The plight of children who accompany their parents crossing the border into the United States illegally has captured the attention of the press this week. Politicians and media types have loudly decried the longtime practice of sending children into foster care or other temporary housing situations, while their parents are detained until the U.S. government can determine their fate.

Next week, Congress is set to vote on a Republican immigration bill with a provision that would reportedly end this practice. But this policy change would likely result in the children being sent to adult detention centers with their parents — a fate that is arguably worse than being sent elsewhere.

{This is a shameful propaganda piece promoting open borders.  Everyone entering the United States illegally MUST BE DETAINED.  Common sense should make that obvious to journalists and bishops.  The fact that parents cross our borders illegally with their children is a huge problem for everyone; ICE, the parents, the children, people who write or comment about the problem.

It is not improbable that some parents, who could leave their children with other relatives while they seek legal status in the U.S. instead choose to bring their children with them when they cross the border illegally counting on the humanitarian reputation of the United States to increase the likelihood that they will be allowed to stay in the United States.  If that were to be adopted as the U.S. policy you could be sure that the flow parents with children would increase exponentially.

Our detention centers were not build to house both adults and children.  To mingle children in a detention center populated primarily by adult men would increase the likelihood of sexual assaults on the children by single men, some of whom come from the worst cartel gangs in Mexico.

The solution Congress, under pressure from Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the USCCB will probably pursue is the allocation of billions of dollars to build detention centers for families with children.

It is wrong for bishops, individually or speaking through the USCCB to push for open borders as a solution to the humanitarian problem presented by the illegal arrival in our nation of adults with children.  Such soft-hearted advocacy when combined with soft-headed thinking does not help anyone in this crisis.

Everyone who enters the United States must be detained while the possibility of their remaining here is adducted; the challenge in this emergency is to detain everyone, man, woman and child, in the most humane conditions possible.  The cost will be terrific and mistakes will be made by government agents, but journalists and bishops must not play politics and inflame passions by portraying the Trump Administration as heartless.}