Trump's 'zero-tolerance' border policy is immoral, un-American -- and ineffective - By Jeh Johnson

By Jeh Charles Johnson
June 18 at 6:39 PM

Jeh Charles Johnson served as secretary of homeland security from 2013 to 2017.

My wife and I spent Mother’s Day in 2014 at a U.S. Border Patrol center in McAllen, Tex. The facility had been built for single adults, but it looked like a crude day-care center flooded with children. In the midst of that flood, my eyes were drawn to one little girl sitting alone at a desk and being processed by a Border Patrol agent. I was struck by her long, black hair, which was beautiful despite the hot and dirty journey from Central America she just had completed. I asked her, “Why did you come here?” She replied: “I’m looking for my mother in the United States.” She began to cry, the translator began to cry, and I began to cry.

As I witness the Trump administration’s current practice of separating children from their parents at the border with Mexico, the image of that little girl and hundreds of other migrant women and children is fixed in my mind.

I hesitate to criticize my successors in office, who are burdened with the responsibility of keeping the U.S. homeland and its borders secure. I hesitate to cast doubt on the hard work of those who once worked for me in the Department of Homeland Security. But when it comes to certain offensive and wrongheaded government policies, those of us with a public voice and who understand the issue cannot stay silent.

The current “zero tolerance” deterrent policy, resulting in the separation of 2,000 innocent migrant children from their parents, is immoral and un-American. Beyond that, the policy will in the long run prove to be ineffective.

Experience teaches (as career personnel at DHS know) that widely publicized changes in immigration-enforcement policy may cause sharp downturns in the level of illegal migration in the short term, but migration patterns then revert to their higher, traditional levels in the long term so long as underlying conditions persist. I learned this hard lesson while in office; the Trump administration is learning the lesson now.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-zero-tolerance-border-policy-is-immoral-un-american--and-ineffective/2018/06/18/efc4c514-732d-11e8-b4b7-308400242c2e_story.html