Detention center is only temporary fix

You can’t please everyone.

That truism was reinforced for President Barack Obama this week.

Last month, his unilateral action on immigration, which granted sweeping deportation reprieves to millions of undocumented immigrants, drew waves of support from immigrant-rights groups. It also earned him a scathing rebuke from many conservatives who believe that it was unconstitutional.

Since then, more than 20 state attorneys general, lead by Texas’ soon-to-be governor, Greg Abbott, have sued the president to block his immigration order from being implemented. We won’t hold our breath.

But this week, the president earned criticism from his left flank, just as Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson highlighted the elements of his executive order aimed at strengthening security measures on Texas’ southern border — something Texans should be able to get behind.

On Monday, Johnson oversaw the opening of a 50-acre immigrant family detention center in Dilley, about 85 miles northeast of Laredo.

The facility is designed to house migrant women and children — tens of thousands of whom crossed the border this year — as they await deportation hearings.

The center currently features 80 tan two-bedroom, one-bathroom cottages, playgrounds, a cafeteria and medical facilities. By May, it will house 2,400 immigrants.

While the surge of migrants has slowed, federal authorities are preparing for another influx of illegal immigration in the coming year.

Punctuating that concern, Johnson told reporters Monday, “This must be clear: Our borders are not open to illegal migration.” He also said that recent border crossers are in the highest-priority category for deportation.

That’s a message that could have come straight from Gov. Rick Perry. It may have assuaged some critics, but it also garnered new ones.

The ACLU wasted no time in suing the administration for “detaining asylum seekers as [an] intimidation tactic.”

The detention center is costly at $296 a day for each detainee. It’s also a far better place to house undocumented immigrants than the makeshift facilities that held thousands of Central American women and children this summer.

But it’s also not a permanent solution for a failed immigration system that requires bipartisan cooperation to fix, once and for all.

This story was originally published December 16, 2014 at 5:41 PM with the headline "Detention center is only temporary fix."