Border Security and Illegal Immigration, continued

photo credit: ABCNews.go.com

John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist reported yesterday on the border crisis:

The day after President Trump’s rally in El Paso, Ortiz-Gonzales crossed the border, along with a group of 16 other adults and children, all from Central America. They had spent the night in a safe house in Juarez, and after paying $2,000 a head they were taken to a spot on the edge of the Rio Grande and told to walk across. (In downtown El Paso, the Rio Grande isn’t much more than a stream—easy to walk across, even for children.)

All but one of the adults in the group were men, and they all had more or less the same story: they have wives and other children back in Central America, they are coming here to work and send money home, they have networks of family and friends in the United States, and they intend to return to their homes at some point after they have made enough money. All of them are claiming asylum, but none of them, based on the accounts they gave, will likely qualify for it.

If you spend enough time on the southern border, where record numbers of migrant families from Central America are turning themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol—including 1,800 on the day of Trump’s rally—you begin to see this pattern emerge. Media outlets often repeat the now-familiar line that Central American families are fleeing poverty and violence, which is true (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are among the most violent countries in the world). But according to federal law, suffering poverty and violence doesn’t make you a refugee.

. . .

What goes unmentioned in most media coverage of family migration from Central America is the role that Mexican cartels play. Cartels control everything that happens on the south side of the border, not only the movement of drugs but also the movement of people.

The full report is here.

A previous CTP blog linked to opposing analyses of the recent budget provisions for Border Security. Paul Bedard at Washington Examiner considered the compromise a step in the right direction. Rush Limbaugh saw it as a step backward.

Steve Salvi at the Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC  considers the Border Security bill “disastrous” – and had this to say on his FB page:

We can no longer depend on most of our public officials to protect US citizens or our nation's sovereign right to control our borders.

Pres. Trump and the US Congress signed off on a disastrous bill that will result in:

1.    More American citizens killed by illegal aliens

2.    Encourage more illegal migrants to enter the US

3.    Help drug cartels/gangs expand human/child sex/labor trafficking

This is not America First! It was an ‘open-border illegal alien First-Americans last’ bill!

Even NumbersUSA has not issued an Action Alert that satisfactorily reconciles these disparate concerns.

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