Often lost in our immigration debates – especially within the activist media's typical framing – is the extent to which border enforcement is not merely a matter of balancing national sovereignty and "compassion." It's undoubtedly true that the vast majority of illegal immigrants entering the United States are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families. That doesn't give them the right to be here, of course, but it's hard to argue that they constitute a national security threat. But along with the minors, families, and laborers, there are very dangerous elements mixed in. Protecting Americans from such elements is, inescapably, an imperative task for the US government, and border security failures therefore cannot be broadly dismissed and downplayed as logistical challenges or relatively harmless shortcomings. What is an "acceptable" number of human traffickers, cartel members or suspected terrorists to allow illegal entry into the country?
Last month alone, US officials revealed that more than 40,000 "got-aways" unlawfully crossed the southern border, which the Biden administration risibly insists is "secure." Even if one grants, for the sake of argument, that 98 percent of those non-detained illegal immigrants were never going to pose a criminal or safety threat to any American, that leaves close to one thousand potentially dangerous illegal immigrants unaccounted for. In one month. And that's just among the "got-aways" that CBP knows about (people who were detected but not captured, due to lack of resources and other factors). The Biden administration has placed much of its focus on removing or mitigating "root causes" of illegal immigration in a handful of Central American nations, which is at best a years-long project. And its inherent, fatal flaws should be obvious. For instance:
I guess the only way to fix this is to give more foreign aid to Romania and put Kamala Harris in charge of fixing the country pic.twitter.com/Q7C7beYCXx
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) May 27, 2021
The number of people attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border from countries beyond Mexico and Central America's Northern Triangle — including residents of Haiti, Cuba, Romania and India — has spiked during recent months...Last month, the Border Patrol encountered more than 33,000 people crossing into the U.S. from nations other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to Department of Homeland Security data. That's up from about 9,000 in January...The Customs and Border Protection agency confirmed to Congress in March that four people arrested at the border since Oct. 1 match names on the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database. Three were from Yemen and one was from Serbia.
Helping other nations overcome difficulties as a means of reducing incentives for illegal migration to America may be a laudable goal (the efficacy of such a "strategy" is certainly debatable) but the overarching duty of the US government is to secure and protect its own borders, a realm in which it wields direct and total authority. We can't "fix" the northern triangle, let alone address the sundry problems plaguing the many nations from which more than 30,000 illegal immigrants (again, that we know of) who crossed the southern border last month originated. Furthermore, it would be foolish to pretend as though there are not extremely serious security problems immediately south of that border. This report from the Associated Press about the viciousness of the drug cartels that dominate large swaths of Mexico is chilling:
The notoriously violent Jalisco cartel has responded to Mexico’s “hugs, not bullets” policy with a policy of its own: The cartel kidnapped several members of an elite police force in the state of Guanajuato, tortured them to obtain names and addresses of fellow officers and is now hunting down and killing police at their homes, on their days off, in front of their families. It is a type of direct attack on officers seldom seen outside of the most gang-plagued nations of Central America and poses the most direct challenge yet to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of avoiding violence and rejecting any war on the cartels. But the cartel has already declared war on the government, aiming to eradicate an elite state force known as the Tactical Group which the gang accuses of treating its members unfairly...
...Officials in Guanajuato — Mexico’s most violent state, where Jalisco is fighting local gangs backed by the rival Sinaloa cartel — refused to comment on how many members of the elite group have been murdered so far. But state police publicly acknowledged the latest case, an officer who was kidnapped from his home on Thursday, killed and his body dumped on a highway. Guanajuato-based security analyst David Saucedo said there have been many cases. “A lot of them (officers) have decided to desert. They took their families, abandoned their homes and they are fleeing and in hiding,” Saucedo said. “The CJNG is hunting the elite police force of Guanajuato.” Numbers of victims are hard to come by, but Poplab, a news cooperative in Guanajuato, said at least seven police officers have been killed on their days off so far this year. In January, gunmen went to the home of a female state police officer, killed her husband, dragged her away, tortured her and dumped her bullet-ridden body.
I'll leave you with this dangerous, woke nonsense, from the leader of our northern neighbors:
This is quite something. Justin Trudeau is asked about safeguarding Canadian institutions after scientists shared research with the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Justin Trudeau responds with a lecture about "anti-Asian racism" and "diversity." pic.twitter.com/qptzdzhdlr
— Andrew Lawton (@AndrewLawton) May 26, 2021
