Trump Caves On Family Separation Policy, Sort Of
President Trump has reversed the family separation policy and replaced it with a family detention policy. This is likely to lead to Court challenges.
President Trump has signed an Executive Order meant to address the family separation policy that has been the source of widespread condemnation not only domestically, but also from religious sources such as the National Conference Of Catholic Bishops as well as internationally from figures such as British Prime Minister Theresa May and Pope Francis. The new order, though, doesn’t completely rescind the policy that the Administration put in place some six weeks ago and leaves a longer-term solution to Congress:
President Trump caved to enormous political pressure on Wednesday and signed an executive order that ends the separation of families by indefinitely detaining parents and children together at the border.
“We’re going to have strong, very strong borders but we are going to keep the families together,” Mr. Trump said as he signed the order at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”
The order said that officials will continue to criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally, but will seek to find or build facilities that can hold families — parents and children together — instead of separating them while their legal cases are considered by the courts.
Mr. Trump’s executive order directed the government’s lawyers to ask for a modification of an existing 1997 consent decree, known as the Flores settlement, that currently prohibits the federal government from keeping children in immigration detention — even if they are with their parents — for more than 20 days.
But it is unclear whether the court will agree to that request. If not, the president is likely to face an immediate legal challenge from immigration activists on behalf of families that are detained in makeshift facilities.
Stories of children being taken from their parents and images of teenagers in cage-like detention facilities have exploded into a full-blown political crisis for Mr. Trump and Republican lawmakers, who are desperate for a response to critics who have called the practice “inhumane” and “evil.”
Mr. Trump has for weeks refused to simply end his government’s “zero tolerance” policy that led to the separation of more than 2,300 children from their parents, saying that the alternative would be to fling open the nation’s borders and allow immigrants who cross the border illegally to remain in the country.
But the president, furious about the pummeling he has taken in recent days, has been casting about for an escape from the crisis, people familiar with his thinking said. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security are preparing the executive order that is designed to end the family separations.
More from The Washington Post:
President Trump abruptly reversed course Wednesday, signing an executive order ending family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border after a public uproar over the impact of his administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.
The plan would keep families together in federal custody while awaiting prosecution for illegal border crossings, potentially violating a 1997 court settlement limiting the duration of child detentions.
“So we’re going to have strong, very strong borders, but we’re going to keep the families together,” Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office. ”I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”
Trump had repeatedly defended his immigration crackdown, including forcibly separating migrant children from their parents after they crossed the border. But images of young children in tears, housed in metal cages, set off an international outcry.
For days, Trump and his top administration officials were unwilling to unilaterally reverse the separation policy, insisting that congressional action was required.
(…)
On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said 2,342 children have been separated from their parents since last month.
One administration official said Trump’s order would end separations by keeping families together in immigration detention centers.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operates two large detention centers for families in Texas and a smaller one in Pennsylvania, but their combined capacity is about 3,000 beds.
As of mid-June, the three centers were nearly full, meaning ICE would potentially need to place children in its much larger network of immigration jails for adults.
You can read the Executive Order that the President signed today at the link.
Right off the bat, it’s important to note that this Executive Order does not appear to be aimed at ending the “zero tolerance” policy that Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced six weeks ago. That policy will continue to be implemented, meaning that nearly everyone attempting to cross the border illegally will be arrested and held at an appropriate Federal facility. What is changing, though, is that it will no longer be the policy of the Administration to separate families when they arrive at the border together or those who have attempted to cross the border illegally. Instead, such families will apparently be held in some form of “family friendly” detention facility. It’s not entirely clear what that means or what kind of conditions these families will be kept in. For example, if it means that children will be kept in adult detention facilities it seems clear to me that this would be entirely unacceptable. However, if it means that they would be kept in the same sort of family-friendly facilities that have been utilized in the past then that would at least be more acceptable than the status quo. It’s also unclear if some portion of these people will be released, with appropriate monitoring, and told to appear for a hearing at a later date.
