(June 17, 2018 at 3:49 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:(June 16, 2018 at 10:49 pm)henryp Wrote: It's not good, but what's the practical answer?
A policy of detaining people trying to enter the country illegally is not a controversial idea, I don't think, is it? So what do you do with the kids when the parents are detained? The law says you can't stick the kids in a detainment facility with the adults, but you can't just let the kids run off into the desert.
They can 1000% make sure the facilities are well-staffed and run as humanely as possible. It sounds like some are, and some aren't. That is something the government should do. They can change the law, so families can be detained together. I guess that's better? Kids in a cell with dad, instead of in a facility with the other kids? I guess that depends again on the quality of the other facility.
I may have been misinformed, but it is my understanding that separating families is a policy, not a law. There is no law that says you can't do this, but there is no law requiring that you do this.
Boru
edit: I took it upon myself to do a little research: It is NOT illegal to keep kids in detainment facilities. Under your last two presidents, this is precisely what was done. The difference now is that the Trump administration has made crossing the border anywhere other than at a designated border point a criminal act - a presumption of guilt now exists which the administration uses to justify putting the adults into (essentially) a prison instead of a detention facility until their case is decided. This is a cruel, cruel ruse used to stop ALL immigration into the US (even families of legitimate asylum seekers who enter AT border crossing points are being split up).
Fuck Donald Trump. Fuck Jeff Sessions. Fuck anyone who tries to sugar-coat the shattering of familes.
So, the problem with detention facilities, is there are legal limits to the length of time children can be kept in them. And because the system is backlogged, in the Obama administration, they'd just release the family and give them a court date. But then they would just head off into the US with no guarantee they'd come back. Which is an opportunity they wouldn't get if they tried to enter legally at the border. If they attempt legally, they either are admitted or turned away as a family.
To your point of legal border crossings resulting in families being split up, I've read that they are supposed to only do that if they feel the child is in danger, which makes sense. I'm sure there are abuses, but that's not by design.
Sessions response, is to close the loophole by charging people with entering illegally, rather than just releasing everybody and hoping they come back to court. It's a bad solution. But the alternative is also bad. But you don't have to enter the country illegally. And as I said earlier, having borders is not a controversial position. The answer is changing the laws to work better. Ideally, to more quickly have people accepted/rejected as a family as they are when applying legally.
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/11/17443198/c...ed-parents
When the Obama administration attempted to respond to the “crisis” of families and unaccompanied children crossing the border in summer 2014, it — a practice that had basically ended several years before. But federal courts stopped the administration from holding families for months without justifying the decision to keep them in detention. So most families ended up getting released while their cases were pending...
