| HomokHarcos said: Should they just keep all criminals out of jail because they might have children? |
I actually missed this post and it may very well be one of the most important posts in this discussion. It is a very good question and I'm surprised more people didn't answer it. In my opinion, it depends. When it comes to illegal immigrants, I am more in favor of taking them back to their home country rather than keeping them in prison at the expense of the tax payers, that is unless they committed more crimes after crossing the border. It's kind of a bias on my part because I am not a fan of the prison industrial complex and I do not like the idea of keeping people who aren't dangerous behind bars.
The other reason why this is important is because a lot of people fail to realize that what is happening to these children in the news happens to regular citizens everyday. There are without a doubt many cases where some guy got caught smoking a joint and because of various legal loopholes, that guy was thrown into prison for 10 years. What if that guy had kids? He is being separated from his kids. In some cases, those kids were taken away by social services. The guy smoking the joint wasn't doing any harm to anyone just like how someone simply crossing the border isn't doing any direct harm. I emphasize the word "simply" because that it doesn't take into account what else that person might do later on if they're not caught right away.
There are two bigger issues here. First of all, the laws need to change in order to avoid this from happening again. That falls directly on Congress. The second issue is if someone crosses the border with children without proper documentation which they're most likely not going to have because they would have no intentions of talking to a border agent or someone from ICE, what are you supposed to do if you aren't if a child really does belong to the person claiming to be their parent?
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