2/8/21

By Josh Rubin

Let’s look at consequences. In this case the consequences of the Biden administration trying to thread a needle.

They have been slow-walking any decision about Title 42. What’s Title 42? It is a little determination that was arm-twisted out of the CDC, an order that allows the US (contrary to international law) to immediately, with no legal recourse or a ruling of any kind, expel anyone who comes to our border. Doesn’t matter where they come from. In practice, we are expelling lots of Mexicans to Mexico. But we are also expelling Central Americans to Mexico. Haitians to Mexico.

If children come with the families that show up at the border, those children are sent right along with their families. Sometimes on planes. Sometimes they are walked across the bridge. Bye.

But the Biden administration also said that it would not do that to minors traveling alone. Children. Sounds like a nice thing, doesn’t it?

But here comes the consequence.

You see, these families that show up at the border are not here on vacation. They are here because they are desperate. Desperate enough so that they consider taking advantage of that rule for children, by sending the children across the bridge alone.

So what we expect to see is a lot of talk about growing numbers of unaccompanied minors. Children. And to handle them we start to see talk about reopening the detention camps and tent cities that we worked so hard to get rid of. The ones that we learned were large, and frightening, and were doing damage to children by keeping them there until we could make sure that the relatives that those families sent their kids across to be with were up to the high standards of a bunch of bureaucrats. Only this time, being in a congregate setting means the possibility of contagion, not just trauma.

And that’s just what we see. We see notices that the same child prison-keepers as before are advertising for unskilled workers to move to remote locations. To work 12-hour days. 21 days at a stretch without a break. To sleep at motels.

Workers, some of whom told me that they suffered PTSD themselves from those conditions. And some of whom disciplined those kids by telling them that if they didn’t walk in single file or finish their food that they would be deported.

Consequences.