This has made the NY Times Very Upset, but, they miss the most obvious solution
Despite Warnings, Trump Moves to Expand Migrant Family Detention
On a burning hot day last summer at the South Texas Family Residential Center, a federal detention facility for immigrant families, Kenia and her son, Michael, 11, were hunched over a foosball table in an air-conditioned recreation room when Michael dropped to the floor and started sobbing. He curled his body into a ball and writhed as if he were in pain.
The other parents and children in the room looked up from their jump ropes and boomboxes as Kenia knelt down and pleaded into Michael’s ear: Would he please go back to their room before the guards noticed him?
“I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here,†Michael shouted, his eyes clenched.
The date of this particular meltdown, Kenia can’t remember — not because it wasn’t memorable, but because it was one of many times her son broke down during the four months they were detained after arriving in the United States.
Kenia also felt like she was falling apart, unsure of what would happen to them. Guards had warned her that if Michael continued to misbehave, they would be punished, which she assumed meant being sent back to Honduras.
“We were always being watched,†she said.
She and Michael could have avoided this but not showing up at the border and demanding entrance. Or crossing the border illegally. Article doesn’t say. It’s a very simple concept. If you get caught driving drunk, whose fault is that? Will you blame the police?
The experiences of migrant families like Kenia’s who were held for months behind the locked gates of a secure facilty offer insight into what thousands of others could face if the Trump administration succeeds in creating one of the few long-term incarceration systems for families in the developed world.
Amid a wide-ranging campaign to discourage migration to the United States, President Trump has vowed repeatedly to end the practice he calls “catch and release,†under which migrants are allowed to live freely in the United States while their lengthy immigration cases are in process.
A goodly chunk of those people never show up for their court dates. And most do not qualify for asylum. Further, the U.S. taxpayers end up on the hook for decades of taking care of these “migrants”.
The administration wants to expand the system of secure facilities where migrant families can be incarcerated for months or longer. In late November, Justice Department lawyers appealed a federal judge’s decision that blocked the government’s attempt to eliminate a 20-day time limit on most family detentions.
If the appeal is successful, Kenia and Michael’s experience of being detained for months — the result of a legal fluke that left them institutionalized far longer than current standards allow — could become the norm. Facilities like the one at Dilley, which is run by the private prison company, CoreCivic, could multiply to incarcerate more than 15,000 parents and children across the country.
They shouldn’t even be allowed entrance to the U.S. while their asylum claims are being processed.
The rest of the article is all the doom and gloom of “incarcerating” the migrants and their children, which the Times would prefer to stop. Well, sure, we can stop it. They just don’t enter the U.S. unless asylum is approved. Easy peasy. But, Democrats are for open borders, and would love to flood the country with illegals and migrants.
They have a get-out-of-jail card available to them. All that they have to do is request to be released south of the border.