The Left loses when rational arguments are bandied about. So, they know to go for the heartstrings. “Think of the children!“
They don’t call them bleeding-heart liberals for nothing.
It started in many respects with the Flores Settlement. There was a 1985 class-action lawsuit on behalf of illegal immigrant children by the usual Treason Lobby suspects (ACLU, etc.) and in 1992, the Supreme Court ruled that
there was no constitutional right for unaccompanied alien children to be released to someone other than a close relative, and further held that these minors could be kept in detention centers if they lacked a close relative or guardian in the United States to take them in.5 Scalia wrote: “Where the Government does not intend to punish the child, and where the conditions of Governmental custody are decent and humane, such custody surely does not violate the Constitution.“
The History of the Flores Settlement
How a 1997 agreement cracked open our detention
CIS.org, February 11, 2019
The plaintiffs didn’t stop suing though. When a sympathetic Clinton Administration came in, the government happily settled with them, resulting in the Flores Settlement.
CIS asks
Why, just a few years after a sweeping Supreme Court victory, did the Clinton administration agree to the Flores settlement? The stated reason was that the government was looking to finally put an end to over a decade of litigation that began in 1985, and certainly there may be some truth to that. The settlement, however, seemed like a major concession by the winning side, and certainly one that could (and later did) crack the door open further for open-borders groups to exploit asylum laws for minors.
Likewise, when it came to Trump trying to crack down on illegal immigration, the group “Pueblo Sin Fronteras” (People Without Borders) happily marched unsuspecting “caravans” to the border knowing that the families would get separated at the border in order to prosecute the parents.
Jeff Sessions was seeking to extend a policy that the Border Patrol had started on a limited basis during the Bush administration and continued during the Obama administration. However, immigrant activists were afraid of the expansion of the program and wanted it stopped. Hence, the “Kids in Cages!” propaganda. Melania cried and Trump caved, overriding immigration patriot Sessions.
During the Trump administration, I swear that it seemed like the press and the open borders lobbyists rejoiced when an alien child died in our custody. It was a means of their getting to an open border and we all knew it. Many of the illegal alien kids had pre-existing medical problems[Guatemalan boy who died in US custody suffered from brain infection, The Guardian, May 3, 2019].. Nevertheless, Deportation Officers, Border Patrol Agents and doctors paid by Health and Human Services tried to save their lives. If you only read the headline [24 immigrants have died in ICE custody during the Trump administration, NBC, June 9, 2019] you might think Agents were beating little kids to death, and that’s what the media wanted you to believe, because they did want an open border.
In an odd way, this has a parallel in the Middle East where terrorists hide in the population hoping to get women and children killed intentionally because of the negative publicity it will generate. It’s all about the media, and the propaganda.
If the media stopped covering the civilian casualties, the terrorists would likely give up hiding behind kids because it was no longer advancing their agenda.
If Trump or any Republican ever defeats the margin of lawyer and wins the presidency, you can expect another Children’s Crusade trying to get on to America’s Magic Dirt with the media egging them on. “Kids are cute, therefore—OPEN BORDERS!”