Instead of processing immigration applications fairly for everyone, we just should let people who break the rules get away with it?

Having deportation as an actual threat, reduces the amount of people who attempt to break the rules since they know there are consequences.

What about the threat of jail? Is the US punitive system not effective? In many ways I'd rather be an immigrant than a citizen if the punishment for crimes is deportation rather than detention... as long as I'm not being sent to country that has also suspended their constitutional right to due process.

First, I don't believe this crime rises to the level of jail. Second, it doesn't make sense here because if the parents are jailed who will take care of the children? I'm also not sold on putting more people into the meat grinder of US judicial system. When they deported at least they will be free. Ironically, compared to the US judicial system, this is the more human approach.

You said "break the rules". If you meant border crossing say it next time. Also they aren't free if they are deported to, like I already said, a country that has also suspended due process.

Why does the consequence have to be deportation? Can we imagine a form of deterrence that doesn’t necessitate the cruelty of familial separation? Do we at least agree that what is happening right now, to this family and to others, is deeply unjust?

You can do what Australia does which is offshore processing

Until a new law is passed, the government and courts have a duty to follow the current law.

Wrong: you have misunderstood what it means to follow the law. The law guarantees liberties, but doesn't guarantee prosecution. Obama has DACA. More generally there's the concept of prosecutorial discretion. Have you ever for example driven a car badly, been pulled over, but the cop let you off with just a warning?

Or, for that matter, driven a car badly but not been pulled over at all? Surely in the interest of absolute lawfulness they then proceeded to the nearest police station to demand to be ticketed.

Surely you understand the difference between a cop declining to issue a speeding ticket and a federal "discretionary" policy that makes it de facto legal to violate standing immigration law at scale.

There is no difference. People often complain during the pandemic that the San Francisco police department has seemingly instituted a "discretionary" policy that makes it de facto legal to violate traffic law at scale, you know, including speeding, not stopping at stop signs, not yielding to pedestrians. https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/11nbnxw/san_f...

Maybe you are misunderstanding. A single cop deciding "okay today I'm letting you off with a warning" is quite different from the President directing the entire Federal bureaucracy to not enforce existing immigration law. If for some reason a large jurisdiction, say maybe the state of California, decided that it was policy to let everyone off with a warning for speeding infractions, then, if I squint hard enough and ignore a wide range of second and third order effects, then yeah maybe they are similar.