beyond the humanitarian aspects of holding children, its clear that the government simply isn’t set up to hold thousands of children. Think of the cost and infrastructure needed for 1 young child. You need round-the-clock babysitter. If a prisoner costs $70K, probably a child cost 2-3 times that. And are we going to turn military bases into internment camps and make military personnel into babysitters? Or is the government needing to hire thousands of new personnel.
Clearly the government has a problem the size and scale of which, it can’t quite deal with. It looks like its trying to dump all these kids into state foster systems and wash its hand of it. But dumping thousands of kids into foster system is not only unethical, it will swamp the foster system. Also states are going to be aware this is happening, and they may not be too excited about receiving these kids. Also once they are put into the foster system, the chances of deporting the kids or reuniting the kids drops significantly.
So the Trumps have created a massive problem that is going to be very hard to resolve, even with a great new Executive order. Thats why a smart president like Obama would have looked at this issue and worked through it, before doing something unethical and stupid.