The report by NPR stated: “U.S. immigration officials are planning to detain and deport immigrants who were part of the surge of Central Americans who crossed into the U.S. illegally” and that “immigration agents are mainly targeting young mothers with small children, and unaccompanied youths who turned 18 after they entered the U.S.” Adding “Many Central Americans have fled their home countries due to gang violence”.
That is part of a report from National Public Radio in the US detailing the policy initiative by the American federal government to deal with the issue of migrants from Central America who entered the country illegally with their children.
In 2016.
Yes folks. The report quoted above is describing the policy directive given to the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by the administration of the yet to be officially sainted (just a formality at this point really) Barack Obama.
An op ed in the Huffington Post in May of that year described it as ‘Obama’s Cruel Decision to Resume Mass Deportations’. The author of the column stated, “Sending mothers and young children back to countries from which they are fleeing violence is immoral and cruel as Pope Francis has recently emphasized”.
But wait a minute…. I don’t recall mass protests, around the clock coverage by the mainstream media, professional pundits weeping on TV or the “won’t someone please think of the children” crowd comparing the President to Hitler at that time. Where were all the sanctimonious people rushing to online comment sections to proclaim their empathy for Central American illegal immigrants and their children two years ago and decrying President Obama’s ‘cruel’ and ‘immoral’ policies?
Here’s how Obama’s department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement defended the president’s “cruel” policy:
“As we have stated repeatedly, the Department of Homeland Security must enforce the law consistent with our enforcement priorities. Our highest priority is public safety and border security…. To promote and protect border security, our priorities include those apprehended crossing the border illegally after January 1, 2014. This includes single adults, as well as adults who bring their children with them.”
Sound familiar?
The unvarnished evidence shows that there is no particular difference in the attitudes or morality behind the policy in 2016 and that of 2018. And yet none of the people currently protesting or otherwise indulging in ostentatious displays of ’empathy’ and grief for the plight of Central American mothers and their kids could manage even mild interest when these things were happening two years ago. So what changed? Only one thing: The guy behind the big desk in the Oval Office.
Which tends to suggest that the emotionalism and shameless moral self-aggrandizement that seems to be all the rage at the moment has little if anything to do with sincere concern for illegal migrants from Central America and their children. The moral outrage these people are so desperate to advertise today is simply a manifestation of their hatred of Trump. Just as their indifference to Obama’s administration rounding up women and children from Central America and shipping them back to the ‘gang violence’ from which they were fleeing was a manifestation of their blind adoration of Barack Obama.
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