Milbank: Obama accused of ‘lawlessness’ for following the law

?Ay, caramba! Palin deserves kudos for using her entire Spanish vocabulary. But this border crisis, sowed years ago and building for months, is neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor. It’s a humanitarian nightmare in which children, some as young as 4, can face physical and sexual abuse, injury and death in their lonely journeys. What’s upside down about the Cruz-Palin argument is that this crisis has actually been brought about by Obama following the law.

Law to blame

The most obvious and direct cause of the flood of children from Central America is the 2008 human trafficking law that ended the rapid deportation of unaccompanied minors who come illegally from countries other than Mexico and Canada. The law essentially guarantees long stays for these immigrants by promising them a deportation process that can take 18 months, during which time they are often placed with family members who have little incentive to have the kids show up for hearings.

The law, which cleared both houses of Congress by unanimous consent and was signed by George W. Bush in his final days in office, was bipartisan and well-intentioned — but it was exploited by the very traffickers it was meant to target, who encouraged this huge emigration of children from Central America.

Obama’s conservative critics say the crisis was caused by his decision to suspend deportation of children who were brought illegally to the United States before 2007. That probably contributed to the problem. Central American parents may have been led to believe Obama’s leniency toward the so-called “Dreamers” would also benefit these current arrivals. The Obama administration’s alternative explanation is that the children coming from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are fleeing violence. That is surely another factor.

But even in the querulous quartet on the Senate floor Wednesday, there was an acknowledgment that the 2008 trafficking law is, as Flake put it, “the root of it or the main part of it.” Cornyn agreed that “we need to change that 2008 law” because it makes it so “these immigrants who come across will not be detained.”

Alas, there was no such honesty from Cruz, who forecast 90,000 child immigrants coming illegally this year and 145,000 next year. “This explosion is the direct consequence of the president’s lawlessness,” he repeated, adding, “The only response that will stop this humanitarian disaster is for President Obama to start enforcing the law.”

The truth — that this disaster has been caused by Obama’s adherence to the law — would be hard for Cruz to square with his worldview.