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Melania Trump visits border, Congress flails on family separations
MCALLEN, United States, June 22, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Melania Trump made a
surprise trip to the US-Mexican border on Thursday as her husband’s
administration seeks to quell a firestorm over migrant family separations,
while Republican lawmakers were forced to delay a high-stakes vote on the
crisis.
While President Donald Trump’s administration struggled to formulate next
steps, the Pentagon signaled officials were bracing for a lengthy ordeal. The
military said it will prepare to house up to 20,000 unaccompanied migrant
children on its bases.
The first lady’s unannounced visit came a day after the president — in a
stunning about-face — moved to end the practice of splitting migrant
families, which had prompted outrage at home and abroad.
There was, however, no immediate plan in place to reunite the more than
2,300 children already separated from their families — igniting a fresh
controversy over the conditions in which the children are living.
In McAllen, Texas, Melania Trump visited the Upbring New Hope Children’s
Shelter, a federally-funded facility that houses about 55 children from
Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, ages five to 17.
“I’m glad I’m here and I’m looking forward to seeing the children,”
Melania said at a roundtable discussion with social workers and government
officials.
“I would also like to ask you how I can help these children to reunite
with their families as quickly as possible.”
Images and recordings of wailing youngsters detained in processing centers
with chain-link cage-like enclosures has ignited global outrage.
The first lady herself had called for a political compromise to end the
separations — the result of the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy
launched in early May, under which illegal border crossers were
systematically prosecuted and their children separated from them as a result.
Melania spent an hour-plus at the shelter, talking directly to children
who spoke to her either in English or in Spanish, through a translator.
One girl said she had been at the shelter for two months. Another told
Trump they were learning how to celebrate the Fourth of July.
“Usually when they get here, they’re very distraught,” one official said.
Melania Trump was unable to escape controversy on the trip. She boarded
and exited her plane wearing a jacket which read “I really don’t care. Do U?”
— a cryptic message that sent the internet ablaze.
– Legislative drama –
The political compromise the first lady had sought has not materialized so
far.
In Washington, lawmakers failed to advance either of two Republican
immigration bills in the House of Representatives.
A hardline proposal was defeated, as expected.
But a vote on a “compromise” bill between the party’s conservative and
moderate wings, which ends family separations but also includes Trump
priorities like curtailing legal immigration and providing some protections
to young immigrants, was pushed back to Friday, and then to next week, in a
sign there was no immigration consensus within the party that controls
Congress.
The failure dealt an embarrassing blow to Republicans under intense
pressure to take legislative steps to address the issue.
The crisis was fueling a brutal partisan scrap, with Trump blaming
“extremist” Democrats for refusing to help tighten border security.
“Democrats want open Borders, where anyone can come into our Country, and
stay,” he tweeted.
The House’s top Democrat Nancy Pelosi blasted back, accusing Republicans
of making a “compromise with the Devil” instead of with Democrats, and saying
they were complicit in Trump’s “atrocities.”
– Indefinite detention? –
For weeks, Trump had insisted he was bound by law to split children from
their parents and that only Congress could resolve the problem — before he
radically shifted gears.
Trump’s executive order would keep families together but in custody
indefinitely while parents are prosecuted for entering the country illegally
— a move that could lead to new legal battles for the administration.
The Justice Department moved Thursday to modify the 1997 court ruling
known as the Flores Settlement, which places a 20-day limit on how long
children, alone or with their parents, can be detained.
Lawmakers and city officials from both parties, as well as faith groups,
families and children have recoiled at how the administration has handled the
crisis.
Several clergy, parents and children wearing fake Mylar blankets like
those given to minors detained at the border protested in a Senate office
building, while lawmakers denounced Trump’s policies on the floors of the
House and Senate.
A bipartisan group of American mayors including New York’s Bill de Blasio
rallied outside a migrant children’s shelter near El Paso, Texas to denounce
a lack of transparency, and demand family reunification.
“The families are not reunified, we don’t know when they’ll be, we’re
gonna fight for that,” said de Blasio, who a day earlier declared himself
“shocked to learn” that a single center in Harlem had received 239 separated
children without the knowledge of city authorities.
Trump insisted there was a need to sustain his “zero tolerance” policy “or
our country will be overrun by people, by crime,” he said.
After a downturn last year, the flow of migrants from Central America and
Mexico has surged since October.
From March to May this year, more than 50,000 people a month were
apprehended illegally crossing the border.
Nearly all of the arriving families have officially requested asylum,
citing the high levels of violence in their home countries.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0903 hrs