Where We Started vs Where We End Up

We started this week with news of the government separating children from those who illegally crossed the U.S. southern border and ended the week with new orders by the government to reunite them.   

A lot happens in a week. 

How did we arrive at this point? 

For a better understanding, let's travel back in time.

The government says illegal border crossings spiked in March – so what happened before/after that?

The President announced in his January State of The Union he was open to granting citizenship to a select group of young adults brought into the country illegally as children as long as that policy change was part of immigration reform that included money to build a border wall. He set an arbitrary deadline for March 5 for Congress to compromise; that didn't happen. Weeks later, in late March, during Congress' spending bill debate, the opportunity to legislate new immigration reform surfaced again. 

No compromise.

No citizenship.

No money for a wall.

But construction started on a fence that looked very much like a wall.

And a caravan of asylum seekers arrived at the border – one of them a former Honduran politician fleeing a politically unstable country. 

Chief of the Rio Grande Valley sector for Customs and Border Control told Reuters in early April he worried the caravan would inspire others to do the same. 

Fast forward to today, the Trump administration will confront a similar legal battle the Obama Administration confronted (and as one legal expert says, every administration confronted before them). A little-known court ruling that prevents the U.S. government from holding minor migrant children more than 20 days. – normally not long enough for legal proceedings – one of the reasons why DHS says 500,000 families from central America have stayed in the U.S. since 2013.

But traditions change.

This week in news we learned:

Baseball attendance mysteriously drops.

Marijuana laws may ease. 

Americans will soon spend more time online than watching TV.

An American tradition we can depend on? The same country that blasts people into space, combats the plague, and gives more than 400B to charity, still fights over unresolved issues. 

But the diversity of our accomplishments should show us, what seems impossible, may be the next big headline.

We’ll watch for it - Have a great weekend!

Jenna & The SmartHER Squad

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