Contradictions

The Border Patrol's parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, has stopped referring migrants with children for prosecution. They claim the 'zero tolerance' policy is still in effect, but since they have been ordered not to separate parents and children, and since there is no legal way to hold the children under existing law and jurisprudence for more than 20 days, they simply cannot do everything they've been told to do.

One might think that this is a sort-of mutiny at CBP, but it's really just a basic contradiction in their orders. They're ordered to arrest everyone and hold them for prosecution; they're also ordered not to separate the alleged parents from their children. They can't do both of these things, so they're failing. Failure is what will usually happen when one programs any system to do contradictory things.

I rather liked Dianne Feinstein's bill on this issue, by the way, because it would have built a similar contradiction into nearly all Federal law enforcement. Anywhere within 100 miles of a border or port of entry, such as an international airport, Federal agents would have been barred from separating parents from their children -- "parents," not "illegal immigrant parents" or anything similar. Pretty much all Americans with children would have been liberated from obedience to Federal laws in one fell swoop.

The head of CBP says he's working to 'develop a plan' on this issue, but I'll be surprised if he can come up with one. New orders will need to be written, preferably by the legislature, that redoes this tangle of old laws and court rulings and newer executive orders.