One of the more grotesque features of this administration*'s policy toward migrant families is the obvious fact that the administration* clearly has been making it up as it goes along, with no real plan about what to do next, and absolutely no appreciation for unintended consequences—or, as we say around the shebeen, Escobar's Hippos.

The administration* gins up hate and fear and then leaves the actual policy apparatus by which it acts upon that hate and fear to an ad hoc collection of towering incompetents who have no earthly idea what they're doing, and who sensible people wouldn't hire to park a car. Awful things, therefore, inevitably result. From The Daily Beast:

As part of the Trump administration’s plan to jail undocumented immigrants on military bases, the site at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, is slated to hold up to 7,5000 unaccompanied children. Attorneys with Earthjustice, the nation’s largest nonprofit environmental law organization, say that the proposed location’s status as a former landfill and Superfund site should preclude it from ever being used for housing—particularly for children, who are especially vulnerable to environmental contaminants.

“Public records show the migrant children’s housing site proposed for Goodfellow will be built atop a former landfill, in an area riddled with lead, benzene and other chemicals particularly hazardous to children,” said Lisa Evans, Earthjustice attorney. “This is outrageous.”In the report, compiled from documents developed by the U.S. Air Force during the Superfund cleanup process and inspections, Earthjustice found that serious potential health risks remain for future residents of the Goodfellow detention center. The contaminants include arsenic, benzene, lead, and PFAS, a pollutant that has been found to affect neurodevelopment and increase risk of learning delays and autism.

I guarantee you that nobody in the administration* ever checked on the suitability of this site on which it plans to warehouse unaccompanied minor children. I guarantee you that nobody there knows fck-all about benzene, or PFAS, or even the SuperFund. Nobody there even bothered to take the military's opinion into account.

Among the people who have opposed plans to house undocumented children on military bases are U.S. military officers and enlisted personnel, one of whom told The Daily Beast in June 2018 that the plan “smacks of totalitarianism.” In an Aug. 2018 letter addressed to then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, nearly two dozen retired senior officers urged the Defense Department to rethink the plan, which they wrote would “divert critical defense resources from core military functions, reduce service member readiness, and detract from their ability to protect our homeland and defend our interests abroad."

They don't know and they don't care. There's no plan beyond lock them away. It's Escobar's hippos, all the way down.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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