Democrats roar into hysteria over Trump's new bid to extend illegal alien detention
President Trump has taken steps to adjust the "Flores" settlement, which prohibits illegal child migrants to be detained no longer than 20 days. It's a necessary and reasonable measure, given that the settlement as it is incentivizes detained illegal migrants to use kids as chits for early release into the U.S. interior, fueling a growing child-trafficking trade, alongside the widespread ignoring of court dates upon this conditional release.
According to the new regulation, illegal migrants will now be given spa-like conditions in detention, with free towels, toiletries, entertainment, education, and other hotel-style accompaniments, which, to most Americans, isn't exactly ideal, given that it rewards lawbreakers with what's effectively spa break, but nevertheless is probably worth it if it disincentivizes the ongoing migrant surges, which are scheduled to rev up again as summer heat ebbs in the fall.
Instead of praising the move, which makes it just a little more attractive to immigrate here legally than illegally, and prevents migrants from taking U.S. jobs and scarfing up welfare benefits unless they can show themselves to be legal asylum cases, Democrats are unleashing a wave of fantasy hysteria.
Here's House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
"The administration is seeking to codify child abuse, plain and simple," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, who labeled the administration's proposal "indefinite detention."
Here's another one:
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), however, panned the move, saying it will "put even more stress on our immigration system and add to the chaos the Administration continues to create."
"The Trump Administration has managed to find a new low in its continued despicable treatment of migrant children and families. Terminating the Flores settlement is illegal and goes against our longstanding American values about the treatment of children," Thompson said in a statement.
Moving on to "stupid," here's Hawaii House Democrat Mazie Hirono:
"These families should not be detained, and that's the bottom line," Hirono said. "And so we're not contemplating thousands and thousands of migrant families being detained, doing irreparable harm to little children. When I was in Dilley, you know, we can't forget seeing was there, a little boy just silently crying. Heaven knows what was going through his mind, but not good."
"And so there are alternatives, as I keep mentioning," she continued. "And I did have a shadow hearing what happens in these facilities and what happens to the children. Clearly, they are harmed irreparably. Our country should not be imposing this kind of cruelty on children. But I think that the Trump administration, people sit around every single day thinking up new ways to be cruel to these migrants. That's what they do. And tomorrow, they will probably come up with something else."
Child abuse? New low? Irreparable harm? Sitting around every day, thinking up new ways to be cruel to migrants? This is hyperbole, an amazing instance of group hysteria for what, after all, is an enforcement of actual U.S. law. What's more, these people are lawmakers; they are fully free to change the law if they don't like it. The only thing this regulation (which will have to survive a slew of lawsuits to get through) does is ensure that illegals can't come here freely, often to commit crimes, create quality of life issues, drain the welfare system, or take jobs from American workers quite as easily as they used to be able to do. They'll get an all-expenses-paid spa visit to the U.S. instead, which is a lot more than they'd get from the governments they elected back in their home countries. Perhaps the U.S. can bill their home countries for the vacay.
The irrationality gets even worse on the Democratic presidential nomination campaign trail (Bernie Sanders was suspiciously silent), as most laid on the screeches.
Start with Joe Biden's hysterical response:
It is cruel and abhorrent to strip migrant children of the few protections they have. It's not enough this administration puts children in cages without soap and beds, now it wants to keep them there indefinitely. This isn't who we are. https://t.co/7HVcuvzEED
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 22, 2019
...and...
Let’s be absolutely clear about what this is: an attempt to prevent families and children from seeking asylum by threatening to lock them away for indefinite periods of time.
— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) August 21, 2019
This isn't who we are. We must continue to fight this administration's cruel agenda. https://t.co/qo0BJtCLh2
...and one that goes beyond hyperbole from Elizabeth Warren:
The Flores agreement mandates that migrant children cannot be held in detention for more than 20 days. Today, the Trump administration announced its plans to roll back Flores—putting thousands of children in danger. We must fight this. https://t.co/rISwDivOBo
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) August 21, 2019
Spa-style detention with free towels and hot meals is cruel? A spa trip to the States on Uncle Sam's dime puts kids in danger? Really?
Finally, we can't forget the Squad:
When people show you who they are, believe them.
— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@RepPressley) August 21, 2019
This administration is capturing and incarcerating babies & families INDEFINITELY. Congress cannot give ONE MORE DOLLAR to this xenophobic, racist & hateful Administration.https://t.co/zaxAkcNbUi
Incarcerating babies? These people are free to leave the U.S. any time they like. They are also free apply legally to immigrate with zero detention any time they like. The migrants who come with babies have made a rational decision about what their best odds are, and come here willingly, correctly calculating that a little detention is well worth the reward of living in the U.S. illegally and harvesting its benefits at no cost to themselves.
The Trump administration is trying to check it, and says it expects detention to last no more than a few months as asylum claims wend through courts, which is still a tremendous deal for those who have authentic asylum claims. Assuming some of these claims are valid, a few months in detention with hot towels, versus someone trying to kill them back home, is still quite a bargain for those with authentic claims.
Jeff Faux, a leftist, at the far-left Economic Policy Institute, warned Democrats that their hysteria was counterproductive and the American people weren't exactly onboard with it - he actually seems to be trying to warn them not to get involved with this kind of grandstanding.
But although the public supports legal immigration, a majority—well beyond Trump's base—also want it limited. A June 2019 Gallup poll reported that two-thirds of Americans thought immigration should stay the same or be reduced. Sixty-four percent of Americans in a 2018 Harvard-Harris poll favored sending back people who cross the border without papers. Although a carefully reasoned policy case can be argued for both, decriminalizing illegal entry and abolishing ICE are nonstarters in a general election.
It is a mistake to dismiss the anxiety about uncontrolled immigration as just a product of Trump-inspired racism. In the Harvard-Harris poll, 52 percent of Latinos shared the majority view. All over the world, when immigration surges, tolerance erodes. The shift to the right in Europe was driven by reaction to an immigrant surge well before Trump came on the scene. And a recent poll in Mexico, whose elected leftist president has compared Trump's treatment of immigrants to Nazism, found support for immigrants from Central America in the past year dropped from 57 percent to 20 percent.
New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, another leftist, warns them, too, at least a few days ago (he's out retweeting outrage at the Trump policy now):
Sanders voices sympathy for immigrants, a sympathy I share. But we can't take all 70 million people displaced by conflict globally, not to mention all economic migrants. So we do need to turn many people back. There's a distinction between doing our part and having open borders.
— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) July 31, 2019
It's an amazing dead end, given that more than half the Latino vote they supposedly are courting with this stance is dead set against it. Yet still they pile on, expecting to change reality on the ground as most Americans know it.
One can only conclude from this that they're out to lunch, or more likely, calculating that illegal immigrants influence the vote total in their favor. Whatever it is, as these leftist cognoscenti warn, it's very likely to trigger a voter response they're not going to like. Voters are going to stick it to them.