Trump Supporters Draw False Equivalence Between Immigrant Families And Criminals
Trump supporters seeking to justify the Trump Administration's family separation policy are drawing a false, and baseless, equivalence between immigrant families and people who have been convicted of crimes.
During her appearances on Sunday morning television yesterday, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway repeated an argument I’ve heard from many Trump supporters with regard to the Trump Administration policy of separating parents and children at the Mexican border, an argument that is easily refuted: (emphasis mine)
She argued that the practice is not unlike the separation of families when a parent in the United States commits a crime and is sent to jail.
“That happens in this country as well,” she explained. “In other words, if I commit a crime and I am put in jail, my four children are separated from their mother, because we don’t have a policy — Why would you want the children in jail with their parents? You want them in a facility temporarily or you want them to be repatriated back to their home country, with said parent, or you want them to come into this country with a responsible adult who you know, who the authorities are confident means that child no harm.”
As I said, this is an argument I’ve encountered quite frequently over the past several days as the stories about these children being separated from their parents have come to define the current news cycle. It has been repeated by Trump supporters who appear on networks such as CNN and MSNBC and I’m sure it’s one that the Trump propagandists on Fox News Channel have raised themselves although I admittedly don’t watch that network frequently enough to be sure. It’s also an argument I have encountered repeatedly online from those attempting to defend the Administration’s policy. Indeed, I would state with confidence that along with the false assertion that the policy that the Trump Administration began implementing roughly six weeks ago is the fault of Democrats that this is perhaps the most common “defense” one is hearing these days from the people still defending this inhumane policy. The only problem is that their argument is completely lacking in either facts or logic.
To start with, someone who is convicted of, to pick an example, armed robbery isn’t sent to prison unless they’ve been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by an appropriate tribunal. That is not the case with the people seeking asylum at the border. At best the most they can be charged with is improper entry into the United States which is, generally speaking, a misdemeanor rather than a felony. That offense only becomes a felony in the event that someone has been caught trying to get into the United States illegally multiple times. While it’s possible for someone to be jailed for a misdemeanor it’s not common except in the case of serious violent misdemeanors or if the Defendant has a pre-existing criminal record. In any case, as I noted such persons are generally speaking not jailed unless and until they have been convicted and found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Defendants can also be jailed pretrial if they do not qualify for bail, or cannot meet the conditions of the bail imposed by the court, but even here they are given an opportunity to argue their case for pretrial release before a Judge and to have that decision revisited in the event of changed conditions. The parents who are having their children taken away are given no opportunity for a hearing before their children are taken from them and being placed in a mass detention facility.
Second, if a person is convicted or accused of a crime and held in jail or prison, their children are not placed in mass detention facilities like the children at the border. In those cases, they are either placed in the custody of the other parent, if that person can be located, or an appropriate family member if one can be found and assuming that doing so would not be detrimental to the child(ren) for some reason. If that can’t be arranged, then the children are placed in the temporary custody of the relevant child welfare agency and, while they may temporarily be housed in a facility for children that, while less than ideal, are certainly better than the facilities these immigrant children are being housed in. Additionally, in these situations the ultimate goal would be to place them with a foster family at least until their custodial parent is released from jail. Depending on the offense(s) the parent is charged with, of course, it may require additional court proceedings to determine if the child(ren) should be returned to them, but they are generally being treated far better than any of the 2,000 or so children being held in mass detention facilities operated by the Federal Government.
Third, it is crucial to remember that the vast majority of the parents who have been impacted by this new Trump Administration policy are seeking asylum rather than merely being undocumented immigrants who were caught trying to sneak across the border with their children. Most of them, in fact, have presented themselves at designated border crossing locations and seeking asylum for reasons ranging from the political to the personal, including women fleeing domestic violence and families fleeing the gang violence that is far too common in many of the nations of Central America. Seeking asylum is not a crime and can also be a defense against a charge of improper entry. In either case, the act of seeking asylum means that we are required to give them a hearing by existing Federal law as well as international treaties to which the United States is a signatory, thus making those treaties part of the “Supreme Law of the Land” pursuant to Article VI, Clause Two of the Constitution. There is, simply put, no justification for the way in which these parents and children are being treated, and no justification for allowing this policy to continue for a single day.
You’re doing great work on this subject, Doug. What galls me is that this administration can never just do the right thing and say yes, there’s a problem, and we’re working on fixing it; they have to lie, blame others, and take advantage of the situation. Obviously, I don’t expect any better from these people, but they never fail to do the wrong thing.
You can tell a lot about people in how they punch down rather than punch up…this administration really is full of scum…I wonder how many people who voted for this trash feel any shame for casting that vote…along those same lines, I wonder if this gives pause to all those Christians who voted for and/or support this sick clown and his henchmen who are practicing extremely unChristian policies…
But it is not unlike when a parent is detained/arrested based on a violation of law or regulation and held in custody due to the reasonable fear they will not show up for their hearing if released. In such situations, their minor children are taken and held by government authorities.
nazis also separated families, kept them in cages, and led people to “showers” because “policy.”
We, the people just outside the concentration camps can’t claim what the Germans tried: “we didn’t know, we were all lied to”. Social media has seen to that.
The U.S. has some serious moral and ethical decisions to make. When they demand to see your papers to buy groceries, it’s too late.
The only zero tolerance that works is against nazis.
@JKB:
Rather than regurgitating Hannity’s lies, why don’t you actually read @Doug’s excellent piece above, which directly addresses that point. I realize you don’t give a fck about the truth, but you could at least pretend.
Is it any wonder that there are so many misinformed people out there when you have Fox “News” propagandists spouting bull$hit like this…
Fox Anchor Redefines Immigration Detainee Cages As Chain-Link Walls
Counter-headline:
Mataconis, leftists draws false equivalence between legal, illegal immigrants
Can’t cite single example of “anti-immigrant” that actually applies to legal immigrants
The Mass Governor just suspended the deployment of the MA Nat’l guard to the border because
@Warren Weber:
Hey, look everyone!!!
It’s J-E-N-O-S posting as Potsie, again.
You remember Potsie…his role was to be the “dumb foil” for punchlines.
Ohhh, so you’re saying it’s perfectly acceptable to forcibly separate children from their parents if they are all illegal immigrants? Thanks for clarifying…
@JKB: Take a step back for a moment. Since you don’t usually run away and hide after posting here, unlike some cowards, you might have the ability to do the following: After actually reading Doug’s post, consider whether you are finding a way to justify something that can fairly be considered evil.
I used to argue illegal immigration in reference to free markets, especially how prohibition on a needed or desired good or service inevitably drives a black market to supply it.
America has an obvious need for labor that it cannot meet domestically, in particular seasonal farm labor, but it also doesn’t want to facilitate even temporary workers to come in and fill it. If immigrants found no jobs available, no opportunities at all, they’d go back; as in fact many did when the great recession hit. And one can better regulate immigration, and secure the border, by allowing more people in rather than by trying to push everyone out.
I had only limited success with that line of argument. Now that Republicans no longer favor free markets, and less so free trade, it’s completely useless.
@JKB:
Yeah! I know hundreds of people who were arrested and incarcerated for speeding because the cops didn’t trust they’d show up in court. They had their children taken away and put in concentration camps too!
