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Comment by core-questions | Hacker News Reader

> First is the new policy that any migrant family entering the U.S. without a border inspection will be prosecuted for this minor misdemeanor. The parents get incarcerated and that leaves children to be warehoused.

How about these people recognize that they're trying to commit a crime - entering the country illegally - and then, if they want to avoid incarceration, perhaps try not committing said crime?

All of this "protest and send money" stuff undermines the legitimate rule of law. Family separation is bad, but it happens all the time when people commit crimes within the country and lose their children by virtue of being deemed unfit to parent because of criminal actions.

Why should an illegal alien be treated any differently on that front?

These children are being used as emotional manipulation to exacerbate a problem that's already pretty egregious.

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Detain them as a family, then. Separating children, some infants, from their parents, is cruel and unusual. The stated aim of the policy is to be so abominable that it acts as a deterrent. You okay with that?

Ahh, hard to say.

Imagine the case of someone within the country where CPS gets called due to the parents doing something criminal. Should the children be jailed? Isn't that cruel? Separation is cruel, but it might be healthier for the kids to go to a foster family or facility where they're not imprisoned.

> The stated aim of the policy is to be so abominable that it acts as a deterrent. You okay with that?

I'm plenty okay with punishments that are intended to be deterrents, yes, but if you're going to do that you need to make sure everyone knows, and enforce it consistently.

A far better option would just be to turn people back at the border, and instantly deport anyone caught in the country who isn't supposed to be there. Consistent, possible to enforce without the courts being involved, faster and more efficient, and probably less cruel overall.

What threat do these people pose? I resent my taxpayer dollars being used for the unnecessary and cruel separation and incarceration of children. Just release these people. Even deporting them without due process would be less cruel than this bone-headed policy.

Add to this that HHS admitted that they lost track of 1,500 children in their custody and failed to protect unaccompanied minors from traffickers and other abuses. I don't trust them to be able to match parents back up with their children later on.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/hhs-official-says...

> What threat do these people pose?

Individually? Perhaps not much. En-masse, a million at a time? A low-level existential threat to western civilization as we know it.

> Just release these people.

Sure. Back into Mexico.

> Even deporting them without due process

Deporting them should _be_ the process.

Separating these children from their parents is a much greater existential threat to our values and way of life.

These adults are endangering these children in the first place, and the children should be separated for their own protection from the reckless actions of the adults. Even taking out the border-crossing factor, such endangerment purely on our side of the border would properly result in intervention by Child Protective Services.

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