So, how did the U. S. get here?<\/b>
\nWASHINGTON \u2014 Thousands of children split from their families at the U. S. southern border are being held in government-run facilities. A look at how we got here, what\u2019s real and what\u2019s not, and what might happen next.
Tens of thousands of parents and children, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, have been caught crossing the U. S.-Mexico border illegally in recent years with stories of fleeing drug cartels, extreme poverty and gang violence. The U. S. can\u2019t send them back over the border unless they are Mexican citizens, and instead must refer their case to an immigration judge.
In 2008, President George W. Bush focused on the problem of minors crossing the border without their parents and signed a law unanimously passed by Congress that called for such \u201cunaccompanied minors\u201d to be released into the \u201cleast restrictive setting.\u201d
By 2014, President Barack Obama was facing an influx of both children travelling alone and families as a result of violence in Central America. At one point, his administration tried housing the families in special detention centres. But after a federal judge in California ruled the arrangement violated a long-standing agreement barring kids from jail-like settings, even with their parents, the government began releasing families in to the U. S. pending notification of their next court date.
Fast forward to Trump, who campaigned on building a border wall, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who derided these longtime U. S. immigration practices as \u201ccatch and release.\u201d Trump and Sessions insisted that people exploit the system, even travelling with children to ensure they aren\u2019t jailed and slipping away before their court dates.
Yes. While Trump\u2019s new immigration policy doesn\u2019t call for families to be separated, as pointed out by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, the policy makes separations inevitable.
Following Trump\u2019s election, then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly \u2014 now Trump\u2019s White House chief of staff \u2014 floated the idea of separating families as a way to discourage illegal border crossings. But much of the administration\u2019s focus went into a travel ban aimed at Muslim-majority nations.
By this April, Sessions announced a plan: The U. S. would have \u201czero tolerance\u201d for illegal crossings. If a person doesn\u2019t arrive at an appropriate port of entry to claim asylum, the crossing is deemed illegal and prosecuted even if the person does not have a criminal history. With the adult detained and facing prosecution, any minors accompanying them are taken away.
Nielsen has muddied the debate by insisting that children will only be separated in narrow circumstances, including if the adult has broken the law. That falsely leaves the impression that only children travelling with gang members or other violent criminals will be separated. But under U. S. law, the act of crossing the border without proper documentation itself is a crime and would trigger a separation, unless a person can find a designated port of entry and claims asylum.
The result is that in the six weeks following Sessions\u2019 announcement, nearly 2,000 minors were separated from adults at the border.
Not much, except that they seem to be relishing in the bad optics this creates for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.
Trump has repeatedly said Democrats are to blame and cited a \u201chorrible law\u201d that separates families. But no law mandates that parents must be separated from their children at the border, and it\u2019s not a policy Democrats have pushed or can change alone as the minority in Congress.
(That 2008 law signed by Bush dealt only with unaccompanied minors, not families.)
Perhaps a bigger obstacle is that Republicans, currently in control of Congress, have been deeply divided on immigration. Moderate Republicans have been trying to negotiate a plan that would reduce family separations and also open a door to citizenship for young immigrants brought to the U. S. as children and who stayed illegally.
But many hardline conservatives are leery of any legislation that would protect from deportation immigrants who arrived illegally, calling it \u201camnesty\u201d and complicating the GOP\u2019s ability to pass legislation in both the House and reach the needed 60 votes in the Senate.
Some Democrats have speculated that Trump is using the humanitarian crisis as leverage to negotiate a tougher immigration bill, an assertion the White House has rejected.
But White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Monday that any crisis belongs to Democrats because they are the ones who rejected Trump\u2019s initial immigration plan.
\u201cIt\u2019s a dangerous situation for this country and it\u2019s all on the backs of the Democrats,\u201d he told Fox News.
Last week, Sessions cited the Bible in defending the policy.
\u201cI would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,\u201d he said.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Sessions\u2019 use of the Bible saying \u201cit is biblical to enforce the law.\u201d
But longtime Trump ally, the Rev. Franklin Graham, had already rejected the zero-tolerance policy as \u201cdisgraceful,\u201d while former first lady Laura Bush called the practice \u201ccruel\u201d and \u201cimmoral.\u201d
First lady Melania Trump issued her own statement saying that she \u201chates\u201d to see families separated at the border and hopes \u201cboth sides of the aisle\u201d can reform the nation\u2019s immigration laws.
So far though, the White House is showing no sign of backing down. Trump dug in on Twitter on Monday, asking \u201cwhere is the outcry for the killings and crime being caused by gangs and thugs, including MS-13, coming into our country illegally?\u201d<\/p>\n

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