If only those deranged loonies like Rich Lowry and Erick Erickson could see the light.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2018/06/18/shots-fired-erick-erickson-lights-the-media-up-for-doing-a-terrible-job-covering-immigrantchildren/
Mike
@MBunge:
I have to note that you have supported:
Child molestation
Serial sexual assault
Russian attacks on our country
And now child abuse
Until you have the balls to answer for the moral squalor that is your comment history…you should just STFU
@Kathy:
There is more than a little bit of truth to that statement, especially in times of full employment such as exists right now, but free market principles needs to apply to both sides of the equation. If an employer can’t find any one to hire at said wage, do not free market principles demand they should raise the offered wages? Instead they hire people who have crossed the border illegally and will work for the wages they are willing to pay (or none at all, because what is an illegal immigrant going to do if he stiffs them for their wages?) even if it means they are breaking the law. I have heard too many interviews with these people where they express the idea that this is perfectly OK, that if they couldn’t do this they wouldn’t be able to be in business.
As though it was their right to do this.
wow even BillO says they’re screwing the pooch.
@JKB: And let’s not forget all the women who came into the local cop shop asking for the police to protect them and their children from the gang in their neighborhood that had raped them and their daughters and threatened to kill them, and they were promptly locked up and had their children taken away and put in cages. This has happens to women in the US all the time!
I don’t usually go for “Trump did X to distract from Y” claims. The simpler explanation is that he just does lots of terrible shit, all the time. But re-announcing the Space Force today? Yeah that was a distraction.
Man, the number of heartless creeps who don’t appreciate the brilliance of Mataconis and Taylor’s insight on this issue just keep growing. What is wrong with people!?!?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/06/the-truth-about-separating-kids-at-the-border-part-two.php
Mike
Here are some prominent “libtards” who are against the policy:
Andrew Napolitano
Sen. Ben Sasse
Laura Bush
Melania Trump
Bill O’Reilly
Anthony Scaramucci
Franklin Graham
Rod Dreher
Actual liberals supporting the policy: zero
As a purely political matter – separate from the obvious moral issue – any policy that unites the opposition party while completely dividing the majority party isn’t good policy.
@MBunge:
That’s all you have…a bunch of right wing nut jobs telling you what to think?
No wonder you are such a stooge.
…moral squalor…
Let’s not forget Bungles appreciation of Supreme Leader and Chairman of the Republican Worker’s Party Donald Trump’s blatant disregard for his marriage by committing adultry screwing porn stars.
@teve tory:
He’s smart to do so. Politically, this is a no-win scenario for the GOP. The poll numbers make that clear. Better than 90% of Democrats disapprove. Worse, nearly 70% of independents do. Hell, 35% of REPUBLICANS disapprove.
This mires congressional Republicans up in a fiasco where they lose either way, and it stands to energize opposition voters going into midterms. The short version is that it gains them exactly zero voters they didn’t already have locked up, and it’ll increase opposition turnout. The optics of this self-imposed pandering to the base stupidity are horrific for the GOP.
If Trump had set out to intentionally wreck the GOP, he couldn’t have done a better job than he’s doing right now.
@Warren Weber: “Can’t cite single example of “anti-immigrant” that actually applies to legal immigrants”
Actually, the Trump administration has started combing through naturalization records looking for any possible misstatements so that they can revoke citizenship and deport people who have been here legally for decades.
Not that baby J@nos cares about that. Lovely way to spend what you claim are your dwindling number of days on earth — rooting for scum that tears two year olds away from their parents in the name of “law and order.” The real tragedy of your pathetic life is that you weren’t able to live it in Germany in the 30s.
@OzarkHillbilly:
There’s a local electronics shop run by a 70ish yro Trumper who services the 1970’s era communications tech still used by many poor rural southern emergency services like the fire dept. here’s a condensed conversation I had with that idiot 2 years ago:
Me: Are you guys hiring?
Him: Nope. Can’t hire nobody. I’m gonna have to close the goddam business down.
Me: You can’t hire anybody? Lots of people at the local community college get 2 year electronics tech degrees all the time.
Him: They don’t know anything. All they wanna do is packet switching and digital this and digital that. I need people who can work on these old analog boards.
Me: Those boards are obsolete. Of course they aren’t going to graduate knowing how to fix 50-year-old Comm boards. But they know the principles of electronics, you’d just have to teach them the details.
Him: I don’t have time for that! And why should I have to pay somebody While I’m Teaching Them?!?!?
Me:….
I have no patience for people who think Millennials are entitled.
@HarvardLaw92: And I’m seeing articles that suggest this separation program is likely to expand many times over in the next 2 months. From 2,000 to tens of thousands. If that happens…
Watching the coverage, I’m beginning to wonder if this will turn out to be Trump’s Katrina moment. For years so many Americans gave Bush the benefit of the doubt, despite 9/11 happening on his watch and his going to war on false pretenses (whether or not you choose to believe that he believed they were real). But during Katrina it became impossible for most people not to see the incompetence and lack of compassion in his administration, and he could never get them back.
Likewise, there seem to be a lot of people who have convinced themselves that Trump is actually a strong leader and a good negotiator — he just likes to talk tough. But the pictures coming out of these concentration camps are so horrifying (I fight tears every time I see that little two year old by the truck) and his response so clearly lies and doubling down, even people who have given him the benefit of the doubt might not be inclined to do so in the future.
This won’t change the hardcore Trumpaloons — Bungles will be kissing his ass for the rest of history. But that base isn’t enough to keep Republicans in power on their own…
@teve tory:
I, generally speaking, have no patience for that generation at all. Everything with them seems to be grumbling about this thing or that thing that irritates them because they’d be required to move one millimeter out of their expected comfort zone. Old man shouts at cloud …
They’re (again, generally speaking – there are exceptions) disagreeable, unpleasant people who are best avoided. The best way for them to contribute to the world at this point is to continue removing themselves from it by attrition.
@teve tory:
It would destroy the GOP. I can’t wish for it to happen, for the obvious reason that these policies are causing suffering for real human beings, but I will say that the attack ads would write themselves.
Up to now, people have had varied reasons for hating Trump, and for that matter the GOP in general. Disparate and difficult to mold into coalesced opposition.
This changes everything. That photo of the despicable treatment of that little girl in the pink shirt, and the many more like it that will undoubtedly follow, are more than mere photographs.
They’re banners under which opposition will coalesce into a much more united wave. Trump has unwittingly marched the GOP onto the field at Waterloo.
@JKB:
If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
If the point is not self-evidently true, don’t even try to make it without cites and good logic.
You are losing already and will lose more the more you soldier on.
@OzarkHillbilly:
If you restrict immigrants looking for seasonal work, then their wages can be much lower, not just lower. See the guest programs that existed in the US for decades.
Besides, how many US Citizens are clamoring to do unskilled work on a seasonal basis for minimum wage? People prefer year-round work. In other words, what I said: the US has a shortage of labor but won’t allow surplus labor from other countries in to fill it.
I keep waiting for them to realize the danger they’re in but they aren’t. They went on tv this very afternoon and said sorry, nothing they could do about it, democrat law, hands are tied, yadda yadda.
I’ve now seen Kirstjen Nielsen tell three blatant lies about this policy and I’m not even paying attention to her.
Let me get this straight. People are saying that if criminal dad or mom goes pokey and kiddos go into foster care, that that is the same as detention of immigrant kids? I am both totally stunned and then again, not at all.
It is what they have to argue to appear to be seen as semi-human so why should I be flummoxed?
Let’s not get distracted. This whole schmeer is flat out evil.
