Philadelphia Columnist: Border Policies Are 'State-Sanctioned Hatred'

A columnist with the Philadelphia Inquirer called President Donald Trump’s border enforcement policies “state-sanctioned hatred’ in a Sunday opinion piece.

Columnist Will Bunch relayed the story of a Guatemalan man, Estaban Pastor, who used his 18-month old son to attempt to gain illegal entry into the U.S. in South Texas. Under a new policy being enforced by the Trump Administration, officials deported the Guatemalan man but detained his son. Bunch called this the “human toll of state-sanctioned hatred.”

“To be clear, the story of how the United States mistreats migrant families, so desperate for a better life, can be a confusing tale — especially as emotions flare on social media,” the article begins. “It’s a discussion that can get bogged down in the evil banality of bureaucrats and in statistics — especially the 1,475 children that government agents took, and then lost track of — that generate shock yet somehow don’t do justice to the everyday inhumanity.”

At about the same time that Pastor attempted to use his child to gain entry into the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security reported a massive increase in similar cases. Between October 2017 and February 2018, DHS officials reported a 315 percent increase over the previous year in illegal immigrants using children as a screen to obtain illegal entry into the U.S., National Review reported.

Between April 2017 and April 2018, officials reported a 636 percent increase in the number of Unaccompanied Alien Children apprehended at ports of entry along the border, the National Review article continued.

Breitbart Texas reported extensively on the dangers these parents are exposing their children to. The risks occur all along the routes utilized by cartel-connected human smugglers.

Just last month, a Mexican cartel abandoned 55 Guatelaman children, along with 48 adults, locked in a tractor-trailer without food or water. The smugglers left them alone for two days in Veracruz before authorities made the discovery, Breitbart Texas reported.

In February, the National Immigration Institute reported the rescue of 40 Hondurans locked inside a cargo truck in Veracruz. The immigration agents found the truck on a “little-traveled road.” Officials said the migrants were suffering signs of dehydration and suffocation as the truck was poorly ventilated.

The agents provided food and water to the “girls, children, and adults” who said they had left Honduras and expected to be delivered to the U.S. border, where they planned to cross.

In the U.S., smuggled migrants, including minors, do not fare much better.

In July 2017, San Antonio police officers found nine dead migrants locked in the back of a tractor-trailer. The “human cargo” included school-aged children. At least two 15-year-old juveniles were transported to a local hospital for treatment relating to heat exhaustion and dehydration, officials reported.

Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Napier told Breitbart Texas in March that “Open borders policies are not compassionate public policy, When we passively encourage illegal border crossing we are creating a human rights tragedy. These migrants are victimized repeatedly by bandits, human smuggling coyotes, and the harsh elements of this region.”

His deputies face the often gruesome task of recovering the remains of migrants, including children, who are abandoned in the desert and left to die by their cartel-connected human smugglers.

In December 2016, Border Patrol agents in southern California rescued an unaccompanied minor who became lost in the desert after illegally crossing from Mexico. “The desert can be an unforgiving place,” Chief Patrol Agent of the El Centro Sector Rodney S. Scott said in a written statement at the time.

Later that month, El Paso Sector agents rescued a group of 15 illegal immigrants after their human smugglers abandoned them in freezing conditions.

The group told the agents that their coyotes had left them behind and told them to find authorities for aid. Because of the freezing conditions that included rain, sleet, and high winds, agents were concerned about the safety of the group who had been left in the severe elements.

At about the same time, Rio Grande Valley Sector agents responded to a situation where human smugglers abandoned a group of 11 illegal aliens in the middle of the Rio Grande River.

The agents quickly responded to a life-threatening situation after human smugglers forced a raft to capsize, tossing seven children and four adults into the water. One of the children was listed as an infant, according to information obtained from Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Marlene Castro. Five of the seven children were under the age of nine, officials stated.

Rather than calling out the danger these mostly Central American parents are putting their children in, the Philadelphia Inquirer instead chose to call President Trump’s policies a “cancer on the American spirit, led by a president and his top aides who dehumanize migrants and now terrorize their families, fueled by cynical demagogic politics and a dollop of old-time prejudice.”