Trump's immigration crisis is a disaster-in-waiting for border hawks

Nor does that president have the capacity to devise a more effective response, it seems, since any policy solution would require two negotiations. First, negotiation with Congress, to change asylum law to override the court decisions currently tying up the Trump White House’s attempts at deterrence — like the attempt to make Central American asylum petitioners wait out the process in Mexico. Second, negotiation with the Mexican government, to get more help discouraging migration on its side of the border. For a different president these tasks would be challenging; for Trump, they seem impossible.

Hence the flailing on display this week, with the president purging his entire Homeland Security apparatus, in the hopes of finding somebody with the requisite toughness to succeed where the present staff has failed. Since “toughness” apparently means one of two things — returning to the cruelty of child separation or ordering Border Patrol agents to simply ignore asylum law themselves — it’s doubtful that this purge will produce anything except more unpopularity for Trump’s policies, and more unsuccessful collisions with the courts.

The flailing also absolves the Democratic Party, currently torn between radicalism and evasion on immigration, from actually having to propose a coherent alternative to the White House’s approach.