Very well crafted. You made a statement that is true, and verifiable. Once you decide to criminally detain a parent, the law is clear. There is no change on policy about what to do after you decide to criminally detain a parent.
Which is why your prior post was misleading.
But it does not actually address the issue at hand. It is carefully constructed to mislead, to convince the reader that the Trump administration is merely following the law as written.
It's not misleading, it's literally true that Trump is following the law as written. Now's the part where you engage in careful crafting and omission to make that appear to not be true.
- There are two legal options for detaining parents with children. Disprove this if you can.
- Previous administrations chose, as a matter of policy, to use administrative detention in some cases, which allows parents and children to stay together.
Detention on this basis is incredibly time limited, this is literally notwithstanding your claim of "detention" the underpinning of the catch and release program.
Explain, if you can, how your alternative allows for detention through the point of resolution of a claim, either deportation or release based on validation of the claim (usually asylum). Answer you can't. The fact is that administrative detention in virtually all cases results in release prior to adjudication and something like half of released persons disappear.
- The Trump administration chose, as a matter of policy, to use exclusively criminal detention, in all cases, which, as you point out, does not allow parents and children to stay together. Disprove this if you can.
Why disprove it. This is literally the law. These crossings are criminal. American citizens detained for criminal charges are also separated from their children.
If you cannot disprove those three points, then the unquestionable conclusion is the Trump administration chose a policy for which the direct result is they must separate children and parents.
Lol, I'd like you to say if for the record. You want the Trump administration to selectively apply and ignore the law.
I do agree, the Trump admin chose a policy. That policy is to end releasing people who are very likely never to report for deportation. He ended a literal failed policy. The consequence of that, because of previous activists that prohibited holding children in that circumstance requires separation.
You also ignore that any family can choose deportation and stay together. Any family can appear at a port of call and claim asylum and stay together.
You also choose to ignore that promoting a policy that anyone that shows up with children will be released into the United States regardless of the merits of their right to be there, with good odds of never being deported regardless of the merit of their claim, has literally encouraged people to show up at the border with children in tow. The amount of children making the crossing has gone massively up as a result of this emotional but misguided policy. It incentivizes bringing children on a dangerous route. You find separating children horrible, I find encouraging them to brought across a border illegally, exposed to smugglers and involved into organized crime to be horrible.
You also ignore that international law requires asylum seekers to seek asylum in the first safe country they reach. That would literally be Mexico or a country on their path prior to Mexico.
But wait! You said DHS changed it's policy to prosecute on criminal charges everyone crossing the border illegally. This is a deviation from the prior policy, which was to pursue civil charges.
which agrees with points 2 and 3.
It deviates from the failed policy it replaces.
So just try to disprove #1, i.e. prove that the previous policy of using administrative detention violated the law. Not that it was limited in duration, or it is "catch and release", or inefficient, or it encourages illegal immigration, or that liberal groups opposed it. Prove it was illegal, so that Trump had no choice put to change the policy to conform to the law.
Why would I "prove" it's illegal? That's a strawman challenge. It was failed and didn't accomplish its purpose and reflected a willful blindness to enforcing the law.
If congress doesn't like the laws it passed its free to change them.
Your argument is a nonsensical appeal to executive discretion. A demand that a failed policy be made permanent.
If you can explain how reverting the policy stops the catch and release problem, please feel free to do so. Until then, you're not making an argument that actually solves the problem, and you're deliberately exploiting children for a political goal and literally encouraging people to put children into harms way to buy their own ability to liver in the US.
Don't distract by saying what the law says. What it says is clear, but not relevant to the choices Trump made. Tell the truth about what the legal and human consequences are of Trump policy decisions.
The truth is you don't care what the law says. This isn't about the law. This is purely emotive. Which ever group claims the most immediate consequence is the winner in your world.
I happen to think a moronic system that encourages people to bring children across a border illegally for their own person benefit is doing far more harm than good. If Congress authorizes the resources to detain families at the border pending their adjudication that's a great thing, but their failure to do so is not an endorsement of a "brought a child" illegal immigration policy exception.
