First Lady Melania Trump was spirited to one of her husband's better child detention centers today in an apparent attempt by the administration to claim there is still someone in the White House with the remnants of a human soul. The result was a televised publicity stunt in which staff members soothingly reiterated that there was no problem whatsoever with the forcible separation of young children from their parents and their subsequent imprisonment.
In the press statement announcing the trip, a White House toady related that her "goals are to thank law enforcement and social services providers for their hard work, lend support and hear more on how the administration can build upon the already existing efforts to reunite children with their families." That language is at odds with administration policy; in his latest executive order Trump made no mention of any attempt to reunite detained children with their parents, and attempts by Central American nations to so much as locate those children are finding their efforts made difficult by apparent administration incompetence.
It should also be noted that the facility chosen by the administration is one apparently filled mostly with genuinely "unaccompanied" children, as opposed to once forcibly removed from their parents, but that too is a point of confusion since the administration's new "zero tolerance" policy has resulted in parents being imprisoned for the misdemeanor crime of crossing the border without papers, upon which their children are then declared "unaccompanied" and placed in separate detention. The new policy announced yesterday continues this policy of parent imprisonment, but would allow the children to be imprisoned alongside their parents rather than separately.