Rampant Child Trafficking: Children Used to Game Border Entry

As is hard to miss, there is a lot of sentimental talk about keeping families at the border together.  (Strange that deporting them together is rarely suggested as a solution.)  This and other weaponized compassion about “refugees” and “immigrants” is enabling rampant child trafficking.  A lot of those families are fake: 

Homeland Security Investigations, a division of ICE, sent 400 agents to El Paso and Rio Grande Valley, Texas, in mid-April to interview families that Border Patrol suspected were fake. In the last eight weeks, HSI special agents have identified 5,500 fraudulent families—about 15 percent of all cases referred.

McAleenan said agents have uncovered 921 fake documents and 615 individuals have been prosecuted for trafficking or smuggling a child.

“That tells me that we might be scratching the surface of this problem and the number of children being put at risk might be even higher,” he said.

“Everybody knows that if they bring a child, they’ll be allowed to stay in the United States—they call it a ‘passport for migration.’ I heard that directly from a gentleman from Huehuetenango, the western-most province of Guatemala.”

Yes.  Smuggling children in order to gain entry into the U. S.

Do we want people who would do this in our country at all?

But you get more of what you reward.  And we are rewarding child trafficking at the border. If you have a child with you and get across the border, you are probably in.  For that we can thank . . .

The legal loophole that is fueling the sharp increase in family units was opened in 2015 by a California judge, [of course]who amended the Flores Settlement Agreement to prohibit the detention of families for more than 20 days. Previously, the 20-day rule was applied to unaccompanied minors only.

An immigration case cannot be adjudicated within 20 days, so families who cross the border illegally are now released by Border Patrol within days, with a future court date that most fail to honor.  [87% failed to show up by one study. – ed.]

One of the most telling statistics is that of men crossing the border with a child. In 2014, fewer than 1 percent of all men apprehended by Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley Sector had a child with them. That number now sits at 50 percent, according to Rodolfo Karisch, chief Border Patrol agent for that sector.

Wow! It’s so nice to see male illegals suddenly become so family-oriented!

Now at least some of those men are smuggling their own children, taking them through a dangerous journey, which is bad enough. Who knows how many of those men are smuggling other people’s children.

As for unaccompanied minors, most of them are smuggled as well in part to, yes, game the system.

McAleenan said it’s often a parent, who is already in the United States illegally, who pays a smuggler to deliver their child up to the border.

“I don’t think most people realize that most of these unaccompanied children are being released to parents or relatives in the United States who are also here unlawfully, who may not have permission to work in the United States,” McAleenan said.

New restrictions, placed by Congress in the latest round of appropriations, include a provision that illegal aliens in a household with an unaccompanied minor are now exempt from deportation.

Again, rewarding child trafficking and the violation of our borders.

I do not pretend to know the balance between compassion on the one hand and self-defense and not enabling criminal behavior on the other.  But we as a nation need to be realistic about who is entering the U. S. and how they are gaining entry, even if being realistic is smeared as racist or whatever.

And, for the sake of children and the God who loves them, we must stop enabling and rewarding child trafficking.

A Balance of the Tractarians – Learned Yet Not Over-trusting Learning

I’ve recently discovered a jewel of a book in my personal library – The Vision Glorious by the late, great Geoffrey Rowell.

Oh I have been aware of that prominent book on the Oxford Movement.  But I was unaware I already possessed a copy.  You see, about a third to half of my library was purchased from an Anglican priest a few years ago who was moving to England and realized moving his library was not practical.  And now and then, I discover things both new and old.

Anyway, I am reading The Vision Glorious now and have noticed an interesting paradox of the Tractarian leaders, particularly Pusey and Keble.   They were profoundly learned and had prestigious positions at Oxford that acknowledged and reflected that.  And, of course, their voluminous writings and lectures very well reflect that.  Yet at the same time they profoundly distrusted modes of thinking that placed too much trust in human reason, logic, and even learning itself as ways to comprehend the things of God.

Not that they did not value learning. Their production, including The Library of the Fathers and much more, showed they did greatly.  But they had the humility to realize learning and the human intellect had its limits.  And they were not shy in pointing out the errors that come from trying to dissect and explain the mysteries of God too much.

Keble felt that both prominent errant views of the Eucharist, transubstantiation and denial of the Real Presence, came from such over-trust in human reason and logic:

Transubstantiation on the one hand . . . the denial of Christ’s real presence on the other. . . .  The two errors in the original are perhaps but rationalism in two different forms: endeavors to explain away, and bring nearer to the human intellect, that which had been left thoroughly mysterious both by Scripture and tradition.

And he urged to avoid “slighting divine mysteries because we cannot comprehend and explain them.”

As for Pusey, Rowell finds he also admonishes, particularly in the unpublished Lectures on Types and Prophecies, that overreliance on human comprehension and reason impoverishes faith.  Pusey:

By striving over-much at clearness, and practically admitting only what they could make, as they thought, intelligible to themselves, men have narrowed [the Creed]far below that of the ancient Church, or of our own in former days.

