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The Trump administration announced its plan Wednesday for a network of detention centers to hold migrant families for potentially as long as it takes to process their applications for asylum. This is the same government, of course, that faces lawsuits and harsh internal criticism over how poorly it has managed adult detention centers — let’s be honest and call them prisons — and where, among other allegations, they left a man with a parasite in his brain linger for a year without medical attention. And it thinks it can build a better prison for families? Let’s be clear from the outset: It is harmful to children to incarcerate them with or without their parents and siblings . (8/21)

The announcement Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security that it will issue a regulation allowing families of illegal immigrants to be detained together longer while awaiting immigration hearings is welcome news that will end court-sanctioned child abuse and endangerment. The new regulation will strike a blow against criminal cartels that engage in human smuggling and will reduce the terrible death toll of migrants making the dangerous journey to enter the U.S. illegally from south of our border. By reducing illegal immigration, the regulation will also reduce the number of rapes and other assaults against migrants on their trek north. (Dan Stein, 8/22)

Between 2012 and 2017, as part of a study of how low-income mothers feed their children, we talked with women who had moved from Mexico and Central America to the United States. They came here because they wanted to be able to offer their children more than they’d had growing up, including a full belly at the end of every day. Over the course of our research — amid increasing ICE raids, tightened work restrictions and growing anti-immigrant sentiment stoked by President Trump’s rhetoric — we found that many families became afraid to apply for food assistance programs. The Trump administration’s new “public charge” rule will intensify this kind of fear for immigrant families, including those who are in this country legally. One result will be more hungry families and children. (Sarah Brown, Sinikka Elliott and Annie Hardison-Moody, 8/210

I recently went to a parents’ meeting at my children’s elementary school in the rural town of Aguacatán, Guatemala, a few hours from the Mexico border. As usual, I was one of the only men there.This disparity has nothing to do with machismo or Latin gender roles; it’s that there just aren’t many men in Aguacatán. They’re all in places like North Carolina, Florida and the state of Washington. It has been this way for years; what’s new now is that there are getting to be fewer women and children, too. They are also heading north. ... Now, however, for the first time my wife and I are considering trying to get to the United States, too. We wake up early most mornings and watch our three young kids sleeping, wondering what future awaits them here. It increasingly feels like there isn’t one. (William Lopez, 8/22)