Getting in the Way

Time personalizes the cost of America's immigration crackdown through its cover story. It's not an extremely partisan piece, but by telling the stories of families who are broken up--especially kids who are left behind--the reader can't help but feel sympathy for them.

The undocumented communities live in fear ("an explosion of fear"--I didn't say the article had no bias):

Don’t go to the Walmart, an ICE truck was seen parked nearby. Plainclothes agents are watching the park. In a phone interview from Mexico, Alejandro told me that many of his old friends now avoid leaving the house, limiting necessary errands to blitzes after dark, when agents are thought to be less active. Sitting in a folding chair on the patio outside her home, Maria describes a similar drumbeat of distress. She doesn’t use the word miedo, fear, but a more visceral term: pavor. Dread.

Advocates for the undocumented, IMHO, can lessen the dread by brokering a deal with the Trump Administration. By encouraging local authorities to cooperate with ICE and hand over undocumented criminals from local jails, ICE would agree to greatly reduce its community raids. (Of course, this would mean gutting the notion of sanctuary cities and states.) But if that hypothetical deal succeeds, we can talk about building a wall and formalizing a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.

The outlines for a deal or deals are there, but I suppose people are letting their anger and moral superiority (not obvious to this blogger, by the way) get in the way.