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h2ohno on 26 June 2018
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CaptainExplosion said:
h2ohno said:

Ending separations at the border is not the same thing as reuniting families that were already separated.

In general, a parent who breaks the law and goes to jail for it is separated from his or her child.  In most cases custody of the child then goes to the other parent or a close relative.  Here we have a situation where both parents are breaking the law and therefore go to prison while the children can't go to prison and don't have relatives in the country to send them to.  Trump's order means that new prosecutions of parents who illegally cross the border will stop, which the administration confirmed the following day.  But any prosecution which has already begun will still continue.

 

This isn't the same thing. The children were torn away from their parents by force, and grouped together in camps like animals.

It takes time to either find a foster family or to arrange to send a child back to his or her home country.  So the government went a temporary option rather than letting the parents who committed a criminal act off the hook or sending the kids to jail with their parents, where they'd be in much worse conditions.  If the parent is a first-time offender he/she will usually be sentenced to time served and released if they plead guilty, and then reunited with their kids after a few weeks.  If that doesn't happen the government usually searches for a foster family.  Either way the camp is a temporary measure.

Camps are a common feature for migrant issues around the world.  Refugees and migrants in many European nations are placed in camps before they are integrated, often in far worse conditions than the places children of illegal immigrants are sent to in the US.  The separation issue is the only unique feature in the US system, and that stems entirely from the fact that the parents are being prosecuted for criminal acts.