R’s bathe in dickishness so hard, they don’t really get it when normal people say you can’t do that – that is evil. They do not even realize when they’ve become evil. That is scary AF. They react as if they are the offended party.
@HarvardLaw92: “I, generally speaking, have no patience for that generation at all.”
Interesting — I’m “that generation,” as are many of my friends. I hear very little of the grumbling you reference. Of course, most of us are busy traveling, volunteering, taking classes, taking care of grandchildren and/or participating in the political process … no time for complaining!
@teve tory: Very short conversation I had with a local *sawmill* operator:
Him: “Kids these days! They don’t wannna work anymore! I got 3 open positions and can’t find anyone for them!”
Me: “How much are you paying?
Him: “$10 dollars an hour!”
Me: “McDonalds pays that. How’s about increasing the pay to $15/hr?”
Him: “Are you crazy?”
Me: “No.”
**working at a sawmill is really horrible work. Back breaking labor in scorching heat or freezing cold. One gets covered in saw dust sticky with sap that makes the skin burn and the possibilities for sudden amputation are definitely above zero. I wouldn’t even think about doing it for less than $30/hr.
@HarvardLaw92:
That’s funny, my sons are millennials and they and all their friends are the exact opposite of that. I would go so far as to say that in general they are far better human beings than us boomers. Of course, I realize that is a rather low bar.
ProPublica has audio of children losing their parents as a result of this Trump order. If you can listen to this and still rationalize supporting Trump you’re something worse than wrong
@James Knauer: They’re already demanding papers to ride Greyhound buses. https://papersplease.org/wp/2018/04/06/transportation-companies-should-not-consent-to-police-harassment-of-travelers/
@OzarkHillbilly: I know what sawmill work is like. No motherfucking way would I do that for $10/hr.
@Kathy:
I notice how you conveniently ignore my argument that is basically “Pay more money and you’d be surprised how many people will want to work for you.”
Of course they do. They also prefer work that pays them a million dollars a year. Your point is?
They do at times of full employment. At other times the US has an excess of greed. And that extends to the consumer as well.
@OzarkHillbilly: He wasn’t talking about millenials there, he was talking about the 70-yro i mentioned.
@Michael Reynolds: I can’t even listen to that audio.
Kevin Drum was spot on.
@teve tory: I was a union carpenter for 30+ yrs. Working in a sawmill? My idea of hell.
@HarvardLaw92: Accchhh!!! @teve tory: says I owe you an apology. I am heartily sorry for any pain and discomfort I may have caused you. 😉
Seriously, my bad.
@HarvardLaw92:
I’ve been seeing predictions about the GOP’s demise for years. After Obama’s election I was seeing articles wondering whether the GOP was going to go the way of the Whigs. James Carville actually published a book with the title 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.
Of course just two short years after the total implosion of the Bush Administration, the disaster in Iraq and the collapse of the banks, Republicans had won back the House of Representatives, and they did it while doubling down on extremism. But even that didn’t stop all the cocky predictions about how the GOP was headed toward political oblivion. And I’m not just talking about how people underestimated Trump’s electoral chances. I was hearing these types of remarks even before Trump came along, about how Hillary was virtually unbeatable no matter who the Republicans nominated.
The result? Now they control the presidency, both houses of Congress, most governorships and most state legislatures in the country.
I’m not trying to imply that Dems are doomed (though the possibility that they will come up short this year, and that the “blue wave” will turn out to be more of a surf, is stronger than most liberals have been willing to admit). Power in this country typically goes in cycles, and Republicans aren’t any more immune to that effect than anyone else. But the point is that there really is no reason to believe Dems have found a way out of these cycles. They’ll win some, lose some, and it almost doesn’t matter what Republicans are doing. Having children ripped from the arms of their parents is just the Republican controversy of the day. Maybe it will have an effect, or maybe it will be totally forgotten six months down the line when people go out to vote. You might think this is the sort of really potent controversy that ought to stick, but I’ve given up assuming the American public has an attention span much greater than that of Dory the Fish. Everything is normalized, everything brought down to the same mundane level of our “team” being outraged by the antics of the other “team.”
An action that is by design meant to punish both the parent and the child.
And is intended as an inducement for your political opponents to pay for your foolish “wall” so it will stop?
Even if I grant that Trump’s ultimate goal is “good”, doing evil to force a “good” outcome is still evil. And it is not something you have no control over, you can stop this if you want to. Paul Ryan & Mitch McConnell, I am addressing you directly. You own this abomination.
This is obscene.
@Lynn:
Hence the “generally speaking” – i.e. in my experience. I. I noted that there are exceptions.
@HarvardLaw92: “That photo of the despicable treatment of that little girl in the pink shirt, and the many more like it that will undoubtedly follow, are more than mere photographs.”
The audio that Pro-Publica released today is incredibly powerful. Unless you simply believe that anyone with brown skin is sub-human, there is no way to listen to it without being moved to tears. And once that happens, all the rationalization in the world can’t change you back…
@JKB: “But it is not unlike when a parent is detained/arrested based on a violation of law or regulation and held in custody due to the reasonable fear they will not show up for their hearing if released. In such situations, their minor children are taken and held by government authorities.”
Actually it is unlike that, because that was the policy up until a couple of months ago.
Remember, they announced this atrocity ahead of time, and the reasons for it.
@OzarkHillbilly:
My apologies. I was speaking of Boomers. To be fair to Lyn , I probably should have qualified that to say “Booomers who support Trump”.
Millennials, to be honest about it, give me hope.
@HarvardLaw92: I probably should have qualified that to say “Booomers who support Trump
You may generalize all you want about that subset.
@Kylopod:
And you’ll hear about it more. you’ll also hear about the imminent demise of the Democratic party. According to some pundits a few years back, choosing Howard Dean to chair the DNC was the Democrats’ suicide note.
You know why commentators keep coming up with it? It’s a good story, and one partisans love to hear. Besides, why compromise with a party that will be dead, dead, dead by the next election?
All it takes is a good narrative and maybe one or two historical parallels, if you can find any. If you can throw in some epithets, so much the better.
A party split is popular, too, if you can’t manage to kill it off.
Runs on both sides, too. I refer you to the weeks after Desert Storm in 1991, when Bush the elder was seen as invincible, and editorial cartoons had the Democrats reading suicide manuals.
@Kylopod:
I was speaking just to the scenario proposed by Tory.
Tens of thousands of brown kids suffering in concentration camps, with non-stop photos and video (there will be video), with this admin trotting out the same tired defenses of this policy, would wreck the GOP in this election. Where it goes two years from there is where it goes, but it would be a landslide in this one.
I suspect this story is going to get much worse. The child snatching ramped up from zero to at least two thousand in a matter of weeks and it is executed by the Trump administration, as incompetent and racist bunch of sewer rats as we have ever had in this country. Think about that. Incompetent racist buffoons who do not even perceive these parents and children as actual human beings. Just how well managed do you think this clusterf*ck is? The NY Times is reporting that already parents are being deported before they are reunited with their children. Imagine the nightmare of having your kids stolen from you by a racist government and then you, a poor person, is sent back to a dangerous situation thousand of miles away. Imagine your kids are in a country, given over to strangers, and you cannot even enter the country to search for them. They have already admitted that they can’t trace hundreds of children they turned over to people claiming to have a connection to these kids.
