PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

When Joe Biden became president, I hoped he would put in place specific actions to correct one of the most egregious – not to mention intentional – abuses of power Donald Trump.

It was the policy to separate immigrant children from their parents at the Southern border.

If you are a parent, imagine the emotions involved to have your children ripped away from you.  Call it kidnapping, which is what it was.

Now, it appears that a new influx of immigrants at the Southern border will create at least two results – (a) a political challenge for the Biden Administration policy to adopt sensible immigration politicies, and (b) a likely delay in the ability to reunite children and parents separated by Trump.

Back on February 2, Biden announced the start of efforts to identify and reunite hundreds of families who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The new president signed an executive order creating a task force to reunite the families, a step toward fulfilling his campaign promise.

“With the first action we are going to work to undo the moral and national shame of the previous administration that literally, not figuratively, ripped children from the arms of their families at the border and with no plan, none whatsoever, to reunify the children who are still in custody and their parents,” he said.

The fact is that the Trump Administration separated at least 5,500 children from their parents along the border between July 2017 and June 2018.  The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the government over the policy, says it’s likely that at least 1,000 of those families remain separated — parents scattered mostly across Central America and children living with relatives in the United States.

Many of those parents, unsure if or when they would ever be together again, have spent the past several years trying to raise their children over video calls.  Some returned to the U.S. border in hopes of finding their children but were once again apprehended by immigration agents and deported a second time.

Now, a new challenge.

Looming over the debate about general immigration reform, as well as the effort to reunite children and families, is a new surge of migrants at the southern border.

Senator Lindsay Graham said the new border crisis makes it “much harder” to make progress on helping Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

So, where we now sit creates more delay for reunification.  That’s, again, almost unthinkable.

What Trump did to separate migrant children and their parents created an indelible stain on America and it now appears that stain won’t be washed away any time soon. 

My fond hope continues to be that the reunification obligation won’t get lost in another political quagmire in Washington, D.C.