As we approach today’s deadline for the Trump administration to reunite 2,500 children with their families, the Washington Post is out with a scathing editorial. They conclude: “From top to bottom, the Sessions-Nielsen zero-decency policy is a humanitarian outrage perpetrated in the name of the American people.”
An excerpt of the editorial is included below:
In the chaos and confusion, parents in detention under the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been presented with terrible and in some cases misleading choices. According to their advocates and lawyers, a number have been led to believe that waiving their asylum claims is the key to being swiftly reunited with their children. Doing so means near-certain deportation for parent and child — even if they could make a strong case for asylum.
ICE officials have also presented some parents facing deportation orders with the agonizing option of being removed from the country with or without their children. In some cases, mothers and fathers have chosen to leave their children behind, evidently hoping their prospects will be better in the United States without a parent than in their home countries with one.
From top to bottom, the Sessions-Nielsen zero-decency policy is a humanitarian outrage perpetrated in the name of the American people. Overall, illegal border crossings have been declining for decades, despite ups and downs and a surge this spring of Central American migrants fleeing violence in their home countries. Most Americans have recoiled from the gratuitous contempt and cruelty the administration has shown immigrants. That much is evident in the public outcry and judicial intervention that have forced the administration to retreat on family separation, the most noxious in a suite of venomously nativist policies.
