Who cares about the children is a question which shouldn’t have to be asked, because all too often people of all stripes espouse that children are our future. Nevertheless, the question is now required in light of past and most recent events involving immigrate children being separated from their parents and placed in detention-like facilities across America. The other question is the continuing murder of school children in our school systems, by deranged and often mentally disturbed killers.

President Trump signed a hastly drafted executive order this week, which addresses immigrate children being separated from their families at the border, but it was not immediately clear to what extent the order will halt border separations in the short term.

The order signed by President Trump instructs the Department of Homeland Security to keep detained families together, but any long-term enforcement of the order is contingent on a judge approving changes to a 1997 settlement agreement that restricts the detention of children. Currently the government can detain families together for up to 20 days — a deadline based on earlier court rulings interpreting the 1997 settlement — but then will have to separate them absent action by a judge or Congress, which would bring the child detention situation full circle.

Under the order, DHS will keep custody over families while both criminal and administrative immigration proceedings are pending. The order additionally orders the defense secretary to provide any existing facilities that could be used to detain families together, and to build more if required; it also directs other government agencies to make facilities available for families while court cases are pending.

The U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions now says it was never the government’s plan to take children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, despite earlier justifying the zero-tolerance policy with a Bible passage. Mr. Sessions acknowledged on Thursday that the immigration crackdown backfired. “It hasn’t been good, Mr. Session told the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The American people don’t like the idea that we’re separating families, we never really intended to do that.”

Also on Thursday First Lady, Melania Trump boarded a plane at Joint Base Andrews near Washington to visit a Texas border town where detained immigrant children are being held wearing an olive green coat that read, in white capital letters, “I really don’t care. Do U?” Whether intentionally or not, the message beamed around the world does not speak well for convincing anyone that caring for children is paramount by our government leadership.

It’s way past the time for Congress to fix our laws to protect our most precious assets, children.

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