Trump Will Only Agree to Protect Some Kids If He's Allowed to Harm Others

[Content Note: Nativism; white supremacy; violence.]

Donald Trump has indicated he might dial back his decision to end DACA, but only in exchange for an absolutely ridiculous and heinous set of concessions from Democrats. Michael D. Shear at the New York Times reports:

The White House on Sunday delivered to Congress a long list of hard-line immigration measures that [Donald] Trump is demanding in exchange for any deal to protect the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, imperiling a fledgling bipartisan push to reach a legislative solution.

Before agreeing to provide legal status for 800,000 young immigrants brought here illegally as children, Mr. Trump will insist on the construction of a wall across the southern border, the hiring of 10,000 immigration agents, tougher laws for those seeking asylum, and denial of federal grants to "sanctuary cities," officials said.

The White House is also demanding the use of the E-Verify program by companies to keep [undocumented] immigrants from getting jobs, an end to people bringing their extended family into the United States, and a hardening of the border against thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America. Such a move would shut down loopholes that encourage parents from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to send their children illegally into the United States, where many of them melt into American communities and become undocumented immigrants.

Just to be abundantly clear: Children fleeing widespread, deadly violence are not "illegals." They are refugees. And instead of welcoming children who make perilous journeys fraught with the threat of death, sexual violence, exposure, and hunger — and only the children fortunate enough to survive these threats — to the relative safety of this nation, the president wants to make sure they are kept out, as part of a deal to protect those already here.

This is just unfathomably cruel.

And it is, of course, just one of many of Trump's vile demands: "[T]he proposals, taken together, amount to a Christmas-in-October wish list for immigration hard-liners inside the White House." Indeed. Which is why one suspects this filthy laundry list has Stephen Miller's nasty fingerprints all over it. Steve Bannon may be gone, but his protege remains. And is frighteningly influential.

This administration routinely traffics in unrelenting malice, but perhaps nothing more clearly and simply underlines the depths of its depravity than this effort to create a literal Sophie's Choice between which set of vulnerable children the people obliged to negotiate with this sadist want to protect from his abuse.