This is as shameful a thing as the US has done in living memory. And the Republicans still cower and hide from doing any oversight on this piece of trash. “But what about my midterms” they cry. At this point there are only two types of Trump supporters: active and malignant racist dirtbags, and their enablers who stick fingers in their ears and look away as the dirtbags act in their name.
With our bipolar country, neither major political party is going anywhere…each side will have its wins and losses…one can only hope that the Orange Toddler will cause damage to the GOP the way that Bush did…I wonder who will be the one Republican to say, “Enough!” and be able to back that up with real muscle and who will be the Republican to come after this current disgrace…
Here’s a radical notion: why don’t we start by defining the problem?
1) Does this situation apply to all immigrants? No, it does not.
2) Does it apply to all illegal immigrants? No, it does not.
3) Just who does it apply to? Groups of illegal immigrants who a) contain children, and b) are captured when crossing the US border without authorization, away from an authorized entry point.
What is the normal, legal procedure for such people, in such circumstances? Immediate deportation to their nation of origin, unless they claim to be seeking refugee status.
(It should be noted that simply presenting themselves at an authorized entry point and claiming refugee status is an accepted procedure. Further, Mexico is bound by international law to also grant refugee status to such applicants.)
So, what are the options for treating such people?
1) Give the adults citations to reappear for a court hearing and let them go. This is what has been prior known as “catch and release,” and resulted in an abysmal record of people actually returning for their court hearing.
2) Detain the adults with their children. This keeps the family united, but keeps the children locked up.
3) Keep the adults, but release the children to family members or foster parents. That’s what is done now, but there are problems. For one, since we’re dealing with illegal aliens, the relatives have a higher than average likelihood of also being illegal aliens, and might just take the kids and go back underground. Or not show up at all.
Or, as in one horrific case, take the kids and turn them into slave labor. There is also the chance of sexual exploitation.
There are also insufficent foster families to meet the need. If I may be a bit cynical, it’s a pity that several Christian-based groups have fallen out of favor for providing social services, and it’s a shame that so few of those people so outraged at the moment aren’t willing to put their money where their mouths are and put the effort into becoming foster parents.
There are also prior examples of the children in question not actually being related to their “parents.” There was quite an active trade in abducted children for a little while, when people who wanted to get into the US chose to take advantage of the “catch and release” policy of those with children by simply bringing some convenient kids with them.
So, does anyone have any actual policy suggestions to offer? Or is this just yet another opportunity for the regulars to show 1) they care so much more than everyone else, and b) they hate Trump and conservatives more than anyone else?
Saul Alinsky’s Rule 12. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”
@An Interested Party:
Asylum seekers are not illegal immigrants, BTW.
@JKB: @JKB:
Helpfully completing your thought….
in lieu of bail.
@HarvardLaw92:
It may have an effect. It may be just the thing pushing the Dems from a modest victory to a landslide. On the other hand, it’s possible this will have fallen off most people’s radar by November.
In any case, the way political controversies always work is that outrage doesn’t build over time, it subsides as the initial shock wears off. Some of this is human nature, but the Trump era seems to have brought this effect to new heights, where there are so many outrages on such a constant basis that it’s hard for people to keep track of them all, and the next one invariably causes the last to fade from view. I’m not even sure something like the Civil Rights Movement would have succeeded in this environment; images of nonviolent protesters being beaten by cops would have consumed the media oxygen for a few weeks before the country would move onto something else. And the segregationists would scream “fake news!” and blame it on the previous administration, and close to half the country would agree, and no legislation to address the situation would be forthcoming.
@Hal_10000: Asylum seekers are more than welcome to present themselves to any authorized entry point and declare themselves. They are also more than welcome to seek refuge in any other country, such as Mexico or Canada. International law obligates all nations to respect asylum seekers, not just the US.
People crossing the border unannounced at a non-authorized entry point are illegal aliens until such time as they are determined to be actual asylum seekers.
Yet another hate-filled monster too stupid to understand the profound moral leadership of Mataconis and Taylor. From whence do these abominations come?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/06/a-civil-rights-commissioner-weighs-in-on-children-at-the-border.php
Mike
@MBunge: From whence do these abominations come?
That strange and mysterious and unknown place known as “the real world.”
Haven’t you figured it out yet? It’s immoral and racist and hateful to enforce any law — unless it’s against a Republican. Hell, in that case, it doesn’t even have to be an actual law.
@Hal_10000: I’m not the person who made that claim…
@MBunge: Hey fluffer, you can link to right wing loons all you want, that still doesn’t change the fact that what this administration is doing is cruel and inhumane..
That’s funny coming from someone who, using another alias, openly admitted to stiffing his hospital bills…yeah, you’re all about the law…
@An Interested Party: Yes, I get your point — It’s all about the FEELZ!!!! Who needs facts or arguments or logic or thought when you can muster all the FEELZ on your side?
And isn’t it so much easier to engage in personal attacks instead of having to actually make arguments? Aren’t you more Interested in throwing around personal insults than actually offering solutions?
Indeed…like all those poor suckers who voted for your hero because they felt like they weren’t being heard, that nobody cared about them and their feelings…
Not at all…but anyone who stiffs his own bills has no right to tell anyone else about laws and how important they are…
@Warren Weber:
Considering the fact that you were banned from this site long ago (no, J E N O S, you aren’t fooling anybody), it’s in particularly bad taste for you to be attempting to lecture anybody. That isn’t a personal attack. It’s loudly pointing out reality.
I’d really like to know, though: what is it, what factor in your pathetic character (such as it exists anyway) compels you to continue to return to a place where it’s been made adamantly clear to you that you’re unwelcome?
It’s just sad …
@MBunge:
Helpful hint: in a competition between this twisted attempt to characterize this fiasco in terms of law & order and photographs of traumatized children being held in cages, you’re going to lose every time.
It’s pathetic enough for the administration to attempt it. It’s worse for you to faithfully regurgitate it – as if that does the slightest thing to mitigate the horrific optics of this one.
You and your patron are about a hair’s width away from imagery directly comparing the treatment of these kids to 1930s Germany. Those ads will happen. The comparisons will be made.
And they’re damning because they have the luxury of being accurate.
Try to grasp this: the most laudable policy in the world (and this one is FAR from being anywhere close to that) is still cause for being vilified if it’s carried out in a callous, brutal manner.
Nobody but Trump’s idiot racist base is buying it. You’ve managed to turn 70% of independents and 35% of your own party against you. I realize that you’re incapable of feeling any sense of horror at this racist fascism. That would require you having a soul (which you clearly do not), but Jesus, man, in the interest of self-preservation alone, you and your moron President should be asking yourselves exactly what it is you think you’re accomplishing.
Test: Jenos.
Hey, we can say his name again and our post gets published! His “Voldemort” days are over!
@Warren Weber:
They are. And they are still being detained and having their children taken away.
One thing to note about this debate. The Republicans are still in what I call the Partisan Reflex Stage — where they reflexively defend whatever it is Trump is doing. It’s why they’re grasping onto bad arguments (because there aren’t good ones). That support from the GOP for this policy is just over 50% is sad, but expected. It will be very interesting to see where it goes from here especially if conservative commentators turn on Trump over this.
My goodness. How many horrible people can there be in America? It’s as if posting over and over and over and over about how awful Trump and his supporters are has accomplished absolutely nothing…but that can’t be, can it?
https://news.gallup.com/poll/235751/trump-job-approval-tying-personal-best.aspx
This IS the darkest timeline. I mean, are we supposed to be rational and grownup about Donald Trump being President? Madness!!