This Executive Order also leaves unresolved questions regarding the status of children who have already been separated from their parents, which have been estimated to number as high as 2,000 as of early this week. Specifically, we will need answers to those questions and to the question of when the parents and children who have been separated will be reunited. In many cases, the Federal Government has been slow to release information about what is happening to these children and in some cases even refused to allow access to those facilities to either reporters or elected state and Federal officials, There have also been reports, albeit unverified in most cases, that some children have been sent to facilities as far away from the border as Michigan and New York, although it’s unclear if these are children who came to the border unaccompanied or those who were separated from their parents. In either case, the status of these children, and those who were separated from their parents at the border needs to be resolved sooner rather than later.
One potential problem with this Executive Order is the fact that it is likely to run afoul of the so-called “Flores Settlement” that set parameters on the government’s ability to keep children in custody and sets restrictions on the conditions under which they can be held. That ruling was further limited by subsequent litigation based on the original case, including a 2016 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that limited the ability of the Federal Government to keep children in custody in any type of detention facility for longer than twenty days. Practically speaking, it is unlikely that any of the cases that the government is currently dealing with involving families can possibly be resolved in that period of time It was because of these court rulings that prior Administrations had chosen to release parents with children with an order that they appear at a later date, although in recent years it has been the practice that the parents would be fitted with ankle bracelets containing GPS locators to ensure their appearance at trial. It’s worth noting, though, that reporting has indicated that the vast majority of people who went through this “catch and release” process did, in fact, appear for their court dates, especially those claiming asylum as a defense to deportation. Because of this, it seems certain that there will be litigation regarding the length and conditions of detention of these families in the near future
While President Trump and his supporters will no doubt try to spin this differently, it’s fairly clear that this amounts to a total back down on the part of the Administration. In the two weeks or so since this story has become front page news, the President and his supporters have insisted that this is an issue that only Congress can solve, which in and of itself proves that Trump was intending to use these children as a bargaining chip to get what he wants out of a broader immigration deal. Additionally, the Administration was falsely claiming that Democrats were responsible for this policy and that it was their refusal to act in Congress that was responsible for the policy that the Trump Administration itself had put into place. All of this was untrue, of course, but that didn’t stop the President and his supporters from repeating these false claims for the better part of a week.
On the whole, I would characterize this as a positive development albeit one that doesn’t go nearly as far as it should. The so-called “zero tolerance” policy will remain in effect, for example, and that means that families will be kept detained for an undetermined period of time while their status is adjudicated pursuant to applicable law. Additionally, as I noted above there is likely to be litigation over the new policy, especially if it means that parents and children are kept in custody for extended periods of time. All that being said, this is a positive development and it clearly would not have happened were it not for the massive public pressure that built up over the past week or more and the fact that members of the President’s own party on Capitol Hill were beginning to rebel and threatening to pass legislation that would have gone further than this Executive Order does. In other words, this is a good development but let’s not forget the fact that this was a crisis of the President’s own creation and that he only caved because the heat what becoming too hot to bear.
Photo via The New York Times
The arsonist wants credit for putting out the fire he was seen to start but blames on someone else.
It sure is awful Trump started all this, and everything was rosy previously:
http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/19/photos-obama-immigration-detention-facilities
The problem here is that Flores is a true consent decree, not an decree in invitum. Any modifications will therefore unavoidably require the consent of the original parties (which you can imagine will not be forthcoming given who those parties are …)
@Guarneri: Separating kids from their parents was not something the Obama and Bush Administration did. When families were detained, they were grouped together before being deported or refered to immigration court.
Nice try, though.
@Guarneri:
Thus proving that contra Trump’s lies, Obama was enforcing the law on the border. Right?
The kids were not separated from their parents. The kids you see alone in those deliberately un-captioned photos, are kids who entered un-accompanied.
But let me guess: you don’t know enough about the issue to know even that much, right? You never do. You remain deliberately uninformed since that’s really the only way to cling to your Trump-love.
Intellectual auto-castration.
@Yank:
Correct. The Obama admin housed them together while attempting to ram their cases through immigration courts for expedited handling.
