Grandstanding at the Border Democrats finally admit there’s a problem. How about helping to solve it?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/grandstanding-at-the-border-11562367921
Ironic good news in the immigration wars: Democrats are finally admitting there’s a crisis at the southern U.S. border, judging by their visits the last two weeks with reporters and TV cameras in tow. Now will they help to stop it?
Nearly every presidential candidate has posed for a border photo op, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as always took it to the limit by claiming migrants were forced to drink from toilets and the U.S. is now heading toward fascism. There’s no confirming evidence about the toilet charge, and the Congresswoman has no standing to complain after she voted against the funding bill last week to get more humanitarian money to the border.
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And, by the way, where has she been? The “breaking point has arrived this week at our border,” then commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Kevin McAleenan warned way back on March 27. “CBP is facing an unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis all along our Southwest border.”
He was ignored. But suddenly Democrats and their media friends are flogging a pair of new inspector general reports, including one on May 30 that documents the “dangerous overcrowding” at a border control station in El Paso. It describes how one “cell with a maximum capacity of 35 held 155 detainees,” and how migrants were “standing on toilets in the cells to make room and gain breathing space.”
At a CBP facility in the Rio Grande Valley, says a July 2 IG report, “some single adults were held in standing room only conditions for a week.” Some migrants were desperate enough to clog the “toilets with Mylar blankets and socks in order to be released from their cells during maintenance.”
This is appalling, and Democrats want to blame it all on heartless Donald Trump. The Administration is an easy target, given its obsession with border enforcement and previous tone-deaf policies like family separation.
But Democrats should also look in the mirror. The perverse incentives of U.S. asylum policy have lured hundreds of thousands who are overwhelming border resources. Yet Democrats refuse to change the incentives that are the root of the crisis.
Migrants who cross the border, legally or not, can claim asylum. They are taught what to say to pass the low bar of “credible fear” in an initial asylum interview, and then most are released into the U.S. pending their final hearing. In the second quarter of 2019, more than 876,500 cases were pending in the immigration courts and they can take years.
In fiscal 2019, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had funding for an average daily detention population of 45,274. But as of June 29 more than 53,000 were in its custody. With its beds full, ICE now releases some of those migrants who aren’t subject to mandatory detention orders, but it has also slowed the numbers it takes from CBP. The border patrol can’t by law stop apprehending illegal crossers, though it can’t pass all of them out if its facilities. Thus, the overcrowding.
Under a legal settlement known as Flores, CBP gives priority to children and families before single adults. Minors can’t be detained for more than 20 days, so parents are released with their children. Migrants now know that if they bring children on the dangerous journey north, they’ll move through the system faster and be freed sooner. Meanwhile, single adult migrants languish in increasingly deplorable conditions, as the IG reports show.
Health and Human Services, which cares for unaccompanied minors, has also been overwhelmed. The Trump Administration’s fixation on enforcement has worsened the problem. Ideally, the children are released to parents or other sponsors who take financial and legal responsibility.
But until recently HHS required fingerprints from everyone in the sponsor’s household that were shared with ICE and could be used for enforcement. The predictable result was that potential sponsors were reluctant to take the risk of picking up children lest they be deported. Recent limits on this finger-printing have helped move children out of government custody faster, but HHS continues to deal with near-record numbers. As of July 1 some 13,000 children were in its care, and as of June 10 it had taken in more than 52,000 this fiscal year—60% more than in 2018.
Late last month Democrats reluctantly voted to pass legislation to provide $4.6 billion in emergency funding, mostly for urgent humanitarian needs. But if last week’s Democratic debates are an indication, the party’s only immigration policy is to offer an open border and free welfare and health care to anyone in the world who wants to come to America.
That isn’t politically sustainable even if it were financially affordable. The answer is a political compromise that narrows the asylum loophole and trades border security for more legal paths to work in the U.S. Any politician who won’t work toward that end is merely grandstanding for the cameras.
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