We begin today’s roundup with Joe Scarborough’s piece on Trump’s cruel immigration policy:
Reagan took a position on immigration that most Republicans today would consider heresy, yet voters rewarded him with a decisive victory and a landslide reelection a few years later. Far less popular has been President Trump’s politically toxic policy of ripping children from their mothers’ arms. That depraved stance, adopted as a bargaining chip to use against Democrats, garnered support from only 17 percent of Americans . But it did earn him the antipathy of our closest allies, Pope Francis and every living former first lady. [...]
With the incarceration of more than 2,300 infants, toddlers and children unresolved, Trump’s policy of breaking up families remains an open wound on America’s character and a political crisis for the few Republicans who still believe they can salvage November’s midterm elections.
Here is Alexandra Schwartz’s analysis of how the Office of Refugee Resettlement is out of its depth on this crisis:
By definition, O.R.R. shelters are not designed for long-term residency. According to Flores v. Reno, a legal settlement in 1997 that established baseline conditions for the treatment of minors in government custody, the government is obligated to hold minors in “the least restrictive setting” according to their needs, and to release them into the custody of a parent or other family member “without unnecessary delay.” One terrible irony of the current crisis is that a government office whose explicit goal is to reunify children with their families is now being used to hold children who have entered its jurisdiction because the government has forcibly removed them from their parents’ care.