Predictably, it didn’t go well, and the Obama admin has to own that, but trying to compare that situation to children being warehoused without their parents in conditions that clearly violate Flores is a non-starter. They’re not remotely comparable.
We won’t even get into the fact that courts back then explicitly ruled that detaining migrant families for the purpose of deterrence – which the Trump admin has admitted is its rationale for this fiasco – is a great big no no.
It shows just how weak the argument being made by these people really is.
The pattern of this deranged administration is ridiculous….they do something stupid and then lie up and down, blaming the problem on everybody but themselves, and even getting indignant for being called out for the lies, then they cave and their original excuses are shown to be completely feckless…from the top down, totally pathetic…
No, the Administration continues to have way too much authority on these matters. Congress needs to act.
Yes, it was a crisis of Trump’s only creation, but he didn’t “cave” so much as he switched tactics. He is going to continue to use every bit of his authority to mess with these people.
Again, Congress needs to act.
@James Pearce:
Republicans can’t act on this matter in an election year. They either piss off their rabid base and risk primary challenges from the right, or they go draconian and serve up a marquee issue & cudgel for Democrats to use to pummel them about the head AND energize their own base for turnout.
Wandering into this issue was, and remains, gross stupidity on Trump’s part. No matter which way they go – and that includes doing nothing – they lose. This issue was custom made for Democrats to use against them in this election cycle. It peels off suburban women AND it pisses off Latinos
@HarvardLaw92: At the moment polls say way more Democrats are voting against Trump in 2018 than republicans voting for him. In fact, in the three previous times when the numbers have been this lopsided, control of congress has flipped.
Failing to take the Senate could have serious, terrible consequences, but taking the House will inhibit Cheeto Benito quite a bit.
It appears that Trump learned the art of hostage taking from Kim Jung Un to whom he caved. Only it didn’t work in this case (so far). He’ll try again.
Very clear pattern to this World’s Greatest Negotiator: Create crisis, try to get way, lose, and cave.
Just think if Trump put his energies to creative endeavors like the opiate crisis or infrastructure,
@Michael Reynolds:
Totally stealing this.
I still don’t get why the “zero tolerance” policy is legal.
Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor. It rises to a felony only for repeat illegal crossings. While a misdemeanor is a crime, typically people are neither arrested nor detained for committing them. It is disproportionate. Add the fact that most illegal immigrants who are caught do report to court hearings, there seems to be no need for such a policy. Also, requesting asylum isn’t a crime at all.
If a city were to arrest and detain people for jaywalking, or littering, wouldn’t that qualify as “cruel and unusual” punishment given the nature of the offense?
@Kathy: 12 years ago I was arrested for a misdemeanor. But I was released at the station within an hour and nobody said anything about taking my kids away.
@HarvardLaw92:
What other options does the administration have? I presume they can go to court in attempt to get a ruling allowing them to hold families indefinitely. What is the likelihood of success, do you know?
@Kathy:
I’ve heard some rumbles that it isn’t. Certainly blocking people from applying for asylum (which there are reports that they are doing) is in violation of treaties.
Trump actually gets rolled a lot. For a guy who thinks he’s a Deal Maker he sucks at making deals. In fact, has he made any important deals at all? He didn’t get the tax bill he said he wanted, he didn’t get his Muslim ban, his Obama repeal/replace, his Wall. He got played like a sap by Kim, paying yugely for the same vapor we used to get for free. And he’s in trouble because he’s such a dumbass he took Russian mob money and didn’t realize they got his balls in the deal.
Hell, I’m a better Deal Maker than this clown – I got a piece of merch from Disney.
@Kari Q:
They actually can’t. The government voluntarily entered into a consent decree to resolve 9 years of litigation in re: Flores. The only way to modify that agreement, aside from fraud and errors of law (which are rare and honestly not relevant here) is for the parties who entered into it to mutually agree to modify it.
As I said above, the particular parties to this agreement aside from the government aren’t going to agree to do so. No chance in Hell of that happening.
I got a piece of merch from Disney.
Congratulations!
This may be a new record:
And it goes on. Thank God for the sheer incompetence of these people. We will be saved by Trump’s stupidity.
