How could I vote for such a vulgar disgusting man?

[Winstonm]

This is what happens when a lying SOS is elected president - lies and a really bad smell everywhere.

The Trump administration insisted it didn't have a policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. It said that it was merely following the law. And it said “Congress alone can fix” the mess.

 

It just admitted that all that was nonsense — and that it badly overplayed its hand.

 

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who on Sunday and Monday insisted that this wasn't an actual policy and that the administration's hands are tied, will now have to untie them as the White House will reverse the supposedly nonexistent policy. Amid an outcry from Senate Republicans and an emerging promise to fix the problem themselves — just as the White House had demanded — the Trump administration has drafted an executive action to change the policy and keep families united.

 

“I’ll be signing something in a little while that’s going to do that.”

 

“I’ll be doing something that’s somewhat preemptive and ultimately will be matched by legislation I’m sure.”

 

 

It's at once an admission that the politics of the issue had gotten out of hand and that the administration's arguments were completely dishonest. Virtually everything it said about the policy is tossed aside with this executive action. It's the political equivalent of waving the white flag and the legal equivalent of confessing to making false statements. Rather than letting Congress rebuke it, the White House is rebuking itself and trying to save some face.

[kenberg]

It's all because of the letter I sent. Trump called and asked if I really thought that he should stop separating families. I told him that this was what we all thought and he said he would take care of it.I'm still working on convincing him not to underlead an Ace against a grand slam.He wants to talk that one over with Mattis.

 

[Winstonm]

It's all because of the letter I sent. Trump called and asked if I really thought that he should stop separating families. I told him that this was what we all thought and he said he would take care of it.I'm still working on convincing him not to underlead an Ace against a grand slam.He wants to talk that one over with Mattis.

 

[hrothgar]

I very much want to keep the families together. The next question is: How? Do you put the children in the adult prisons with the parents? Do you build special facilities for imprisoning families? Do you just release the families to the public with the hopes that they will return for their court appearance (apparently most don't). And if you release them to the public, isn't that an incentive for bringing children with you when you enter the US illegally? Isn't that an incentive for an increase in child trafficing? (Apparently a large number of the children are not related to the adults that they enter with).

 

 

The way in which you are framing this question implies that some kind of trade off is permissable.

 

IT IS NEVER ACCEPTABLE TO TORTURE SMALL CHILDREN TO GET YOUR WAY.

[ldrews]

This is false. Studies show that this figure is close to 90%

 

 

 

Go back to directing your resources at violent criminals.

Provide more resources to process refugees.

 

The single most effective things that we could do would be

 

1. Decriminalizing most forms of drugs

2. Crack down on gun sales

 

The two later choices would have a dramatic impact on the stability of governments South of the border.

 

According to Senator Jeff Flake, 90% of illegal immigrants fail to appear in court. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jul/10/jeff-flake/sen-jeff-flake-says-90-percent-immigrants-given-co/

 

So apparently you choose to allow illegal immigrants to just disappear into US society. Don't you think this will only increase under that policy? The US already has problems funding the social services used by illegal immigrants. And they tend to compete for the lowest rung of jobs, depriving US citizens of entry level positions.

 

How do you handle these consequences?

[ldrews]

The way in which you are framing this question implies that some kind of trade off is permissable.

 

IT IS NEVER ACCEPTABLE TO TORTURE SMALL CHILDREN TO GET YOUR WAY.

 

Do you have evidence that small children are being tortured? Torture has very specific physical and/or mental conditions.

[hrothgar]

According to Senator Jeff Flake, 90% of illegal immigrants fail to appear in court. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jul/10/jeff-flake/sen-jeff-flake-says-90-percent-immigrants-given-co/

 

 

Jesus f#cking christ you're stupid.

 

The very web page that you are citing states that Flake is misrepresenting the #s

 

If you actually bother to read the article rather then cherry picking the number you like, you'll see that Politifacts states the following

 

The report used figures from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is tasked by the Justice Department with handling immigration court proceedings, appellate reviews and administrative hearings. Between 2003 and 2012, the percentage of all immigrants who failed to appear in court after being released has bounced between 20 percent and 40 percent, settling in at about 30 percent at the end of that time span. (No data for children specifically is available from this long-running data set.)

 

That’s substantially lower than the 90 percent figure Flake cited.