Mike
Doug, I just want to thank you for the work you are doing here, particularly on this tragedy.
This whole disaster is breaking my heart.
@Warren Weber: Yes, your lack of empathy is well noted. Your accompanying lack of facts or arguments or logical thought are also duly noted.
(This Warren fella sounds a lot like that guy Jim Treacher who quit a sweet job writing propaganda because he’s weak.)
@JKB: In cases of asylum seekers 99% return for a hearing. After all, they want asylum, they are not here to hide. There is no justification for this barbarism.
@michilines: I felt my empathy when Breitbart broke this story back in 2014. http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2014/06/05/leaked-images-reveal-children-warehoused-in-crowded-us-cells-border-patrol-overwhelmed/
I also don’t have an overwhelming hatred for Trump (which seems to be the price of admission around here), so I can also assign a bit of blame to Mexico for honoring their obligation to offer refuge to these people, and also for the parents who choose to take their children out through the desert and across the border instead of following the legally accepted procedures of requesting refugee status from the US. Or in Mexico — which is certainly not a “third-world sh!thole,” after all, and I’m sure a vast improvement over whatever horrible place they’re fleeing.
So, just what is your solution, anyway? You’ve gotten step one covered — “make sure everyone knows that we all hate Trump.” What’s the next thing? Or is that the beginning and end of your concern about the problem?
@MBunge:
Whew, you’re dense …
Those numbers are buoyed by the South. Trump isn’t running this year. My suggestion to you is for you to take the state by state approval ratings and overlay them with the Senate map for this cycle. The first thing you should notice is that the bulk of the South has no Senate elections this year.
The second thing you should pay attention to are the approval ratings in states where the Senate races are considered competitive.
You won’t like what you see, especially when you factor in the impossible position this situation puts congressional Republicans into. The House numbers are far worse – for your side …
Note that these numbers also largely don’t factor in the run up in gasoline prices that’s happening there as we speak or the looming inflation inherent in moron’s trade war. Those effects are just beginning to be seen. They’ll get worse.
This isn’t about defeating Trump. It’s about using Trunp’s stupidity in wandering into this minefield to defeat incumbent members of Congress. You’re putting congressional majorities at risk.
We needed one issue around which unified, coordinated attacks on congressional Republicans could coalesce, and *pouf*, here it is, delivered by the Moron in Chief. Thanks? 🙄
Did you know that if you seek asylum at any port of entry there will be zero separation of families? Fun fact.
These aren’t asylum seekers being caught at the border. These are people coming into the country illegally who, when caught, cry Asylum!
If they didn’t cry asylum, they’d be reunited with their children the next day and escorted back home.
Obama’s policies essentially ignored the law and just let anyone who came here with a child walk, with a vague promise to come back for a hearing. (Why does that sound familiar?)
This is like catching someone in your house with a handful of jewelry and cash, and they say they were just looking for the bathroom. Then what Obama did made burglary free of consequences as long as you’re committing a crime and you have a child, any child, with you.
Obama encouraged this behavior from people sneaking into the country. Trump is, again, restoring rule of law, which is hardly something Hitler would do.
I would expect these cases to drop once word here out that just having a kid with you means you get free passage into the US. But then, we have Democrats who continue to encourage these acts because those children are useful as political props.
And now we have word that the Obama administration handed kids over to child traffickers, who forced the kids to work or be killed. Obama: literally bringing back slavery.
@michilines:
You know, I didn’t care about children being separated from their parents at the border when Obama was president. Why should I care about it now?
Oh really? Show the evidence that the AG’s zero-tolerance policy has been going on for years…show the evidence that families have been routinely separated for years…you’re as full of $hit as the odious administration you defend…
@An Interested Party: I showed you the government pictures that Breitbart published four years ago, but keep covering your eyes and shouting “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.”
And I see you’re still at the “I HATE TRUMP SO MUCH” stage of your argument. When do you move on to Phase 2, where you actually address the issue? Do you even have a Phase 2, or is “I HATE TRUMP SO MUCH” the alpha and omega of your arguing capacity?
Wow, what a pathetic analogy…so now people escaping domestic violence, death squads, drug gangs, and other horrors are no better than thieves robbing your house…
It is hardly surprising but still nauseating that anyone who defends this administration has to resort to the same kind of lies that come from the White House…is this how America is supposed to be made great again? Disgusting…
It seems that the problem is those who claim to be wanting refugee status, but instead of taking the easy way — showing up at a point of entry and claiming refugee status — they instead choose to cross the border and go through the desert until they are captured — at which point they then claim refugee status.
One would think that the desert itself would be enough of a deterrent and encourage people to do things the legal, safer, and easier way, but apparently it isn’t. Maybe a more visible, substantial, and significant barrier would do some good. Something like a wall…
@MarkedMan: Just in case anyone thought the case of a mother being deported without her child was a fluke, check out this article from Politico. The judge “can’t make any promises” that the parents will be reunited with their kids. “Hopefully, they will get you to her”.
So we have stolen their children and they get vague promises from the incompetent racists in the Trump administration. All the proof we need that there is no plan or mechanism in place to keep track.
Of course the hard core racist Trumpoids love this. Sticking it to the brown people is what they are all about. More important to the moral health of our nation will be the “Reasonable Republicans”. Alas, I suspect, they will be a bit discomfited and grumble and switch to talking about sports or the new school construction project or about Uncle Bob’s hip replacement. They will complain about being tired of all this “Politics” and they’ll tune out the news, except for the reassuring drone of Fox in the background.
I notice in those photos that parents are with their children, once again showing that defenders of what this administration is doing now are still full of $hit…oh, and taking kids away from their parents is vile and despicable…that’s a good enough reason right there to dislike the sick joke in the White House…
@MarkedMan: Sorry, forgot the link to the article
Summer camps. They’re now calling cages and tents in the summer desert heat $#&%*%$#* SUMMER CAMPS. The rebranding of a detention camp with a less horrifying name…. hmmm, where have we heard that before?
I don’t know what hellholes most conservatives seem to send their kids to but you can leave a summer camp – it’s not detention. It’s the family’s choice to attend – the government isn’t tossing you into it because they stole you to punish your parents. You go out and play at summer camp – you’re not kept in an abandoned Walmart with cages for fun and profit. You’re allowed visitors at summer camp – parents, senators and human rights groups aren’t kept out by armed security guards when they want to check on you. You can call home or reach the outside world if you need to – most parents have no idea where their kids are and have had no contact in months.
It’s not a $@#&$%*^# SUMMER CAMP. If we did the same thing to American citizens who’ve committed misdemeanors, there’d be RIOTS. If you trespassed on your neighbors yard and the government took your kids for months while they “figured it out”, you’d be foaming at the mouth. How about speeding – lose your kids to the Chihuahuan Desert summer camp for over a year when you go to court to bargain it down to a moving violation, that sound good?
@Warren Weber:
People are being turned away at POE’s.
You have been banned here, several times.
Show a little self-pride and go away. Maybe die, like you promised you were going to.
(and yes…anyone who advocates for the separation of children from their parents deserves no less.)
Speaking of the obvious Nazi analogy, we didn’t even have to bring it up.
Sessions the Elf just trotted his ass out to offer his opinion that this is different from Nazi Germany because “they were keeping the Jews from leaving”.
I shit you not …
If I were a Republican, I’d be looking for someone to save these morons from themselves.
