For Democrats, like the ‘insurrection’ of January 6th, the Trump policy of separating illegal-immigrant parents from their children in 2018 has been the political gift that’s kept on giving ever since. In 2020, the conspicuously inhumane protocol provided a rallying cry for candidates in the primaries and later for Biden as nominee.
True, the policy did have a rationale beyond sheer sadism. American law restricts the number of days border agents may detain the underaged and likewise constrains children’s deportation. As migrants are better versed on American immigration statutes than most lawyers, savvy incomers (meaning most incomers) were rocking up on US soil with kids in tow — not always their own — as guarantees of release from custody, leaving them in the country home-free. If children were dealt with independently, at least the parents could be sent packing.
Never mind its moral dubiety; family separation was a political catastrophe. Although minors were confined by the same chain-link that encloses basketball and tennis courts, the Dems’ incessant charge that Trump put ‘children in cages’ entailed inspired branding.
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