Implementation of the disastrous “zero-tolerance” policy formally announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May caused such a public backlash that the Trump administration has had to back away from it.  Scenes of kids sequestered in fenced pens and tents caused a very large number of people, including all past first ladies, to report their outrage publicly.

Kids seem to have been sent helter-skelter across the country to what have been described as “black sites” by those inquiring about facilities and requesting inspections.  With the Trump order to rescind the action of dividing families, there is an admission that they may not be able to match children with parents.

Sessions, shortly after Trump revoked the separation policy, declared in an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network: “It hasn’t been good, and the American people don’t like the idea that we are separating families. We never really intended to do that.”  Oh really? If that was not the administration’s intention, then under whose orders were the border control authorities acting?

Congressional Republicans, as with all Trump fiascos, including backing out of the Iran Nuclear Treaty and the ridiculous tariff wars he is starting, sit quietly aside and let their self-proclaimed authoritarian do his thing.  The latest from the president is he does not want Congress to deal with any immigration bills until after the mid-term elections.

In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post George Will stated: “Ryan and many other Republicans have become the president’s poodles, not because James Madison’s system has failed but because today’s abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it. Congressional Republicans…have no higher ambition than to placate this president. By leaving dormant the powers inherent in their institution, they vitiate the Constitution’s vital principle: the separation of powers.”

I do not always agree with Mr. Will, but in this case, he is spot on.

Tim Walls

St. Joseph