A Little Child Shall (Mis)lead Them

To be fair, it’s not the children who are doing the misleading. It’s the adults who are using them as props. Children are being used as tools to game (and beat) our immigration laws and to advance a pro-illegal alien political position. It’s a disgusting spectacle, brought to you by Democrats and their media overlords.
If that sounds harsh, stop reading now; it’s going to get rougher from here. What we’ve witnessed over the past few weeks, from the national border to the halls of power, has been the opening of a new front in the un-Civil War raging since the election of Donald Trump.
Today it’s nearly impossible to have a civil conversation on any topic of importance. The Left has corrupted our language, worked hard to make some subjects radioactive, and made once-unthinkable comparisons the norm so that we end up either speaking in euphemisms or risk our friendships and livelihoods when speaking our minds. It’s the stuff of totalitarian states, which is the direction Democrat partisans have been pushing us for decades. They are a cancer in the body politic.
When “illegal alien” morphed into “undocumented migrant,” the Left won a key victory. When enforcement of eminently-reasonable US laws governing immigration is compared to the Holocaust and the depravity of German Nazis, the Left wins. When threats or acts of violence succeed in cowing citizens from expressing non-Leftist-approved opinions, the Left wins. The common theme: The Left wins by denigrating our nation, encouraging lawlessness, and menacing law-abiding people who disagree with them. That’s their playbook, and God help us if we ever again give Democrats a majority.
Boston Celtics-great Kevin McHale learned this lesson last week. McHale attended a Trump rally in Duluth – not as a speaker or even on stage – but some freakish fanatic found his face in the crowd and “outed” him on social media. Outrage and threats followed. His wife was harassed. People called for his dismissal as an NBA announcer. (At least no one has called for his removal from the NBA Hall of Fame – yet.) All because he attended an event featuring the President of the United States.
For the Left, no behavior is out of bounds. A washed-up actor targets the First Family’s 12-year-old son with this gem: “We should rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.” After 78 years on this planet, you’d think a man would know better. Well, a man would; I can’t identify the creature Peter Fonda has become, but for him there is a special place in Hell. Fonda vents mindless rage on an adolescent simply because he objects to his father’s “zero tolerance” policy protecting our borders.
“Zero tolerance” = “100% enforcement” (and it’s another semantic victory by the Left to make “100% enforcement” appear to be what’s wrong here). For 8 years Obama used his “phone and pen” to run roughshod over his Constitutional duty to faithfully-execute the laws as passed by the legislature. I am grateful that we now have a president who understands his obligations. Which brings us back to the children. Simply put, the only people separating children from families are the ones using them as props to game the immigration system.
One particularly egregious example: A Getty photographer’s viral photo of a crying child standing next to her mother as she was being arrested by federal agents. The mother had taken the 2-year-old on a perilous journey from Honduras and illegally crossed the Rio Grande. The Instagram caption began, “A Honduran asylum seeker, 2, and her mother…” Wait. What?
A two-year-old is not an asylum seeker. Her mother isn’t either, since she purposely failed to follow rules we have established for asylum seekers. The rules are a high bar to cross; higher than the waters of the Rio Grande. So she took the path of least resistance, and for good reason: She was a previously-deported economic migrant, here to jump the line and steal a job.
Despite what media initially reported, mother and daughter were never separated by federal agents. In fact, mother separated father from daughter in Honduras without permission; the father said he wasn’t even allowed a proper goodbye.
By entering the US illegally, this Honduran woman committed a crime on US soil. What happens to US citizen parents who break the law? They are separated from their kids, sometimes permanently. Why should foreigners get a break?
Our social services net frays and American families suffer, yet Democrats look beyond our borders to add to our problems. Prioritizing foreign law-breakers over our neighbors should disqualify any person running for office. While the Left uses social media and anti-social behavior to advance its political interests, the Right needs to be resolute and settle the issue at the ballot box.

Ken Gorrell welcomes yoir comments at kengorrell@gmail.com