Tag: border security
We Can Enforce Border Security Without Trump’s Racist Cruelty

We Can Enforce Border Security Without Trump’s Racist Cruelty

You don’t have to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement or “decriminalize” illegal entry into the United States to humanize the Border Patrol. You don’t have to close all the detention centers into which migrants are now cramped and stacked as if, yes, they are in concentration camps (though that would help). You don’t have to give up enforcing the country’s borders.

You do have to replace President Donald J. Trump, who has stage-managed the cruelty and fed the racism that seeps through ICE. And you have to fire many of the men now working as Border Patrol agents — men so steeped in racism and misogyny and violence that they never should have been hired in the first place. The agency can be fixed, but many of its hirelings cannot be.

That is clear from reading some of the “secret” messages that were posted on a Facebook page that was closeted from public view — a page for retired and current Border Patrol agents. Aired earlier this week in an investigative report by ProPublica, the messages ranged from the crude to the violent. Some made light of the deaths of migrants trying to cross into the United States illegally. Others used racist language and ugly stereotypes to refer to both migrants and Latino members of Congress.

And then there were the vile posts that targeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., one of the harsher critics of the inhumane border tactics currently favored by the Trump administration. One depicts her engaged in oral sex with a migrant. Another features a doctored photograph of her with Trump, who is forcing her head toward his crotch. The text reads: “That’s right bitches. The masses have spoken and today democracy won.”

This may be shocking, but it is hardly surprising. The vast majority of Border Patrol agents showed themselves to be comfortable with racism and misogyny in 2016, when Trump became the first presidential candidate their union had ever endorsed. He built his presidential campaign on a surprisingly frank racism. He was birther-in-chief, insisting that President Barack Obama was not an American citizen. He denounced Muslims and denigrated Mexicans. And he was caught bragging about groping women.

Once elected, Trump proceeded to cultivate a culture that favored white nationalism, a worldview made all the more desperate by the nation’s changing demographics. The president surrounded himself with advisers such as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller, both of whom are anti-immigration fanatics who would curtail legal immigration. And the president has endorsed inhumane border tactics that he believes will discourage migrants from attempting entry without papers.

It’s no coincidence that the president’s underlings take to his policies with glee. They are chosen for their ruthlessness. If his immigration agency heads are insufficiently cruel, if they show a shred of mercy every now and then, they are publicly humiliated. In the last few months, the president has purged nearly every agency head at the Department of Homeland Security — including the hapless Kirstjen Nielsen, who was cabinet secretary — because he wanted more “toughness.”

Trump’s vile policies and procedures have promoted a reaction among progressives that now disdains the very notion of border control. Some leading Democrats have spoken openly about abolishing ICE, while others would so curtail its authority that it would effectively be out of business. That’s likely a mistake. Even in our modern, globalized age, nations need to control traffic flows — human and otherwise — across their borders. The U.S. has managed to do so for a very long time without resorting to the terror that Trump has inflicted.

Trump’s successor can start the process of cleaning house at the agencies charged with policing the borders, deporting immigrants who have proved themselves unfit to stay here and — not coincidentally — naturalizing those who have completed the process for citizenship. That will take time and effort, but it can be done. (Trump’s successor would also do well to get out of the for-profit prison business, not only for migrant detainees but also for federal inmates. Nothing good comes from prisons for profit.)

Even with a more humane approach to immigration, some hearts will be broken, some dreams dashed. Not everyone who wishes to come in can be admitted. Still, cruelty need not be a policy feature.

IMAGE: A Salvadoran father (R) carries his son while running next to another immigrant as they try to board a train heading to the Mexican-U.S. border, in Huehuetoca, near of Mexico City. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo

Why We Should Reach Across Borders, Not Close Them

Why We Should Reach Across Borders, Not Close Them

A nation’s border is nothing in and of itself. It’s just an inanimate line on a map, in the dirt, on a riverbank. It has no philosophy, personality, feelings or meaning — beyond what people on either side attribute to it.

Unfortunately, thanks to Donnie Trump’s xenophobic demagoguery in this presidential election, America finds itself in a destructive border war — not with Mexico, but with itself. In his rallies, he leads his true believers in angry chants of “Build that wall!” He’s demanding that our Southwestern border with Mexico be turned into a hostile barrier of national, cultural and racial separation that will physically scream at Latino people: “KEEP OUT!”

