A nation of shopkeepers.

Tense arguments broke out at the White House over the past two days as top government officials clashed over how to carry out President Trump’s executive order on keeping together immigrant families at the Mexican border, according to four people familiar with the meetings.

The disputes started Thursday night. They continued Friday as Kevin K. McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, returned to the White House to question how his agency was supposed to detain parents and children together when the law requires that children not be held indefinitely in jail.

The bureaucratic battles threatened to undermine Mr. Trump as his administration tries to counter a political crisis driven by heartbreaking images and recordings of crying migrant children separated from their parents and sent off to shelters.

On Friday, the president was defiant. “We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter.

But inside the White House, the arguments echoed the chaos at American airports that Mr. Trump, days after taking office, plunged the government into with his ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries that surprised Border Patrol agents and State Department consular officials.

It is unclear when the other 2,300 children will be reunited with their families. They have been separated from their parents since the zero-tolerance policy was announced. The children have been placed in facilities run by the Health and Human Services Department, some of them thousands of miles from where their parents are being detained.

Administration officials said they have finalized a process to let parents know where their children are and to have regular communication with them after separation. Parents who are deported will be reunited with their children before being removed from the country, officials said.

For the past week, Mr. Trump has demanded changes in the United States’ immigration laws and encouraged Congress to act with urgency. But on Friday morning, he appeared to give up hope that the Republican-controlled Congress could succeed in passing an immigration bill this year, urging lawmakers in a tweet to stop “wasting their time.”

The president said a vote on immigration legislation should be postponed until after the midterm elections in November, when he expects Republicans to pick up more seats and create a stronger majority — a prediction that is far from guaranteed.

Maybe they should have used tattoos…

Yesterday’s orphans will become today’s foster kids, and tomorrow’s Dreamers. The heartless malice of the Trump administration is only exceeded by its staggering incompetence.