Tag: border crossing
Julian Castro Is Right: Criminalizing Immigrants Is A Failure

Julian Castro Is Right: Criminalizing Immigrants Is A Failure

When Julian Castro advocated repealing the law making it a crime to cross the border without permission, he confirmed that in today’s political environment, there is no safe harbor for common sense. Republicans gleefully accused him of favoring “open borders,” as though he were going to eliminate all checkpoints and border agents.

Even former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, whose Texas House district adjoins Mexico, wasn’t willing to go along. When Castro challenged his fellow candidates to declare their support for repeal of Section 1325, as it is known, there was no stampede to join him. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) was notable for saying he had already endorsed it.

In the second debate, though, something striking happened: Every candidate on the stage raised a hand in support of the idea. They know this criminal classification is what gave the Trump administration the power to separate migrant parents from children. If it were a civil offense, migrants would not be jailed, only fined and deported — removing the pretext for tearing kids away.

Castro’s critics believe criminal penalties serve as a vital deterrent to lawbreaking. To which Ur Jaddou, director of DHS Watch at America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group, replies: “Has it been working?” The answer: no. This administration, she told me, “inherited the lowest number of border apprehensions in 46 years, and all we have seen since is a massive increase.”

Toughness is a failure. A 50 percent rise in prosecutions over the past five years has not dissuaded Central Americans from coming. The number of southwest border apprehensions has tripled since Donald Trump became president.

Central Americans who flee face an arduous journey of 1,500 miles or more. They often pay criminal smugglers thousands of dollars to help. If the expense and the prospect of robbery, rape and murder on the way don’t stop these migrants, the chance of being arrested here certainly won’t.

In the absence of real solutions, attempts to scare people into staying away are ineffectual. The reality is that many people are fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to escape violence and poverty. They would obviously prefer to come through legal channels. But our laws deny them that option.

Asked after the debate about the “open borders” charge Thursday, Castro scoffed: “We have 654 miles of fence. We have thousands and thousands of personnel at the border. We have planes, helicopters, boats. We have security cameras. All involved in border security.” Nowhere does he suggest scrapping all these.

The alternative to the awful, unworkable status quo is not erasing the border but letting more people enter legally — as immigrants, workers and refugees. But as the number of foreigners seeking admission has grown, the administration has cut the number it will accept.

Oscar Alberto Martinez, who drowned with his 23-month-old daughter in the Rio Grande, hoped to reach the United States to get a job and save enough money to buy a house. In response to public outrage, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Ken Cuccinelli chose to shame the victim. He said the deaths occurred “because that father didn’t wait to go through the asylum process in the legal fashion.”

Maybe that was because the system in place at the border condemns asylum seekers to spend weeks or months in Mexico, often in squalid conditions. The father sought asylum, by the way, not because he was persecuted but because that was his only hope of coming here legally.

Admitting him would not have harmed Americans. It would have helped us, by letting him perform labor that needs performing. But the U.S. immigration system offered no feasible route.

Castro wants to solve the problem by letting more people come legally. Among his proposals is admitting 4.4 million people awaiting visas to join their families in the U.S. Spouses and minor children would get to come immediately.

This is the opposite of what the Trump administration prefers. It responded to the surge in people seeking refuge with a 60 percent cut in refugee admissions.

President Barack Obama also created a program to reduce the number of unaccompanied minors from Central America. It let a parent who is here legally could request refugee admission for children left behind, with the kids screened without having to leave their home countries. Trump abolished it — depriving families of a safe, approved avenue.

Conservatives like Cuccinelli say they are not against immigration, but they want foreigners to come legally. With the image of drowned migrants fresh in our minds, here’s something they could do: prove it.

Steve Chapman blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman. Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, now a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Lawmakers Press DHS Secretary To Stop Children Crossing The Border

Lawmakers Press DHS Secretary To Stop Children Crossing The Border

By Brian Bennett, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Tuesday he had ordered five dozen additional criminal investigators to Texas to prosecute human smugglers responsible for bringing children across the border illegally.

Johnson disclosed the beefed-up federal presence during a sometimes-acrimonious congressional hearing in which Republicans blamed a 2012 decision to slow the deportation of immigrants brought the country illegally as children for sparking a surge in minors crossing the border.

House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), told Johnson that the United States needs to send a message that “if you come, you can’t stay.”

The number of children entering illegally has more than doubled since last year, federal statistics show.

Families from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras pay smugglers thousands of dollars to bring children to the United States.

Johnson said that investigators last month arrested 163 alleged members of smuggling rings operating in El Paso, Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, and San Diego.

“I think the key is the money trail,” Johnson said. “The money trail starts in the U.S., and if we can track the money, we go a long way toward solving this problem.”

Administration officials attribute the increase to rising violence in Central American cities and to false rumors about legal residency permits being awarded to children who reach the United States.

Johnson said that he is considering “every conceivable lawful option to address this situation.”

McCaul urged the Obama administration to deploy National Guard soldiers to help stem the flow of children.

National Guard troops have helped monitor surveillance cameras, fly aircraft, build fences, and man observation posts along the Southwest border. But the Pentagon has resisted activating more National Guard members because there isn’t a clear mission for them in this case, officials said.

“Having the Guard on the border has some limitations,” Border Patrol Deputy Chief Ronald D. Vitiello told the panel. “This work is best done by law enforcement agents.”

Vitello emphasized that it is “not a challenge to arrest” children and parents crossing with children. Most are surrendering themselves to Border Patrol agents.

By law, Customs and Border Protection must deliver unaccompanied minors to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services within three days. But with so many children now in custody, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has had to step in to help house them, said FEMA administrator Craig Fugate.

The Obama administration has created temporary camps at Border Patrol stations, as well as at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and at Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme, Calif.

Dormitories at a federal law enforcement training center in Artesia, N.M., are also being prepared for parents caught entering the country with children.

Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), said that improving the conditions for children held in temporary holding centers and handing them over to their families “can look like a free pass.”

“It’s a much better life than they’re getting right now in Central America, so I don’t know how that’s going to in any way stall what’s happening,” King said.

The practice of uniting children found alone on the border with relatives in the United States undermines the message that migrants who cross the border illegally can’t stay, Republicans said.

Johnson confirmed that more than half of the unaccompanied minors from Central America were turned over last year to family members in the United States while deportation orders were under review.

Photo: Steve Hillibrand via WikiCommons

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