“How is the United States made better or more secure by throwing away this family’s eighteen years of law-abiding life in Connecticut? The answer is that we will be no better and no more secure. We will only be more callous, less compassionate, less fair, and we will continue to spin so far from the moral center that we may never find our way back.” In the New Yorker, the excellent (particularly here) Dave Eggers’ tells the story of an immigrant family hiding in a Connecticut church. As regular readers will note, I often end blurbs on this topic with this refrain: (feel safer?). That’s the part that really gets me. Even if you’re a security hawk, why would you want ICE and other agencies focusing on harmless families and border-crossing toddlers instead of actual threats?

+ NYT: Smugglers are making millions of dollars by extorting migrants after sneaking them into the United States and shuttling them from house to house.