monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

You do know Obama built and used those cages, right?

At the time, the Obama administration had been struggling to manage a major influx in unaccompanied Central American children arriving at the US-Mexico border.

As one former Obama official explained, "We didn't have enough shelter facilities, because we had a huge increase, so kids ended up piling up in Border Patrol lock-ups, which are no places for children."

It sounds like you're trying to let Trump off the hook by only telling part of the story.

The current policy of separating children from their parents is Trump's, nobody else's.

I get the feeling that if Trump were to start sacrificing children to Satan live from the Whitehouse you'd still find a way of blaming Obama.

And if Mr Sanders does secure the Democrat nomination you'll soon come up with an excuse for attacking him for not being pure enough. Let's face it Jesus wouldn't be pure enough for you.

Lash wrote:

You do know Obama built and used those cages, right?

I didn't know Obama was such a skilled metal worker! But the circumstances were such that his administration could not avoid it.

Quote:

At the time, the Obama administration had been struggling to manage a major influx in unaccompanied Central American children arriving at the US-Mexico border.

As one former Obama official explained, "We didn't have enough shelter facilities, because we had a huge increase, so kids ended up piling up in Border Patrol lock-ups, which are no places for children."

Quote:

unaccompanied Central American children arriving at the US-Mexico border.

Exactly. This is the same problem Trump is dealing with.

You know, he also deported many more people than Trump has.

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of deportation: those which kick people out of the country quickly for getting caught crossing the US-Mexican border, and those which round up people who are already living in the United States—the “interior.” One big reason for the decrease in deportations is that fewer people are crossing into the country from Mexico. That pool of easy stat-boosters had already been drying up under Obama, and it continues to decline—though in its end-of-year report, ICE claimed that the trend could reflect “an increased deterrent effect” from the agency’s “stronger interior enforcement efforts.”

If one looks only at what are called “interior removals,” Trump has deported more people than Obama did in his final two years. In fact, in his first eight months in office, Trump deported 61,094 people from the interior, 37 percent more than Obama did in the same period in 2016.

ICE arrests are also up under Trump. Between his inauguration and September 30, ICE arrested 42 percent more people for immigration violations than it did over the same period in the previous year. Immigration-court backlogs are key to understanding why Trump’s deportation numbers aren’t even higher: If a person has lived in the country for more than two years and has not been previously subject to a deportation order, they’re entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge. Processing those cases takes time.

As it is, Trump has authorized his agents to do things that other administrations declined to do. Obama said that he was focused on removing “felons, not families.” These days, anyone who’s deportable—from restaurant-owning, decades-long residents to DACA-approved Dreamers—is a priority. ICE is now willing to arrest people with no criminal record, people who are guilty only of immigration violations. Even ICE’s gang-enforcement operations—designed, supposedly, to capture the most hardened criminals—have netted a disturbing number of people with no criminal record. It’s an unleashing that, to immigrants, feels like a kind of terrorism.

To make matters worse, ICE agents stalk places that were once no-go areas for apprehending immigrants: churches, courthouses, even school drop-off sites. In November, dozens of public defenders gathered for an impromptu protest outside a Brooklyn courthouse just after ICE a gents arrested a man who had shown up at court. That arrest was one of approximately 40 such incidents in 2017 in New York City alone—a 900 percent increase compared with last year, according to the Immigrant Defense Project. Lawyers and judges have reported similar activity in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and the rest of New York State. Denver City Attorney Kristin Bronson said that she’s given up on four domestic-violence cases since Trump’s election, because the victims were too afraid that ICE would be lurking to appear in court.

Trump has also invited the public to get involved in the process of nabbing immigrants. This year, the administration set up a hotline called VOICE (Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement), supposedly to provide services to the victims of crimes perpetrated by “removable aliens.” But an investigative report by Splinter found that the hotline was being used by people to settle family scores—one caller reported his stepson, another his mother- and sister-in-law, a third his ex-wife, and a fourth her granddaughter’s boyfriend—as well as to report suspected undocumented workers at various businesses and, in one case, people using EBT cards.

The Trump administration has given no indication that it plans to slow down in these efforts. As of May 2016, there were more than 900,000 people with final deportation orders living in the United States. And those people have no right to see a judge; court backlogs will not delay their removal. As soon as ICE can get its hands on them and make the travel arrangements, they will be deported.

There are only so many ICE agents, and only so many immigration judges, and only so many detention beds. It’s not quite clear what the upper limit on deportations might be. But the total number of deportations is clearly not the most important metric for gauging the harshness of a president’s immigration policies.

The idea of going through the application process on the other side of the border is a much better idea.

We have to change that law. Our border is overwhelmed. We can’t be held accountable for the illnesses, safety, housing, clothing, etc for millions of people.

It’s my opinion that it’s a healthy practice to look at issues with clear eyes and unbiased thinking, rather than a completely politicized view.