OPINION:
Some Democrats in Congress continue to further sully the image of America’s federal lawmakers.
These Democrats fall all over themselves in their intramural competition to see which one of them can behave the most unconscionably on border protection issues.
To the naked eye — as well as to one peering through something as large as the Hubble Telescope — these same anger-management failures of the Democrat persuasion can’t resist taking every imaginable opportunity to inaccurately and unfairly condemn the Trump administration.
For what?
For everything under the sun that goes wrong —or that goes right but is still wrong in the minds of these mad partisans.
For the purposes of this discussion, these churlish legislators as a group blame the administration for every unfortunate border incident involving aliens who jump the U.S- Mexico border.
SEE ALSO: DHS defends handling of girl who died at border, says father never raised alarm
But it is veteran Democratic legislator Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California who has crossed the line between political vituperation and dangerously irresponsible partisan viciousness.
Mrs. Feinstein, who crossed a different line in her intemperate treatment of Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination hearing, is the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat.
Now she’s accusing agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security of maltreating a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl who died in DHS custody after her father attempted to sneak her into the U.S. in a remote part of New Mexico on Dec. 3.
Homeland officials say her death was her father’s fault for not having alerted them to her condition for eight of the hours agents held her and her father in custody awaiting transportation to the nearest U.S. Border Patrol station 90 miles away.
Agents say they gave her the standard examination they gave the 262 other people in the group seeking to jump the border at the Antelope Wells (N.M.) Port of Entry.
Mrs. Feinstein called the border agents and Homeland Security liars.
“It’s heartbreaking and unacceptable that a 7-year-old girl died of dehydration and shock last week in Customs and Border Protection custody,” the increasingly vituperative 85-year-old senator said. “Reports indicate that she was not given water for the eight hours she was in custody before seizures started, even though she’d had nothing to drink for days.”
Homeland officials say drinking water was readily available to the detainees.
Nevertheless, the illegal-immigration lobby went into its habitual blame-America’s government-first howling mode.
The Washington Times’ Stephen Dinan reported that “Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an advocacy group, called it a ’preventable death ’ and blamed a ’deliberately cruel and dehumanizing system.’”
Mr. Dinan reported that “…Homeland Security officials said the father had every opportunity to alert them, both during an initial 20-question screening each migrant is given when first apprehended, or during the period when migrants were waiting for the bus to return, or again while the bus was taking them back.”
The border-integrity situation in an important sense has gotten worse after two years of Republican control of the White House, Senate and House.
As The Washington Times reported, the Congress has not allocated enough money to begin to keep the border reasonably secure in the absence of the promised border wall.
More than 560,000 illegal immigrants are on the run in the U.S., even though they were supposed to have been deported, the government reports.
ICE warns it might have to release more detainees because “finances are being stretched so far, facing both interior challenges and the new surge at the border.”
Budget constraints in 2013 were behind the release of some detainees with “serious criminal records,” ICE says.
“We’re worried that might happen to us again,” he says, according to The Washington Times report.
Republicans will continue to hold the presidency and the Senate through 2020 and will remain in control of the House for a few more days.
If you’re holding your breath for them to man up to the budgetary border problem, don’t count on being around to toot any horns —or take a cup of kindness with Mrs. Feinstein — this New Year’s Eve.
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