Are Trump's Concentration Camps For Immigrant Children Going To Further Damage The GOP Brand?

Meet Jesuit priest, James Martin author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage and Building a Bridge. He's also an editor of the Jesuit magazine America. You may know him for his appearances on Colbert's show. He has a lot of influence in the Vatican and it's worth reading between the lines in the tweet storm above. It's also worth reading Barbara Bush's Washington Post OpEd from Sunday night, Laura Bush: Separating children from their parents at the border ‘breaks my heart’. "I live in a border state," she wrote. "I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart. Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history... "Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war. We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance. If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents-- and to stop separating parents and children in the first place."

A few hours earlier White House communications director Stephanie Grisham announced that Melania "hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart." Both sides of the aisle? Really. Her husband, Señor Trumpanzee, keeps asserting the child stealing and incarceration was forced on him by some imaginary Democratic law, instead of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions' "zero tolerance" policy meant to "send a message."

[O]ver the weekend his secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, flat-out denied that such a policy existed.

"We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period," Nielsen tweeted.

But the Department of Homeland Security does separate children from their parents at the border, and it just put out a press release about it on Friday, explaining its new "zero tolerance" policy for border crossers. And why have they been building concentration camps (that are now filled with children)? And why is Trump's policy tearing his own party apart?

Yesterday AP reported that Trump's ugly and inhumane policy "is also starting to divide Republicans and their allies as Democrats turn up the pressure." Susan Collins (R-ME) has signaled she won't work with the Democrats to fix anything but-- always trying to have it both ways-- said "What the administration has decided to do is to separate children from their parents to try to send a message that if you cross the border with children, your children are going to be ripped away from you. That’s traumatizing to the children who are innocent victims, and it is contrary to our values in this country."

Former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci said in a weekend interview that the child separation interview could be dangerous for Trump. He said the president “should be immediately fixing this problem.”

“This is a fuse that has been lit,” he said. “The president is going to get hurt by this issue if it stays out there very, very long.”

The signs of splintering of GOP support come after longtime Trump ally, the Rev. Franklin Graham, called the policy “disgraceful.” Several religious groups, including some conservative ones, have pushed to stop the practice of separating immigrant children from their parents.

Trumpanzee is meeting with House Republicans today and said he'll sign whichever bill Ryan gets through Congress, a vaguely conservative bill or the one the neo-Nazis from the Freedom Caucus and the crackpot Trumpists are pushing.

The Republicans are in a bit of a pickle here. A new poll from Ipsos shows that most Americans oppose Trump's policy, the Republican base are just fine with it. 27% of Americans-- normal people plus Republicans-- like the child grabbing policy. 46% of Republicans favor and just 32% disagree. Among normal people, there's a very different story. Just 14% of Democrats and 29% of Independents support support what Trump is doing. Congressional Republicans are feeling the pressure-- especially from independent voters who they have to win over to be reelected.

As Caitlin Owens explained at Axios, Ryan is allowing a vote on 2 different immigration bills this week: one written by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte that the neo-Nazis and other Trumpists favor and a sort of compromise bill that's still hideous but that mainstream conservatives like a little more than what Goodlatte came up with. It's not likely either will pass. Ryan "agreed to do this to avoid the worst-case scenario of moderates filing a discharge petition-- a way of forcing votes on bills they don’t like-- which could have resulted in passage of the Democrats’ preferred immigration bill... Even the optimists say that the compromise bill’s chance of passage is probably in Trump’s hands: He alone has the power to pressure reluctant House Republicans into voting for it. (Democrats are unlikely to support it.)"

Today the Economist suggested that people who really want to raise the stakes in this scriptural to-and-fro might consider turning to a verse in Matthew’s Gospel which warns of the dire consequences that may befall anybody who does spiritual harm to children: "If anyone causes one of these little ones…to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

Paul Clements, the progressive running for the southwest Michigan congressional seat occupied by Trump enabler Fred Upton, put it like this: "We are a nation of immigrants. So why are we watching ICE separate families and detain human beings in inhumane conditions? Why are we watching them put frightened children in mass detention for months at a time?

This isn't how we ought to respond to immigrants and refugees. Regardless of your political leanings, human beings shouldn't be treated this way--especially when there's a better way:

• A pathway to citizenship for immigrants who have not committed crimes after entering the United States
• Permanent DACA protections
• Compassionate and sound refugee policies following international human rights standards and emphasizing cooperation with other nations

We need elected leaders in Congress who will stand up and say no to this inhumanity, and demand accountability and decency."

I wonder how long it's going to take Republican rubber stamps too scared of Trump to do their jobs to get this message. American voters sure have. Now it's just a matter of how many Republican congressmen are going to be looking for jobs on K Street in 2019. Lobbyists already love old-timers like Upton but what are Trump enablers like Steve Russell in Oklahoma, Ron Estes in Kansas, Don Bacon in Nebraska and Dan Donovan in New York going to do to make a living?

This reporting won't make Trumpanzee happy if someone reads it to him: GOP Governor Charlie Baker said Monday that "members of the Massachusetts National Guard will not be sent to the Mexican border to assist the Trump administration in what the Republican called its 'cruel and inhumane' policy separating migrant children from their families."

A few Republicans are starting to criticize Trump. Florida governor Rick Scott, in a tough Senate race, told the Tampa Bay Times on Monday that "What the country is witnessing right now is the byproduct of the many years of bi-partisan inaction and failure from our federal government. Let me be clear-- I do not favor separating families. Washington is to blame for this by being all talk and no action, and the solution is to secure the border. Anyone seeking to enter our country illegally needs to be sent back, with the exception of those who are truly seeking asylum from an oppressive regime." A Miami area Republican congressman, Mario Diaz-Balart, went a little further, though, like Scott, was too frightened to mention Señor T: "It is totally unacceptable, for any reason, to purposely separate minor children from their parents. Any and every other option should be implemented in order to not separate minors from their parents, which I believe is unconscionable. We cannot allow for this to continue happening, and it must stop. I continue to work with my colleagues to ensure that the provision included in this week's immigration bill puts an end to this cruel practice."

Lindsey Graham (R-SC) did mention Trump by name though: "President Trump could stop this policy with a phone call." Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse (R): "Family separation is wicked. It is harmful to kids and absolutely should NOT be the default U.S. policy. Americans are better than this... The administration’s decision to separate families is a new, discretionary choice. Anyone saying that their hands are tied or that the only conceivable way to fix the problem of catch-and-release is to rip families apart is flat wrong. There are other options available to them. The other options are all messy (given that some overly prescriptive judges have limited their administrative options), but there are ways to address this that are less bad than the policy of family separation they’ve chosen. There are many senior folks in the administration who hate this policy, and who want to do something better. But some in the administration have decided that this cruel policy increases their legislative leverage. This is wrong. Americans do not take children hostage, period... The President should immediately end this family separation policy."

UPDATE: Who's Taking Care Of The Kidnapped Kids?

Guys like Deputy Sheriff Jose Nunez, a 10-year veteran of the Bexar County Sheriff's Department. According to the Dallas Morning News Nunez (not Devin Nunes this time) sexually assaulted a 4-year-old girl and threatened the victim's mother into staying quiet about the assaults.

Sheriff Javier Salazar said the girl had been assaulted multiple times over the course of several months. The mother is an undocumented immigrants and Nunez said she'd be deported if she told anyone.