The hysteria, pearl-clutching, and proliferation of fake news and doctored photographs of poor little children locked in cages by the evil Mango Mussolini reached fevered pitch this past weekend, culminating in DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen being unable to have a meal in peace at a Mexican restaurant in DC, leftards twitderping unhingery at little Barron Trump, and Trump signing an Executive Order ensuring families are kept united when they illegally break into our country.

There has been some debate about who is responsible for regulations separating families at the border and what those regulations were and are.

The Republicans, as expected, are anxious to blame everyone from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama for the policy separating youngsters from their parents, and the Democrats are obviously blaming Trump and his administration for the “zero tolerance” policy at the border that has resulted in separating several thousand kids from ostensibly their families.

So who’s right?

Is the heartless Cheeto Tyrant responsible for the warehousing of innocent children, ripped from the loving arms of their parents?

Or is this merely the continuation of a policy started by lyin’ Democrats, who are anxious to blame the GOP for this travesty because HOLOCAUST!!!!11!!11!!

The answer is just not that simple. Despite the media’s claim that the Obama administration didn’t separate families, former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson admitted it did happen.

“I can’t say that it never happened. There may have been some exigent situation, some emergency,” Johnson told NPR June 9. “There may have been some doubt about whether the adult accompanying the child was in fact the parent of the child. I can’t say it never happened — but not as a matter of policy or practice. It’s not something that I could ask our Border Patrol or our immigration enforcement personnel to do.”

How often? Well, conveniently no one knows, because the Obama Administration (also conveniently) didn’t keep a record of how many families were separated at the border. It could have been a few times, it could have been a few thousand. Convenient, isn’t it?

It certainly sounds like Obama and crew didn’t delve in too deeply to find out whether the adult accompanying the child was the parent of said child. I say this because it seems that the DHS under Trump has seen a staggering increase in the number of illegal scumbags trying to use kids as human shields to get across our border.

From October 2017 to February 2018, there was a 315 percent increase in the number of cases of adults with minors fraudulently posing as “family units” to gain entry.

Do we think that the fraudsters all of a sudden decided they would gain easier entry under the Trump administration, and flooded our borders pretending to be families?

I doubt that. It’s more plausible that Obama and his goons just didn’t do a whole lot of digging into the backgrounds of those trying to enter this country.

Now, the “zero tolerance” policy was, in fact, a Trump administration policy, and it was meant to act as a deterrent to those crossing the border illegally. White House officials have admitted as much, including Chief of Staff John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

SESSIONS: Well I see the fact the no one was being prosecuted for this as a factor in a five-fold increase in the four years in this kind of illegal immigration so yes, hopefully people will get the message and come through the border at the port of entry and not break across the border unlawfully.

But are asylum seekers being turned away and treated like criminals? Not according to DHS.

If an adult enters at a port of entry and claims asylum, they will not face prosecution for illegal entry. DHS does have a responsibility to protect minors we apprehend and will separate in three circumstances: 1) when DHS is unable to determine the familial relationship, 2) when DHS determines that a child may be at risk with the parent or legal guardian, or 3) when the parent or legal guardian is referred for criminal prosecution.

In other words, DHS is tasked with the responsibility of protecting not just our borders, but also the kids that cross, and sticking them into a detention center with adults that may or may not be their actual parents, who may be criminals, or who may be out to cause them harm isn’t exactly smart.

In all the hysteria about these kids, we’re forgetting that they may actually be victims of drug cartels who steal kids in order to give them cover when crossing the border, or worse, human traffickers.

We are also forgetting that generally, DHS doesn’t keep families separated beyond 20 days, per court directives.

In 2014, DHS increased detention facilities for arriving alien families and held families pending the outcome of immigration proceedings.  However, a federal judge ruled in 2016 that under the Flores Settlement Agreement, minors detained as part of a family unit cannot be detained in unlicensed facilities for longer than a presumptively reasonable period of 20 days, at which point, such minors must be released or transferred to a licensed facility.  Because most jurisdictions do not offer licensure for family residential centers, DHS rarely holds family units for longer than 20 days.  The judge’s ruling made it much more difficult for the Federal government to use the detention authorities Congress gave it.

Look, no one likes separating kids from their families. No one likes seeing children detained, scared, and alone. I don’t know a single law enforcement officer – and I know quite a few of them – who enjoys scaring little ones. But DHS has an obligation to ensure that our nation is protected and our borders are secure, and it certainly appears they do their due diligence in ensuring these kids are safe and cared for, considering that in the last fiscal year, 90 percent of the children brought across the border by their parents (or anyone else) were released to a sponsor who was either a parent or close relative.

As much as I’m a fan of limited government and react viscerally at the though of children being abused, I also realize that we do face a threat that’s coming across the border. So far this fiscal year, more than 250,000 people were apprehended at our Southwest border. So far, the Border Patrol arrested 4,886 criminal aliens, convicted of multiple crimes, including drug and weapons trafficking, sexual offenses, homicides, and domestic violence. And on a typical day in 2016, the Border Patrol identified 877 individuals with suspected national security concerns.

In other words, we would be crazy to a) leave kids with potential abusers, traffickers, and murderers without checking them out or to b) allow illegal aliens to just roam the country untracked and unchecked simply because they happen to be accompanied by a child.

Separating families is cruel and it tugs at everyone’s heartstrings. Keeping children with people who could possibly hurt them without checking them out first is irresponsible and inhumane.