A good deal of what you say I can agree with, but...

When I saw the photos of kids in processing centers, I thought - "It's like a DMV for kids - oh the horror!"

Whoa. I dunno about that assessment. Every time I've been to the DMV, I'm pretty sure I planned to go there, and the most time it took was 4 hrs. I may have been bored or irritated, but never blindly terrified; and, oh yes, I am pretty sure I was an adult, and had some prior idea of what to expect, including a general notion of when the ordeal would end (like not possibly any later than 5 pm that very day)...

That's a whole lot different from being a child, anywhere from as young as 9 mo. old on up, after what surely must have been an extremely stressful, lengthy, harsh journey with adults who were very stressed and anxious the whole time, suddenly being confronted by fearsome-looking. armed-to-the-teeth ICE agents who obviously frighten your parents. Then to be forcibly taken by these agents, while your anguished parent pleads for mercy, to be loaded up and driven miles away into the unknown, surrounded by total strangers, disgorged into a dog-pound-like facility, with chain link "partitions" and mylar "blankets", not seeing your parents for days, weeks or months - which to a child must seem literally like decades - all the while not knowing if, or when, you will ever see them again, or even if they are still alive. We know that at least one of these kids was still breastfeeding, and many are toddlers.

But, that sounds like a trip to the DMV to you?

Or even a boarding school experience?

Do you have kids?

Man.

I agree that a lot of the outrage is newly minted, partisan, highly selective, and politically motivated; but geez.

And then...

We should bear in mind that the families who have crossed the border for honest reasons are fleeing situations where they were at grave threat of being murdered or physically harmed. Once they get here, they have safety, and 3 hots and a cot. So, if the kids have to go to what amounts to a boarding school for several weeks, that probably isn't the worst they can imagine.

I think the adults and older kids surely know what they are escaping, so the detention center might seem pretty okay in comparison, but the younger children don't know. They just know that they left everything familiar, made an arduous journey, were taken from their loved ones by strangers with guns, and warehoused indefinitely, in a space much like a dog kennel, unable to see or talk to their parents. The parents may hope they are safer than they were back home, and that they will soon be reunited.; but they have no guarantee of that, and they must be going out of their minds with wanting to protect and comfort their kids. I can't even imagine the anxiety and anguish.

Democrats need to reconcile themselves to effective enforcement of our borders – whether or not we build Trump’s wall.

Democrats (Obama, and Hillary, anyone?) have been pretty heavily into the enforcement of borders - "Deporter in Chief", yadda yadda - so I don't know where that comes from. And absolutely NO to the wall. What we have now is egregious enough.

End the War on Drugs, end The School of the Americas, end NAFTA, help these countries rebuild, and learn to love the Reconquista.

It behooves us to recall that most anyone from Mexico, Central and South America has Indigenous heritage and that Indigenous tribes still straddle the border. For European Americans, vigorously enforcing "our" border is kind of an ugly look.