Crossing the Mexican/US Border with Children

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When the pictures first surfaced in 2014 nobody seemed bothered by them. Children in cages at border detention centers. When they made the news again last year all of the sudden everyone was outraged. A few month later another outrage hit the news. Kids at detention centers being sexually abused. So which is it? Should the federal government be protecting children while the adults they are travelling with are processed through or not? The knee jerk reaction is, the kids should remain with their parents. The reality of it is, the government has a responsibility to ensure the adults are, in fact, the kids' parents. Human Smuggling is a huge problem and to ignore it only serves to support the smugglers. Insisting the children be left alone with the adults they're traveling with is literally recognizing parental rights of smugglers. So that brings us back to the problem. How should the US government carry out its responsibility to crack down on human smuggling if they have no authority or right to separate the kids from the adults?