Government Data Proves There Is No Border Crisis

One thing that one can count on is that just about anything that comes out of the Trump/Pence regime will be a lie.  That same thing holds for Fox News - today's equivalent of  Germany's Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, or Propagandaministerium for short - under the Nazi regime.  Fox News cares nothing about the truth and objective facts and like it's German model instead works to (i) enforce Trump/Pence ideology, and (ii) give the impression that the Trump/Pence regime has the support of a majority the population rather than merely 35-38% of the population.  Nowhere is the lying campaign more pronounced at the moment than in pushing the fiction that a crisis exists at the US southern border and that a mass invasion of brown people is rushing the border.  A piece in Forbes looks at the Trump/Pence regime's own Department of Homeland Security data that proves that Der Trumpenführer claims are - like everything he utters - a deliberate lie.  Here are article highlights that include meaningful methods to improve the actual border situation: 

America is only a year removed from a December 2017 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report that hailed the agency’s great success in achieving “the lowest level of illegal cross-border migration on record.” A fresh look at current and historical data shows that despite the attention paid to the dueling televised addresses delivered on January 8, 2019, there is no crisis at the border.

“In FY 2017, CBP [Customs and Border Protection] recorded the lowest level of illegal cross-border migration on record, as measured by apprehensions along the border and inadmissible encounters at U.S. ports of entry,” according to the Trump administration’s DHS report released in December 2017. Did the situation at the border change dramatically over the next 13 months and go from an historic “lowest level of illegal cross-border migration” to a national crisis? The answer is, “No.”

Digging deeper into the data, in the first three months of FY 2019, the number of apprehensions and inadmissible encounters at ports of entry was higher than during the first three months of FY 2018. However, the number of apprehensions and people deemed inadmissible at ports of entry the first three months of FY 2019 was actually lower than during those same three months in FY 2017 (the year DHS referred to as the “lowest level…on record”). . . . this indicates there is not a national crisis, but rather developments that should be monitored and addressed with reasonable measures (see below). The data show the problem is concentrated on family units and unaccompanied minors from Honduras and Guatemala. The number of unaccompanied minors from these two countries did not change a great deal between FY 2016 and FY 2018. For Honduras, apprehensions of unaccompanied minors were 10,468 in FY 2016, similar to the 10,913 total in FY 2018. For Guatemala, the FY 2016 number was 18,913, compared to 22,327 in FY 2018. A multi-pronged approach is needed to address the problem. First, the administration should reinstate the Central American Minors (CAM) program to permit people to apply for protection from their home countries. “The CAM program was established in 2014 to provide certain minors in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras the opportunity to be considered, while still in their home country, for refugee resettlement in the United States,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. As part of its opposition to refugee admissions, Trump administration officials made a significant error in judgment by abolishing the program, when instead they should have been expanding the program as a way to discourage dangerous treks to the border. Second, not everyone coming to the border is seeking asylum. Many simply want better economic opportunities free of shakedowns (or worse) by gang members. Donald Trump was a businessman and should be adopting a practical businessman’s approach by giving more people a chance to work legally in the United States so they will not enter the U.S. illegally. Negotiating bilateral agreements with Central American countries is one way to accomplish this straightforward solution.

Third, hire more immigration judges and give people a chance to apply for asylum. Blocking people at ports of entry through “metering” encourages people to use smugglers to enter the U.S. unlawfully. For those who apply for asylum, use alternatives to detention, a number of which have a good track record in ensuring people appear for their hearings. That would eliminate the need for more long-term detention facilities.

Fourth, work with Mexico and Central American governments to eliminate the conditions that drive people north in search of safety and economic salvation.

Fifth, tone down the rhetoric to seek more rational solutions. Arguing, as the administration has, that a wall is needed to prevent murderers and terrorists from overrunning the United States does little to promote a bipartisan compromise.

Establishing more ways for people to apply for refugee status in their home countries and allowing individuals to enter the U.S. and work legally is the best approach. A wall will not solve the problem at the border, and it’s a problem, not a crisis.