Okay, so here's a summary of what Trump & Sessions have ordered ICE to start doing (
link):
Amid growing outrage over his administration's policy of separating migrant families crossing the U.S. border, President Donald Trump on Saturday pretended that it wasn?t his problem, and suggested the blame should lie with Democrats. ?Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents once they cross the Border into the U.S.,? he tweeted. ?Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.?
Like many things Trump tweets, however, the idea that Democrats are responsible for what is happening at the border is nonsense. As the Associated Press notes, the previous ?catch and release? policy Trump and his administration cite as the reason for increased border crossings was put into place in 2008 by then-president George W. Bush, and was primarily created to combat the influx of children fleeing to the U.S. from Central American countries due to a surge of child trafficking. Under Trump, however, that policy has changed. In the past, the Office of Refugee Resettlement traditionally placed unaccompanied minors?that is, children who cross the border without a parent?in government-run detention centers. If a parent and a child came together, they would be processed together. In recent months, however, the Trump administration has begun forcibly taking children from their parents?some as young as one year old?and warehousing them in facilities far away from their parents, as if they had crossed the border alone.
The 2015 9th circuit decision has background on the 1997 settlement the Clinton adminstration reached.
The initial class action lawsuit was filed in the mid 80's (note: Clinton was NOT president at this time), ruling that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) violated the equal protection clause by treating unaccompanied alien minors subject to deportation proceedings differently than unaccompanied minors in exclusion proceedings (which were the now defunct proceedings that decided whether minor would be admintted to the US.
In the latter case, the gov't would release the kids to other adult relatives while the proceedings were adjudicated; in the former case they would be detained. The settlement provided that the government could temporarily detain unaccompanied minors but only if they would otherwise not appear for their INS hearing, or had committed criminal acts, and if not then the gov't
had to release them to a parent, adult relative or a list of other people that could take custody, such as those designated by the parents, or a licensed foster agency
You may realize this has nothing to do with what Trump is doing.
all this time families who entered the US illegally, IE, not asylum seekers or refugees, were often separated if they were not immediately deported together, but according to the court in
Flores, that was because of a lack of space, not as an actual policy.
in 2006, after the Homeland security act increased immigration enforcement, a group of kids who were accompanied, but entered the US illegally were separated from their parents and sent to detention in a prison in Texas... the kids sued arguing that the
Flores settlement required they be housed in decent conditions, and reunited with their parents.
the government argued the settlement only applied to unaccompanied minors!!!
How twisted is that? Basically, they said "If you came without your parents we have to release you to them or family because they sued; but if you came WITH your parents, we can treat you like shit and detain you because technically that settlement didn't apply to you."
The 2008 law codified this settlement; wow! common sense! the government can't treat kids who come illegally with their parents worse than kids who came illegally by themselves.
This is the opposite of course of the point Ben Shapiro was disengenuously trying to make.
The 2015 lawsuit (Flores v. Lynch) said the same thing: the government was violating the settlement by detaining kids (note: WITH their parents), as a deterrence to keep them from coming here, whether or not they were accompanied, was unconstitutional. the court did hold that contrary to the lawsuit, the government was not required to release their parents if they were also detained.
Now Trump is violating this again, and not only by detaining refugee & asylum-seeking families as a deterrence, but also by separating the kids from their parents, which was not done before.
I'm trying not to be partisan about this; the government, especially ICE, has long been shitty to illegal and legal immigrants, regardless of who was in the White House. But this policy is unquestionably new, and bad, and coupled with Trump's racist, fever-pitch inflammatory rhetoric, it is made even worse.
