Editorial: Trump used children to try to get his wall

President Donald Trump listens during a cabinet meeting at the White House. Photo / AP

If his recent meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un displayed Donald Trump at his best, the scenes at the US border with Mexico over the past two weeks showed him at his worst. His eventual backdown came only after many more Americans than usual expressed their shame and disgust at what this President was doing in their name.

So did the United Nations, the Pope and some other governments, notably France and Canada, but, strangely, not ours. Foreign Minister Winston Peters, now acting Prime Minister, said Cabinet ministers were "concerned" but it was an internal matter of the US. After the backdown Peters said the Government had conveyed its concerns to the US Embassy the previous day.

It is already evident that Peters will present a different face to the world than Jacinda Ardern would probably have done. She likely would have expressed something more heartfelt than "concern" for the treatment of these children, happening as she was awaiting the birth of her own first child.

Immigration is a volatile political issue in most developed countries at present. An estimated 65.6 million people around the world have been driven from their homes by civil wars or persecution. Among them are nearly 23 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
Border control procedures have no need to separate children from their parents.

Attempting to defend the indefensible, Trump pointed to Europe saying, "The United States will not be a migrant camp, and it will not be a refugee holding facility...." But that is exactly how the US appeared to the world for the first time. We have not been accustomed to seeing tents, encampments and steel cages on the US border until this northern summer.

Trump claimed to be obliged to remove children from detained parents acting in accordance with a law enacted by his Democrat opponents, offering to change the law if the Democrats would vote to fund the asinine "wall" he wants to build along the entire Mexican border. To use family separations as leverage for a political purpose was reprehensible.

It has also turned out to be dishonest. He had claimed he had no power to override the law against child detentions with an executive order. But when the heat finally got too hot for him, he would issue the executive order.

Polling showed registered Republicans were supporting his cruelty but they are the only segment of the American population that was. Even some prominent Republicans had expressed horror at what he was doing. Former First Ladies Michelle Obama, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton called for more humanity at the border and even Melania Trump made an appeal for compassion.

Increasingly this Administration seems to be shrinking to the dimensions of the President and a small loyal cadre who reinforce his worst impulses. The White House officials who seemed capable of restraining him last year have mostly gone. In their absence Trump is doing what he pleases, dealing with North Korea well but discarding the nuclear deal with Iran, falling out with Western allies in Europe, bullying Canada and inviting trade wars with China and Europe.

Those who were amused by him when he was running for President believed he would not be a bad as his critics feared. They were wrong, he is worse.