WH Incompetence Laid Bare by Immigration Fiasco

By Steve Benen

The day after addressing the family-separation disaster he created, Donald Trump bragged yesterday, “I signed a very good executive order yesterday.” A report in the Wall Street Journal this morning suggests the president is the only one who’s impressed.

Changing, competing and contradictory explanations of the administration’s immigration policy spread confusion from Washington, D.C., to the Mexican border, leaving front-line law-enforcement and social-service agencies unsure of what will happen to thousands of children. […]

Meanwhile, the federal government is still wrestling with the prospect of rapidly running out of space, money or both to detain immigrants—especially as family units.

Those factors create an immediate tension with prosecution policy. If the Trump administration stops prosecuting all adults for illegal border entry, it could maintain its detention capacity for longer, but paring back prosecutions would also amount to a significant retreat in the eyes of many, including the president himself.

The White House originally said the issue simply couldn’t be addressed with an executive order. Officials then threw one together, leaving many in the Department of Homeland Security in the dark, all while ignoring the advice of White House Counsel Don McGahn.

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