Democrats quickly united against Donald Trump’s decision to separate young children from their parents at the border. His reversal will test whether they can keep it up.
The president’s edict Wednesday aimed to end one problem – separating migrant children from their parents – but would create another, allowing those families to be held together indefinitely. The executive order strains the legal limits of a 1997 federal court settlement that restricted how long the government can hold young migrants and is likely to be overturned, according to Democrats.
“He’s doing what he always does: Running the country on an hour by hour basis,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said of the president. “The kids are now locked up with their parents, but within days this is likely to be struck down by the courts. So we’re back to square one.”
For now, Democrats have won their argument that Trump can reverse his own policies. But the issue could soon land back in lawmakers’ laps, in a way that doesn’t give Democrats the undisputed moral high ground they’ve had amid the horror stories of the past few weeks.
The question of how to deal with extended detentions is a harder call for the party, especially Senate Democrats from conservative states who don’t want to be tagged as soft on illegal immigration in their reelection campaigns this fall.
During a meeting in Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-Maine) office with more than a dozen senators from both parties to deal with the family separation issue, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) described “a sense that whatever the president did today is not going to solve the problem long-term.”
“So we need to do something to make sure this never happens again,” said McCaskill, one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats on the ballot this fall.
Republicans had tried to put red-state Democrats on the defensive over family separations. The GOP challengers to McCaskill, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) slamming the incumbents for backing a proposed fix championed by liberals. Democrats were unmoved by those broadsides before Trump’s executive order on Wednesday, which may force the politically endangered members to reevaluate their stance.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who remarked earlier Wednesday that signing onto Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) bill halting separations was an easy choice for him, said later in the day that he would have to take a closer look at Trump’s new action before weighing in.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), underscoring that she had yet to read the order in full, welcomed "any day when when there’s some hope that we could find a compromise."
"This doesn’t solve all the problems, but it offers at least movement on [Trump’s] part that suggests that this was not a good idea, to take children away from their parents," she said in an interview.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and spent Father’s Day visiting immigration detention facilities, said after Trump announced his order that it’s “not acceptable to allow the indefinite imprisonment of children” as a response to the separation crisis.
But asked whether Democrats would remain united against the administration’s latest move, Van Hollen said that “where that conversation will go, I just can’t speculate until I see the details.”
Digging in against Trump’s immigration policy is an easy call for Democrats in safe seats, even after Trump retreated. Detaining families indefinitely raises troubling issues of its own, said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii).
It “really evokes the picture of Japanese Americans being incarcerated” during World War Two, she said.
“I fear that this is just a recognition that they were losing on the politics and as long as we have a president who doesn’t make decisions on moral foundations, that we have some real rocky times ahead,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who is up for reelection this fall.
Whether Tester, McCaskill, Manchin, and other Democrats targeted by the GOP can stay on the offensive on immigration – an issue that bitterly divided the party during this winter’s government shutdown fight – is another matter.
Republicans are still calling for a vote codifying the end of the family separation practice because they want “long-term certainty,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. He offered a new bill Wednesday that would put a legal end to the policy, which liberals hate because it would enshrine harsher detentions of families that cross the border illegally.
“They’re going to hold families together . and see if someone will take it to court and fight it in court,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “Ultimately, it would be ideal if we could back that up by passing a law.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) backs Tillis’ bill, but has not committed to putting it up for a vote. McConnell is wary of giving vulnerable Democrats an opportunity to vote for it, only to see the rest of the minority party band together to block the legislation over the detention issue, according to Republican sources.
Passing a law would require bridging a partisan chasm on immigration that the Senate failed to close this winter. Democrats forced a shutdown over immigration reform, only to see their opportunity to pass a bill scuttled by Trump’s insistence on cuts to legal immigration.
The group that met Wednesday – which included lawmakers from the conservative Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to the liberal Hirono – is “not trying to write a bill as a team,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), but rather agree generally that something needs to be done.
Even compromise-minded Democrats warned that rolling back the 1997 settlement, as Trump’s order envisions and GOP bills propose, would do nothing to alleviate humanitarian harm caused by his “zero tolerance” prosecution of all migrants crossing into the United States.
“Where in this country do we currently detain children with their parents for weeks or months pending trial?” asked Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.). “How is that a good idea?”
Trump’s Wednesday order maintains the “zero tolerance” policy that has led to family separations, even as it asks the Department of Homeland Security to keep “alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.” Immigrant-rights advocates quickly disputed the White House’s portrayal of the order as representing a complete end to the splintering of migrant families.
The order also requires Congress to supply the administration with more money for detention facilities, a fight that is likely to also fall on Congress to resolve.
Yet even the most liberal Democratic senators admitted that Trump’s attempt to end a crisis of his own making was a positive, if incomplete, step. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called it a “relief” but said Trump has more work to do.
“To the extent that families stay together, it’s a good thing,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said. “But indefinite detention is not a solution.”
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