Border patrol officers will start releasing many of the myriad migrants crossing the Rio Grande without even going through the formalities of temporary detention or strapping removable tracking-devices to the migrants’ ankles, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
The policy comes as the migrant wave is expected to reach 100,000 this month, and shortly after Congress again refused to seriously fund a border wall or to fund additional detention beds for migrants, to penalize companies which hire illegals, or to reform border laws or even to bar the courts from cutting loopholes in the border laws. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Starting this week, hundreds of families caught each day in that area are being released by Border Patrol agents, instead of being handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for potentially longer detention, government officials said. The exact number will depend on how many there is room for in ICE detention facilities, which have filled up as a record volume of families are crossing the border.
The officials said they are making the change because of crowding and safety concerns. The conditions under which the federal government detains migrant families, particularly those with young children, have drawn frequent criticism in the past few years. Two migrant Guatemalan children died in Border Patrol custody in December….
Under the new policy, some families will be processed by the Border Patrol and then released and ordered to show up later to start their deportation or asylum cases.
Few migrants show up for the court hearings where they are supposed to make a plea for asylum.The inflow of economic migrant is good for business because it helps reduce marketplace pressure to raise wages for Americans and legal immigrants. The new decision to further weaken border defenses may accelerate the population movement from Central America population movement into the United States, tweeted Mickey Kaus:
HUH? Why don’t they print this up on flyers and distribute in Central America, to save the coyotes the trouble. This seems a sure-fire way to turbocharge the mass migration, no?Maybe the [administration is] intentionally provoking a crisis to force Congress to act? (If so, seems very risky–Dems and pro-business GOPS will demand all sorts of things in exchange, like amnesties and guest-worker programs. Not what you want to negotiate under a gun.)
“The situation at our Southern Border has gone from a crisis to a national emergency, to a near system-wide meltdown,” Homeland secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said March 18 at Auburn University’s Center for Cyber & Homeland Security. Her prepared speech said:
There is no more fundamental responsibility for a nation. And yet, the American people have been let down by our government again…and again. I want to cut through the politics to tell you loud and clear: there is NO “manufactured” crisis at our Southern Border. There is a real-life humanitarian and security catastrophe. Late last year, we were apprehending 50,000 – 60,000 migrants a month. Last month, we apprehended more than 75,000—the highest in over a decade. And today I can tell you that we are on track to interdict nearly 100,000 migrants this month …I say this with the utmost sincerity and urgency: the system is breaking. And our communities, our law enforcement personnel, and the migrants themselves are paying the price.
Elsewhere, the flow of economic migrants is so great that a bus station is requiring released migrants to wait outside:
Traffickers have established a low-cost bus route through Mexico to deliver thousands of economic migrants from Central America to U.S. blue-collar jobs, according to the Washington Post. The business model is being called the “conveyor belt” system, and large groups of customers are charged from $2,500 to $7,000 per adult and child, depending on amenities, says the Washington Post:
Paying up to $7,000 per adult with child, families are transported to staging areas at ranches and hotels in southern Mexico, where they are organized into bus groups and rushed north along Mexican highways, “stopping only for food, fuel and bathroom breaks,” according to the U.S. law enforcement documents.…
Within 72 hours of leaving the staging areas, the buses arrive at predetermined drop-off points within walking distance of the U.S. border. Migrant families are clustered into groups that have at times exceeded 300 adults and children, and they walk directly across the border, in some cases stepping over barriers in long, orderly lines. They then surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents and initiate asylum claims.
The bus networks boost the cartels’ profits by maximizing production and minimizing overhead costs, such as the costs of stash houses and gunmen, the Washington Post notes.
Meanwhile, establishment reporters ignore the threat of cheap-labor migration to Americans’ wages and livelihoods.
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