StrangeSox

he's probably the biggest & dumbest MAGA guy in Congress and brought a holocaust denier to the SOTU.

We're going to find graves.

Scratch that 2k number from April,. Now it's nearly 6,000 children they've simply lost track of. There is no doubt some of the kids torn from their parents will never be reunited. Pure cruelty. And yet people keep defending it.

Deliberate cruelty. You are a horrible person if you support this.

whoops, I am owned. it was similar to language Nielsen used recently to defend Trump's family separation policy. Obama's response to the surge in 2013-2014 was also bad and inexcusable, for whatever that's worth.

Cool words from a fascist. I wonder if their next statement will include Trump's "infest" language.<--oh man tripped up by a bad quote from Obama, who was less than stellar in this area. Why are you defending deliberately separating families and putting children into concentration camps.

It was a report on a public conference call with Customs and Border Patrol.

Nielsen is a liar and her words are worthless. This is a deliberate policy. Sessions has defended it as deliberate policy. Trump admin notes and memos from earlier evaluated this as deliberate policy. Kelly defended it as deliberate policy.

Oh, a quote from the lady who's said in one sentence that this isn't policy at all and in the next sentence defended the same policy? She's a liar. She lied all through her press conference yesterday. Her words are worthless. For example, here are the actual numbers: That's over 2000 children in a little over a month torn from their parents and tossed into cages.

I don't think that's a fair excuse. Plenty of people without children get it.

Enough are, and they're being deliberately torn from their parents and thrown in cages as a deterrent effort. Trump today called undocumented immigrants an infestation.

No. The "loophole" was not having a "zero-tolerance" criminal prosecution policy. This was a deliberate change enacted by Trump/Sessions in April. I linked you to the announcement.

How many times does it need to be pointed out that the Trump administration is intentionally closing down these ports and turning people away from them? That they just significantly curtailed the number of people that can seek asylum? These people have made long treks fleeing violence or economic destitution. Have some empathy, try to imagine what it'd take you to leave your entire life behind to seek asylum.

here's some more routine corruption from the Trump administration

Right, that article was from the end of April. They've since dramatically ramped up family separation and the rate of unaccompanied minors they're shoving into concentration camps. Odds that the number of children they've lost track of haven't increased are low. This is just a Trump thing. Obama and Bush did not deliberately engage in family separation policies as a deterrent. There was coverage of the ways the Obama administration failed to handle the influx of actually unaccompanied minors back in 2014, as ss2k5 pointed out earlier. But this is different. This is a new, intentionally cruel policy that's resulting in infants being taken from parents. There is no excuse for this. SB is right about the kind of person that continues to support and excuse this.

I'm sorry that you don't understand how executive discretion works, but there is nothing in the law that requires a "zero tolerance" policy. The Executive branch is given latitude in how, when and where it enforces various laws throughout the country. There is absolutely nothing that forces the Trump administration to do this, just as there was nothing that forced that Obama or Bush or Clinton administrations. Trump's administration has deliberately implemented this policy change in order to inflict harm as a deterrent. This can be changed, right now, with an announcement from Trump or Sessions to end their policy.

This is the result of an intentional policy change. There is zero reason to separate these families. This isn't "how it works," it's how the Trump admin decided to make it work starting in April. Many of these people are coming here seeking asylum, a legal process, but we've also intentionally shut down portals and refuse to process asylum claims at them, which leads to increased border crossings and then apprehensions. There is no reason or justification to compare this to domestic jailing, which itself is an often abused and unjust process, given that we have literally decades of experience of not separating families.

Sessions announced a "zero-tolerance" policy in April, which means everyone is criminally prosecuted which leads to family separations. No law was changed, and yet we went from official policy where we didn't deliberately separate families as a "deterrent" and in fact explicitly avoided that, to one where we did. The Executive branch has discretion in how it executes the laws passed by Congress. In this case, they've chosen to follow this policy as a deterrent. Are you denying that there was a policy change here?

They've already lost track of nearly 1500 migrant children as of the end of April. It's already happening, and it's only accelerating. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/federal-officials-lose-track-of-nearly-1500-migrant-children

a few weeks ago: "Trump only meant to compare MS-13 members to animals, he definitely doesn't want to disparage and dehumanize all immigrants!!" Trump, today: Illegal immigrants will "infest our Country" Migrants are criminals!

This is a Trump administration policy that was started in April specifically as a deterrent. It was not and is not necessary. Stop defending child concentration camps.