 

Or, if you prefer

 

https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/myth-vs-fact-immigrant-families-appearance-rates-immigration-court

 

In recent months, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency within the U.S. Department of Justice that adjudicates immigration removal cases, released data showing that the vast majority of families do in fact show up for court dates. This data, however, has been misconstrued—some have even claimed that 85 percent of mothers are not appearing for their hearings.

 

In fact, the data actually shows that the majority of families do appear. Appearance rates can be brought even higher by addressing deficiencies in the provision of information and through provision of counsel. Ninety-eight percent of families who are represented by counsel show up for their hearings. In individual cases determined to need additional support, alternative measures, which are much more cost effective and humane than detention, achieve very high compliance rates.

[hrothgar]

Do you have evidence that small children are being tortured? Torture has very specific physical and/or mental conditions.

 

 

The United Nations Torture Convention of 1984 (Which the United States signed on April 18th, 1988 defines torture as follows:

 

"Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."

 

So, yes, there is plenty of evidence that the Trump Administration is systemically practicing torture.

 

(And don't try any bullshit like "The US isn't intentionally causing the suffering". Sessions and Miller are both on the record saying that this is a deliberate choice and Kelly is on tape months back explaining how this type of policy would be rolled out)

 

This is - part of - the reason that the UN is now calling out the US for Human Right's abuses.

 

Get it through your thick skull.

 

THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT IS DELIBERATELY TORTURING SMALL CHILDREN AS A MATTER OF POLICY

[hrothgar]

 

So apparently you choose to allow illegal immigrants to just disappear into US society. Don't you think this will only increase under that policy? The US already has problems funding the social services used by illegal immigrants. And they tend to compete for the lowest rung of jobs, depriving US citizens of entry level positions.

 

 

What is the acceptable thresh hold?

 

How many children can we justifiably torture to prevent one illegal immigrant from disappearing into US society?

 

Hint: The answer is NONE. Torturing small children is never acceptable.

[cherdano]

But, Richard, the children will be taken care of - put in foster homes or whatever! John Kelly already said so more than a month ago!

[ldrews]

What is the acceptable thresh hold?

 

How many children can we justifiably torture to prevent one illegal immigrant from disappearing into US society?

 

Hint: The answer is NONE. Torturing small children is never acceptable.

 

So I get it, you are in favor of open borders if that will prevent the separation of children from parents who have illegally entered the US, regardless of long term consequences.

[hrothgar]

So I get it, you are in favor of open borders if that will prevent the separation of children from parents who have illegally entered the US, regardless of long term consequences.

 

And here we see a perfect example of Drews' style of debate

 

Drews made a pair of incredible stupid posts

 

• In the first, he cited an article that showed that Senator Flake was misrepresenting facts to back his position
  
• In the second, he demonstrated that he completely misunderstands the definition of torture
  

 

And, rather than dealing with the actual critiques of his position, he prefers to invent yet another new strawman to argue against...

 

SAD!

[andrei]

This is false. Studies show that this figure is close to 90%

 

If you actually bother to read the article rather then cherry picking the number you like, you'll see that Politifacts states the following:

 

Historically, the rate has ranged between 20 percent to 40 percent, settling in at about 30 percent in 2012, the most recent full year for which data is available. A more recent estimate for children specifically, made by the director of the office responsible for handling such cases, is that the current no-show rate for children is 46 percent. That’s still quite high, but it’s only half what Flake said. We rate the claim False.

 

Where is your 90% coming from?

You weren't just making up numbers, were you?

[ldrews]

Where is your 90% coming from?

You weren't just making up numbers, were you?

 

Read the link

[andrei]

Read the link

 

 

Apparently hrothgar heard of studies saying that 90% goes to court.

 

The linked linked states the most recent estimate is that 46% skip court.

 

So I was asking if hrothgar was making up his "90% goes to court" number.

[ldrews]

And here we see a perfect example of Drews' style of debate

 

Drews made a pair of incredible stupid posts

 

• In the first, he cited an article that showed that Senator Flake was misrepresenting facts to back his position
  
• In the second, he demonstrated that he completely misunderstands the definition of torture
  

 

And, rather than dealing with the actual critiques of his position, he prefers to invent yet another new strawman to argue against...

 

SAD!

