The number of illegal aliens captured at the southern border has overloaded the facilities that hold them, and thousands have been released into the country.
Illegal entry has been routinely called a non-crisis by much of the media and Congressional Democrats, and recently Jeh Johnson, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, called it that. Appearing on CBS last month, Johnson said: "So here are the facts: the facts are that illegal migration on our southern border is a fraction of what it used to be." He added, "But a security crisis per se? No. I would not characterize it that way. I think there is some fear-mongering going on."
However, Saturday Johnson said on Fox News’ “Cavuto LIVE,” “By anyone's definition, by any measure, right now we have a crisis at our southern border.” He added, “According to the commissioner of [Customs and Border Protection], there were 4,000 apprehensions in one day alone this past week, and we're on pace for 100,000 apprehensions on our southern border this month.”
Perhaps Congress will finally get the message. Had Congress taken administration warnings seriously and acted to relieve the situation months ago, this crisis could have been resolved.
Representative Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, noted that in the heat of summer “it’s going to be very, very dangerous in this part of the country to have young kids, women and other folks to come in.”
Cuellar said, after speaking to Customs and Border Patrol agents, he had discovered a disturbing trend of adults “renting” children in Central America in order to increase their chances of being able to stay in the U.S. once they cross over.
Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch visited Guatemala earlier this year to get a first-hand look at the first of several caravans headed toward our southern border.
Contrary to reports in the media and those who support unfettered immigration that the migrants were mostly women and children, Farrell observed that while there were women and children in the caravan, he estimated that between 90 and 95 percent of them were men 15 to 45 years old. The children, he said, were “recovered from a human smuggling operation using the caravan as ‘cover.’”
He said that it’s “A highly organized, very elaborate and sophisticated orchestration,” not a sudden movement of thousands of people who just happened to all decide to travel north at the same time. It’s an “organized group of people pushing a certain political agenda by a group calledPueblos Sin Fronterasbeing aided by hundreds of that organization’s workers.”
This effort, he estimated, cost several millions of dollars for food, water, transportation, medical equipment, mobile hospitals and child services, which reminded Farrell of a complex military operation. And while they did walk portions of the tremendous distance through Mexico, they primarily traveled on chartered tour buses, dozens of them.
The media reports of the plight of the migrants say that “they are trying to escape daily violence and daily threats. People are dying left and right. The conditions are extraordinarily dangerous.”
Farrell interviewed some of the marchers. He started every interview with, “Why are you coming to America?”
“They all said that their reason for joining the ‘caravan’ was economic,” he said. “It was job driven. And then, someone would say, ‘Oh, yeah, … we’re also fleeing violence’ as an after-thought.”
And then, Farrell asked the obvious question: “Well, if things are so bad, why did you leave your family back home? Of course, they couldn’t answer that question,” he said.
Perhaps the growing recognition of the crisis at the southern border will bring a realistic attitude about the nature of the numerous migrant caravans headed our way and get Congress to do its job, and take action to address this crisis.
President Donald Trump has threatened to completely shut down the border this week if Mexico doesn’t take steps to stop the caravans from traveling through to the border. He has already cut funding to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras because they have not taken action to halt the flow of migrants.
Shutting down the border has some serious problems for Mexico and the U.S., so Congress must act quickly. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said yesterday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” that his state cannot deal with the number of illegals entering it, and the same situation exists for other border states.
The Los Angeles Timesaddressed the border shutdown in February: “Fortunately for Trump, the law on immigration and related matters favors the president. Legal precedents have traditionally accorded the chief executive complete and nearly unchecked power to deny foreigners permission to enter the United States.”
"The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty … inherent in the executive power," the Supreme Court said in 1950. And the Timesadded, “Congress adopted a provision in 1952 saying the president ‘may by proclamation … suspend the entry of all aliens and any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants’ whenever he thinks it ‘would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.’”
That does not, however, preclude a block by an activist liberal judge.
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