Despite Trump’s executive order, Democrats still angry over immigration, detention
President Trump’s executive order reversing the law causing the separation of illegal immigrant parents from their children was immediately condemned Wednesday by Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said. “Family separation cannot be replaced by family incarceration and imprisonment.”
Moveover, Democrats, such as Tammy Baldwin, still avoid placing any blame on the Obama administration when the practice first began. When asked by CNN’s Brooke Baldwin if she ever spoke up and raised her voice about family separation under the Obama administration, the Wisconsin Senator muddled along.
“So many people in this country are certainly outraged by the cages, the thermal blankets, and the facilities housing these kids. You know, they were all there in 2014 under President Obama. And my question to you, Senator Baldwin, did you up against them then?” CNN’s Baldwin asked.
“You know, on this issue that we get into a moment where we’re making progress and then when it stalls we turn around. I think we all need to continue to be focused on it and press it through. The American people need confidence that we can solve problems. Nobody believes that we have an immigration system that works. It is broken, it needs fixing but we just got to resolve to do that,” Sen. Baldwin said in her response.
Check out that clip below.
Back to the Connecticut Senators…
“Ending family separation would be a welcome and humane step, but the solution cannot be the immoral and unlawful detention and imprisonment of children,” Sen. Blumenthal said in the wake of the executive order. “Family separation cannot be replaced by family incarceration and imprisonment.”
Under the executive order, immigrant families will still be detained, but not separated.
The order also directed the government’s lawyers to ask for a modification to a 1997 court order, known as the Flores settlement, that currently prohibits the federal government from keeping children in a federal immigration detention facility for more than 20 days.
Sen. Chris Murphy said the Trump administration has “reached a new moral low.”
“Locking up little kids in cages with their parents is less evil than locking up little kids alone in cages, so I guess I’m glad that the president took this step,” Murphy said. “But the new practice is still inhumane and arguably illegal, so no one should be celebrating today.”
Reality is clear: Democrats just want an open border.
The Las Vegas Review Journal accurately summarized that “Obama’s solution was simple: catch and release. Catch illegals crossing the border but release asylum seekers who came to the United States with children. Sure, there would be a future court date, but good luck finding them. This system turned children into get-out-of-jail-free cards, which created a horrible, perverse incentive to bring children to the border. They became a valuable commodity.”
“[I]n the last five months, we have a 314 percent increase in adults and children arriving at the border, fraudulently claiming to be a family unit,” said DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday.
Some parents have even turned their children over to smugglers for profit. Incentivizing human trafficking should be reason alone to end catch and release, which the Trump administration has done.
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Here’s the full CNN transcript of the Baldwin exchange:
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: But here’s a question for Democrats because you hear the president now lie on a lot of topics and this one included. Looking back to previous administrations, well, they should have done more.
As so many people in this country are certainly outraged by the cages, the thermal blankets, and the facilities housing these kids. You know, they were all there in 2014 under President Obama. And my question to you, Senator Baldwin, did you up against them then?
SEN. TAMMY BALDWIN (D-WISCONSIN): You know, on this issue that we get into a moment where we’re making progress and then when it stalls we turn around. I think we all need to continue to be focused on it and press it through. The American people need confidence that we can solve problems. Nobody believes that we have an immigration system that works. It is broken, it needs fixing but we just got to resolve to do that.
BROOKE BALDWIN: But were you worried about it then? Did you raise your voice under the Obama administration?
SEN. TAMMY BALDWIN: You know, in numbers of cases usually — I remember a constituent who was in detention at the border arguably very inappropriately and we, uh, you know, we raised our voice in that instance and many others. But that’s — we’ve got to do this now in unison. It’s not enough to do it case by case or Senator or House member by House member. We’ve got to resolve to fix this issue.