The Whole Animal

As long-time readers of this blog will know, I'm not one to always personally seek out the latest Ross Douthat column, but a friend yesterday put one directly in my path in a way that proved unavoidable. In this piece, Douthat explains his reasoning behind why he has decided (thank God) not to vote for Trump in 2020, but he wrestles as he does so (in a joking way) with the voice of what he calls his "right-wing id," which tries and ultimately fails to convince him that Trump's administration has fulfilled many of Douthat's own policy aspirations. 

There is much I disagree with in the piece, per usual. As thoroughly critical of Trump as Douthat is in this column, I still think he manages to significantly understate the threat the man poses to democracy and the rule of law, particularly if he were to serve a second term. There are also places where Douthat flirts with a kind of moral equivalence-hunting that is tiresome. It's no longer a sign of moral independence, amidst the mountain of Trump's criminality, to make a point of saying that the media should also devote some attention to Hunter Biden. No, the media should not. 

The particular passage that raised my hackles was, inevitably, the section on immigration. What bothered me most was not just that I disagree with Douthat; it's that he seems to want to attain a happy medium that is logically untenable. Douthat's "right-wing id"—in this section—first wishes to call his attention to the fact that Trump largely achieved Douthat's own restrictionist goals. He slashed the number of immigrants entering the country. No one disputes this, though many of us would beg to differ that it can be seen as a good thing.

Douthat then argues with his right-wing id by saying that Trump may have reached the end he sought, but he did so by inhumane means that Douthat would not approve—namely, family separation. To this, the id fires back that family separation was reversed relatively quickly, and anyway the Democrats also reintroduced family detention and have a record of inhumane immigration policies and mass deportation. To which the conscious Douthat, the ego or superego writing the piece, replies, yes but family separation is still having horrific consequences that are playing out today, and so on. 

Much about this invented interchange betrays ignorance of how immigration enforcement actually works in this country. We will put aside the oddness of Douthat's implicit two-fold suggestion that the family separation that occurred under "zero tolerance" may have been inhumane, but somehow the mass prolonged detention of adult asylum-seekers, the confining of people who have committed only civil violations in prison-like facilities, workplace and community raids targeting undocumented immigrants (which also, by the way, separate families), and all the other things that make up the routine aspects of U.S. immigration enforcement, somehow do not raise any similar moral concerns. 

We will leave aside as well that the family separation policy was only completely reversed due to a court order halting it—not to the administration's own muddled backpedaling—and the fact that Douthat meanwhile makes no mention of other in some ways even more extreme policies that the administration has introduced more recently to make life hell for asylum-seekers: such as the "Remain in Mexico" program, the so-called "safe third country" agreements, the Title 42 expulsions under COVID-19 that violate U.S. law and international commitments, and on and on. Douthat should take the time to familiarize himself with these policies, but I will leave the subject for now because this is still not my main objection. 

What I most take issue with in Douthat's internal dialogue is his suggestion that a hypothetical administration could somehow fulfill his restrictionist policy agency without stooping to such "inhumane" means as family separation or family detention. In reality, one implies the other. This is an area where the Trump administration is actually being more consistent, albeit more evil, than the columnist. 

I mean this quite literally. If the fundamental goal is to keep people out, then Trump's most iniquitous policies have the force of cold logic on their side. The way the asylum system works (or at least, the way it is supposed to work, and generally did  work before Trump started expelling all asylum seekers without due process, under Title 42 and other policies) is this: asylum-seekers, including families traveling together, arrive at the border and ask for protection. If they pass a credible fear interview, they receive a notice to appear in immigration court. At this stage, they could in theory be released and trusted to return for their hearings (which the vast majority do). 

This option, however, is detested by restrictionists (it is what Trump calls "catch and release") because it means temporarily forfeiting control over the body and mobility of immigrants who have not yet received permanent permission to be in this country. Restrictionists are therefore far more likely to prefer detaining people for the duration of their asylum proceedings, so that they can be rapidly deported if that hearing reaches a negative determination. When people are traveling together as a family, however, this process hits a snag. 

The government could simply detain the family together. This, however, is the very same family detention that Douthat's right-wing id accused the Democrats (accurately) of reintroducing (as if right-wingers suddenly regarded the policy as a bad thing). It means holding children behind bars, which Douthat would presumably consider to be "inhumane." Moreover, the practice has been declared unlawful. A 2015 court ruling by the judge who oversees the Flores litigation established a 20-day window in which the U.S. government must release children from detention. Until Trump came along, this tended to mean that family units were generally released together. 

So we appear to be faced either with the "catch and release" that restrictionists abhor, or the prolonged family detention that is currently illegal. Douthat's favored policy options would seem to paint him into a corner from which there is no exit that he would find acceptable. 

To those diabolically bent on restriction, however, a third logical possibility suggests itself: separating the families, in order to detain the adult parents indefinitely, for the remainder of their hearings. This is the proposal the Trump administration decided to pursue, though it took the even more hideous step in many cases of first criminally prosecuting the parents for border offenses, before deporting them.

It was ghastly. It amounted to a violation of international law. It was torture. It was kidnapping. And it also made perfect sense from a restrictionist point of view. To abandon this policy option is, under current laws governing the protection and rights of children, essentially to accept "catch and release." It means giving up on the project of trying to perfectly control the mobility of thousands of people across the southern border. Which I am perfectly willing to do. But I imagine Douthat is not. This is why I find his position illogical: in essence, he wants to have it both ways.

Ironically, for a column devoted to wrestling with his conservative conscience, Douthat in this regard is doing what liberals are so often accused of: that is, wanting the benefits of something without paying the price of dirty hands. How often do we hear it said of liberals that they are perfectly happy to reap the benefits of U.S. prosperity and global ascendency, say, but don't want to concern themselves with the sordid details of how the sausage gets made. As a character in a Norman Mailer novel remarks to his son: "Liberals refuse to look at the whole animal. Just give us the tasty parts, they say."

Douthat is here refusing to look at the whole animal of what his restrictionist policies entail. Trying to wield a massive, overfunding militarized bureaucracy to control the mobility of all human beings across a 2,000-mile border, to detain and deport anyone who crosses without permission, will inevitably be "inhumane." You can't have the policy goal of lower immigration without accepting this moral consequence. 

Of course, an administration might enforce such policies with less racist rhetoric, less vitriol, less bombast than Trump deploys, and that alone would probably be a good thing. But the reality of confining asylum-seeking families and expelling them from the country is going to be ugly no matter what words one uses to describe it. 

To those of us willing to accept that human mobility does not in fact have to be fully regulated, that some small number of people escaping deportation due to "catch and release" is not a problem (indeed, may be a good thing), this poses no conundrum. (It doesn't necessary mean we need formally open borders—but accepting a certain perpetual unreason and laxity in the interests of mercy is a perfectly tenable option.) But I don't think there is a way for Douthat to retain his restrictionist goals and nonetheless find some way around it. He can't just take the tasty bits. He has to accept the whole animal—or else push the animal away and eat some leafy vegetables.