If We Want to End the Border Crisis, It’s Time to Give Trump His Wall

The humanitarian situation will only get worse if we don’t tackle illegal immigration — and there’s one way to get a deal under this president

New York Magazine
New York Magazine

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Photo: Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images

By Andrew Sullivan

You could think of the last week as a solid victory for the Democrats and for basic human decency. An utterly indefensible and morally foul policy of separating children from their parents is over for now. Trump backed down amid a torrent of his usual lies and refusal to take responsibility for anything. We found a line even today’s GOP would not cross (although we also found plenty who were indeed prepared to cross it).

But it is emphatically not the end of this story, not simply because there are more than 2,000 children still apart from their families, with very little hope of ever finding their parents again, but because none of the underlying reasons for this atrocity in the first place have been addressed. Nor are they likely to be addressed in the Congress today, as one of the latest GOP immigration bills staggers toward failure. Nor do the Democrats seem able, willing, or united enough to tackle the problem at its source, by finding a legislative compromise with the GOP and president, on both legal and illegal…

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New York Magazine
New York Magazine

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