Bloomberg reporter Laura Litvan is citing Trump as saying that he would sign a “narrow measure” that allows families detained by immigration to stay together. But Trump will only make this move if two Republican bills now kicking around the House are rejected.
Of those two bills, one gives Trump every single item on the right wing wish list of immigration policy. It drops diversity visas, limits family reunification, and gives Trump more billions to route back into his own pocket while creating his 2,000 mile long Trump Monument to Inhumanity, also known as “the wall.” And that’s the bill the press is calling “the moderate bill.”
The second bill, fresh from the pen of Representative Bob Goodlatte—one of the primary purveyors of the 90 percent lie—makes the give-Trump-everything bill even more savory by adding in a side order of making sure that Dreamers never, never-ever, get citizenship.
Neither of these bills is going to pass. Neither of these bills is even designed to pass. Both of these bills exist for the singular reason of creating talking points that Republicans can carry into the fall elections. Because Republicans are certain that what worked before, will work again, and they’ll be able to romp across much of the country buoyed by tales of murderous immigrants and how they would have helped those DACA kids if it wasn’t for, sniff, the mean old Democrats.
Meanwhile, the “narrow measure” that Trump says he would support has already been drafted. It’s called Diane Feinstein’s Keep Families Together Act, and it already carries the signature of every single Democratic Senator as well as massive support in the House. If Republicans were interested in actually ending family separation, Mitch McConnell could bring the Feinstein bill to the floor this morning and Democrats would happily ferry it to the other side of the Hill before lunch. Even if Republicans want to insist on voting on their bills first, that could be handled. Just stop bickering over the difference between too vile to consider and too vile with a side of chips and vote on both of them.
Then when they’ve failed, they can vote on the Feinstein bill. Which is exactly what Trump has said he will support. Except … there’s no reason to believe Trump is telling the truth on this point, since he’s definitely lying about everything else. And the only reason that Trump would not sign this bill first, then go on with arguing about other immigration matters, is because these heartbroken kids are his hostages in his attempt to build that wall.
The entire Keep Families Together Act runs just eleven pages. It breaks down into these parts:
- Children must remain with their families during detention unless there is a good, documented cause — one that would satisfy federal laws regarding severing guardianship, such as determining that a child is the victim of trafficking.
- Requires that HHS produce a report within 180 days on the status of family separations at the border, then update that report once a year.
- Requires that HHS maintain data on children and families who have been separated, with the assumption that they will be reunited unless there’s a good cause for continued separation.
- Orders a GAO report on the overall status of asylum seekers over the last decade.
That’s it. That’s about as brief, and as narrow, as the document could be while still addressing the fact that children are on occasion used as pawns in obtaining asylum, and insisting that the end goal of the process should be to keep families together.
It’s exactly what Trump said he would sign. But won’t.