Wife and children

On Monday, the US State Department made a briefing of his high -ranking employee on an unprecedented topic for the current administration: the persecution of political and religious dissidents in Russia. However, the employee failed to show off eloquence and righteous anger. Journalists asked him a number of slippery questions, to which there was nothing to answer a senior person.

One of the questions was this: “Do you think that the problem of political and religious prisoners in Russia is more acute than in North Korea? The President does not mean anything about his concern about these issues there. And if not, if it isn’t worse, will you make a similar call to the liberation of political prisoners in North Korea?” Another question is also noted in an eyebrow, but in the eye: “You say that the Russians threaten dissidents by deprivation of parental rights. Do you think that it is difficult to bring such arguments while the United States separate children from their parents on the border with Mexico?”

The Russian Embassy in Washington responded to the State Department’s appeal in the usual style: “There is no moral right to blame Russia and demand someone to free the representatives of the American establishment. Moreover, when the constant hunt for Russian citizens continues in third countries.”

Of course, there is no links to incidents on the border with Mexico in the embassy’s statement, but with the phrase the absence of the administration of Donald Trump moral right to blame other Americans today, perhaps, will agree. According tothe Gallup survey just published, 57 percent of the US citizens against the construction of the wall on the border with Mexico, and 83 percent advocate that children of illegal immigrants are entitled to citizenship.

The current immigration crisis was provoked by the government. It claims that in recent months the number of people who illegally entering the territory of the United States with young children has sharply increased. Immigration authorities are forced to take measures stipulated by law, which the Barack Obama administration did not do.

The fault for the separation of families on the border lies on a bad law adopted by the Democrats. It is necessary to change the laws on the security of the border, but the democrats cannot act together! He began to build a wall.

So Trump wrote on Twitter on June 5. Ten days later, he assured the journalists: "I hate the excommunication of children from parents. Democrats must change their law. This is their law." “Sir, this is your policy,” the journalist said to this. “Why are you continuing to lie?” “Quietly, quiet,” the president dismissed. “This is the Law of the Democrats.”

In fact, the law prescribing to select children from parents who crossed the border, without permission, does not exist. The law, on the basis of which the immigration authorities are currently operating, was adopted in December 2008 and signed by President Bush. Republicans then had the majority in both chambers of Congress. Both chambers accepted it with consensus.

The UN Convention and the US national legislation do not allow simply deporting a person applying for a refugee status. With each case, you need to understand separately. Before clarifying the reasons forced to illegally leave the country of their citizenship, he is placed in the temporary content center. Children stay with their parents. The Obama administration did so. However, in 2014, due to an influx from Central America, there are a large number of children without parents (parents sent them alone, knowing that it would be easier for them to get the right to reside) the time for consideration of immigration cases increased, and the conditions of the detention of children worsened. Then the federal courts reminded the government of the so -called "agreement of Flores." In 1985, 15-year-old Salvador Jenny Lizette Flores was kept in unacceptable conditions after crossing the border. The lawsuit passed many stages up to the US Supreme Court. Finally, in 1997, the Bill Clinton administration settled the dispute, obliging to facilitate the procedure for children as much as possible. The deadline for the maintenance of a child in refugee reception centers decreased to 20 days. After this period, a dilemma faced the authorities: either to separate their parents with their children, or let their parents go with their children so that they could wait for the decision of the immigration court at large, having received the right to work and a temporary residence permit.

The Obama administration chose this second path, which received from the everyday name "catch and let go." Donald Trump in his election speeches promised to put an end to this practice and fulfilled a promise. On April 6 of this year, he sent five members of his office to submit an order to him a plan of action to change the immigration policy. On the same day, one of the addressees of the notes, the Minister of Justice, Jeff Sehns, sent the demands to close the "loophois" in the legislation to the federal prosecutors on the ground. "Those who want to experience the determination of the Trump administration to ensure public calm, national security and the power of the law, I warn: illegal penetration into this country will not reward, but, on the contrary, be persecuted by the force of accusatory powers of the Ministry of Justice," Sehns said.

The new policy is called "zero tolerance". Now, after 20 days, parents from now on, before the court’s decision, go to the bars, and since it is impossible to keep innocent children in prison, they find themselves in the status of children unaccompanied by adults. The law prescribes such children within three days to send the Ministry of Health and Social Services. This department is looking for closest relatives who are legally living in the United States, and passes the children to them. If relatives cannot be found, they are transferred to foster families - temporary or permanent, depending on the decision of the immigration court, considering the case of their parents. If parents are denied the right to asylum, they may never see their child again.

