The immigration fight is just beginning, and the media is going to lose

Now that people in the news media are literally crying on TV, it’s time to watch public opinion once again drift into President Trump’s favor.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow looked like she might throw up from overexertion Tuesday night as she tried to force out a tear while reading a report on illegal immigrants at the border separated from the children they brought along (sometimes they’re parents, sometimes they’re paid smugglers). Her daytime anchor colleague Stephanie Ruhle choked up earlier in the day talking on air about the same thing. So that there was no confusion about her compassion, she wore a subtle pin on her top that said “LOVE.”

The issue (tens of thousands of foreigners overwhelming the southern border) has never not been a “crisis,” and yet it wasn’t described by the media as such until Trump got in office and began enforcing laws against slipping into the country unnoticed and unvetted. (Their children cannot join them in jail, where everyone must go after being charged with a crime, but you rarely see that spelled out in news reports.) And as with every other cultural issue of the last three years, reporters and liberal commentators have taken the losing route of throwing themselves all in on the wrong side. It’s hysterical. In a debate Tuesday on Fox News, former Hillary Clinton campaign aide Zac Petkanas attacked the illegal immigrant crack down by using an anecdote about a child with Down syndrome. Corey Lewandwoski, who headed the Trump campaign in its earlier days, dismissed the argument, so much as it was an “argument,” saying, “Womp, womp.” The clip spread among reporters fuming that Lewandowski responded to the unverified story so heartlessly. The New York Times even wrote a story about the exchange under the headline, “Corey Lewandowski Mocks Child With Down Syndrome Separated From Her Mother: ‘Womp Womp.’” Only he didn’t mock the child with Down syndrome. He mocked Petkansas for using what was, at the time, a fully unsubstantiated claim as an attempt to win a policy argument. Between overwrought shouts of “How absolutely dare you?” from Petakansas, Lewandowski said, “What I said is, you can pick anything you want to, but the bottom line is very clear: When you cross the border illegally you have given up the rights of that country.” It wasn't even clear that the child exists. The story was initially traced back to one source: the Mexican government. You know, that pristine organization of the highest order, only known for its unblemished history of quality ethics. (Excuse me, what I meant to say was: corruption, bribery, and organized crime.)'

U.S. Customs and Border Protection released a statement Wednesday that said there was a child with Down syndrome separated from her mother but it had nothing to do with her being an illegal immigrant. It's because a U.S. citizen was being charged with attempting to smuggle the family across the border and the mother, who is not being prosecuted, needed to be held as a witness. But so long as it’s now fine to win debates with anecdotes, Lewandowski should just say next time that he heard about a boy with cerebral palsy who was separated from his mother at the border and he’s having such a great time at the detention center that he began to weep when told he would soon have to leave.

Can’t verify it, but it does the trick! CNN thought it had captured a rare and profound moment on film when Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday asked acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan if the separations caused by enforcing the existing law are “humane.” “I think — I think it’s the law,” Homan replied. Asked again specifically if it was “humane,” Homan said, “I think it’s the law and I’m a law enforcement officer and I follow the law.” He added that he thought it was “inhumane” instead when parents pay smugglers to illegally bring their kids, who are often abused along the way, to the U.S. But because there was a gap in Homan’s speech that lasted less than three seconds, on a question he had already answered, CNN swore it had gold, tweeting out the clip and telling followers to “watch the head of ICE pause when asked by Wolf Blitzer if the policy of separating children from their parents is humane.”

https:/ /www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/the-immigration-fight-is-just-beginning-and-the-media-is-going-to-lose

Trump discovers the resistance — to enforcing immigration laws

White House staffers and administration officials were tearing their hair out. There was so much misinformation about the family separation crisis at the border, they said, and an unwillingness to grapple with the basic challenge President Trump was facing. The protocols for housing adults and children separately had not changed. Neither had the circumstances under which children might be separated from the adult they came with: a false claim of parentage, some specific danger to the child, or the adult being criminally prosecuted. What had changed was a shift in illegal immigration to the U.S. from single males from Mexico to men, women and children — sometimes traveling as intact family units — from Central America, a trend on a collision course with the Trump administration’s desire for greater immigration control. Previous administrations exercised greater prosecutorial discretion in cases of illegal entry when the adult was with a child. Trump, through Attorney General Jeff Sessions, announced “zero tolerance.”

The Trump administration was also markedly less inclined to release families into the U.S., in many cases never to reappear before authorities, pending the resolution of an asylum claim. But the 1997 Flores consent decree said unaccompanied children could only be detained for 20 days, and then the 9th Circuit Court extended that to children with their families. Asylum cases are seldom resolved in that amount of time, creating another family separation scenario. Still, it did not take a great deal of imagination to anticipate what could go wrong with more migrant children in federal custody. Conservatives believe in the rule of law. We also believe that parents and families are generally better at caring for children than government. Nor was there any public relations strategy for explaining the uptick in detained children. If Trump cannot escape scrutiny for how many scoops of ice cream he is served, the media was never going to give him a pass on this, losing a different kind of scoop. The Trump administration had the correct goal in removing incentives for future illegal immigration and preventing a new generation that would need a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals-style amnesty because they were brought to America through no fault of their own. As the president blinked Wednesday, however, it was clear that he underestimated how difficult politically this would be.

Immigration enforcement is popular in the abstract, but when attempted in a more sustained way than usual there is always a backlash. When the laws are enforced against illegal immigrants, you see raids and detentions involving mostly sympathetic people alongside the president’s bad hombres. When they are enforced against the businesses that employ illegal immigrants, there is an outcry from people who vote and donate campaign cash. At the micro level, illegal immigrants are as Jeb Bush says mostly trying to provide for their families. At the macro level, having many millions of them creates problems responsible governments would be wise to try to avoid. Contrary to the impression given by the occasional Trump tweet, no given undocumented immigrant is especially likely to be a member of ISIS or MS-13. Again at the macro level, having many millions of people entering the country undetected or overstaying their visas without consequence is a good way to end up with national security and public safety problems.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/trump-discovers-the-resistance-to-enforcing-immigration-laws