Opinion

Trump and the Mexican migrants

June 22, 2018

President Donald Trump continues to advance his anti-immigration policies with the bombast and confusion that characterizes his most unusual administration. But there was one element in his clampdown on Mexicans caught up in his new immigration dragnet that was perfectly clear. It was simply plain wrong, if not indeed immoral, to separate the children of apprehended families from their parents.

Such was the outcry, even from die-hard Republican voters who otherwise enthusiastically back the President’s clampdown on illegal migrants, that Trump hurriedly signed an executive order stopping the practice. While he made it clear that he was still committed to zero tolerance for anyone in the country illegitimately he said that he did not like the sight of families being separated. Immigration officials have revealed that more than 2,300 children have been taken from their families and held in separate detention facilities.

Trump, of course, is being blamed for this heartless policy. However, as the law stood, children could not legally be held in detention with their adult parents. Those who drew up these rules were clearly thinking of common criminals and the undesirability of having young people living cheek by jowl with them in jails. It is, however, interesting the way this issue has surfaced. As anyone flying into America will know, sometimes to their cost, US immigration officials have a well-deserved reputation for rudeness, a total lack of sympathy and a complete absence of anything remotely resembling a sense of humor.

The inhumanity of dragging frightened young children from the arms of their parents is probably not a tough call for members of the service. They have their strict rules and they enforce them with the mercilessness of a robot. In this respect it is unfair to criticize them since they were only carrying out their instructions to the letter. But it has to be wondered if somewhere in the immigration department, there are officials who deplore the President’s crackdown on illegals, who decided to embarrass him with just such a shocking story. They let the inhumane practice run just long enough to become a sufficiently large scandal and then they tipped off the media. The resulting outrage has been as predictable as it is understandable.

American voters chose Donald Trump as much as anything for his pledges on jobs and immigration. As politicians go, he is an unsophisticated operator on Capitol Hill where politicking is marked by hypocrisy and double-dealing, almost always conducted with exquisite good manners. Trump says what he means. And he does what he says. He also changes his mind. This last is considered a serious political crime within the Beltway because it is supposed to display fatal weakness and lack of information.

But the President does not care. He does not read the political columnists. This is not because he knows they hate him but because he is indifferent and anyway prefers Fox TV News. It appears he is equally unfazed by opinion polls that seem to show his popularity tanking.

Ronald Reagan was called the Teflon president because no scandal ever stuck to him. Trump, arguably the incumbent who has been most assaulted by the predominantly liberal establishment media, has a different quality. As the rocks and garbage that are showered at him on a daily basis pile ever higher, he merely clambers back on top of them.


June 22, 2018
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