee polices are too subject to executive branch whim, rather than clear legislative debate before the American people. We don’t have any coherent policy for dealing with kids who were brought here as minors but who have never known any home but the U.S. And more broadly, we have no long-term agreement about what levels of legal immigration we should want, or what kinds of workers we should prioritize. The Congress clearly bears much of the blame.

But neither the horrors of family separation nor the stupidity of catch-and-release should be about leverage for a broader debate. We should start by tackling the specific problem before us in the narrowest way possible.

The President should immediately end this family separation policy. And he should announce to the Congress the narrowest possible way problems like the FIores consent decree and related decisions (which bias policy toward release into the U.S. within three weeks after capture) can be resolved.

I am also working on a possible solution with James Lankford of Oklahoma, a man of integrity who has been pouring great energy into addressing this human tragedy at the border.

Sledog said:

dnc said:

Sledog said:

dnc said:

HardlyClothed said:

Southerndawg said:

Obama did enforce the law for awhile, and he did take some heat for it. Political expediency won out under him though, he used his pen and phone to practically gut enforcement. Trump's admin is simply returning to enforcing the law. Fact is that there should only be negative consequences for illegals entering the country, not incentives. That's been a big part of the problem.

Unsurprisingly you have it completely wrong. Obama tripled ICE’s budget and deported more people than any other president in an effort to cut a deal with the right on immigraion, which will be a stain on his legacy.

There is no law mandating that children be separated from their parents at the border. It is a “zero tolerance” policy change that was initiated in April. The Trump admin is being as cruel as possible to pressure democrats to give him a friendly immigration deal. Keep justifying 10,000+ migrant children held in cages not knowing when they will see their parents again, it’s a great look.

hr, yk

Applying for assylum isn't a crime dumbass.

And we're not talking about people going to jail, we're talking about them going into holding facilities where they await their applications being processed.

It's a completely worthless argument, but not surprising considering the source.

Those being separated are not applying for asylum. They are illegally entering the country by crossing the border somewhere other than a border crossing. Many with children not their own. So you think it's OK for people to risk a child's life sending them through the desert etc. with Coyotes and possibly strangers or maybe friends? Oh and 80% plus are not eligible for asylum.