RCP: "Most of that vacillation resulted not from brutal bigotry, however, but from a simple fact: Democrats have simply not provided Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement with the resources necessary to properly control the border. Federal courts have ruled that families cannot be held together in custody for longer than 20 days; children must be released to guardians outside detention. This means that the Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, was left with a choice: Either release parents along with children, or separate parents from children."
"The federal courts have made the situation even less tenable. They have stated that the Trump administration cannot work with the Mexican government to house potential asylum claimants on the Mexican side of the border to keep families together; they have stated that the Trump administration cannot separate families for prolonged periods of time. A series of conflicting lower-court rulings has left the general policy in limbo."
"This means that Congress ought to act. Everyone should be on the same page with regard to those crossing the border illegally. We should have an expedient system for determining the validity of asylum claims; we should give families the option of staying together in detention pending such determination."
"But Democrats in Congress refuse to act. They won't change the regulations to allow families to remain together in custody, and they won't provide the funding necessary to keep detained families in some level of comfort. Instead, they snipe at the supposed cruelty of the Trump administration, which simply seeks to end the policy of "catch and release" that results in hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants remaining indefinitely in the country."