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?
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.
