Some help please. A friend keeps bellyaching about how President Obama put kids in cages.

[Lee-Lee]

42. Essentially he is right, and wrong

The “cages” are the holding cells used at the processing centers. Every person caught crossing the border illegally goes to these centers. And that is true now, was true in the Obama Administration, and was true in the Bush administration and so on...

What has changed is what happens from there. The Obama administration policy was unaccompanied minors went to the DHHS shelters while their cases were handled. Adults were typically detained and run through the system and either granted asylum and released in the US or deported, with the vast majority deported. If a family unit was caught crossing illegally, that is a child with a parent, they still went to these same “cages” at processing centers but then they were given a date for an immigration hearing and released so the family was not split. The illegal entry was handled as a civil case instead of criminal.

This did create a bit of a double standard on how people were treated. If you had a minor with you it was almost certain you would be released into the US after being caught instead of detained or rapidly deported.

The change is that now these “family units” are not being released with a hearing date and a promise to appear. Instead the parents are all being charged criminally, just as they likely would be if they didn’t have kids with them. Well if you are arrested that makes your kids now “unaccompanied” so now they get treated the same as minors who actually crossed unaccompanied.

So your friend is mostly right- the so-called “cages” are holding cells that are in fact being used the exact same as they always were. What has changed is the splitting of families after they leave these processing centers that previously wouldn’t have been split up.

The pushing of the “cages” lines was probably a mistake by our side. While it makes for an attention grabbing sensational opening, it really is a criticism of the exact same policies and procedures and facilities used in years past also, and does open critics of current policy up to claims of hypocrisy or fake outrage when they go after that part of it. The focus always should have been on what actually changed, and that is the policy of locking up adults who cross with children instead of releasing them as a family into the US with a court date.