Since I’m not a Republican, I’ll just gleefully laugh at the circular firing squad.
@HarvardLaw92:
I gather Dennison is going to the Hill today to discuss immigration.
I think he’s going to get an ear full from Congress critters who don’t want to lose the House and Senate.
But I’m not sure Dennison is intelligent enough to back down, even from an untenable position.
I’m sure that when I said months ago that guys like @TM01 and @MBung and @Warren would take jobs as concentration camp guards tomorrow, I know some of you chuckled and thought, ‘there goes Reynolds engaging in hyperbole.’
Reading this comment thread, what do you think now?
Would any one of these three rip a little brown baby away from its mother? No doubt at all. Would they then bash that child’s brains out on orders from a superior? Yes. That’s who these people are. Not just deplorable, but despicable.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
His shtick is all about playing to his admirers. It always has been.
What this is cueing up is what I’ve patiently been waiting for – civil war within the Republican Party.
We managed to accumulate 2,000 or so kids being detained in this despicable fashion in less than two months. The evidence makes it clear that this policy isn’t having the deterrent effect that these morons thought that it would, so one can only imagine how many more kids we’ll have in concentration camps by November. When they start losing those kids in wholesale fashion – and they will – this whole mess will go nuclear, quickly.
Between Trump’s intransigence, the horrific optics, and the tone deaf defense of this policy by the admin (somebody needs to find a heater and thaw Kirstjen Nielsen out after that ice queen / not a iota of humanity to be found performance of hers yesterday), Republicans in Congress are in panic mode.
They’re craven, but they aren’t stupid, even if Trump is. They know where this leads for their party.
@Michael Reynolds:
You forgot JKB.
You’re right that, to some degree, this does come down to a question of practical trade-offs and moral priorities. Personally, though, I don’t find it a close call at the end of the day. Given the choice between releasing families together knowing that a certain percentage of them won’t return for their hearings, locking them all up together for months or even years, or separating the kids from their parents so we can just lock up the parents, option 1 strikes me as the only morally acceptable choice.
Answering that threshold question doesn’t have to be the end of the policy discussion, though. It’s hard to sift through all the misleading, agenda-driven statistics on immigration that the various advocacy groups on both sides put out, but from what I’ve been able to glean, only 60-65% of all immigrants released pending adjudication actually show up for their hearings, but the rates for asylum seekers generally and minors/families are higher. I haven’t been able to find support for the 99% across-the-board claim Doug and some commenters have made with respect to asylum seekers, but I have seen a number of ideologically diverse sources citing figures in the 70-85% range.
One of the things that complicates the stats is the fact that the appearance rate is dramatically higher – as in 95-99% – for immigrants who are either represented by counsel, assisted by various charitable case management programs like the ones run by the Catholic and Lutheran churches, or enrolled in one of the ICE/DHS heightened-monitoring pilot programs. From what I’ve read, it seems a big factor in non-appearance cases is that the immigrants in question don’t know how to navigate the insanely bureaucratic process and are terrified that any foot fault will get them deported, so they try to disappear instead. Having counsel and/or case management support dramatically reduces that fear, and the heightened monitoring obviously reduces their ability to disappear. Unfortunately, most immigrants don’t have reliable access to counsel and aren’t enrolled in any case management or heightened monitoring program, so the average appearance rate continues to be woefully low.
On the up side, though, that all points to rather obvious policy changes that could significantly improve the situation. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper to pay for counsel, case management, and monitoring programs than it is to keep people in detention, so it seems it might actually be possible to have our cake and eat it too. We can choose the vastly more humane option of “catch and release” and simultaneously dramatically limit the downside risk that those folks won’t show up for their hearings by keeping a closer eye on them and actually trying to help them navigate the system. It’s win-win.
I’m not sure I agree with the line “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” But I can certainly agree that if you’re explaining how you’re different from Nazi Germany, you’re losing.
Man, am I stunned.
Given the opportunity to eithe 1) offer a solution to the problem or 2) engage in personal insults and compete in WHO HATES TRUMP MORE, so many of the regulars chose option 2.
The one reasonable one is someone I don’t recognize as a regular.
@Michael Reynolds: “Would they then bash that child’s brains out on orders from a superior? Yes. That’s who these people are. Not just deplorable, but despicable.”
To be fair, I don’t think little J@nos (aka “Warren”) would bash a child’s brains out. That would mean actually doing something, as opposed to sitting on his ass and trolling. I don’t doubt for a second that he would enthusiastically cheer for such a policy of mass murder, but to suggest he’d actually participate gives him far more credit than he deserves.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: “People are being turned away at POE’s.”
Here’s the actual law covering applicants at points of entry, courtesy of the Customs And Immigration Service. https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/asylum/questions-and-answers-asylum-eligibility-and-applications
Stick to the personal insults and arguing how you hate Trump so much more than anyone else. When you actually venture into facts and reality, you tend to lose your way. Very quickly.
@Michael Reynolds: “Would they then bash that child’s brains out on orders from a superior? Yes. That’s who these people are. Not just deplorable, but despicable.”
Sorry, but I don’t think I could work for Planned Parenthood.
Then again, with them it’s not “bash their brains out,” but “suck their brains out.” Plus, they’re fetuses, so they’re really not human, so that might be enough of a distinction.
Well, maybe for you, but not for me. No thanks.
@Warren Weber:
Silly Jenos. We don’t hate Trump. We ridicule Trump.
We hate you. Take the hint and leave
@Warren Weber:
I don’t care what the law is…people are being turned away at POE’s. Neilson admitted it in her failed press conference yesterday. So the Dennison administration is saying don’t enter illegally, go to the POE’s, where they are turned away because they don’t have anyone in place to deal with them. Nice catch 22.
Fact: You have been banned several times only to come back under other names. Have a little self-respect and finally disappear for good.
@Warren Weber :
The solution is simple: STOP. Just stop.
This wasn’t a problem before. We weren’t building tent cities before or converting Walmarts with cages. This is an entirely new, self-inflicted problem and you’re asking why no one’s “offering a solution to the problem”? That’s like someone who keeps pouring gas on themselves, lighting the match and then complaining nobody’s offering a solution to why they’re constantly on fire! Stop doing the bad thing and the bad thing won’t happen – even the little girl in the picture can understand that logic.
Why not just go back to the way it was before? We’ve managed to do border security for quite a while without building camps so what exactly is the problem with, you know, not doing that? Please explain why children absolutely MUST be separated from their families and why said families can’t be detained together if detention is really required (I don’t believe it is but am willing to listen). Catch and release is the best option and the reason why previous Admins used it. Otherwise, the solution is clear: STOP what you’re doing when pretty much the whole country is having moral issues with it.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: I don’t care what the law is
Truer words have never been spoken. You’ve never let the facts get in the way of your hatred. You’ve never let yourself get confused by reality.
@Warren Weber:
Ever hear of the Nuremberg Laws? They were duly-enacted laws, too.
There is not the slightest doubt that in 1942 you’d be defending Dachau and Auschwitz. That’s who you are.
@KM: The solution is simple: STOP. Just stop.
Sigh. You sound like the people who wish we could just go back to the morality and society of the 1950s.
Groups with children are crossing the border and cutting across the desert to get into the US. That ain’t gonna change (unless we build a wall or something), so the only question remains is what do we do about it.
Are you recommending we just look the other way? Do nothing? Just let them keep coming?
