The White House has faced harsh criticism in recent weeks for their newly implemented “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which calls for law enforcement to press charges against all illegal immigrants and has already led to the forcible separation of hundreds of children from their parents. But on Thursday, the administration defended the morality of the change, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions pointing to “the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command” that the state was right to punish evildoers.
During a speech to law enforcement in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Sessions digressed from his remarks to address “some concerns raised by our church friends about separation of families.”
“Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution,” Sessions said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”
Asked to respond to Sessions’s comments at the White House later, press secretary Sarah Sanders replied that “It is very biblical to enforce the law. That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible.”
The problem: separating families isn’t a matter of law, but of a change in executive policy. Under previous practice, migrant families would typically be apprehended by law enforcement, then set free pending a date in court before an immigration judge—the practice vilified by Trump and his allies as “catch and release.” The new policy hasn’t done anything to speed up the backlog of immigration cases—but it has mandated that adult immigrants be jailed until their number is called. And that means tossing their children into the bureaucratic care of the federal government—perhaps for a short time, perhaps permanently.
Making matters worse is the fact that many of those affected by the new policy are not “illegal immigrants” in the traditional sense at all, but people fleeing persecution or gang violence in Central America who are suing for asylum in America. Some of those who immediately turned themselves over to law enforcement to plead asylum have been among those whose children have been taken, despite the fact that suing for asylum on such grounds is perfectly legal. Or at least it was until Monday, when Sessions overturned an immigration judge to rule that claims of domestic violence and gang violence would no longer form an acceptable basis for granting asylum.
“The asylum statute does not provide redress for all misfortune,” Sessions wrote. “The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes—such as domestic violence or gang violence—or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime cannot itself establish an asylum claim.”
How widespread and long-lasting these “zero tolerance” family separations will be remains to be seen. THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked the White House what steps they were taking to ensure that children taken from their parents at the border would be speedily returned to their care, and whether they could guarantee that all such separations would eventually be remedied. So far, the White House has not responded.
