Ted Cruz has staged a dramatic about-face on the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies, laying bare how politically damaging the issue of separating children from parents accused of crossing the border illegally is becoming for Republicans facing voters this fall.
The Texas senator, who has become a frequent ally of President Donald Trump, initially blasted criticism of the White House crackdown.
“When you see Democrats saying, ‘Don’t separate kids from their parents,’ what they’re really saying is don’t arrest illegal aliens,” he said last week
But he’s now softened substantially, telling reporters in Washington on Tuesday, “All of us are horrified at the images we’re seeing.” Cruz also said he talked with the White House about legislation he introduced to stop family separations.
It is striking that a leading conservative insurgent could flip-flop in a deep-red state where hardline immigration policies are exceedingly popular. But Cruz’s change of heart underscores the chorus of bipartisan politicians and civic and religious leaders across the country who’ve said such tactics are unacceptable — even as the Trump administration has vowed to stand by them.
Cruz’s push for legislation comes as Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic congressman giving up his seat to challenge the incumbent in November, has moved quickly to criticize the family separations and, in the process, raise his national profile. O’Rourke led a Father’s Day march to a Texas desert tent city which federal authorities hastily erected to house immigrant children.
“There’s an open question right now about who we are and what we stand for and what we’re going to do in the face of this injustice and this inhumanity,” O’Rourke said by phone.
A former punk rocker, O’Rourke has waged a high energy campaign and often outraised Cruz. He remains a longshot since Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994, but family separation may be proving too thorny a topic even for a Republican facing a relatively easy path to midterm re-election.
“The needle that Cruz is trying to thread is he wants to end separation but also maintain rule of law,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Texas GOP strategist who added, “He’s recognizing that this separation issue is explosive.”
More than 2,300 minors were separated from their families at the border from May 5 through June 9, according to the Department of Homeland Security. That’s under a policy announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that refers all cases of illegal entry — even those when people crossing sought asylum to remain in the U.S. — for criminal prosecution. The government previously limited prosecution for many family entrants, partly because children aren’t charged with a crime and can’t be detained with their parents.
Texas is 39 percent Hispanic and has become the epicenter of the debate, with a former warehouse fitted with metal caging in the Rio Grande Valley housing more than 1,000 immigrant children. Roughly 750 miles to the west, near the pecan-growing town of Tornillo close to El Paso, more youngsters are being held in the tent encampment where O’Rourke led Sunday’s march.
O’Rourke also is offering House anti-family separation legislation, but his is similar to Democratic-led efforts in the Senate. He’s long courted Trump supporters, saying he can understand their frustration with Washington’s status quo. But O’Rourke says there’s no room for agreement with the White House on this issue.
“President Trump made the decision to take their young children from them, inflicting horrific trauma on those kids and on those parents alike and absolutely undermining our values and our idea of who we are as a country,” he said. “But, at this point, it is now the United States of America that is doing this. It is now on all of us to change it.”
O’Rourke said the effort won’t make him appear soft on crime since existing federal law already stipulates that anyone crossing the U.S. border and seeking asylum not be treated “like common criminals.”
“It’s not a question of if you’re for law and order. We all are,” O’Rourke said. “It’s following our own laws and also making sure that we’re not torturing these families.”
Cruz is beginning to echo that sentiment, saying, “We can stop this” and that his bill “would prohibit separating families, would mandate that kids should stay with their parents.”
He said the proposal would double the number of federal immigration judges to ensure that asylum cases are heard within two weeks.
“If the claim is not valid, and many of those coming here illegally don’t have valid claims for asylum, then within 14 days that claim should be processed and they should be returned to their home country,” Cruz said. “During that expedited process, we can and should keep families together, keep children with their moms and dads and we need to stand up temporary shelters.”
Neither Cruz nor O’Rourke’s legislation are likely to advance as congressional Republicans continue to grapple with larger immigration packages , which some fierce conservatives are rejecting as “amnesty.”
Mackowiak said immigration and border crackdowns rarely are losing issues for Texas Republicans, but family separation “is very uncomfortable for a lot of us.”
“Separating families is dicier,” he said “even here.”
(AP)
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2 Responses
Another example of YWN falling for AP’s “fake news”
NO Republicans favor “family separation.” The issue is what to do with newly arrived persons are caught crossing the border illegally. It would be very easy to have them held as a family, but the current law doesn’t do that (note that this is a judge-made rule signed on to by previous administrations), meaning the only alternative is to lock up the parents in one facility, and the children elsewhere – or to release them into the US (which is what most Republican oppose). Keeping them together as a family, which is what most other countries would do, is not an option unless the Congress specifically authorizes it.
It should also be noted that the parents in question are free to take their children and go home, but are choosing to be separated in the hope of eventually getting into the US (and probably realizing that the kids will be better fed and cared for in an American facility than they would in their home country).
The actuality is that innocent children are being harmed by the American policy. Ideology shouldn’t be an issue. It should be stopped immediately. The children are not at fault. Any normal person with children is going to feel that way.
The use of the term “flip-flop” is inaccurate. Sen. Cruz changed his mind after realizing what harm the US policy was doing to children. It’s also possible that as a Catholic, he pays attention to the teachings of his own religion and the pronouncements of the Pope. Not all Xtians are protestant evangelicals. And people who think occasionally change their minds.
Incidentally, this is also an issue for Israel. The US has been the major defender of Israel against the BDS people, but without international moral credibility it won’t be able to do much of a job. The issue of child separation, along with the foolish withdrawal of the US from the UN human rights organization, is setting us up for a real struggle. There are at least a quarter of a million Jews in the West Bank who would have to be resettled within the Green Line if the BDS people win. Every crying toddler on the Mexican border makes that possibility a little more likely.