No issue captures the failures of the Democratic Party’s old guard quite like our inhumane immigration system. After three years of breathless warnings that Donald Trump represents a fascist threat to the republic, a majority of congressional Democrats — self-styled Resistance warriors through and through — caved to its conservative Blue Dog caucus and rubber-stamped Trump’s concentration camps, voting through an emergency border aid bill that gives the president everything he wanted with precious little in return.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has defended the bill as a necessary evil, an imperfect short-term measure to improve conditions in the camps. In a statement, she explained: “in order to get resources to the children fastest, we will reluctantly pass the Senate bill.” In other words, to protect the children held in detention centers, the Democratic Party’s congressional leaders have determined they must write a blank check to an administration that has argued in court that kids do not need toothpaste, soap, towels, showers, or even a half-night’s sleep. Pelosi’s hand was forced by both Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s incompetent response to a ghastly piece of legislation backed by Mitch McConnell and the twist of the knife from a conservative faction of Democratic “Problem Solvers” in the House. Still, it remains a grave failure of leadership that she did not join with dissenting progressive members of the House — including democratic socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib — in condemning the bill and voting against it.

Make no mistake: the arrival of these funds will not improve conditions at the border. In fact, it will worsen them — increasing the government’s capacity to detain migrants while providing no congressional oversight of the deplorable living conditions in the camps. The bill that passed the House and Senate excluded even the modest provisions that would have limited the time a child could spend in detention to ninety days, and canceled contracts with private companies that failed to maintain federal standards after six months.