 

So back to the original topic here. It seems to me that there are only 3 choices:

• Arrest the illegal immigrants and separate them from the children
  
• Arrest the illegal immigrants and put the children in jail with the parents
  
• Arrest the illegal immigrants but if they have children release them and hope they show up at court
  

 

To me there are no good choices, just bad ones. But the long term consequences of releasing the family is to make a huge incentive for an increase in the number of illegal immigrants who bring children, not necessarily their own. A byproduct of that increase is a probable increase in child trafficking.

 

To me the choice is family separation or child trafficking. Which do you prefer? If you see another alternative, please describe it.

[Winstonm]

Womp, Womp

[hrothgar]

So back to the original topic here. It seems to me that there are only 3 choices:

• Arrest the illegal immigrants and separate them from the children
  
• Arrest the illegal immigrants and put the children in jail with the parents
  
• Arrest the illegal immigrants but if they have children release them and hope they show up at court
  

 

To me there are no good choices, just bad ones. But the long term consequences of releasing the family is to make a huge incentive for an increase in the number of illegal immigrants who bring children, not necessarily their own. A byproduct of that increase is a probable increase in child trafficking.

 

To me the choice is family separation or child trafficking. Which do you prefer? If you see another alternative, please describe it.

 

First and foremost, I reject your framing...

 

The Trump wasn't using these tactics against illegal immigrants. The overwhelming majority of the cases involved asylum seekers.

And, asylum seekers are, by definition, not illegal immigrants.

 

Second, for years, the Obama administration and the Bush administration followed policies in which you

 

1. Provide the asylum seekers with shelter

2. Conduct preliminary interviews

3. Release them into the US until their application can be reviewed

 

And, guess what... The asylum seekers came back for their hearings.

 

There's no reason why this policy had to be changed in such a horrific manner.

 

As to your argument about long term increases in the number of asylum seekers who bring children.

I suspect that your evidence is as dubious as ever, and even if this is true I don't really care cause I don't consider this "child trafficking".

 

And, of course, people who favor torturing children don't get to use "Oh! But the poor children" as a line of argument

[andrei]

 

And, guess what... The asylum seekers came back for their hearings.

 

 

Still waiting to see the studies that show that 90% rate you claim.

[hrothgar]

Still waiting to see the studies that show that 90% rate you claim.

 

I posted one with 85%. Round up, a$$hole

 

Also several of the ones I pointed to have values of 98% (assuming that the individual had access to legal representation)

[kenberg]

The separation of families was repugnant to many. And so there was a rare moment of fairly broad agreement. Now it's back to the hard stuff.

 

The combined population of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador is a bit over 30 million (I looked it up). I can easily believe that a large portion of these people have good reason to fear violence. And certainly there are other good reasons for people to want to come here, there always have been. A woman in our book club left Hungary, with her children, in 1956 pretty much with bullets flying around her. Similarlly for a guy I know from Lebanon. And there are a lot of Syrians. And there are various places in Africa. My father came here from somewhere, he was not clear on just where, because it was awful there.

 

What are we to do? Some people find the answer clear. I don't.

Saying what the law is doesn't suffice. Laws can be interpreted, laws can be changed. And they can be enforced in various ways. On PBS last night they did a story on a woman with her granddaughter coming into the US through the proper checkpoint at El Paso. After a delay, they were allowed to enter. But now there will be an evaluation. Can she prove she has legal custody of the granddaughter? Can she prove she has a credible fear of returning?

 

Who gets in, who doesn't, how do we decide?

I recently saw some figure that there are now 70 million refugees worldwide. See https://www.rescue.org/topic/refugee-crisis for example. Perhaps it is only 50 million? And surely there are many more ho would like to leave from where they are but lack any means to do so. What are we to do about this?

As I say, I am very skeptical of anyone, of any persuasion, who thinks that the answer is obvious. Opposing the separation of families was the easy part.

 

[hrothgar]

 

As I say, I am very skeptical of anyone, of any persuasion, who thinks that the answer is obvious.

 

I don't consider this to be a particularly difficult problem.

 

1. An awful lot of the problems that are happening in Central and South America have their roots in the behavior of the US

 

Its our drug consumption and drug laws that are funding the gangs

Its our guns that folks are using to kill one another

Its our carbon output that is fueling climate change

 

The US has a moral responsibility to help clean up the problems that we created

 

2. Historically, the US has been extremely good at assimilating minorities. I doubt that this new wave will be any different than

 

the Germans

the Irish

the Italians

The Jews

The Vietnamese and Chinese

 

3. I understand that there are a bunch of good American citizens who are very concerned with changing Demographics.

 

***** em all.

 

I see no reason why I should be more concerned about the opinions of bunch of racist whites in flyover country than I am about a bunch of South American immigrants.

