Trump Never Stopped Believing in His Child-Separation Policy

Children photographed climbing the Mexican border in Sunland Park, New Mexico on June 24, 2018.

By Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Though curbing immigration is a cornerstone of his presidency, Donald Trump has so far been unable to achieve a core campaign pledge: building a big, beautiful wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Illegal crossings have increased to the highest level since 2016, straining Customs and Border Protection resources. And so, in the weeks before midterms, the president evidently thought it prudent to dial up his anti-immigration rhetoric. On Saturday, he told reporters that he was of a mind to reinstate a variation on his controversial child-separation policy, claiming it would dissuade asylum-seekers coming north from Central America. “They use children. In many cases, the children aren’t theirs. They grab ‘em, and they want to come in with children,” he said. “If they feel there will be separation, they won’t come.”

As ever, it is hard to discern exactly what Trump is thinking. During a wide-ranging interview with CBS’s 60 minutes, which aired on Sunday, Trump told Lesley Stahl that his previous policy had been “the same as the Obama law,” but then quickly shifted gears into defending family separation. Asked whether he was toying with the idea of reinstating the policy, Trump equivocated: “There have to be consequences, Lesley, for coming into our country illegally. And part of the reason, I have to blame myself, the economy is so strong that everybody wants to come into the United States.” Stahl pressed on:

Stahl: Are you willing to reinstitute that policy? You said, “We’re looking at everything.”

Trump: I will—

Stahl: Yes or no.

Trump: I will only—I can’t—you can’t say yes or no. What I can say is this: there are consequences from coming into a country, namely our country, illegally.

To be fair, Trump has something of a habit of getting out ahead of his own White House’s policy framework. But in this case, it appears he’s not just blowing hot air: his comments this weekend followed a Friday Washington Post report that the White House is weighing various plans that could again split parents from their children at the border. One option under consideration, according to several sources, is the “binary choice” option, wherein parents would be given the choice to either stay with their children in detention after 20 days, or to allow their kids to be moved to a government shelter. Other tabled suggestions reportedly include enabling courts to process cases faster, and extending the legal amount of time a child can be detained to more than 20 days (already, there are numerous reports of detentions lasting far beyond this limit).

Reinstating child separation in any form will expose Trump to significant domestic and international opprobrium, even from allies such as the U.K. (which quietly practices its own form of family separation under the Home Office hostile environment policy). The White House would also face significant logistical challenges if it wishes to avoid the chaos of attempting to reunite families under the time pressure of a court order, without the help of a unified, cohesive system. There is also a lack of space to house many more detained immigrants, as highlighted by a recent report that, under cover of darkness, federal authorities have been transporting hundreds of children from their overcrowded accommodation to a makeshift tented town in Texas.

But none of this seems to bother the president who, riding high on the successful implementation of U.S.M.C.A., and the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, appeared more convinced than ever of his own righteousness during Sunday’s sit-down. “I’m not a baby—I know these things,” he boasted to Stahl at one point, in reference to the possible ill-will that North Korea’s leader, with whom Trump has said he’s “fallen in love,” could hold toward the U.S. (He reiterated the phrase minutes later, this time to assure Stahl that he did not trust every aide employed in the White House.)

Indeed, though the Post reported that some officials say they are “not planning” to revive the forced separations of May and June, others, like hard-liner Stephen Miller, are driving the process forward, convinced that the policy “worked as an effective deterrent to illegal crossings.” Not only has Trump apparently bought the message, but in one fell swoop he’s disposed of the pretense that the policy was ever intended otherwise, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions argued when it was first instated. “Frankly, when you . . . allow the parents to stay together,” he told Stahl, “then what happens is people are gonna pour into our country.”

Credit:Vanity Fair

via USAHint.com