Given his past history, in the next few days Trump will lash out viciously and angrily, red faced and barely in control, and in public at some relative nobody (in his eyes). Any bets as to what category that poor bastard will fall into?
It’s like we’re watching some warped combination of House of Cards and Yes Minister with the chief character being a bungling idiot…not only is this not the way to run a government, but this show needs to be cancelled…
Trump is having another “rally” today, on top of things. Those are always bizarre, but it seems especially tasteless today. I shudder to think what horrible things he’ll say when he’s feeling emboldened surrounded by his fanatics.
@reid:
Why am I not in the least surprised? He needs a mob to slobber over him and tell him how wonderful he is.
Well hell, if that’s all he needs he should just stop by here and read all the greetings from his peculiar crew of dedicated well-wishers…they slobber over him on a daily basis…
@An Interested Party: The evidence is pretty strong that Trump can’t really read, or at least has no interest in it.
You’d think watching Fox & Friends, Carlson, and Hannity would be enough slobbering for him, but apparently not.
@Just Another Ex-Republican: Perhaps we could give MBunge and some of the other admirers some construction paper and crayons…surely their hero would understand those messages…
Remember the thing that the Trumpanzees were so happy to say: Elections have consequences!
Well, November 2016 sure has had it’s effects, but not the way the the Trumpanzees planned, and the 2018 midterms will be a real cluster for them.
For instance: In Colorado, the governorship is up for election.
The GOP had it’s televised Candidate debates yesterday, with all 4 candidates being firmly Pro-Trump. The frontrunner of the pack, Walker Stapleton, made it clear he stands with Donald Trump on family separation.
And then Trump yanked that carpet right out from under him today. (… D’oh ! )
In this purple state, you KNOW that little clip will get TONS of airplay into the upcoming election, and will likely cost the GOP the governorship in Colorado.
So, there is something good that comes out of this. Likely that same thing has happened to a lot of elections and candidates nationwide.
(PS: Walker Stapleton is the Great Grandson of Ben Stapleton, former Mayor of Denver and member of the KKK during his tenure as Mayor)
@An Interested Party:
I bet if he read these threads, he’d leave asking “I wonder who that Cheeto Benito they keep ragging on is. He sounds like a total loser.”
@Kathy:
The ACLU filed suit against the policy of separation and detention in February. With Trump switching tactics, the lawsuit is moot and it won’t be adjudicated. I’m fairly certain the national ACLU legal team will be filing suit over the new ‘family-friendly’ detention policy soon.
@HarvardLaw92: Hearing tonight from the Flores attorney that the govt will ask that the requirement that detention facilities be licensed be dropped from the consent decree. Very hard to imagine that the judge would agree to that.
Also, apparently there is a provision for Flores reps to have access and inspect detention facilities under their purview. If the Flores facilities are on a military base, it is suggested that while they can access the facility, they may be refused entrance to the military base. (How devious is that?)
@Bob@Youngstown:
In a pure consent decree, where all involved parties mutually agree to settle their litigation via a negotiated agreement, the decision to modify and/or set aside the terms isn’t within the power of the presiding judge, absent very narrow circumstances like fraud or errors of law. The parties to the agreement have to agree to modify it – which the Flores plaintiffs clearly aren’t about to do. The order from the court merely implements the terms of the agreement – it gives them force. It doesn’t define them.
If a party, say the government, abrogates the agreement, not only is it subject to contempt of court, it also potentially opens the door for the aggrieved party/parties to resume their initial litigation where it left off. It’s more likely that they’d seek an order compelling compliance first.
This is theater for the base. They expect to lose. They’re trying to set up a scenario where they can use that loss to subsequently enable them to blame the courts and Democrats for the current fiasco.
Which is obviously erroneous. The only factor creating this situation is the Trump admin’s decision to effect detainment pending prosecution. That’s it. It could be rectified in a second by a decision reversing that policy.
Nobody is making them do what they’re doing. Not the courts. Not the Democrats. Trump wanted this as red meat for his base, and he got it. Now he gets to own it.
