Despite the intensity of media coverage blaming the Trump administration for the separation of children from their alleged parents who have crossed into the United States illegally, a poll taken by Rasmussen during the height of this intensity reveals that a healthy majority of Americans blame the parents of the children separated, not the U.S. government.
Fifty-four percent of likely voters in the Rasmussen Poll say that they place blame primarily on the parents who have crossed into the U.S. illegally, while only 35 percent told pollsters that the U.S. government under President Donald Trump is mostly to blame.
Rasmussen took the survey of 1,000 likely voters on June 19 and 20, while media attention on the issue was at its most intense. The media attention was almost uniformly negative toward Trump, and was used by Democratic politicians to score political points in the highly-charged atmosphere.
With Democratic Party hopes fading that the “Russia Collusion” story would create a “Blue Wave” in the November mid-term elections, many leading Democrats latched onto the “family separation” story as their newest hope for mid-term success. But the Rasmussen Poll reveals that the story, part of the larger issue of illegal immigration, may actually be a clear net gain for the Republicans — that is, if they don’t blow it by opposing Trump on this issue.
Rasmussen also asked likely voters to respond to Trump’s assertion, “The United States will not be a migrant camp. And it will not be a refugee-holding facility — it won’t be.” The same figure, 54 percent, agreed with Trump’s blunt statement. This indicates that should Democrats insist on essentially opening the borders of the United States to massive immigration, they are courting electoral disaster in the Fall.
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Why would a majority of Americans support President Trump in the face of overwhelming negative media coverage of the present story?
First, Americans generally do not favor open borders. While most do not feel good about the idea of children being separated from their parents, they know that the present “crisis” is a result of the Trump administration actually trying to do something about the flood of immigration into the country that has been happening for decades.
Americans also most likely understand that when a person commits an illegal act and goes to jail, that person, unfortunately, is going to be separated from his children. After all, when a man gets caught holding up a liquor store and is sent to jail, they don’t put his kids in the cell with him. Ordinarily, if there is no other custodial parent or relative with whom to place the child of a convicted criminal, the child is left to Child Protective Services for care. While no one thinks this is ideal, blame for the situation is rightly placed on the person who has committed the crime, not the government.
Under federal law, unaccompanied alien children are turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. Each child is then placed with the nearest relative or family friend living in the United States.
It should also be emphasized that such separation is due to parents illegally crossing into the United States, and it did not begin with President Trump. The Obama administration prosecuted illegal aliens as well, including some asylum seekers. In 2014, the Obama administration placed hundreds of families in immigration detention. Then, when federal courts said that they could not hold families for months without justifying the detention, most simply got released while their cases were pending. This was the policy that has been dubbed “catch and release.” In many cases, those released just disappeared into the United States and never showed up for their court dates.
What the Rasmussen Poll indicates is that Americans are losing patience with the inability or unwillingness of the federal government to deal with the immigration issue, and they do not want it dealt with by simply opening the borders of the United States to just anyone desirous of living in America. They see Donald Trump as the first president in many years who has the will to deal with the issue, and they are ready to reward those members of Congress who back him in this effort — and punish those who oppose him.
Photo: AP Images
