For weeks, the myth-fueled media coverage of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy focused on children being separated from their parents after attempting to enter the U.S. illegally. The public relations offensive mounted by open borders advocates resulted in President Trump taking executive action to address family separation at the border.
Trump’s Executive Order moved to bring about a solution to a burgeoning crisis fairly quickly, but not quickly enough to keep pace with the moving goal posts of his open border caucus.
Surely, critics would embrace any proposal to ensure children were no longer “being ripped from their mothers” or “torn out of the arms” of their fathers.
When Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced narrowly-written “emergency legislation” intended to keep illegal immigrant families together as their cases were processed, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was not satisfied.
“The president alone can fix it with a flick of a pen by signing a presidential order to end the agonizing screams of small children who have been separated from their parents,” Schumer said on Tuesday.
And when he did, Schumer again was unsatisfied.
“It seems that the administration lacks a plan, intention, and a sense of urgency to begin reuniting these children — many of whom have suffered serious emotional anguish — with their parents,” said Schumer in a letter to Trump that was co-written with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi, in her own press release, proclaimed from her high horse that “instead of protecting traumatized children, the President has directed his Attorney General to pave the way for the long-term incarceration of families in prison-like conditions.”
It seemed with the swipe of the presidential pen, the goalposts had been moved. It was not about separating families, it has always been about detaining families or any individual who has entered the U.S. illegally.
Amnesty advocates may believe the American people are equally opposed to family detention, but they would be wrong.
A new poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov shows overwhelming support for the administration’s other immigration actions.
Yes, there was public opposition to the practice of separating families – a mere 18 percent strongly approved and 14 percent somewhat approved of separating children from their parents or guardians.
The same cannot be said for family detention. Asked how illegal alien families should be handled, a majority (43 percent) said to “hold families together in family detention centers until an immigration hearing at a later date.”
And half of all Americans (32 percent strongly approved and 18 percent somewhat approved) are in favor of “the new federal policy to arrest and send to jail anyone who crosses the border into the United States without proper documentation.”
Similar findings were shown in a June Politico/Morning Consult online poll. That survey found 49 percent of registered voters backed referring for prosecution those who are found illegally entering the United States from Mexico.
Immigration is a complicated issue – and so are Americans’ views on it.