Immigration 'crisis' brought to you by the Media Matrix
You can either see what the Deep State Media Matrix wants you to see or you can look behind the cable charade and see the truth.
It was pretty obvious that the leftist media and their Democratic pawns were worried about President Trump’s rising popularity after his successful Singapore summit with Kim Jung-un and then the release two days later of the inspector general’s report demonstrating conclusively that the FBI’s so-called Russia investigation was headed up by people who shared Hillary Clinton’s belief that Trump and his supporters were a “basket of deplorables.”
So who could be surprised really when one day later the topic in the national media had changed from “Trump is winning” to “Trump is an evil monster”?
Starting a week ago Friday, the media discovered (surprise!) that the Trump White House is taking a hard line on illegal immigration — and the pharisees of CNN and MSNBC began dressing themselves in sackcloth and ashes to impress us with the sincerity of their shock and dismay at finding out that children coming across the border illegally are separated from the adults who accompanied them (not necessarily their parents).
Honestly, if you need a give-away (a “tell” as they say in poker) that the left-wing media is conspiring to damage this president, all you need to do is click back and forth between CNN and MSNBC for about three hours. If every time you turn on one of these channels they are parroting the same story back at you with different talking heads pouring ashes on each other and cursing Trump, then you know you are in the middle of a feeding frenzy. Of course, I’ll admit that President Trump does throw Twitter chum into the water to rile up these media sharks, but watching their bloodlust take center stage 24/7 is truly astounding, especially to someone such as myself who knows just how much other news is going on at any given moment in time.
Think about it. For one full week, you would be hard pressed to turn on either CNN or MSNBC or watch a late-night “comedy” monologue without catching one more manifestation of the “party line” that Trump is Hitler. In fact, Trump is doing exactly what Trump said he would do when he was elected — enforce immigration policy and do anything he can to discourage illegal immigration into the United States. That’s what the people who elected him expected, and it is what the open-borders left-wing establishment will do anything to prevent.
The main arguments against Trump’s border policy are all emotion-based, not logic-based. It all boils down to this bit of wisdom: It is sad to see children separated from their parents, and therefore we must not do so. But the facts can easily dismiss this emotion-based argument:
— First of all, the government separates children from their parents under all kinds of circumstances — almost all of which are to benefit the children. Yes, children inevitably cry when separated from their parents or put into a strange new environment, regardless of whether that environment is an improvement over their previous living conditions or not. That is called human nature, and does not prove anything one way or the other. Child Protective Services takes children away from parents to protect the children. People in prison are separated from their children as a matter of necessity. The claim that taking children away from parents is by its very nature cruel or inhumane has no validity.
— Moreover, about 10,000 of the 12,000 immigrant children being held in care facilities by the United States were sent here without their parents. In other words, they were put in the hands of dangerous smugglers by thoughtless parents who — in a sane world — should not have parental rights in the first place.
— The remaining 2,000 children in custody came across the border with some adult who claims to be a parent, but in many cases these “parents” are just other border-crossers trying to take advantage of the system by having a minor in tow. How would we know otherwise? Most of them have no documentation.
— In any case, the law prevents the children from being imprisoned for crossing the border because we are a caring society. Therefore, we have two choices: either house these minors in a separate facility from their arrested parent figures or else release both the minors and the adults into the general population where they will in most cases never be heard from again.
That is not a solution; it is a surrender — and if it sounds familiar, that’s because it is the same policy of capitulation that has been followed by both the Bush 44 and Obama administrations. It is also the policy of the European Union, which is facing collapse as a result of willfully opening its borders three years ago.
There is a solution, which is to return families of illegal immigrants to either Mexico or their home country as a unit, quickly and safely. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has introduced legislation to do just that, as well as to create family housing options where such illegal immigrants can remain together until their asylum claims are adjudicated. Of course, if Democrats wanted solutions to the problem of children being separated from their parents, they would seize on this compassionate solution, but we all know they won’t. What the Democrats want is an issue to elect more Democrats in the mid-term elections, and that means a solution to immigration is an impediment to their emotion-charged campaign to vilify Republicans.
President Trump, on Wednesday, switched course and signed an executive order to allow illegal immigrant families to stay together while their cases are being litigated. It remains to be seen whether this will satisfy anyone, Republican or Democrat, but at least the president has once again shown that he is interested in solutions, not just talk like so many other politicians. And, of course, the Democratic leadership immediately pivoted away from their argument that children should not be separated from their parents, now saying it is inhumane to hold the children at all. Oddly, the media did not exhibit any hysteria when Democratic President Barack Obama ordered children held in custody after they crossed the border illegally! Again, if you drink the media Kool-Aid, you will never get the straight story — just the spin cycle.
President Trump said last week that he will not allow the United States to become a “migrant camp.” Let’s hope so. But he also should not do anything to give false hope to foreign citizens who want to escape their own wretched countries to invade ours. Allowing migrants to escape punishment for illegally crossing the border would just encourage more of them to use children as political pawns and put more children in danger as they make the 2,000 mile trek from Central America across Mexico to our porous border.
If you want to end the prospect of children sitting in detention centers in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California, there is only one real, permanent solution. Build the wall.
Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. He can be reached at fmiele@dailyinterlake.com.