ACLU: The ONLY Humane Option is to Release All Illegal Immigrants

We get that President Trump felt like his back was up against the wall last week, what with all of the hysterical media coverage of his so-called inhumane and monstrous crisis at the border. We understand he was likely under enormous pressure from within the Republican Party to do something to fix the problem before it spiraled out of control and potentially cost lawmakers the election in November.

But none of that changes the fact that Trump made a big mistake when he caved to the left’s demands. With that executive order, he only fed an insatiable beast – a beast that is now telling the country that there is only ONE option when it comes to enforcing U.S. immigration law: Don’t enforce it at all.

That’s essentially what Ruthie Epstein of the American Civil Liberties Union said in an open letter this week. In the piece, entitled “The Tried-and-True Alternatives to Detaining Immigrant Families,” Epstein says what many Democrats have insisted this week, which is that the solution to keeping migrant families together CANNOT be to detain the whole family. No, they want to go back to the useless “catch and release” policies of previous years – the exact policies that have led to an unending surge in illegal immigration and a cultural/economic crisis that is threatening to swallow this country whole.

“With his hastily issued executive order on family separation on Wednesday, President Trump presented America with a false choice: If you don’t want me to tear infants from their mother’s arms, I’ll just put entire families in jail,” Epstein wrote. “Rather than jailing families who are in deportation proceedings, the government should release anyone who is not a flight risk, or whose flight risk can be mitigated by an alternative to detention. Such alternatives are designed to ensure court appearance and compliance with any final court orders, but they do even more — they allow families to live outside prison walls while their case moves through the system.”

No, see, that is where Epstein is wrong. Well, we shouldn’t say that she’s “wrong,” because she knows damn well that the truth is basically the opposite of what she’s saying here. The fact is that these “alternatives” ONLY keep these families together outside “prison walls.” They do NOT ensure that they make their court dates and they do NOTHING to ensure that they stay within the system. Rather, they openly encourage anyone who wants to flaunt U.S. immigration law to do so. Head into the shadows, find a nice sanctuary city, and avoid prosecution and deportation indefinitely. Yes, there is a slim minority of immigrants who have a legitimate claim to asylum, but if those immigrants were our only problem…we wouldn’t HAVE a problem.

As Trump has said many times before, we either have a country or we don’t. If our border laws are meaningless – which they essentially are under “catch and release” policies – than we have given up our nation’s sovereignty in favor of a feel-good situation in which every rapist, drug dealer, gang banger, and terrorist can take advantage of our idiocy. That’s not why this country elected Donald Trump. Not by a long shot.