H/T pic ocregister.con
General John Kelly, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, was recognized by us as a problem by Federale in February: John Kelly, You’re No Jumpin’ Joe Swing and by myself in DHS Chief Kelly Failing/Betraying Country: Time For The Trump Treatment.
The situation has now become much worse. Kelly seems to be deliberately sabotaging verifiable successes stemming from President Trump’s election.
Separate mothers and children: How a Trump threat deterred illegal migrants By Julia Edwards Ainsley Reuters Thu Apr 13, 2017 reported
President Donald Trump has won the first major battle in his war on illegal immigration, and he did it without building his wall.The victory was announced last week by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which released figures showing a 93 percent drop since December of parents and children caught trying to cross the Mexico border illegally.
In December, 16,000 parents and children were apprehended; in March, a month in which immigration typically increases because of temperate weather, the number was just over 1,100.
The reason was a classic example of how self-deportation works: Fear.
Central Americans had heard about Trump’s get-tough policies. And public service announcements on radio and television presented bleak pictures of what awaited those who traveled north.
But the Trumpsters has added an important element
..a working group consisting of Capitol Hill staffers and others called together by Trump’s transition team… identified a major obstacle - the large numbers of women and children continuing to cross the border.Because a federal court ruling bars prolonged immigration detention of juveniles, the Obama administration generally released mothers and children to live in the United States while awaiting resolution of their asylum or deportation cases.
The incoming Trump administration viewed that policy as providing encouragement for women to make the dangerous journey north with their children in tow...
Since the court ruling on children was an obstacle to prolonged detention, why not separate them from their mothers, sending children into foster care or protective federal custody while their mothers remained in detention centers...
This was a masterstroke.
Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Maria Andrea Matamoros told Reuters“That worries any mother that wants to go to the United States with their kid, and being separated drastically changes their plans," she said.
Hence the 93% drop in crossings December-March.
So what did our tough Marine Corps Protector do?
When Kelly and his advisers saw the numbers dropping, they announced they were shelving the idea of separating women and children
A messier and more extensive version of this capitulation is Kelly says DHS won't separate families at the border by Tal Kopan CNN Wed Mar 29, 2017
What we are dealing with here is Psychops –
“planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.”
as Wikipedia currently puts it. This has been a Big Deal in military thinking since at least the end of WWII. None of the threatened consequences actually have to happen. Even a man with what appears to have been very limited combat experience has to have heard a great deal about this. It cannot be a new concept.
So why is Kelly throwing this into reverse? Whose side is he on?
