The only speculative TV script I ever managed to write, years ago, was for my favorite show, Strangers with Candy (created by, among others, Stephen Colbert), a one-camera dark comedy starring Amy Sedaris, and I made its villains two agents from the I.N.S., or Immigration and Naturalization Service, precursor to ICE. I portrayed them as cruel and bumbling, and I had the regular characters on the show, in the name of “Community Through Exclusion,” blaming illegal immigrants for just about everything, including the sinking of the Titanic. When I was a reporter-researcher at The New Republic some years later, I mocked Bill O’Reilly and others for their alarm over border security.

Over the years, as I learned more about our immigration system, I changed my views and became convinced that my former insouciance had been seriously misguided. I’ve come to believe that limiting immigration and enforcing such limits are crucial to protecting poorer Americans from a race to the bottom and a winner-take-all economy. My aim here isn’t to convert readers in 1,200 words over something that took me many years. But I want to note that it’s with some understanding of those who are upset about immigration enforcement and some respect for the width of the chasm between Americans on this issue that I offer some thoughts about what’s happening at the southern border, where parents and children are getting separated from one another if they arrive illegally (and sometimes, it seems, if they arrive legally).

To put it bluntly, and in what I hope are nonpartisan terms, what we’re seeing is the product of an insane immigration system that leaves us with insane options. The latest choice is between separating parents from children, a policy so toxic that even Republicans like Ted Cruz are seeking to bring an end to it, and releasing thousands of migrants into the United States with little hope of them being seen again. It’s just one more indication of how the entire machinery of immigration has become a Frankenstein’s monster that no one, of any political leaning, applauds.

We can’t review our entire dreadful system, which goes far beyond illegal immigration or asylum seeking, but this crisis requires some specific background. Traditionally, there was a strong disincentive to bringing a child with you to cross the border illegally: it made a dangerous trip even more dangerous. But after what was called the “child-migrant crisis” of 2014, when tens of thousands of children and teenagers from Central America arrived unaccompanied at the U.S. border and requested asylum, Barack Obama’s White House felt that it had no choice but to release them into the country. This was because of something called the Flores consent decree, which forbids minors from being detained for more than 20 days. When family members were accompanying them, they typically got released, too. This increased the incentive to travel as a family.

These arrivals were given a notice to appear in court at a later date, but tens of thousands never showed up. Between the years 2013 and 2018, the number of “family units” apprehended quintupled, reaching more than 75,000 in 2018. Some commenters claim that it’s because violence in their home countries has increased, but some migrants also admit, as The New York Times has reported, “they believed it would cause the authorities to release them from custody sooner.” The more that taking a child on the journey to the United States has resulted in a successful re-settlement, the more that other families, or unaccompanied minors, have taken similar risks.