A federal judge in San Diego late Tuesday managed to achieve something the president and Congress have failed to do: Resolve President Trump's self-inflicted crisis of separating children from their migrant parents.
It turns out the solution is pretty simple: Reunite them. Judge Dana M. Sabraw gave the government 30 days to get all the kids back with their parents, and 14 days for kids under the age of 5.
Of course, the government should never have embarked on this cruel and traumatizing policy in the first place.
Interestingly, Sabraw zeroed in on the utter incompetence of the government in crafting the policy. There was little to no forethought of how to handle the separations other than to send the parents to jail on misdemeanor charges of entering the country illegally, then declaring the children to be unaccompanied minors _ which they were not _ and shunting them off to the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Sabraw wrote:
"The practice of separating these families was implemented without any effective system or procedure for (1) tracking the children after they were separated from their parents, (2) enabling communication between the parents and their children after separation, and (3) reuniting the parents and children after the parents are returned to immigration custody following completion of their criminal sentence. This is a startling reality."
And:
"The facts set forth before the court portray reactive governance _ responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government's own making. They belie measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our Constitution."
Incompetence from the Trump administration _ who saw that coming?
