Jeb Bush calls for illegal kids to be treated ‘compassionately’

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — who previously described some illegals as committing little more than an “act of love” by crossing into the United States — has now come forward with a new call for compassion for those breaking the nation’s immigration laws.

Mr. Bush said in an interview with the Bradenton Herald that the government should not force the scores of illegal minor-aged immigrants who’ve poured into the United States in recent months to go back to their families in Central America without fully processing them first.

Granting them a full processing is the humanitarian way, he said, the Bradenton Herald reported.

“The administration has a responsibility to let people know they should not imperil their children and themselves by illegally entering the United States,” Mr. Bush said, emphasizing the need for processing over simply releasing, the Bradenton Herald reported. “The idea that it’s humanitarian to thrust these people into dangerous locations is wrong. We need to deal with it in a compassionate way.”

In April, Mr. Bush rose conservative hackles by saying that border control was necessary — but that some were forgetting the human side.

“There should be penalties for breaking the law,” Mr. Bush said in April. “But the way I look at this … is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally, they come to our country because their families — the dad who loved their children — was worried that their children didn’t have food on the table. And they wanted to make sure their family was intact and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love.”

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Mr. Bush has been a talked-about Republican candidate for the White House in 2016, although he hasn’t officially decided whether to run.