“We’re disappointed that those making the decisions are not here,’’ Brittney Nystrom, of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

But their disappointment in the president is even greater.

“You’d think that this administration, at this point in time, would want to do the right thing” in guaranteeing due process to children, said Mary Meg McCarthy of the Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center. In some ways, she said, their rights were actually better protected under George W. Bush: “The head of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] at that time, Julie Myers, really believed in access to legal counsel, so there was at least that recognition.”