Some crises drop from the sky in a funnel cloud; some sweep away the coastline and everything in their paths. Not the crisis at the Mexican border nor the stark facilities that are supposed to be sheltering immigrant children; those are entirely human-made.

With a vote they almost didn't take in haste to leave for the Independence Day holiday recess — what irony — both houses of Congress passed a humanitarian aid bill Thursday to provide $4.5 billion to handle border issues.

Some so-called progressives in the Democratic party have castigated Speaker Nancy Pelosi for caving in and holding a House vote on the Mitch McConnell version of the bill passed by the Senate. At the least she deserves acknowledgment that she kept Congress from inaction that would be even worse complicity in the degrading, unhealthy treatment of unaccompanied migrant children. Deplorable conditions exist at emergency detention facilities for children because the U.S. has not had nor enforced a coherent border policy since the administration of George W. Bush.

Yet the progressives were right to call "Shame!" on McConnell, the Trump administration and those in their own party whose stalemate has condemned these children to a hot, dirty, smelly, lonely hell on earth. Reports of neglectful conditions have been seeping out for months, but last week a group of lawyers and physicians visited the facility in Clint, Texas.

Appalled at the sight of children caring for babies, sleeping on crowded floors, without soap or toothbrushes or reasonable food, the lawyers filed a motion as part of a federal court settlement setting the standard of care for the detained children. They are seeking inspection of facilities in Texas and want the Border Patrol held in contempt. According to the New York Times and Buzzfeed News, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general has drafted a report that cites the same deplorable health and safety issues. Damning reports coming from all fronts prompted the resignation of John Sanders, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

With Pelosi's strategic capitulation, the bill that passed assigned most of its funding for enforcement of the border — wall money — and a lesser amount to Immigrations and Customs and immigration judges to speed up decisions on who stays and who must leave. The House bill would also have funded enforcement but would have regulated the care of migrants and limited the time they would be in the shelters. Some funding will go to the agencies tasked with housing the arrivals. Vice President Mike Pence said the administration will also honor two elements in the losing bill: a 90-day limit on a child's stay in the shelter and notification to Congress within 24 hours if a child dies. Sorry victories.

Congress' work is not done. Lack of a coherent border policy is perhaps the most flagrantly callous example of what happens to the vulnerable when wisdom cannot overcome political self-preservation. The result has been the entry of a flood of people fleeing Central American nations or sending their children on alone, with no better ideas for managing them than walling them off in Mexico or cattle-herding them into detention.

Whether immigration ever gets reform or just heavy-handed enforcement, those will come too late for the kids already stranded in the detention centers. 

Like Speaker Pelosi, Connecticut's liberal Democratic senator Chris Murphy saw pragmatism in voting for the Senate bill, saying it would provide emergency funding to help with the current crisis. However, he added in a press statement, "we have broader moral and legal obligations to the children and families who arrive at our borders seeking asylum."

It seems we really are still not the humane, responsible society we would like to believe we are. But if we cannot come up with a plan out of compassion, we had better do it out of pragmatism. What happens to these children next?

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.