Some breaking news on the immigration front:
Trump administration will stop prosecuting migrant parents who cross the border illegally with children, official says
The dramatic about-face comes just one day after President Trump signed an executive order ending his administration’s widely denounced practice of separating families apprehended at the Mexico border.
Trump’s order said the government would maintain a “zero tolerance” policy toward those who break the law, but a senior U.S. official, when asked to explain how the federal government would change enforcement practices, told The Washington Post that Border Patrol agents have been instructed to stop sending parents with children to federal courthouses for prosecution.
“We’re suspending prosecutions of adults who are members of family units until ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) can accelerate resource capability to allow us to maintain custody,” the official said.
Sounds like they got out over their skis and simply don’t have the capacity to intern entire families yet, so they’ll go back to the Obama-era status quo until they do. Imagine the headlines at Fox News, WSJ, etc., if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had suffered an embarrassing reversal on a signature policy, crapped out a face-saving EO to fix it, then had to scrap that 12 hours later, even temporarily. The mind reels.
Also, the Third Lady is making a “surprise visit” to one of her odious husband’s shameful stolen child incarceration centers to see “what’s real,” according to CNN:
McAllen, Texas (CNN)First lady Melania Trump touched down in McAllen, Texas, Thursday making a publicly unannounced and hastily planned trip to get a first-hand look at the crisis affecting immigrant families at the US border.
In doing so, she becomes the first Trump family member to personally witness the situation that has captured the country’s attention over the past several weeks.
“She wants to see what’s real,” said the first lady’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham told CNN during a 10-minute press briefing en route to Texas. “She wanted to see as close to what she had been seeing on TV. She wants to see a realistic view of what’s happening.”
The article implies this was the Third Lady’s proactive decision rather than something orchestrated by Trump’s White House minions:
Acting or commenting from the sidelines apparently was not enough for Trump, who fewer 48 hours ago informed her staff — and her husband, the President of the United States — that she had decided she needed to see for herself the family intake and unaccompanied children facilities.
Yeah, right. I suppose she could surprise us, but this is the woman who backed up her pig-husband’s racist birther lies, attacked fellow immigrants for behavior she herself engaged in and excused Trump’s many sexual assaults by calling his accusers liars, so my expectations are subterranean.
Looks like the GOP immigration bills – both shitty and even shittier – are going down. No surprise there.
And finally, The New York Post reports that evil Trump aide Stephen Miller was heckled in a DC-area Mexican restaurant a few days ago – before DHS ghoul Nielsen suffered a similar fate:
White House adviser Stephen Miller was accosted at a Mexican restaurant by a patron calling him a “fascist” — two nights before Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was hounded out of another south-of-the-border eatery, sources told The Post…
“Hey look guys, whoever thought we’d be in a restaurant with a real-life fascist begging [for] money for new cages?” another customer at the Mezcal joint snarled at Miller, according to a source who saw the encounter.
Miller didn’t respond and scurried away, the witness said.
“Scurried away” — that’s perfect. It’s small potatoes in the scheme of things, but I relish seeing any evidence that these bastards are paying for their atrocious behavior. Power centers being what they are, social costs are likely all we’ll ever extract from the Trumps and their evil cabal, so I want those costs to be maximized, including, at the very least, a life of ordering take-out food under fake names.
Open thread.