The mainstream media's treatment of a young girl's death while in the custody of the Border Patrol is a case study in how the mainstream media control the national narrative and manipulate public opinion to advance their leftist agenda.

The purpose of flooding the internet and the airwaves with propaganda about the death and life of Jakelin Maquin isn't to edify or inform the public; it is to make Americans feel bad about enforcing any immigration laws at all.  The real crime here isn't any wrongdoing on the part of the Border Patrol.  The real crime, according to our Cultural Marxist overlords, is that the Border Patrol exists in the first place.

After all, it wasn't the Border Patrol that led this young child on a 2,000-mile trek over harsh terrain.  It wasn't the Border Patrol who failed to provide her with water and vital nutrients.  No, that was the doing of her own father.  But he was a good guy, you know.  He just wanted a "better life" for himself and his (now deceased) child.

Never mind that this argument from self-interest is the argument of every single drug-dealer, thief, and criminal since the dawn of time.  In fact, the argument from self-interest isn't even a moral argument.  If self-interest could, all by itself, justify an action morally, virtually any action would be justified.  After all, it is rare that people deliberately harm themselves.  I murdered my boss, but they told me I had to do whatever it took to get that promotion!  I raped that beautiful young woman, but I'm finally going to have a son!  Not much of a moral argument, is it?

The purpose of inundating the public with stories about this young girl's death is to guilefully, albeit forcefully, place the immigration debate into a perceptual frame that best serves the political left's agenda, and to make Border Patrol agents, and especially the man who directs them and employs them, the president of the United States, seem like monsters in the eyes of the public.  The lying press isn't trying to prove this by evidence.  Reason is not the mainstream media's strong suit.  They achieve this objective via innuendo and suggestion, not reason or evidence or anything comparable.  A child died in the custody of the Border Patrol, ergo something is terribly racist about America, something is terribly wrong with our immigration policy, and something is terribly contemptible about the orange emperor.  The thing speaks for itself, right?

Not really.  Remember, Border Patrol intercepts half a million people annually illegally entering the United States of America.  Half a million people!  Are we really to believe that no one intercepted will ever have a major medical event while in custody?  No one will ever be caught while dehydrated and fatigued, such that his life is already in peril?  This is simple statistics, people.  Some people are going to die in the custody of Border Patrol.  It is unavoidable.  It is a mathematical certainty.

The Border Patrol, like any person or group of people, can do wrong.  For example, if the child had said she was dreadfully parched and dizzy, and the Border Patrol had refused her life-saving hydration.  However, there is absolutely no evidence of this, and there never will be.  In seventy-two hours, this story will be forgotten by the media, and they'll have moved on to some other silly propaganda tale meant to engineer consent and control the minds of the public.  All the supposed free press can hope for is that this last story had its intended effect: of proving to Americans, at last, that America is irredeemably racist and Trump is Hitler reincarnated.  If not, back to the drawing board or the spin room or whatever these liars call it when they brainstorm how best to deceive the American people and advance Cultural Marxism.

Tragedies like the death of 7-year-old Jaqelin Maquin do not denote wrongdoing.  Tragedies happen every day, all around the world.  Sometimes the only party responsible is chance.

Finally, defending our borders is arguably the most essential duty of government.  Moreover, the enforcement of every single law brings with it certain minor, highly attenuated risks to human life.  If the mere detention of criminals is considered too harsh a measure for our nation to stomach any longer, there is no hope for the rule of law or for the Republic's continued survival.  If our government is permanently unwilling or somehow unable to defend our borders, we should not shut the government down temporarily, as Trump is threatening.  We should shut it down permanently.