An outgoing Democratic congressman has a unique idea about how to deal with family separation at the border: give them U.S. taxpayer money?!

Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) said on Wednesday this week that, for their trouble at the hands of the Trump Administration, migrant families at the US-Mexico border should be compensated:

“The damage that has been done to these children will be lifelong—to these family units will be life-long, as well. In fact, I suggest that they need to be compensated for what this administration did to them. The first form of compensation needs to be the full reunification of these families.”

That’s right. Non-citizens showing up at the border deserve to be paid for turning up, already utilizing government resources as border officials attempt to sort out thousands of adults and children on their hands.

And the resources to do so are already tight, making that much harder law enforcement’s additional task of stopping drug cartels who use migrant families to distract from their activities:

“Because federal law says all illegal immigrants must be apprehended and processed by Border Patrol, the surge this spring has forced agents and other resources to be diverted to regions where illegal crossings are most common, and this allows drug cartels to move their narcotics through spots that are left unguarded,” per a lengthy Washington Examiner report from earlier this week.

(The report is worth reading, as it details how border patrol is already facing staff losses in the face of yet another periodic “migration surge.” The Examiner’s full report can be read here: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/smugglers-flood-border-with-migrants-to-divert-security-forces-from-drug-interdiction).

Congressman Crowley has been in the news in the past few weeks mainly because of his unexpected reelection defeat—he has lost his House seat to twenty-eight-year-old socialist media darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—but this unfortunate suggestion about compensating migrant families at the border has him cropping up in conservative and mainstream news outlets alike.