This isn’t conjecture — you can see it for yourself, for about a third of that 2,000-mile frontier has already been desecrated with a massive metal wall, thrusting up to 30 feet high. It scowls at Mexico with such military fortifications as pole-mounted cameras, 24-hour radar, vibration sensors, all-seeing drones, surveillance balloons, and Blackhawk helicopters.

It has made the border mean, yet — get this — it doesn’t work! Migrants and traffickers continually overcome it. “The wall is a fantasy,” says an Arizona border sheriff. A rancher and diehard Trump supporter dismisses Donnie’s barrier scheme as a “farce.”

Worse, the existing wall and Trump’s extension of it is a perversion of what this border has been for centuries: An enriching connection point for people on either side. In fact, there were no sides — festivals paraded from Mexico into the U.S. and back again, businesses were totally bi-national, families extended across the so-called-line, kids played together on both sides, and the community was an organic whole.

However, Trump doesn’t concern himself with the hardship his wall extension would have on the hard-working people living along the border. He has convinced himself that hordes of rapists and drug dealers are pouring into the country in droves. Indeed, Donnie warned his supporters that if he does not win the election, we “…could have 650 million people pour in and we do nothing about it. Think of it: That’s what could happen. You triple the size of our country in one week.” That’s more than the entire populations of Mexico, Central America, and South America combined.

Not that there’s not an issue with border security. For example, at one part of the border, three Guatemalans waited until dusk to make their move, evading security in the remote expanse, illicitly slipping into our country. As the New York Times recently reported, “This area is a haven for smugglers and cross-border criminal organizations.” If Donald Trump were to witness such a scene, his hair would burst into flames and he’d fall into such a furious rant his lungs would explode! But The Donald will never see it, speak about it, or even know about it, because he’s always facing south, fulminating against Mexicans, Central Americans, and South Americans who cross our southern border.

Meanwhile, the scene described by the New York Times took place way up north, where rural Vermont connects to Canada. With so many of our nation’s political and security officials obsessed with the southern border, more and more criminal action — including smuggling people, drugs and weapons — has been coming across our 5,500-mile Canadian border, the longest in the world between two countries. Running from the Atlantic to the Pacific through sparsely-populated and heavily-wooded terrain, there’s often no clear demarcation of where Canada ends and the U.S. begins. Some farms, homes and businesses actually sprawl across the border.

Meanwhile, only about 2,000 agents patrol this vast stretch, and officials concede they don’t even have a good guess of how many people and how much contraband is coming across, or where.

So, Mr. Trump, shall we wall off Canada, too? And how much of our public treasury, democratic idealism and international goodwill shall we dump into the folly of militarizing both borders? By simply thinking we can wall the world out, we’ll be walling ourselves in — and that’s suicidal. Trump’s wall won’t keep undocumented migrants out, but it will lock out America’s egalitarian ideal of cross-cultural community. Rather than walling-off borders, our true national security requires that we reach across them in all directions.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Trump Says He, Mexican Leader Discussed Border Wall But Not Who Pays

Trump Says He, Mexican Leader Discussed Border Wall But Not Who Pays

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Wednesday he and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto discussed Trump’s proposal for a border wall between the countries but not the New York businessman’s demand that Mexico pay for it.

Trump and Pena Nieto emerged from about an hour of talks at the presidential palace in Mexico City to deliver statements to the news media and take questions.

“We did discuss the wall, we didn’t discuss payment of the wall, that will be at a later date, this was a very preliminary meeting, it was an excellent meeting,” Trump said.

Pena Nieto, in his statement, said the border must be seen as an asset for the region. He said undocumented immigration from Mexico to the United States had dropped considerably since reaching a peak a decade ago.

(Reporting by Steve Holland,; Ginger Gibson, Caren Bohan and Amanda Becker; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Trump’s Islam Comments Draw Fire From Rivals, But Civility Reigns

Trump’s Islam Comments Draw Fire From Rivals, But Civility Reigns

By James Oliphant and Luciana Lopez

MIAMI (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump came under fire from his rivals on Thursday for saying Muslims hate the United States at a debate that was relatively free of the gut-punching attacks that have dominated past encounters.

