Biden’s cabinet appointees are not merely worried about emotional images of separated families swaying judges and juries. This administration, from the president on down, believes there is something unwholesome about enforcing immigration law. If that means granting every individual who can prove that he or she was part of a separated family vast sums of money, then it appears that Biden is willing to say “so be it.”

But what those involved in this legal tangle—which also involves an effort by the ACLU to force the government to give every illegal immigrant, including dubious asylum claimants, a way to remain in the U.S.—are ignoring is that the optics of granting illegal immigrants a winning lottery ticket may be just as bad for Biden as those of separated families were for Trump.

Many Americans felt instinctive sympathy for crying children and anguished parents. But there is a difference between thinking that those families were paying too high a price for crossing the border illegally or making an asylum claim and believing that they are entitled to nearly half a million dollars each.