For it is “not the things which we know clearly, but the things which we know unclearly [which] are our highest birth-right.”

Many of us from different churchmanships would do well to take these admonitions to heart.  I’ve seen a kind of very Reformed Bible Church mindset which rightly exalts study of scripture, but then falls into a pitfall of an inflated sense of one’s knowledge and a weakened respect of mystery. Thereby conceit oft gets inflated and faith constricted.  And, of course, those from liberal theological backgrounds tend to put human intellect as a judge over the things of God.  Such pretentious presumption becomes putrid.

Better is the approach of Pusey and Keble, to strive for the learning God allows to us while having respect and awe for the mysteries He has revealed yet veiled. 

In Praise of Molly at Oxford

With Molly Gibson-Mee having recently gotten excellent examination grades in Classics at Oxford – and Classics there is notoriously demanding – I think this a good time to congratulate her and to recommend her videos to anyone interested in Oxford.

Emeritus Pusey House Fellow Barry Orford once humorously complained in my hearing about Oxford, “They don’t tell you anything that’s going on around here!” And I have noticed it is sometimes difficult to tell what’s what at that university.  Molly has done yeoman work in unveiling Oxford mysteries, particularly for prospective students.

Personally, my favorite part of her YouTube channel is her college tours.  Although aimed mainly at potential students, I enjoy seeing things mere visitors like myself usually do not get to see.

So if you are the least bit interested in Oxford, I commend her channel to you.  And, since she intends to continue as a Masters student at Oxford, we can look forward to future contributions. 

Boris Johnson Off to a Roaring Start

Contra his many detractors, some of whom I greatly respect, I think Boris Johnson will prove to be a great Prime Minister. Both on politics and policy, he is brilliant. And I am pleased beyond even my expectations with his start. 

He has cleaned out most of the Wet/Damp/Remainer Tories from his cabinet and significantly upgraded.  Don’t take my word for it.  Scottish MP Pete Wishart has given a glowing endorsement:

Boris Johnson’s nightmare Tory government is shaping up to be the worst since Thatcher – packed full of extreme Brexiteers and rabid rightwingers who want to drag us back to a bygone era….

This is a Tory cabinet from hell, which Donald Trump or Nigel Farage would be proud of…

Sounds good to me! Labour Lefty John McDonnell also gives it a heartfelt endorsement, calling it “the most right-wing cabinet in my lifetime.” I am particularly pleased that Jacob Rees-Mogg is now on the front bench.  Watching him is already proving to be as fun as watching Boris.  If he is “Victorian values,” then we are amused!

Teresa May and her failure theatre has been a drag on the UK and has come precariously close to giving the world Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn.  Boris Johnson is the remedy to pull the UK and the Tories out of the May morass. Granted, his margin in Parliament is so narrow thanks to May and treacherous Remoaner Tories, he may have to call an election.  But if he can’t pull off Brexit and a UK revival, I don’t know who can.

And, as a bonus, it will be great fun to watch.

Trump is Right – The Squad and Their Ilk Should Go

Although President Trump’s tweets are not all wisely worded (And maybe this post isn’t either, but I’ve had enough.), he is right to say that those who hate America and push Anti-American values have no place in Congress and would do well to consider getting out of the country. “America – love it or leave it” is not racist but is instead anger at those who take advantage of our freedoms to attack our freedoms.  This is anger I share regardless of the skin color of those who so attack us and our freedoms.

The Gang of Four, recently dubbed “The Squad,” are among these.  Take Rep. Ayanna Pressley . . . please.  She is the racist, having recently said in a prominent speech at Netroots Nation:

Because if you're going to come to this table, all of you who have aspirations of running for office. If you’re not prepared to come to that table and represent that voice, don’t come, because we don't need any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don't want to be a black voice. We don't need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don't want to be a queer voice. 

So if you are in these demographics you must toe the Leftist line, or you’re not a good Black, or a good Hispanic, etc. THAT is racism and bigotry.

And then yesterday she pointedly refused to call Trump the President, instead calling him “the occupant of the White House.”  She thereby disrespects our elections and the Americans who elected Trump.  THAT is not just un-American, but anti-American.

(Have I mentioned Leftists only respect elections they win? Yes I have.)

Or take Rep. Ilhan Omar – heck, deport her as there is good reason to suspect she became became a citizen via a fake marriage, but anyway….  Yesterday, she not only repeated the lie that illegals under detention drink out of toilets, she not only repeated the lie that Trump colluded with foreign governments to rig the election among other lies, she refused to denounce Al-Qaeda.  That after earlier refusing to decry the terrorist Antifa attack on an ICE facility. Crap, that anti-semite refuses even to denounce murderous terrorism, and she and her backers bitch about Trump’s tweets??

If you give such noxious views and statements a pass because you agree with them, feel free to give that a good rethink or to get the heck of America.  You ARE un-American.  And there is a lot of the rest of the world to choose from.  If you give such noxious views and statements a pass because they come from “women of color,” YOU are racist, period.

Trump is right.  Those who hold the views of The Democrat Squad should consider improving America . . . by getting out.

Yes.  I said it.