RALEIGH – It was only a matter of time before the leading Democrats in North Carolina joined the chorus on the Left in smearing President Donald Trump over a illegal immigrant family detention policy in practice for years.
Cooper announced Tuesday his decision to pull North Carolina’s National Guard contingent from border operations, protesting what he (and his media friends) refer to as “Trump’s” family separation policy.
“Gov. Roy Cooper has recalled three members of the state National Guard from the southern border over the Trump administration policy of separating children from their migrant parents.
“The cruel policy of tearing children away from their parents requires a strong response, and I am recalling the three members of the North Carolina National Guard from the border,” Cooper said in a statement.
Members of the NC National Guard had assisted at the southern border under Presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama. The current deployment includes a helicopter and three National Guard members.”
The guard members had just started a 120 rotation on June 1. Their mission was to help federal and state agencies with aerial observation to bolster customs and border enforcement operations, according to their spokesman Lt. Col. Matthew Devivo.
That “cruel policy” Cooper refers to has been around since the Obama years, but now it is politically convenient to oppose since Trump is the one enforcing it.
When Obama was questioned about the family detention centers his response was essentially that ‘We can’t have these adults risking the lives of their or others’ children to illegally enter the country.’
Instead of outcry in 2014/2015, it was crickets.
The partisan pettiness from Cooper was not lost on former Gov. Pat McCrory, who called Cooper’s “disgraceful action” in a couple of tweets.
Shame on @RoyCooperNC for using our N.C. national guard troops as political pawns. Our troops have helped secure the border for many years and Cooper’s disgraceful action will make us less safe. https://t.co/TOF5p4h3lq
— Pat McCrory (@PatMcCroryNC) June 19, 2018
Our national guard has been fighting to stop drugs and human trafficking from coming across our borders, and Governor Cooper’s shameful act makes N.C. less secure. Our national guards’ mission has had nothing to do with the politics being debated in Washington. Shame!
— Pat McCrory (@PatMcCroryNC) June 19, 2018
Ah, but Leftist political narratives have everything to do with Cooper’s actions as governor. When the Left says, ‘Jump!’, Cooper asks, ‘How high?’
But Cooper wasn’t the only one to jump on the bandwagon; his trusty sidekick state attorney general Josh Stein piled on right after him.
“Also on Tuesday, state Attorney General Josh Stein joined with 20 other Democratic attorneys general across the country calling on U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to stop separating children from their families at the border.
“The president’s family separation policy is an affront to American decency and the children’s humanity,” Stein said upon release of the letter to Sessions. “The administration must cease this cruelty immediately.”
Stein described the practice as “cruel and dangerous,” and at their core a violation of international, federal and state law, as well as judicial precedent.”
There they go again. This policy, right or wrong, was not instituted by the Trump administration. As executive the Trump administration is enforcing the law. Stein asserts Trump is violating the law by enforcing the law. Go figure.
Other elected North Carolina leaders are presenting solutions for the specific issue of family separations. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, filed legislation Tuesday to reform the handling of families arriving at the border, keeping them together and deporting the whole family unit if asylum is not granted.
The outcry is being questioned by Border Patrol leaders who insist the policy is not as extreme as the media suggests.
In an interview on NPR, National Border Patrol Council president Brandon Judd explained the reality.
“What we’re doing is we’re prosecuting these individuals. And we do separate them for a very, very short amount of time. It’s not this separation that people are thinking weeks, months, even years. That’s just not…if they go into the custody of other federal agencies, there could be a separation that’s a little bit longer, but that percentage is small because we just don’t have the facilities to hold very many people. So the zero tolerance, when people hear the zero tolerance, you would think that we’re prosecuting 100 percent of the people that are crossing the border. And that’s not true. In fact, we’re prosecuting between 10 and 20 percent of the people that cross border.”
It is possible, despite the heated partisan debates, to think the policy of separating young kids from their parents in such a manner to be a bad one, while also supporting a zero tolerance policy for illegal immigration.
In this current debate, very little attention is given to the prime movers in the way that President Obama (of all people) did in 2014. Whatever they are running from, these adults took their children with them on a very dangerous trip to illegally sneak across a national border, knowing they could be caught and face consequences.
If an American citizen was arrested for trespassing on private property, and happened to have brought his/her children along, guess what? They’d be separated when that parents was being arrested for a crime.
No matter. Cooper and the Democrats will milk this controversy for as much as it’s worth. The proof of how politically useful they find this issue to be will be evident when Democrats oppose specific legislation to fix it.
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