The Ministry of Internal Security took up the case zealously. In the period from April 8 to yesterday, about 2300 children were separated from parents. The actions of the immigration authorities were accompanied by dramatic scenes and even tragic consequences. The AR correspondent reported : "In the old warehouse in the south of Texas, hundreds of children are waiting for cells built of a metal mesh built. One cage contains 20 children. Around, bottles of water are lying, chips and large sheets of foil, which serve as blankets." The message was accompanied by an appropriate photograph. The Propublica website published an audio recording on which children cry and call for a help mom or dad, and the border service agent jokes: "Yes, we have a whole orchestra here. Only the conductor is not enough." One man from Honduras of a three -year -old son was pulled out of his hands by force, after which he hanged himself .

All four of the now resilients of the first ladies of the United States came out in defense of the children. Melania Trump, through her press secretary, said that she was disgusting scenes of separation of families and she hopes for a quick humane resolution of the crisis with the help of Congress. Voters cut off the telephones of the offices of their elected representatives and entered the protest shares. Human rights activists pointed to the UN Convention on the rights of a child, guaranteeing children the right to care of their parents and to non -discrepancy with them.

It is possible that the actions of the government aimed to intimidate potential immigrants. In the justification of these actions, Jeff Sehnes quoted the phrase from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul, which has long been justified by any arbitrariness of the authorities: "Let every soul be submissive to the highest authorities, because there are no power from God; the existing authorities are established from God." (Rom., 13: 1). But prominent Christian leaders, priests and theologians rejected such an understanding of the Holy Scriptures. In defense of the children, a preacher Franklin Graham, who called what was happening with a shame, made the loyal Trump, and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention Russell Moore answered the Minister with a quote from Ezekiel: "Your father and mother are slandered, an alien is resented among you, an orphan and a widow are oppressed by you."

The “zero tolerance” was condemned by the conference of the Catholic bishops of the United States, and Pope Francis said in an interview with Reuters that the separation of families contradicts Christian values. On his twitter, the pontiff wrote:

Christ is in the poor, rejected or persecuted. Do not allow fear to stand in the way of compassion for the suffering neighbor.

This is a clear reference to the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew: “Then the king will say to those who, on the right side of him:“ Come, blessed my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from creating the world: for I brought me, and you gave me to eat; longed, and you gave me howling; was a wanderer and you accepted me; There was a nag and you dressed me; was sick and you visited me; He was in the dungeon, and you came to me. "Then the righteous will tell him in response:" Lord! When did we see you hungry, and fed you? Or thirsty and drunk? When did we see you a wanderer, and accepted you? Or naked, and dressed? When we saw you sick, or in a dungeon, and came to you? ”And the king will tell them in response:“ Truly I say to you: “Since you did this to one of these brothers of my smaller ones, you did to me.”

The Minister of Internal Security Kirsten Nielsen took a tough position. "We will not apologize for fulfilling the laws adopted by Congress," she wrote on Twitter. "We are a rule of law. We ask Congress to change the laws."

Moreover, Trump did not intend to apologize. He does not know how to do this at all. The president continues to blame anyone for what is happening: Democrats, Congress, the government of Mexico, and the organizers of the smuggling of people - just not themselves. On Tuesday, he wrote on Twitter:

We must always arrest people who come to our country illegally. Of the 12 thousand children, parents send 10 thousand on a very dangerous journey and only 2 thousand are accompanied by their parents, many of whom have repeatedly tried to enter our country illegally.

In the evening of the same day, he came to Congress to meet with lawmakers-republicans of the lower house and call them to solve the problem as soon as possible. However, the members of the Congress, which were present at the meeting, did not understand which of the two bills is supported by the president, tough or soft. Pensus was allowed by the deputy press secretary of the White House Raj Shah: "In his speech, he approved both bills of the lower house, which will make it possible to build a wall (on the border with Mexico. - V.A.), close the loopholes in the law and solve the crisis on the border and the problem of separation of families, allowing the detention and deportation of families entirely."

Unlike the president, whose self-conceit and self-confidence is not able to shake almost nothing, the Republican congressmen are aware of the political costs of the tough option, especially in the light of the elections in Congress in November. They have yet to agree on a compromise, if possible.

On Wednesday, it became clear that there was no need to count on the quick adoption of the law, and the president backward. Media reports that the opinions of Trump's advisers were divided and that the first lady played a decisive role in changing his position. One way or another, in the morning, on Wednesday, Trump called Kirste Nielsen with a group of lawyers in the White House and put them to write a presidential decree, which forbidden the separation of families.

The president signed it in the afternoon, saying at the same time: "I did not like to see or feel how families are separated. I think anyone who has a heart has such a strong feeling about this."

Thus, Trump admitted that he was hypocrite when he insisted like Chichikov: "The law is a number before the law." This is perhaps the only case when the president was forced to retreat not by court decision, as was the prohibition of entering the United States to citizens of Muslim countries, but under the pressure of public opinion.