President Donald Trump’s executive order which modifies his “zero tolerance” policy at the United States-Mexico border has left Democrats and the open borders lobby fighting for an end to all border enforcement, inviting floods of illegal immigration and cheap foreign labor into the country.
The zero-tolerance policy mandates that all illegal border crossers — including illegal alien adults who cross the border with children — be prosecuted and eventually deported from the U.S. This policy results in border-crossing parents having their children taken into federal custody. This is a loophole known as the Flores Settlement Agreement.
In an effort to modify and strengthen his zero-tolerance policy, Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that keeps border crossing family units in detention together while they are prosecuted. These border crossing families will be held in facilities run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) rather than being released into the interior of the U.S. through the “Catch and Release” program.
Trump’s Migration E.O: Prosecute Migrants and Challenge ‘Flores’ Loopholehttps://t.co/OYv3jn9Mhy
— John Binder 👽 (@JxhnBinder) June 20, 2018
For weeks, the open borders lobby and Democrats have blasted Trump for the zero-tolerance policy — even though the Obama administration also detained child border crossers, as Breitbart Texas exclusively reported — at the border, but remained unsatisfied with his executive order.
The political Left’s talking points have now shifted from complaining about child border crossers being placed in separated detention facilities from their border-crossing parents to fighting for an end to all border enforcement and detention.
For example, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the executive order does not go far enough because federal immigration officials should not be detaining and prosecuting border crossers at all.
Pelosi said in a statement:
The President’s Executive Order seeks to replace one form of child abuse with another. 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. [Emphasis added]
In a statement before Trump’s executive order was even made public, the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) blasted the plan, arguing that border crossers should not be held in detention at all and instead should be released.
The ACLU wrote:
President Trump has been brought to his knees because of the lawsuit we filed on February 26 and the ensuing public outcry. Kids should not have been separated from their parents in the first place and they still don’t belong in jail. His alleged solution to a crisis of his own making is many months too late. It is a crisis that should not have happened to begin with. He has caused irreparable damage to thousands of immigrant families. [Emphasis added]
The devil is in the details. This crisis will not abate until each and every single child is reunited with his or her parent. An eleventh-hour executive order doesn’t fix the calamitous harm done to thousands of children and their parents. This executive order would replace one crisis for another. Children don’t belong in jail at all, even with their parents, under any set of circumstances. If the president thinks placing families in jail indefinitely is what people have been asking for, he is grossly mistaken. [Emphasis added]
Likewise, open borders group, the American Immigration Council, slammed Trump’s executive order by saying that the policy to prosecute all border crossers is “cruel and unnecessary.”
“The zero-tolerance policy is cruel and unnecessary,” the group said in a statement. “We should not have to choose between separating parents from their children and expanding the shameful practice of imprisoning families.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s plan to detain border crossing families together while they are prosecuted is supported by a plurality of Americans, including 45 percent of white Americans and 45 of black Americans, a poll by the Economist/YouGov reveals. Nearly half of Hispanic Americans said previously they support the plan.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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