July 12, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  How did we end up with kids in cages? We put them there, across multiple administrations, creating a politicized immigration and asylum system that constrains better options.

It’s time to stop saying this isn’t who we are and it’s time to start looking beyond the hysteria.

Bill Clinton’s 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act set new records for immigrants detained. Next up was George W. Bush’s 2005 Operation Streamline, a zero-tolerance plan to prosecute all illegal entrants. But to avoid the logistics and negative optics, the program made exceptions not written into the law for adults traveling with children. Nature finds a way, and more and more economic migrants arrived with somebody’s child in hand as a Get Out of Jail Free card. Fewer kids in cages, but more illegals.

Obama initially prosecuted only those found illegally entering more than once. Caught off guard by an influx of asylum seekers from Central America, his administration in 2014 established then-legally permitted family detention centers to hold parents and children—potentially indefinitely—in cages as a means of deterring others. And if kids arrived without their parents or in the hands of human traffickers or if their parents were criminally dangerous, they were held alone in cages. The program ended only because of a 2016 court decision ordering the release of most of those hostage families and largely prohibiting family detention facilities. Adult men, women, and children would be caged separately in the future.

Trump set out in April 2018 to prosecute every illegal crosser, first or tenth time, with or without kids, the letter of the law. There had been a growing rise in the number of people from the Northern Triangle (Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador) and from Mexico. For example, the border patrol detained 6,405 unaccompanied children in May 2018, up from 4,302 in April. In comparison with May 2017, the number of unaccompanied children soared by 329 percent, and parents migrating with kids as families surged by 435 percent in 2018.