[y66]

Guest post by Matt Yglesias at Vox:

 

Donald Trump has largely skated by as president, deferring to the policy consensus in Republican Party circles. He’s served as a rubber-stamp signatory of tax legislation he wasn’t involved in crafting and judicial nominations in which he had little say.

 

But sometimes things happen — like a surge of families with children arriving at the border to press asylum claims — that require leadership in the executive branch and don’t have obvious solutions.

 

Trump’s response to the crisis at the US-Mexico border — where toddlers are in internment camps and older kids are in tent cities at frightening expense while children sob, health deteriorates, and the long-term damage of toxic stress accumulates — reminds us that he does not know anything about public policy, diplomacy, constitutional law, or legislative strategy.

 

So you get instead what he’s delivered over the past two weeks — aggressive hostage-taking, lying, trolling, chaos, dissembling, and cruelty — none of which is going to advance Trump’s legislative goals or address the underlying issue of the northward flow of asylum seekers. Even the executive order he signed on Wednesday raises more questions than it will probably solve.

 

All presidents are tested now and again, and Trump is failing massively. It’s not quite the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last. Being president of the United States is a difficult job, and Donald Trump has no idea how to do it.

 

The origins of this crisis are in Central America

 

The fundamental reality of the situation that Trump has no idea how to grapple with is that the families showing up at the border aren’t faking it.

 

Whether or not one deems the asylum claims being made as meeting the formal legal bar, it should be obvious that nobody takes their children on the perilous route through Mexico with dim prospects of an ultimately successful asylum application without being seriously distressed back in their home country. By the same token, it’s not a coincidence that the family migrants are coming specifically from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador rather than the more stable countries to the north or south of that triad.

 

It’s not obvious that there was actually anything especially terrible about the status quo as it existed in 2016 — a lot of people came, they were typically released into the interior pending asylum hearings, most claims were rejected, and a certain number of people skipped their appointed court dates. In the Trump administration’s mind, the fact that crossings are occurring at a much higher rate in 2018 than they were in 2017 is a big problem, but the reality is that it’s simply a return to the level we were living with before Inauguration Day.

 

But while reasonable people can disagree about which problems are important, there’s simply no denying that the origin of this problem is in Central America. If Trump wants to make solving the problem a major priority, he needs to make Central America a major policy priority. Instead, he’s picked a secretary of state with no experience in the region, made himself politically toxic by calling El Salvador a “shithole country,” embroiled the country in pointless fights with Mexico over NAFTA and a border wall, repeatedly threatened to end aid to Honduras for no reason, and decided not to show up at the Summit of the Americas.

 

Drastically improving living conditions in the Northern Triangle would, obviously, be difficult. But Trump isn’t even trying. Meanwhile, he exacerbates his problems with the fact that he can’t even remotely get his story straight on what he’s even trying to accomplish.

 

Trump has no idea how to legislate

 

After Chief of Staff John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had both spent a considerable amount of time teasing a new policy of criminal prosecutions for asylum seekers as a deliberate means of separating parents from their children that would create a powerful deterrent, the White House’s communications strategy broke down immediately when the issue became controversial.

 

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen repeatedly denied that there was any new policy at all, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was nowhere to be seen even though his agency oversaw the children in detention, and Trump himself kept insisting that the new policy was somehow forced on him by some mysterious law that Democrats were allegedly responsible for. The one thing everyone could agree on was that the only possible solution was for Democrats to come to the table and agree to a broad series of sweeping changes to American immigration policy. Children were being held as literal hostages in a legislative negotiating strategy.

 

Not surprisingly, this didn’t work. On Wednesday, the administration admitted it had been lying all along and prepared to back away from family separation.

 

This combination of bluffing and hostage-taking would be a remarkable approach under any circumstances, but it’s particularly bizarre because Trump has repeatedly tried and failed to make this work. First he did it with the Affordable Care Act, where he spent months deliberately sabotaging the law and raising insurance premiums in the futile hope that this would bring Democrats to the table. He did it again with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, canceling it and then immediately labeling the cancellation regrettable but demanding legislative concessions in exchange for a fix.

 

But even in its new form, Trump is still going to shift resources away from prosecuting criminals and toward prosecuting people — babies and all — for misdemeanor illegal entry violations.

