with Paul Hoffer
[compiled from three lengthy Facebook threads, dated 19, 20, and 21 June 2018; see the fuller discussions: one / two / three. Here I will mostly collect my own thoughts and links to articles about it.]
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The discussion started with my link to this article:
“Ted Cruz Introduces Emergency Legislation to End Family Separation – It Looks Solid” (David French, National Review, 6-18-18)
And of course the Democrats (being the very exemplars of Christian compassion, unlike us evil, wicked, racist conservatives) will immediately agree with this and legislation will be passed, right? Well, sadly, it’s very unlikely, but I hope I’m wrong and that the Democrats do the right thing.
I linked many more articles, from the conservative perspective:
“The Truth about Separating Kids” (Rich Lowry, National Review, 5-28-18)
“Lost Children? Detention Cages? Baby Prison Bus? Trump’s Critics Will Believe Anything” (Investor’s Business Daily, 5-29-18)
“Associated Press Uses ‘Cages’ to Describe Chain-Link Partitions in Border Patrol Center” (Joel B. Pollak, Breitbart, 6-17-18)
“Fact Check: ‘Caged’ Child Photo Is Not What Immigration Advocates Claim” (Katherine Rodriguez, Breitbart, 6-18-18)
“PHOTOS: Obama Used Same So-Called ‘Cages’ to Detain Child Border Crossers” (John Binder, Breitbart, 6-18-18)
“Unpacking the Manufactured Migrant Children Crisis” (Rush Limbaugh, 6-18-18)
“Democrats Say Trump and Republicans Hate Children” (Rush Limbaugh, 6-18-18)
“How the Drive-Bys Peddle Fake Outrage” (Rush Limbaugh, 6-18-18)
“We Punish Ourselves by Listening to Hillary” (Rush Limbaugh, 6-18-18)
“DHS Secretary: Children Are Being Taken Care Of — ‘Don’t Believe The Press’” (Pam Key, Breitbart, 6-18-18)
“Debunking Lies On Trump’s Child/Border Policy” (Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire, 6-18-18)
“CBP Official: Illegal Kids ‘Have PlayStations, Pool Tables’ in Shelters Run by HHS” (Craig Bannister, CNSNews, 6-18-18)
“Separating Families At The Border: The Hysteria Overlooks Some Key Facts” (Investor’s Business Daily, 6-18-18)
“On Separating Children From Parents and Incarcerating Orphans for Life Without Parole” (Dov Fischer, The American Spectator, 6-18-18)
“Cable News: 22 Comparisons of Immigration Policy to the Holocaust, Slavery” (Bill D’Agostino, NewsBusters, 6-18-18)
“Laura Ingraham Slams ‘Faux Liberal Outrage’ Over Border Child Detention Centers, Likens Them to ‘Summer Camps’” (Jeff Poor, Breitbart, 6-19-18)
“Child Border Crossers Enjoy Nearly 3X Higher Standard of Living than Average Middle Class American Children” (John Binder, Breitbart, 6-19-18)
“Cotton: Democrats Want to Make Kids at Border ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card’ – We’ll Offer Amendment to Solve Separation” (Ian Hanchett, Breitbart, 6-19-18)
“13 Facts the Media ‘Pros’ Don’t Want You to Know About ‘Family Border Separation’” (John Nolte, Breitbart, 6-19-18)
“Sarah Sanders to Laura Bush: Trump Trying to Fix Law that Your Husband Signed” (Charlie Spiering, Breitbart, 6-19-18)
“The Drive-By Media on Me and Immigration Policy” (Rush Limbaugh, 6-19-18)
“The Separation of Criminals From Their Children” (Rush Limbaugh, 6-19-18)
“Bill Clinton and Janet Reno Separated Families” (Rush Limbaugh, 6-19-18)
“Your Host’s Take on the Audio of Kids Crying” (Rush Limbaugh, 6-19-18)
“Here Are The Photos Of Obama’s Illegal Immigrant Detention Facilities The Media Won’t Show You” (Benny Johnson, Daily Caller, 6-19-18)
Funny that the Democrats are very unconcerned about separating 1 million preborn children every year from not only their mothers, but their right to life as well. Hillary Clinton is actually talking about stopping the suffering of children with a straight face, after having defended partial-birth infanticide during one of her debates with President Trump? This woman is utterly shameless and witless.
We live in an insane world, folks.
Big Media won’t report accurately, so I go to those who do (conservatives). Rush Limbaugh is one of the sharpest political analysts I’ve ever heard. The Catholic Church has said families ought not be separated. I agree. Trump and the GOP agree. They want to pass a law that will fix the problem. Next question?
Ben Shapiro has been a huge critic of Trump. He left Breitbart because of it. I don’t know if he’s changed in that respect, but I know what he used to believe. So this is no Trump clone or sycophant. Rich Lowry and National Review are (or were in 2016) huge critics of Trump. But Shapiro and Lowry are now simply dealing with the facts; i.e., doing what (even Big Liberal Media) journalists used to do.
I used to love David Brinkley, Ted Koppel, MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, and above all, Tim Russert. I also liked Jeff Greenfield a lot. That’s how even liberal journalists used to be: calling it straight: not being deliberate agents of propaganda for the Democrat Party and far left ideology. They could be respected and listened to. I loved all these guys. Before Fox News or the CNN show Crossfire it was all we could watch. So I chose the best journalists among the liberals and it was the people listed above. Those days are gone now. Now Big Media is a relentless assault against the intelligence of anyone even remotely conservative.
Big Media journalism died almost exactly ten years ago. It was on June 13, 2008, when Tim Russert died.
There were 25,000 illegal children being detained separately under Obama in 2013; now there are 10,852. Where’d I get that? From Fox News? Well, Rush Limbaugh did mention it today, but the sources are Newsweek (5-30-18) and Mother Jones (July 2014).
