Toronto immigration lawyer Andy Semotiuk: Some very worrisome details are coming from the US/Mexican border, where child migrants are apparently coming into the United States by the thousands:
A surge in unaccompanied minors from Central America crossing the border illegally into Texas has so overwhelmed the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley that officials have transported more than 750 children since last week to Border Patrol facilities in Arizona — with plans to bring hundreds more, if necessary.
Calling the situation “a humanitarian crisis,” President Barack Obama has sent federal officials scrambling to ramp up temporary housing in three other states for about 3,000 more migrant children.
Today’s immigration editorial notes that word has passed through the grapevine back to Central America that women and children who infiltrate across the border are let go, and that “The only way to stanch the flow is to change such expectations.” But I wonder if this administration is capable of doing what it takes. I don’t mean whether the tools exist, but rather whether the decision makers are ideologically or even psychologically up to the task….
No one in Central America is poring through the 1,200 pages of the Schumer-Rubio bill or studying the memoranda establishing Obama’s illegal DACA/DREAM amnesty to see if they might qualify. It’s the broad signal we’re sending that illegal immigrants can remain here unmolested that’s driving this rush for the border. When the former head of ICE under Obama says that “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero,” news of that reality travels by word of mouth and prospective illegal aliens jump at the opportunity.