 

This may succeed in extricating Trump from the public relations disaster he made for himself, but nothing about this is going to induce Democrats to want to make a deal with him. If anything, the fact that once again his administration has been caught lying about significant public policy issues confirms the suspicion that he’s not a negotiating partner one can work with in good faith.

 

Meanwhile, the new approach violates earlier court orders and will be the subject of immediate legal challenges that will likely strike it down. Trump, in other words, isn’t fixing anything. He’s just continuing to flail.

 

Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing

 

So far in his 500 days in office, Trump has benefited from a fairly benign set of objective circumstances. He inherited a strengthening economy from Barack Obama and made a reasonable selection to head up the Federal Reserve.

 

His tenure has been marked by an extraordinary level of drama, but on some level, relatively little has actually happened in reality. But when things have happened, Trump has been unequal to the task of handling them. Last year’s hurricane season created a catastrophe. The return of Central American asylum seekers to their pre-Trump level immediately devolved into a humanitarian crisis. America’s relationships with its traditional allies are in tatters for no real reason. China is relaxing its enforcement of sanctions on North Korea, and Iran is opening a new nuclear facility.

 

And even though Trump is remarkably skilled at taking advantage of the news cycle’s tendency to move on, reality is less forgiving. Another hurricane season is coming. None of Trump’s border antics are going to stop people from coming north. Some trouble or another — whether in the realm of the economy or foreign policy — is essentially inevitable. And when the trouble comes, America will be facing it isolated and discredited, led by a team with no credibility or integrity, headed up by a man who can’t be bothered to put in a moment’s thought or hard work on even the topics he proclaims himself to be focused on.

Nobody is suggesting this is an easy problem to solve. Trump's incompetence and mindless pursuit of a white nationalist agenda are not making it any easier.

[kenberg]

I don't consider this to be a particularly difficult problem.

 

1. An awful lot of the problems that are happening in Central and South America have their roots in the behavior of the US

 

Its our drug consumption and drug laws that are funding the gangs

Its our guns that folks are using to kill one another

Its our carbon output that is fueling climate change

 

The US has a moral responsibility to help clean up the problems that we created

 

2. Historically, the US has been extremely good at assimilating minorities. I doubt that this new wave will be any different than

 

the Germans

the Irish

the Italians

The Jews

The Vietnamese and Chinese

 

3. I understand that there are a bunch of good American citizens who are very concerned with changing Demographics.

 

***** em all.

 

I see no reason why I should be more concerned about the opinions of bunch of racist whites in flyover country than I am about a bunch of South American immigrants.

But to cut to the chase, do you think that the answer to what should we do is obvious? An extreme possibility: If someone arrives at our border and says that they wish to enter and live here, should that be enough? Or, even more extreme, if someone in Honduras says they would like to come to the US but they lack the means to get here, should we provide transportation? I am not trying to put words in your mouth or anything like that. I am trying to address the following: Assuming that most people reject both the idea of completely open borders and the idea of completely closed borders, how do we decide what we actually should do?

 

If you think that borders should be completely open then that is one answer. If you put this idea to a vote it will not be only the people in flyover country (I grew up in flyover country but never mind) who will reject it. There is no chance that this view will become the majority view. A person can of course still hold that view but it will never become policy. Call us names if you like, that's what passes for argument these days, but it will never become policy.

 

[diana_eva]

But to cut to the chase, do you think that the answer to what should we do is obvious? An extreme possibility: If someone arrives at our border and says that they wish to enter and live here, should that be enough? Or, even more extreme, if someone in Honduras says they would like to come to the US but they lack the means to get here, should we provide transportation? I am not trying to put words in your mouth or anything like that. I am trying to address the following: Assuming that most people reject both the idea of completely open borders and the idea of completely closed borders, how do we decide what we actually should do?

 

If you think that borders should be completely open then that is one answer. If you put this idea to a vote it will not be only the people in flyover country (I grew up in flyover country but never mind) who will reject it. There is no chance that this view will become the majority view. A person can of course still hold that view but it will never become policy. Call us names if you like, that's what passes for argument these days, but it will never become policy.

 

 

 

Coming from a country that used to be eligible for political asylum, I'm shocked at the discussions. People who come knock at the door asking to be let in, do so because living in their own country is too dangerous and they fear for their life and for the life of their loved ones, not because they like to take a hike with their small kids over mountains and seas.