By John Daniel Davidson
Tuesday, April 03, 2018
A caravan of some 1,200 Central Americans now trekking
through Mexico, most of them Hondurans bound for U.S. ports of entry, has
already begun to change the immigration debate in America.
Organized by a left-wing group called Pueblos Sin
Fronteras, or People Without Borders, the stunt is brazen and reckless enough
that it might just force U.S. policymakers to reevaluate America’s
long-standing—and obviously failed—policy of strategic neglect toward Mexico
and Central America.
According to a report by BuzzFeed on Friday, the caravan
marched unopposed into Mexico from Guatemala last week, and since then “have
boldly crossed immigration checkpoints, military bases, and police in a
desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States. Despite their being
in Mexico without authorization, no one has made any effort to stop them.”
This presents the Trump administration with a unique
challenge, especially if Mexico stands aside and allows the caravan to reach
the U.S.-Mexico border. Mexico has a long history of failing to exercise
sovereignty within its own territory, and the United States has a corresponding
history, mostly forgotten today, of cross-border intervention when American
interests were at stake.
If Mexican authorities prove unable or unwilling to stop
the migrant caravan, President Trump could make the case that America has a
compelling national interest in ensuring such caravans don’t reach the U.S.
border, and that drastic measures, or the credible threat of such measures, are
entirely appropriate.
Of course, an incursion into Mexico by the U.S. military
would be a huge risk and it’s therefore extremely unlikely. But the existence
of the caravan nevertheless represents a unique opportunity to change the
parameters of an otherwise stale immigration debate in the United States—to
shift from talking about enforcement tactics (like a border wall) to the root
cause of mass migration: the collapse of civil society in places like Honduras
and parts of Mexico.
Trump Says DACA
Deal Is Off the Table
In fact, Trump might be laying the groundwork for such a
shift. He took to Twitter Sunday night to denounce “ridiculous” U.S.
immigration laws, Mexico, Democrats, and an amnesty deal, which he says is now
off the table.
A number of media outlets were quick to point out that
the Central Americans in the caravan are not eligible for President Obama’s
Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) executive order, which is technically
correct but misses the point.
Trump brought up DACA, which protects some foreign citizens
who were illegally brought to the United States as children, to highlight the
fact that Democrats were unwilling to strike any kind of DACA deal, balking at
even modest reforms to the immigration system and funding for Trump’s border
wall. Democrats’ unwillingness to compromise, argues Trump, is all the proof
you need that they don’t really want to secure the border, that they’re fine
with uncontrolled mass immigration, and that he shouldn’t be expected to
compromise with them.
On Monday, Trump continued in this vein, urging Senate
Republicans to use the “nuclear option” and abandon the legislative filibuster
so they can pass tougher immigration laws. Later on Monday, the White House
released a statement expounding on what Trump had referred to, in an earlier
tweet, as “ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release.”
Citing the numbers of unaccompanied minors and
trespassing families U.S. officials have released into the country with orders
to appear before a judge, the statement explained how current law limits the
government’s ability to return illegal migrants to their home countries. “In
the absence of lasting solutions to the problems that riddle our immigration
system,” it read, “we can only expect the flow of illegal immigration into our
country to continue.”
The Caravan Could
Trigger a Crisis
But what is a “lasting solution” to our immigration
problems? It’s not a border wall, nor is it simply loosening the laws that
govern deportations and asylum proceedings. When hundreds or thousands of
migrants are willing to trek through Mexico in massive caravans and present
themselves at U.S. ports of entry to claim asylum—knowing they won’t get asylum
but will be released into the United States—then it’s time to stop talking
about walls and start thinking about major policy shifts.
Make no mistake: if the caravan reaches the U.S. border,
it will be a disaster on several levels. At the most basic level, it will be a
humanitarian crisis. Depending on where groups of migrants decide to cross, food,
water, and exposure will be an immediate problem. Vast stretches of the
U.S.-Mexico border are sparsely populated and geographically harsh. Facilities
to house and feed hundreds of families for more than a day or two simply do not
exist along the border. Most of those who manage to cross into the United
States would have to be released before long.
While Border Patrol is dealing with all that, drug
cartels would no doubt take advantage of the situation. While I was on a
reporting trip to the Rio Grande Valley last month, Border Patrol agents told
me that when unaccompanied minors began showing up in large numbers in 2014, it
swamped their resources and left vast stretches of the border un-monitored.
Drug cartels sent over large groups of minors on purpose, they said, as a
diversionary tactic. A group of 80 or 90 children and families surrendering to
Border Patrol would tie up every agent in that area for the entire day,
allowing smugglers to ferry drugs across an unguarded border with impunity.
All of this would in turn trigger a political crisis that
very well might accrue to Trump’s advantage. In some ways, the caravan is the
worst possible development for Democrats, who have painted themselves into a
corner on immigration by betting the future of their party on a rigid form of
identity politics. For much of the Democratic Party’s base, “border security”
is tantamount to racism.
If it appears the caravan is going to reach the
U.S.-Mexico border, will Democrats even express alarm? Will they offer
platitudes about the rule of law? Or will they finally admit that what they
really want are open borders, mass immigration, and amnesty?
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