This post by Substacker Jesse Singal, who is occasionally a much hated voice for relative sanity on transgender issues, but is otherwise a modal liberal—and who blocks VDARE.com on Twitter—suggests that immigration patriots (he says Republicans, because most patriots have been driven out of the party of the Coalition of the Fringes) are evil if they don’t want to make DACA illegals into citizens.

It drew this response from libertarian MorlockP on Twitter:

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And this:

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Remember, the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) illegals are not ”children of illegal aliens,” they’re ”illegal alien children,” and they only thing you can say in their favor is that some—not all—are innocent of the crime of entering without inspection. Others are known to have crossed the border when they were old enough to be juvenile delinquents, or be tried as adults.

The point of wanting to send the DACA illegal aliens back, as well as their parents, is because illegal immigration is a crime, a form of theft from the American people. When we hear that illegals come to the U.S. for a ”better life,” we should understand that they came to the U.S. to steal a ”better life,” and when we hear ”a better life for their children,” it means they came to steal ”a better life for their children.”

And that ”better life”—all the financial benefits of US residence—is what the DACA kids are in possession of, and that’s what they are required by law (actual law—the DACA thing is more of an illegal Executive Order) to surrender and go back to Mexico, or wherever they were born, where citizenship is literally their birthright.

In a 2014 column called To End ”Unaccompanied Minor” Scandal, Start Deporting Illegal (And Irresponsible) Parents, I pointed out that some parents would first establish themselves in the U.S., and then send for their kids to be smuggled in—frequently at risk of their lives. For example, this picture, promoting Sonia Nazario’s 2006 book Enrique’s Journey,  shows a teenage boy, 17 years old, traveling alone through Mexico, riding on top of a train:

There are repeated reports of children dying, sometimes with their parents, sometimes not, but it’s not the Von Trapps escaping the Nazis, as in The Sound Of Music, it’s an enterprise crime—sometimes the parents put their kids to work as child labor.

What the parents are doing is committing a multi-year crime, for money, and they’ve brought their children, sometimes babies.

And you have to ask ”Who brings their baby to a crime scene?”

What this reminds me of is the classic Damon Runyon 1930 short story Butch Minds The Baby.

You can read the full story at that link, watch a 1982 short film here, or listen to it with a full cast on Damon Runyon Theater, below:

Briefly, the plot is that three men (Harry the Horse, Little Isadore, and Spanish John) come up to Runyon’s anonymous first-person narrator, and ask him where they can find Big Butch, an Irish safecracker. 

They have an office they can get into, they know there’s $20,000 in the safe ($376,000 in 2024 dollars), but while they have the skills to get into the office and tie up they night watchman, they can’t open the safe. The narrator doesn’t want to get involved, and is afraid it will annoy Big Butch, but finds it very hard to say no to such guys as Harry The Horse—who looks like this.

When they get to Butch’s apartment building, they find Butch and his infant son, John Ignatius Junior, sitting on the front stoop, Butch having finally managed to get the child to sleep—this was pre-airconditioning New York.

Butch’s wife is elsewhere, attending a wake, and there’s no one but him to take care of John Ignatius Junior. Aside from the problem of having no one to mind young John Ignatius, he’s afraid of (a) the legal consequences, having more or less retired from safecracking after his third felony conviction and (b) what will happen if Mrs. Butch finds out.

But the guys talk him into it, and they go along to the payroll office, and crack the safe:

The pan of water in the picture being heated has nothing to do with the safecracking, it’s for John Ignatius Junior’s bottle:

Big Butch keeps sticking his finger in the pan of water while it is heating, and by and by he puts the rubber nipple of the nursing bottle in his mouth and takes a pull at it to see if the milk is warm enough, just like I see dolls who have babies do. Apparently the milk is okay, as Butch hands the bottle to John Ignatius Junior, who grabs hold of it with both hands, and starts sucking on the business end. Naturally he has to stop squalling, and Big Butch goes to work on the safe again, with John Ignatius Junior sitting on the blanket, pulling on the bottle and looking wiser than a treeful of owls.

They do move the baby to the next room when Butch decides to use nitroglycerin:

Well, Butch starts pawing through his satchel looking for something and it seems that what he is looking for is a little bottle of some kind of explosive with which to shake the lock on the safe up some, and at first he cannot find this bottle, but finally he discovers that John Ignatius Junior has it and is gnawing at the cork, and Butch has quite a battle making John Ignatius Junior give it up.

This reminds me that the person who coined the simile ”as easy as taking candy from a baby” had almost certainly never tried to take candy from an actual baby.

There is a little excitement because Butch uses a tiny bit too much nitro, making a loud bang, and causing John Ignatius Junior to laugh like it’s the Fourth of July, but causing the local police to come along and start looking for the safecrackers.

Butch can’t run because (a) if the police shoot at him as a fleeing felon, it will endanger John Ignatius Junior, and (b) John Ignatius Junior is now full of milk, and if Butch starts running, it’s all coming up, which will upset Mrs. Butch.

The narrator is thinking of running himself, not being full of milk, but then the police come on the scene, and he holds still.

I am feeling very sorry, indeed, for Big Butch, and very sorry for myself, too, and I am saying to myself that if I get out of this I will never associate with anyone but ministers of the gospel as long as I live. I can remember thinking that I am getting a better break than Butch, at that, because I will not have to go to Sing Sing for the rest of my life, like him, and I also remember wondering what they will give John Ignatius Junior, who is still tearing off these squalls, with Big Butch saying, ’There, there, there, Daddy’s itty woogleurns.’ Then I hear one of the coppers say to the fat sergeant:

’We better nail these guys. They may be in on this.’

Fortunately, the sergeant is a family man himself:

Well, I can see it is good-bye to Butch and John Ignatius Junior and me, as the fat sergeant steps up to Big Butch, but instead of putting the arm on Butch, the fat sergeant only points at John Ignatius Junior and asks very sympathetic:

’Teeth?’

’No,’ Big Butch says. ’Not teeth. Colic. I just get the doctor here out of bed to do something for him, and we are going to a drug store to get some medicine.’

Well, naturally I am very much surprised at this statement, because of course I am not a doctor, and if John Ignatius Junior has colic it serves him right, but I am only hoping they do not ask for my degree, when the fat sergeant says:

’Too bad. I know what it is. I got three of them at home. But,’ he says, ’it acts more like it is teeth than colic.’

Then as Big Butch and John Ignatius Junior and me go on about our business I hear the fat sergeant say to the copper, very sarcastic:

’Yes, of course a guy is out blowing safes with a baby in his arms! You will make a great detective, you will!’

Yes, it’s a crazy idea, isn’t it? Going out to commit a crime with a baby! But apparently more than half a million illegal alien parents commit it.

Runyon’s is kind of a heartwarming story, because John Ignatius Junior didn’t get blown up, shot, or even spit up all that milk, and here’s Runyon’s ending:

I do not see Big Butch for several days after I learn that Harry the Horse and Little Isadore and Spanish John get back to Brooklyn all right, except they are a little nicked up here and there from the slugs the coppers toss at them, while the coppers they clip are not damaged so very much. Furthermore, the chances are I will not see Big Butch for several years, if it is left to me, but he comes looking for me one night, and he seems to be all pleasured up about something.

’Say,’ Big Butch says to me, ’you know I never give a copper credit for knowing any too much about anything, but I wish to say that this fat sergeant we run into the other night is a very, very smart duck. He is right about it being teeth that is ailing John Ignatius Junior, for what happens yesterday but John cuts his first tooth.’

Well, that’s a happy ending if you like, but is there going to be a happy ending for America if no one who crossed the border illegally is ever sent home?