I can tell you a whole bunch of horrific consequences of that particular policy, and it doesn’t require any imagination — just a few minutes of research on what has happened before.
One of the biggest reasons we don’t want people just walking across the border and cutting through the desert into the US is actually humanitarian — it’s frigging dangerous, and we don’t want people dying out there.
Detain the parents with the children? Well, that’s what was done under Obama. And I have already seen the howls about how we’d be locking up innocent children for the alleged sins of their parents.
Release them all? Tried that, it worked horribly.
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” The attacks on the current policy are looking successful. So let’s hear that constructive alternative.
If the current situation is so bad, those demanding it be changed are morally obligated to offer a better solution. To offer something that will actually make things better than they are now.
I’m not hearing any.
@Warren Weber:
Um…you are the one using an abstract law to deny the FACTS on the ground. A fact the head of of the DHS admitted to.
You claimed to be dying. Get it over with, would’ya? There’s a special place in hell for people like you who advocate for child abuse. You’re gonna really like it….
@Warren Weber:
You’re the one who wishes we could go back to the racism of the ’50’s…your happy place.
@Michael Reynolds: You need to stop hoarding all your creativity for the paid work, because the free stuff you give out is stale.
If everyone’s a Nazi, then nobody’s a Nazi.
@Warren Weber:
Durrrr.
Don’t try to be clever Jen0s. Not everyone is a Nazi: you are.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Interesting debating technique. Never argue what you believe, just make up stuff, announce that the other side believes it, and denounce it. Then hope they deny or defend it, which puts them on the defensive — and leaves you free to keep attacking and never have to actually articulate a position of your own.
I’d ask you about the upcoming lottery numbers, but considering how badly you suck at this kind of mind-reading, I’d have to find a lottery where they reward you for getting zero numbers correct…
@OzarkHillbilly:
No, in a free market, the market’s responsibility is to provide workers at the wages Capital is willing to pay by whatever means are necessary. Fortunately, our nation is bordered by a less economically advantaged country, so that a supply of less expensive labor is available when necessary. Most First World nations have had the fortune of being similarly situated over the years, lucky for them.
And also lucky for the less advantaged nations, whose citizens receive the all-important remittances that export labor provides. Truly, win-win. Bigly so.
@Michael Reynolds: I’m a Nazi,
He’s a Nazi,
She’s a Nazi,
Wouldn’t you like to be a Nazi too?
Be a Nazi, drink Dr. Nazi..
Or, if you prefer the classics,
Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party!
Of course, if you really want to get in on the genocide game, go Socialist. Socialists have killed at least 10 people for each one killed by Nazis.
But them being Socialists, they’re a hell of a lot less efficient. It took them most of a century to do what the Nazis did in less than 20…
@Warren Weber:
No, again, not everyone is a Nazi.
You however, are.
@Warren Weber:
I am recommending we cease and desist immediately the course of action the Trump campaign is taking. It is simply unAmerican, unChristian and inhumane. It’s a mockery of all of our values with no benefit and a hell of a lot of drawbacks.
I understand a fact you seem to be ignoring: we are never going to get 100% compliance or success on any venture we take. There will always be illegal border crossings. Even at it’s most lethal point, the Berlin Wall couldn’t stop everyone. What we were doing before was by no means perfect but it was a damn sight better then what’s happening now.
My personal recommendation is one conservatives hate: punish those who employee illegals severely and implement a National ID if you must. Make it hurt for those who are the reason so many come here in the first place and then we can talk about the rest. To quote another argument’s favorite logic, shouldn’t we enforce the laws we have rather then creating new ones that don’t work?
And you are acting like the only choice we have right now is the terrible path Trump’s set us on.
This shouldn’t be a hard choice. Don’t put kids in cages, don’t take toddlers from their parents and put them in mass detention alone. That this is even an issue just goes to show how far America has drifted from her ideals of freedom. False choices are false for a reason.
That’s because you want a specific outcome and refuse to acknowledge that there might not be a better one then what we previously had. Catch and release for asylum seekers (or illegals in general) may not be ideal but it really is the best option for preserving our ideals, morals and freedom. Things like trackers would be an affront to privacy and frankly giving the government permission to tag people is *asking for it*. Detention is expensive, has high potential for cruelty and a breeding ground for resentment and future gang members. Walls simply don’t work – there’s a reason we stopped walling cities after the Middle Ages.
We’re trying to reinvent the wheel here. Deportations were up before Trump without all this nonsense. Things were working as best they could in a society that values individual freedom more then security. Why not stick with what success we had?
@de stijl: At some point, they’re going to have to go back to El Rushbo’s argument from earlier about this type of thing:
It simple, and even Bunge can repeat it.
@KM: First up, it’s not the Trump campaign, it’s the Trump administration. Campaigns don’t make policy, administrations do.
That triviality aside, you’re still not offering a solution. Your message is a whole bunch of “Don’t’s” and no “Do’s.”
“What we had before” didn’t work, and never worked. We ended up with (at least) 12 million illegals. Under Obama, we had a flood of “unaccompanied minors” and minors who were “accompanied” not by their parents, but their abductors.
I have no problems with the steps you do propose — I’d love a crackdown on employers of illegal aliens. But that doesn’t address those who aren’t coming here for a cheap, undocumented job. Hell, I’d argue that it goes after the least offensive of the illegal aliens — the ones who want to work. But they’re low-hanging fruit, and it’s a step in the right direction.
But back to the real source of the problem — all those people sneaking across the border and trudging through the desert, often dragging children with them. We’ve already made it illegal to do that, and require everyone to come through official Points of Entry. We already make it fairly easy for those seeking refugee status to simply show up at a PoE and apply.
How the hell do you propose we keep people from sneaking across the border anyway?
And, quite frankly, when these people choose to take the far more dangerous and illegal option, and subject their children to the dangers, what moral obligations do we have?
@Michael Reynolds: I finally get it. I finally get you.
You’re a professional fabulist, and a very successful one. And you understand, better than anyone, that a hero is only as good as his villain.
So, for you to be a hero, you need your villain to be the worst, so you can look the best. And since the Nazis are history’s greatest villains, and — tragically — you were born too late to show how wonderful you are by fighting real Nazis, you need to pick fights with people that you can call Nazis and show just how great a hero you are.
That’s pathetic. And you can trust me, as I’m an expert on pathetic.
@Warren Weber:
What don’t you understand J@nos? People are being turned away at the POE’s. The head of the DHS admits it. That’s pretty simple stuff; even you should be able to understand it.
Again…you’ve been banned several times. Slink away…
@Warren Weber:
I don’t see any evidence that Michael Reynolds or anyone else here was going around calling everyone a Nazi. That sort of thing is far more of a right-wing obsession these days. As Paul Waldman noted in 2015:
In the Obama era, a proposal to tax the rich a tad more was compared to Nazi Germany. In the Trump era, a policy separating children from their parents and placing them in detention camps is compared to Nazi Germany.
Seriously: which would you say is more indicative of carelessly throwing around the word “Nazi”?
@Warren Weber:
Again…this is a bald-faced lie.
People are being turned away at POE’s.
The head of the DHS admits it.
Anyone familiar with J@nos won’t be surprised.
@HarvardLaw92: Your comment reminds me of why I think of “he who shall not be named” as a character but not as having character. I see him as a sort of repackaging of what Phil Hendrie did on radio a couple of decades back. Although redundant, none of the roles of Warren are any reliable indications of who the real person is (even though I’m fairly confident that he may be this person in real life, too) because he’s only playing a role on the interwebs.
