Trump’s reversal on the separation of families at the border had nothing to do with morality, but everything to do with politics and optics.
However, the damage has already been done. Members of his base — the ones who have lost all perspective on what’s right and what’s wrong — believe the pictures of children crying in the detention centers were photoshopped or faked by media outlets. They swallow all of his bogus justifications and lies (as well as those from his cabinet and the right-wing media) and have overwhelmingly supported having kids, including babies, ripped out of their parents’ arms and stuck in cages.
Many of those ignorant zealots are the same ones who said gay marriage would destroy families. Nope, all it took was a white nationalist president.
Here’s a simple question for those who thought this was a good policy in the first place: can you name a single crime for which a parent is arrested and the authorities also lock up their child(ren) in a separate facility with no family contact? We don’t even do that for the offspring of serial killers.
Incidentally, crossing the border illegally isn’t a felony — it’s a misdemeanor. You know, the kind of crime that people of Trump’s skin color and status are never convicted of, let alone spend any time in jail for. And their kids’ lives aren’t impacted a bit.
We won’t know the psychological impact of these forced separations on the children of immigrant-wannabes for years — assuming anyone bothers to go back and check — but I can’t imagine them ever looking at America as a Shining Beacon Of Freedom again. Shame on everyone in and out of the White House who’s accomplished that.
Despite Trump’s executive order, his agencies will not make active attempts to reunite parents currently in custody with their children, who are likely being held elsewhere — not in the same venue, but another state. On top of that, consider that many of those are not government-run facilities, but belong to private corporations operating them under contract. In other words, there are still companies in our country making a profit off of kids in cages.
Because no matter how low America goes, there will always be someone making a buck off it.