My good friend Paul Hoffer chimed in (his words will be in blue below):
When a parent commits a felony in this country and that parent goes to jail pending trial, Children Services remove the children to care for the child or place that child with other family members until the parent receives their due process. That was not considered abuse at any point of my 35 years as an attorney who represents children. Do you think that there is no trauma in parent removing the child from their home, trekking thousand miles through jungle and desert subjecting them to violence and harm from vs vs and sex traffickers, etc? We take children away from their parents for dependency, neglect and abuse for far less dangerous circumstances hundreds of times a day.
Under current law, anyone who seeks to be declared an asylee or refugee they are entitled to the benefits of our law and to present their claim. The problem is that they are supposed to present their claim at a port of entry. If they cross illegally, there is no way for the field agents to get them and verify their parentage, etc. If people want to claim the benefits off the law, they should show respect of that law by following the procedures to claim legal status. I have no problem with people coming to my door of my home seeking help I just believe that the person knock before entering my home. The border is the front door to our country. People should knock before coming in. By sneaking in time burglar, they can’t expect our government to treat them the same as someone who follows the rules. These folks are fleeing persecution, gang violence, etc. We have the right to take steps to make sure they are who they claim to be and meet the criteria the law requires.
The preferential option for the poor calls us to have special concern for the marginalized. Trump ha s made numerous suggestions to fix immigration issues and Congress who represents interests that want to exploit the immigrants, etc (Establishment Republicans who want cheap labor and Democrats to replace millions of their base who were aborted) refuse to fix it. Trump rightly or wrongly is enforcing the law as written to force Congress to act. Fixing bad law rather than ignoring the problem for next president is showing regard for the poor.
The bishops have spoken out against this but I have seen little done but complaining. If they were truly serious, they would meet with him to discuss their concerns instead of watching CNN. Solutions, as opposed to complaining, is what needs to be done.
When some of these news outlets start making comparisons between abortion clinics and Nazi death camps, I might take them seriously. In the meantime, bombastic rhetoric does nothing but harden hearts.
There are no easy answers to these problems. The issue of separating kids is a complex one. It is illegal for someone to cross the border at a place other than at a point of entry. I remember a friend of mine, a citizen of the United States, got arrested taking a boat across Lake Erie and getting out on Pt. Pelee. The Canadian authorities didn’t catch him but the coast guard did when he tried to come back into US waters. That is a federal crime separate from the immigration issue.
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Trump and conservatives don’t want this situation to continue any more than the Dems do. But many people will keep believing the lies, no matter what. If Trump solves it, then Big Media will immediately come up with another Big Lie of the Week (after all, even preventing nuclear war was mocked), or his wife can be called a piece of %$#@, and his daughter even worse, or he can be subjected to Punchy DeNiro’s juvenile theatrics once again.
Peter Fonda is calling for scaring to death the children of border agents. How ironic, huh? But I’m sure he missed the irony. That’s the level of our political discourse (and behavior towards each other) these days. Journalism is Dead. Pravda is alive and well in America. Reason is just about dead. It’s on life support.
“Trump signs executive order to stop family separations at border” (John Roberts, Andrew O’Reilly, Fox News, 6-20-18)
“Democrats Have Zero Tolerance For Illegal Immigration Solutions” (David Harsanyi, The Federalist, 6-20-18)
“Trump Moves to Obama’s Position on Family Detention, Democrats Outraged” (David French, National Review, 6-21-18)
So fast! That’s Trump the pragmatist: stop all the BS and party politics, talking points, and polemics and solve the problem, for heaven’s sake.
Now we will get to be entertained by what the liberals lie about next. I predict they will say,”he had to do it because of all the pressure. He didn’t really believe in it.” Mark my words! We’ll probably see that before this day is done. Whatever Trump does, in their eyes, has to be because of some nefarious, sinister motive.
Note once again, too, that Bush II and Obama never signed such an order (and this separation was going on then, too, as has been shown in many articles). So does that make them evil and wicked now? Trump is the one who did it, just like Trump made fantastic progress with North Korea while Clinton, Bush II, and Obama didn’t do one blasted thing to resolve it (which inaction amounted to making it worse). Yet Trump gets no credit from his critics! I keep saying it: we truly live in an insane world now.
Antifa just published the names and addresses of 1500 ICE agents so people can commit acts of violence against them and their children. [link]
Gotta love the oh-so-compassionate left.
What’s amazing is how many folks (otherwise sensible and rational and charitable) believe all this nonsense.
Of course I have never advocated such separation (one person somehow thought that I did and called for me to be fired as a regular columnist for the National Catholic Register; he withdrew it by the end of that day). I made that very clear in my recent writings on the topic. That’s why I was very happy when President Trump signed an executive order yesterday to stop it. And I’ll be even happier if Congress passes a similar bill.
I replied to my temporary critic:
The Catholic Church was against separation, so was I, so was Trump, which is why he signed an order and did more than his two predecessors (not hard to do more than nothing) to solve the problem.
He counter-replied: “During that entire sub-thread he never once said that he agreed with Catholic leadership . . .”
This is false. In fact, I wrote in the thread [which can be seen above]: “The Catholic Church has said families ought not be separated. I agree. Trump and the GOP agree. They want to pass a law that will fix the problem. Next question?”
He did take the post down, to his credit, but no apology was ever offered. So it often goes with us human beings . . . At least he did that much. It’s good for his sake. I’m happy about that. Lying is no good for anyone.
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(edited on 8-14-20, utilizing material from 19-21 June 2018)
Photo credit: Photo provided by Custom and Border Protection to reporter on tour of detention facility in McAllen, Texas (6-17-18) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]
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