As to why he keeps coming back–dude, it’s his stage, man! He entranced with the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd (or something like that…). The theater, in whatever small way he can be said to be on stage, is his life’s blood. The role is what he lives for–to whatever degree what he does constitutes “living.”
Part of the reason that it’s important to not feed the trolls is that they aren’t actually people. Warren, Bunge, JKB, Drew. (even ignint cracker probably more than I’d like to admit) Fictions. Every. Last. One.
And when someone refuses to pay his medical bills, what obligation does anyone have to give his arguments any credibility? Certainly many of these immigrants are hard workers and surely better than native deadbeats who walk away from their obligations…
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: People are being turned away at the POE’s. The head of the DHS admits it.
You keep saying it, but you offer nothing to back it up. And that makes me strongly suspicious that there’s a context or a conditional in the original that undercuts your argument. Something like “those that don’t qualify are turned away” or “some are turned away who shouldn’t, and we’re working on correcting that” or something.
Just a hunch. Because if it was an admission that the existing laws were being ignored wholesale, that the border agents were just making up their own rules and turning away huge numbers of asylum seekers, you’d be posting that clip 24/7. Or, more accurately, others would and you’d be slavishly sponging off their original work.
Or so I suspect.
@An Interested Party: You only included the personal attack this time, IP. You forgot to include how much you HATE TRUMP. Careful, people might start doubting your sincerity, comrade.
@Warren Weber: It is hardly a personal attack to point out your lack of credibility…
… and we’ve reached the point in this thread where it is just arguing with Trolls. Arguing with Trolls is the equivalent of arguing with the naked guy on the subway who thinks he’s Jesus. It is trivial to come up with truly great arguments against thinking you are Jesus while being naked on the subway, but that’s really not the point, is it?
@Warren Weber:
From the head of the DHS…
Of course she is spinning it…but the bottom line is that they are told to come to the POE’s…where they cannot receive help, and are sent away. And then every day there are more people coming which means there is less chance of them being helped and more are turned away.
CNN yesterday had a segment from a POE where there were dozens of families camped out waiting and one person had been interviewed…all day…one person.
If you are seeking refuge from a deadly situation then you are left with little choice.
Look…Republicans don’t want a solution…they want brown-skinned scapegoats because they are afraid of losing their white privilege.
Now…slink away, banned boy.
@Warren Weber: “Here’s the actual law covering applicants at points of entry, courtesy of the Customs And Immigration Service. ”
Yes, that is the law. Which they are violating. Which has been documented again and again — including in a statement by the DHS secretary at her press conference yesterday. (“We never turn anyone away. We just tell them we’re full and they should come back another time.”)
Now why don’t you go slime away, like the festering sack of pus you are? (And before you start calling for your mommy again, that’s not a personal insult — just a statement of fact.)
@Warren Weber: “Then hope they deny or defend it,”
In your dreams, you self-fellating troll. No one here wants you to deny or defend anything. We all want you to go away.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: “I see him as a sort of repackaging of what Phil Hendrie did on radio a couple of decades back.”
Yes, but Phil Hendrie was funny. (Or maybe I should say “As a gay man and a gay journalist, Phil Hendrie was funny.”) J@nos seems to think he’s funny or clever or provocative, and is completely incapable of understanding that to everyone else he’s just a loser, a pathetic troll who has decided the only way he can make any impact on the world is by annoying people he’s never met for no reason.
@Warren Weber:
@wr:
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/16/immigration-border-asylum-central-america/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/at-the-us-border-asylum-seekers-fleeing-violence-are-told-to-come-back-later/2018/06/12/79a12718-6e4d-11e8-afd5-778aca903bbe_story.html?utm_term=.88d6051d06b3
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/15/620310589/after-a-2-000-mile-asylum-journey-family-is-turned-away-before-reaching-u-s-soil
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Took you long enough. How much did you have to pay someone to do your homework for you?
And, as I suspected, it wasn’t a policy thing. Which is what you were so strongly implying.
Plus, it wasn’t some “sh!thole” country the would-be applicants were in, it was Mexico. Which is obligated to offer them sanctuary, too. In fact, as I understand it, international law says that they must be accepted by the “first safe country” — in this case, Mexico.
Why is Mexico shirking its obligations under international law towards these people, and why are you so willing to excuse their misconduct and volunteer the US to take on their duties?
@MarkedMan: So, just to make it clear, are the “trolls” the people trying to stick to the issue, or the ones who are doing everything they can to avoid the topic and engaging in personal attacks?
@Warren Weber:
I never implied any such thing…I said it’s the law…but it’s not the fact of how it is actually happening.
Once again…as you always do…faced with inconvenient facts you move the goal posts and change your story.
Go away. You’ve been banned. Your act is tired, and you are unwanted here.
@R. Dave: I’m copying your response because I think it is important enough to highlight again:
So, the law says to apply at a POE.
Official policy at the POE is to accept as many asylum-seekers as they physically can.
When they reach their physical limit, they tell the rest of the people in line to come back tomorrow (which, like, never happens anywhere else in the world).
So the applicants — who have already safely escaped their hellhole of a homeland — are asked to wait a little longer in Mexico. And, under international law, 1) refugees are obligated to seek refuge in the first safe country they reach, not go shopping for the best deal they can, and 2) Mexico is obligated to offer them sanctuary, not ship them along to the US.
Go ahead, make the argument that Mexico is a horrible place, and asking these asylum-seekers to wait a little longer there is some horrible crime against humanity. I double-dog dare you. Because that’s a can of worms you really, really, really don’t want to open.
And isn’t it odd how this whole story just exploded right after the Inspector General’s report on the FBI came out, which included such awkward details as FBI agents trading leaks to the press for bribes, the completely biased and unprofessional attitude dominating FBI Headquarters, the double standard of justice for those favored by the establishment and the rest of us, and (best of all) the proof that Obama lied when he denied knowing about Hillary’s email server until he heard about it in the news? It’s almost like the story was all worked up and kept under an “IN CASE OF PR EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS” sign.
@Warren Weber:
Go away, Potsie.
Well this thread went downhill. Feeding the trolls never works–the outrage they draw is a feature, not a bug, to them. Ignoring them is the thing they hate the most.
America doesn’t have to do this. Until this past April, we didn’t, and illegal border crossings were still at a 10-year low. This is not necessary. This is a deliberate choice made by the Trump administration, a deliberate choice to inflict suffering on children.
Anyone who wants to defend that can go fuck themselves.
@OzarkHillbilly: It always amazes me when self-proclaimed “businessmen” fail to understand that the demand/supply curve works on the other side of the table as well…
(I’m sure I mentioned this before, but the funniest example I’ve run into in my own life was the company in Los Angeles looking to have me carry out the tasks of a bilingual (English/Japanese) patent lawyer and thinking they could hire me for $70k or less. I talked with our office manager and we both agreed that $160k was a more reasonable level if they wanted to blast me away from my present location.)
@Mikey: I regret that I can only upvote this comment once.
@wr: Please note that I’m not saying that Jenos is clever or witty or gifted at comedy. I’m only saying that it’s the same type of schtick. No, he isn’t good at it, but that doesn’t diminish that it is a schtick and that he’s only portraying a character on the interwebs.
Don’t feed the Trolls–they’re not real and don’t need anything to eat anyway.
@Warren Weber: Oh, I just remembered: