Contrary to what anyone listening to or reading mainstream media would believe, Custom and Border Protection (CBP) detention centers are not operating any differently today than they were during the Obama administration. What is different from the Obama years is that these centers are now more overcrowded and undermanned, causing problems at some of the facilities, reports John Daniel Davidson in The Federalist.
But the Central Americans apprehended by Border Patrol are not being held against their will, nor are children being kept in cages. Indeed, the entire statutory regime under which the Trump administration is dealing with the border crisis is no different than it was under Obama, because Congress has not changed any laws regulating the agencies in charge—despite the manifest reasons why it should.
The Media Lies
What we’re witnessing is something closer to the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation circus: Democrats and their courtiers in the media have decided they will claim the moral high ground, even if it means jettisoning all sense of reality and historical fact.
(Photos of migrant detention centers dating back to 2014 under President Obama” https://twitter.com/brandondarby/status/1146050615564492800)
Fake Families
Since last June, more than 860,000 people have been apprehended, and at an increasing rate. More than 84,500 families were apprehended just in the month of May. This total includes adults falsely claiming to be parents of children who aren’t theirs, and migrants over the age of 18 posing as children. In April, immigration agents said they had identified more than 3,100 of these “fake families,” and that the practice was growing.
Buying and Selling Migrant Children
Indeed, right now in Tijuana, men from Haiti and Central America are trying to buy migrant children from single mothers so they can pose as their fathers and claim asylum in the United States. One woman, 44-year-old Antonia Portillo, says she’s afraid to let her sons, aged 10 and 8, out of her sight, and fears the offers to buy children—the going rate is reportedly $350—will eventually turn into demands or kidnappings. “They want to rob our kids so they can cross into the United States.”
Does the outraged left think there aren’t bad people willing to exploit a very real crisis, willing even to buy and sell children to take advantage of defective U.S. asylum law?
Congress Refuses to Fix Immigration Laws
The Trump administration didn’t cause it, and no policy or authority currently at its disposal will be able to end it. If there is blame to be apportioned for this mess, let’s lay it where it belongs: on lawmakers who refused for years, and still refuse, to reform our immigration laws and secure our border.
The weaknesses of our asylum regime, as much as our glaring inability to care for the large numbers of people crossing the border, are now apparent to a gaping world—and especially to all those who are willing to get here by whatever means available.
