Editorial: The unsettling residue of a welcome reversal of immigration policy

It took more than two months of images of tormented children and the prospect of a midterm election nightmare for the president to find his heart, but apparently he has discovered it at last - or at least come to the realization that appearing to have one has a political upside.

Whichever is the case, his executive order requiring that immigrant families be kept together - rescinding a policy that only Monday his Department of Homeland Security secretary said does not exist - is a welcome reversal of his prior stance that only Congress had the power to end a practice that didn't become common until he and Attorney General Jeff Sessions initiated a "zero tolerance" policy toward illegal immigrants in April. Since then, more than 2,000 children have been ripped from the arms of their parents - sometimes literally - and transferred to "humane" holding areas where their tortured cries and unconsolable anguish have become defining images of President Donald Trump's immigration policy.

The illegal immigration debate is an important one, to be sure. But the administration's reaction to the uproar over separations has been so replete with lies, distortions, misdirection and misinformation that it seems useless to address the developments with arguments of reason. Instead, it is imperative to lament the unarguable politics of this outrage: A policy was implemented with the deliberate intent of callously separating young children from their parents to deter other families - many of them fleeing persecution, gangs and violence - from trying to sneak into the United States and was abandoned not because of the heartbreaking anxiety it created but because the president finally grasped the political calculus that in the fall could threaten the Republican Party's hold on Congress.

It is hard to know the extent to which that arithmetic affected the positions of the two suburban GOP congressmen - Peter Roskam of Wheaton and Randy Hultgren of Plano. But both men face tough election challenges and their clear statements of outrage - Roskam's almost immediately, Hultgren's growing in intensity as the calls from voters poured into his office - added urgency to a threat of November defeat growing so ominous that even the generally intractable President Trump had to respond.

Politics, of course, is supposed to react to the moods of the public. Yet, there is something fundamentally disturbing about a circumstance in which appeals to compassion went unheeded until the political repercussions of failing to act were undeniable. Something deeply unsettling about a strategy that uses the torment of children as bargaining fodder for the president's broader immigration agenda.

The roots of that agenda, of course, are understandable. The nation's immigration policy has long needed revision and reform and the debate over how to accomplish that is valid and necessary. The president's abrupt change of heart doesn't exactly advance the discussion, but it does provide the occasion to remember that we cannot let fear and resentment over the results of a faulty immigration policy outweigh decency and compassion for the people the policy directly affects.