Border-detention policy breaking up families is an outrage, and needs to end now

Rep. Jim Costa, the Democrat from Fresno, went to the San Diego area Monday to see firsthand how the Trump administration policy of separating children from parents was working out.

He toured a facility in El Cajon that houses boys and teens caught while crossing from Mexico into California. Some of the youths tried to enter on their own, but others were taken from their parents when the family tried to cross into the U.S.

Costa said that, in total, the policy has split 2,600 children from their parents in the last six weeks. “That’s not the American way,” Costa said.

Sadly, as a letter to the editor on this page reflects, the U.S. detained Japanese Americans during World War II and Native Americans before them. Race-based detentions are a long stain on the American experience.

But making little children of Hispanic background spend the night under a Mylar blanket in a fenced-in area is a new step of cruelty. Costa was speaking to our higher nature, and in that he is right. Breaking apart moms and dads from their sons and daughters, the legalities and politics of immigration notwithstanding, is not what anyone would want, and it should be stopped immediately.

As the controversy over the border detention policy has grown in the last week, President Trump has tried to blame Democrats for not dealing with immigration reform, as if they forced him into separating families. While there is validity to the argument that Congress has completely failed to reform immigration laws, the fact is children were not being herded into detention centers until Homeland Security began the zero-tolerance program at the president’s behest.

All it takes to end this dreadful chapter is for President Trump to relent on zero tolerance. Give this directive instead: Undocumented people must remain in detention facilities, but keep families together.

If he won’t act, seemingly Congress is going to. News began breaking Tuesday afternoon that House GOP leaders were going to push a bill that would allow parents and children to be kept together in new family detention centers. The bill’s language was to be made public on Tuesday night.

It was noteworthy that both Costa and Kings County Republican David Valadao agreed that the separations must stop. They have neighboring districts in Congress, and both represent farming areas where immigration reform is badly needed.

To his credit, Valadao has tried repeatedly with north Valley congressman Jeff Denham to engineer immigration reform bills, only to see them fail, often at the hands of congressional hard-liners.

We urge Valdado and Costa to lead their respective parties toward meaningful reform, one that protects the Valley’s farming interests by ensuring a means for undocumented laborers to be legally able to work the region’s farms, orchards and vineyards.

And to those who retain hard-line approaches in Congress, and at the White House, all they have to do is take a look at the many pictures of little children crying in American detention centers. Those children just want their moms and dads. But for now, they are alone, and for now, that is their American experience.