Republican Sen. Susan Collins has long been known in the Senate for trying to have it both ways—a self-declared moderate whose actual opposition to extremist conservative policies crops up only rarely. She made sure to stake out a place on the Sunday shows today to make known her purely theoretical opposition to the Republican administration's new "zero tolerance" policy of separating children from their asylum-seeking parents at the border.
"What the administration has decided to do is to separate children from their parents to try to send a message that if you cross the border with children, your children are going to be ripped away from you. That's traumatizing to the children who are innocent victims, and it is contrary to our values in this country."
What Collins did not offer so readily, however, is that despite that speech she's refusing to sign on to a bill ending the practice. Which is, if you are attempting to paint yourself as not as evil as the rest of your party, the whole ballgame. There is currently a single-issue bill to undo the Republican policy of separating children from their parents and housing them anything from refurbished big-box retail stores to tent cities. Collins, like every other Republican lawmaker, is blocking it.
In fact, constituents that contact Collins about the policy receive a reply from her office in which she explains her tacit support for the Trump policy. "I am concerned that some Central American families cross our southern border illegally with their children believing that they will be allowed to stay in the United States. While their desire to find a better life in our country is understandable, crossing the border illegally is highly dangerous, especially for children."
By refusing to halt the intentional separating those children from their parents, Collins is helping to make the situation even more dangerous for the children. And her comments to the press make it clear she knows the damage currently being done.
So Sen. Collins is attempting to mislead the public. She was eager to offer condemnation of the family separation policy, but like every other Republican Senator, she is refusing to stop it. She might support it later–if her party can extract other concessions in exchange for ending the human rights abuse, like curtailing legal immigration of family members and a host of other anti-immigration restrictions. That is the would-be "moderate" version House Republicans are attempting to sell. She, like the rest of her party, is using a chillingly inhumane practice in order to extract political concessions from those that are rightly horrified by it.
Sunday show interviews or no Sunday show interviews, that puts her in the same camp as those willingly carrying out those policies. Her sternly worded objections mean nothing; she is one of the few hundred people in America able to put an immediate end to it, and she continues to refuse to do so. That is who she really is.