Two months after inheriting a border secured by diplomatic deals brokered by former President Donald Trump, President Biden has resorted to bribing Mexico with millions of doses of our own life-saving coronavirus vaccine in the hopes of stopping the unprecedented surge along our southern border. Even as overcrowded facilities for children become COVID-19 petri dishes, Vice President Kamala Harris has made a stunning concession: the de facto endorsement of ripping children away from their parents and putting what she once described as “babies in cages” at the border.
“Are we looking at overcrowding at the border, particularly of these kids? Yes,” Harris said on CBS when asked about the border crisis. “Should these kids be in the custody of the HHS, the Health and Human Services, instead of the Border Patrol? Yes.”
Kamala Harris concedes border crisis is a “huge problem” during CBS interview: “It’s not going to be solved overnight.” pic.twitter.com/MRd5I5zx9r
— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) March 24, 2021
During the 2019 migrant surge, Harris accused Trump of committing “a human rights abuse” under the guise of “national security” because he put migrant children under the authority of HHS while adult asylum claims were being processed by Border Patrol. Her complete 180-degree turn on the matter doesn’t just belie Harris’s own rank dishonesty, but also the entire border binary choice that Democrats have forced upon any president in power.
Thanks to left-wing activists and the Clinton administration, the Flores settlement agreement requires that children be kept in the “least restrictive” setting — which means children are separated from their parents or guardians in Border Patrol custody. After the fracas of 2019, the Trump administration attempted to amend the agreement so children could be kept with their parents in border patrol facilities. Naturally, the liberals at the Center for American Progress simply deemed Trump’s family reunification efforts as an attempt to “indefinitely incarcerate children,” and now, Harris has come close to admitting the Democratic-created conundrum out loud.
Without amending Flores, Border Patrol can either separate children from families or resort to the lawlessness of catch-and-release, a clear green light to caravans and coyotes that our border is open. Harris can’t just admit that on TV, so she’s stuck endorsing children in cages.
The only silver lining for her macabre morality: an unprecedented number of children crossing the border are unaccompanied, likely trafficked by coyotes or pushed by parents to anchor the way for the rest of the family. At least, that’s family separation that she didn’t cause. At least not directly.
