FRONTPAGEMAG.COM
THE REAL CHILD ABUSERS OF BORDER INSECURITY
The zombie lawsuit causing family separation that never dies.
June 21, 2018
Daniel Greenfield <https://www.frontpagemag.com/
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an
investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic
terrorism.
What the media has been falsely calling President Trump's family separation
policy began with Hollywood actor Ed Asner's housekeeper and a lawsuit by
the ACLU during the Reagan administration.
The issue was child trafficking.
Teenage girls were being smuggled into the United States. Some were being
sent on to their illegal alien family members in the United States. Others
were being sent to the United States as cheap labor or being trafficked for
prostitution. People purporting to be family members might show up asking
for them to be released into their custody. And immigration authorities were
faced with a horrible situation.
The ACLU was less interested in the teens than in Attorney General Edwin
Meese. Reagan's AG was the Sessions of the day. A man whose name so enraged
the left-wing group that at one point it circulated petitions demanding that
Reagan fire Meese and called him the most dangerous official since Nixon.
Flores v. Meese, the case that led to the family separation policy, was born
with Ed Asner's housekeeper and the ACLU's obsession with Meese. But the
case, with various AGs replacing Meese, dragged on. And the ACLU went on
insisting that refusing to release teenage illegal aliens violated the
Constitution.
In '93, when Jenny Lisette Flores, the girl at the center of the original
case, was 23, the Supreme Court finally ruled 7-2 against the ACLU and
rejected its bizarre claim that illegal teens had a right to be released.
The verdict was brutal and made a hash of the ACLU's opportunistic
misreading of the Constitution.
And that should have been it. But by then it wasn't Flores v. Meese, but
Flores v. Reno.
The Clinton administration then threw the case with what is known as the
Flores Settlement in 1997. By then the titular Flores was 27 years old. The
settlement required releasing underage illegal aliens into the least
restrictive setting. And that meant that they couldn't be detained alongside
illegal alien adults.
The Flores Settlement was the ACLU's big victory. And the partisan lefty
group went on using it to batter successive administrations into loosening
conditions on underage detainees. And then, a few weeks ago, the narrative
flipped. The "least restrictive conditions" that the left had been fighting
for since the eighties suddenly became the worst atrocity since slavery,
Japanese internment and the Holocaust.
Holding underage migrants in "least restrictive conditions" meant separating
them from their parents.
The media's defiantly fake news coverage is so bad that it described
President Trump's executive order trying to modify the Flores Settlement, an
ACLU sweetheart deal with the Clinton administration, as a retreat. The
executive order proposes to detain illegal alien families together, but that
may end up violating the Flores Agreement which is why Trump is asking for a
modification of the Clinton program.
Flores lawsuits in the past had fought against detaining families together
except under least restrictive conditions.
None of this satisfies the left which used the claims of family separation
only as a wedge issue to restore the open borders policies of the previous
administration. Its goal is to end the detention of illegal aliens.
Despite the media's claims, this isn't a new problem.
The supposed 2,300 "children" separated from their families are consistent
with past numbers <https://oig.justice.gov/
of over 4,000. The real problem is that the floods of illegal aliens
overload the resources of INS and now ICE. That's particularly true when it
comes to underage teens and children. And the left also knows that if it can
get an illegal alien out of custody, it will be almost impossible to get him
or her back into custody.
The Flores Settlement requires detaining illegal alien border crossers
separately from any minors coming with them. But if these alleged families
are detained together, then the left will accuse the administration of
locking up entire families. And indeed, after President Trump's executive
order, the media's fake news spin is already twisting to accuse a cruel
administration of locking up families.
Despite the media's hysterical innuendo and propaganda, no Republican wants
to detain children. The trafficking of children across the border is an open
borders problem. It would not exist if the border were secured. And the
Democrats have fought against any serious effort to secure the border.
That's why Flores isn't going anywhere.
In 2016, Flores v. Lynch was filed. Jenny, the original teenage girl, was
now 46 years old. The occasion was the flood of so-called unaccompanied
minors in response to Obama's open border policies.
Once again the flood of illegal aliens overloaded ICE resources. That
incarnation of the lawsuit insisted that the Flores Settlement required the
government to hold families in the same conditions as the minors. And to
expeditiously release both minors and accompanying adults.
That was often the policy of the Clinton administration. But the security
measures of 9/11 ended that. And that's what the protests are really about.
When media activists began posting photos of detained minors under the Obama
administration (while misrepresenting them as images taken during the Trump
administration) they were really highlighting the consequences of open
borders.
Open borders doesn't mean that everyone gets in. What they really mean is
that, much like Europe, a flood of migrants and a lack of meaningful
enforcement overwhelms immigration authorities. Many migrants make it
through. Some are detained. And the conditions of their detention are often
unhappy because immigration authorities don't have the resources to keep up
with the sheer scale of the crisis.
Because border security can't be entirely dismantled, even by Democrat
administrations innately hostile to the idea, the wave of migrants actually
ends up increasing the number of those being detained.
It's not border security, but the lack of it that leads to adults and
children being detained in substandard conditions. And Republican bills to
improve conditions, detain families together and secure the border are being
stifled by Democrats who don't want border security, but do want to exploit
a political crisis.
The right's preferred solution is border security and the left's solution of
choice is open borders.
Only border security will solve the problem.
The latest incarnations of Flores, who is now pushing 50, would give a free
pass to any illegal migrant bringing a child with him into this country.
That would be a gift to human traffickers. And that is why the ban on
releasing children into the custody of anyone except a legitimate guardian
was implemented.
The decades of Flores wars undermined a policy that was there to protect
detained minors.
The media has accused Republicans of child abuse. But the Flores campaign
enabled child trafficking. And the intended endgame would end all protection
for the children being trafficked across the border.
The Flores Settlement was a sweetheart deal with enough loopholes to drive a
truck full of migrants through. And the left has spent decades driving
trucks through those loopholes. Its latest campaign is only the culmination
of decades of twisting border security into insecurity and child protection
into abuse.
As the decades roll on, as the original Jenny grows old and retires, the
Flores lawsuits will keep on coming. And children will continue to be
detained and adults arrested until the border is secured.
President Trump's signature issue was securing the border with a wall.
That's still the only answer.
Only a wall can end the tide of illegal migrants, the flow of drugs and of
human cargo. Only a wall can shut down the detention centers, for adults and
children. And only a wall can keep us safe and free.
ABOUT DANIEL GREENFIELD
<https://www.frontpagemag.com/
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a
New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
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