@HarvardLaw92: Thanks!
https://politics.theonion.com/political-scientists-baffled-by-trump-s-ability-to-end-1827000942
Since everyone and their brother has had spell check for a decade, I have to wonder if shit like this is intentional for their supporters. “Look, we cain’t spell no words rite eether! We’s just like you!”
“The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.” -Karl Kraus
What do you know…I was sure I would see a Bungie comment here explaining how caving was part of Dennison’s 10-D chess strategy.
I guess being made a fool of by defending the indefensible, only to be tossed under the bus by his man-crush, hurt his little snowflake feelings.
Trump is just so comprehensively incompetent.
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/21/17483494/family-separation-trump-incompetent
read that whole thing.
Historian Kevin Kruse reminds us of a line from Deep Throat during Watergate: “Forget the myths the media created about the White House. The truth is, these aren’t very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”
@teve tory:
It will get worse. Not just because his mental health is declining, but because WH staff vacancies are going unfilled as they occur, and he is increasingly surrounded by people like Stephen Miller and John Bolton.
@Charon:
Oh, don’t worry about it. Things will be just swell when Corey Lewandowski’s Chief of Staff.
@teve tory: The White House may have been on to something there. “Seperation” has to do with festering lesions or sores. It may just be a Michael Kinsley gaffe.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: My bad, I was thinking of “suppuration.” Easy mistake to make when one is just an ignint cracker. I wonder what their excuse is?
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I always default to stupidity rather than conspiracy, so I would guess Seperation was just rank incompetence. But if it came out that they deliberately misspelled things to shore up the Cletus Vote I wouldn’t be terribly surprised.
(I know Trump’s accomplices misspell to make things look more Trumpian, my point is slightly different)
The caving continues: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-will-stop-prosecuting-parents-who-cross-the-border-illegally-with-children-official-says/2018/06/21/4902b194-7564-11e8-805c-4b67019fcfe4_story.html?utm_term=.e02929bcfa47
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Incompetent Liberal Wusses Who Always Do Things Wrong seem to have won this one completely.
True.
However, it is scary what could happen if a another demagogue comes around. One that isn’t lazy and stupid like Trump.
@Yank:
This is why I think restoring integrity to government should be a Democratic theme in 2018 and 2020. Trump has done a lot of damage domestically and destroyed our international reputation. We need to look to legislation that limits corruption and abuse of power in Washington. We need to make sure this never happens again.
@teve tory:
https://twitter.com/meridithmcgraw/status/1009868675829129216
I remember some years back a lot of immigrant children were sent in here by their parents who stayed behind down in wherever. They came rolling in by the bus loads! I don’t remember any complaints or a big hue and cry about them being separated from their parents then.
(“rolling through here like the 3:00pm dismissal bell at the middle school! ” ). This hot weather brings lots of old memories of riding a hot, dusty school bus. “Irby, stop talkin’ or start walkin’!” ” Murrell, you’re close enough to walk, get goin’ ” School bus drivers did not put up with any stuff back then.
@Tyrell:
One sentence earlier you wrote:
I don’t like to insinuate that people are addle minded, but…you ok?
Regarding the “big hue and cry,” it was front page news for a month, and the Obama administration’s mishandling of it resulted in a giant lawsuit by the ACLU. One that wrapped up only recently, and which resulted in a report that shed light on CPB mistreatment of migrant families, including separating children. You see where I’m going with this?
@Charon: Stephanie Grisham is more of a professional than I am. My response would have been…less suited to retaining my employment.
School bus drivers did not put up with any stuff back then.
True story.
When I was in 5th grade at the Bay Road School in Webster NY (1957) I remember being the first one to get on the School Bus. Apparently I surprised the driver sitting in his seat as I clearly saw him hastily folding up his copy of Playboy and cramming it out of sight.
Ha! Too late for that!
@Neil Hudelson:, “ok” – yeh. Try spending a full day in a theme park with “real feel” temperatures at 105, and riding all sorts of machines that rearrange internal organs. Then the food you get there.