Trump, the front-runner who could tighten his grip on the Republican presidential nomination battle if he wins Florida and Ohio on Tuesday, defended his belief, as stated in television interviews, that followers of Islam “hate us.”

“We have a serious problem of hate. There is tremendous hate,” Trump said.But Trump’s rivals, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich said the United States needs to maintain good relations with Muslim countries in the Middle East to help in the fight against Islamic State militants.

“We are going to have to work with people in the Muslim faith even as Islam faces a serious crisis within it,” Rubio said.

Rubio also defended American Muslims as patriots.

“If you go anywhere in the world you’re going see American men and women serving us in uniform that are Muslims,” he said.

“Anyone out there that has the uniform of the United States on and is willing to die for this country is someone that loves America,” he added.

Kasich, looking to win his home state of Ohio on Tuesday in order to keep his candidacy going, said Middle Eastern allies in the Arab world are essential.

“The fact is if we’re going to defeat ISIS, we’re going to have to have those countries,” he said, citing Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.

Trump said he would consider between 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops on the ground in the region to help defeat Islamic State, saying he would complete the mission quickly and bring them home to focus on rebuilding the United States.

“We really have no choice, we have to knock out ISIS,” Trump said. “I would listen to the generals, but I’m hearing numbers of 20,000 to 30,000.”

It was the most detailed view yet of Trump’s thinking about Islamic State. He has previously talked of “knocking the hell” out of ISIS without offering specifics.

The CNN-hosted debate took place at a crucial time, days before primary votes in Florida and Ohio that could catapult Trump even further ahead of his rivals despite an intense anti-Trump movement by establishment Republicans who are trying to deny him the party’s presidential nomination.

Both the Florida and Ohio Republican primaries award delegates on a winner-take-all basis, meaning that the winner of the popular vote is awarded the state’s entire slate of delegates.

So far, 25 states and Puerto Rico have held nominating contests, and Trump has amassed a solid lead in the delegate race. According to the Associated Press, Trump has 458 delegates, followed by Cruz at 359, Rubio at 151, and Kasich at 54.

Clinching the Republican nomination requires 1,237 delegates.

Trump on Thursday appeared to try to appear more presidential, something he has pledged often in the past to do so but never has. On Thursday he modulated both the tone of his voice and the tenor of his remarks, which in prior debates have drawn sharp criticism for being vulgar.

“I would say this, we’re all in this together. We’re going to come up with solutions, we’re going to find the answers to things, and so far I can’t believe how civil it has been up here,” Trump said.

The two-hour debate included a sober discussion of pressing challenges from illegal immigration to reform of Social Security to free trade deals, a marked departure from the finger-pointing schoolyard taunts that the candidates have engaged in past debates.

Trump insisted he would impose a tariff, as high as 45 percent, on some imports from countries like China.

Trump said his goal is to encourage production of goods on American soil.

“People will buy products from here,” Trump said. “We’ll build our factories here and we’ll make our own products.”

But Cruz, looking to emerge as Trump’s central challenger and consolidate the party’s anti-Trump vote, said the New York billionaire’s tariff plan would only lead to higher prices for American consumers because companies from the exporting country would increase prices.

“A tariff is a tax on you, the American people,” Cruz said.

Trump said he would pause for a year or two the H1B federal visa program to reduce an influx of foreign workers into the United States.

He acknowledged he has taken advantage of that visa program in order to bring in foreign workers to work at some of his own resort properties. He said he would also pause the issuance of Green Cards, which grant permanent residency, for these workers.

Kasich emphasized the need to control the U.S. southern border with Mexico to stem illegal immigration. He said he would offer a path to legal status, but not citizenship to the more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.

“We can’t just have people walking in,” Kasich said.

Trump got a fresh injection of campaign momentum on Thursday with plans by rival Ben Carson, who is popular with conservatives, to endorse him.

Trump said Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who dropped out of the race March 4, would endorse him on Friday at an event in Florida.

 

(Additional reporting by Ginger Gibson, Alana Wise, Amanda Becker; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Photo: Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich stand together onstage at the start of the Republican candidates debate sponsored by CNN at the University of Miami in Miami, Florida, March 10, 2016. REUTERS/Joe Skipper