The Emperor’s New Tariffs Exposed by Reality at the US-Mexico Border
Like the arsonist who claims credit for saving the building when he calls the fire department, the President is claiming victory in the latest round of his war on the so-called invasion from the South.
This kind of behavior has happened so often it’s pattern is predictable: create fake crisis, “solve” fake crisis, get praised by his sycophants, declare any reporting calling out his little game as fake news... wash, rinse, repeat.
Let’s step back a cycle and move forward from there...
Donald Trump declared a bogus emergency to build a wall he said would “solve” immigration.
We have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people, and it is unacceptable."--President Trump at press conference, February 15, 2019.
Oh, those darned facts….
Drugs: Illicit drugs do come into the United States from the southern border, but federal data and reports say that a significant amount gets through legal ports of entry. Most heroin, for instance, comes in private vehicles and in tractor-trailers, co-mingled with legal cargo.
Gangs: Nationwide apprehensions of gang members are down from a few years ago, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
Immigrants: The total number of people apprehended during Trump’s time in office has been far below the numbers apprehended in the 2000s. In fiscal year 2000, the Border Patrol recorded more than 1.6 million apprehensions at the southwest border. During each of Trump’s years in office so far, Border Patrol has apprehended fewer than 400,000 people.
Since that National Emergency declaration, border arrests have spiked. Apprehensions have risen in recent months to levels on par with the higher-traffic decades of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s.
So are these new arrestees smuggling dope, or what? Here’s what Politico found:
The spike was due largely to a sharp rise in family members and unaccompanied minors caught at the border.
Border Patrol picked up nearly 85,000 family members in May, a 44 percent increase over a month earlier and a historic high. For comparison, the agency arrested roughly 107,000 family members in all of fiscal 2018.
The number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border also climbed. Border Patrol arrested 11,507 unaccompanied minors in May, up from 8,900 a month earlier.
In response to the influx, the Trump administration has announced it’s cutting services not directly related to migrant children's safety, including legal services, education and recreation, blaming a lack of money.
From the Washington Post:
The Trump administration is canceling English classes, recreational programs, and legal aid for unaccompanied minors staying in federal migrant shelters nationwide, saying the immigration influx at the southern border has created critical budget pressures. The Office of Refugee Resettlement has begun discontinuing the funding stream for activities — including soccer — that have been deemed “not directly necessary for the protection of life and safety, including education services, legal services, and recreation,” said U.S. Health and Human Services spokesman Mark Weber.
As Charles P Pierce at Esquire observed:
Look at the headline on that story. "Unaccompanied minors in U.S. shelters" should have been gob-stopping enough for any American with a democratic conscience, but, what the hell, let's make the experience even more joyless and degrading because that's easier than coming up with a plan that makes sense.
The cruelty, after all, is the point. Someday in the future, when the international courts look into this matter, stories like these headlines/links below will be part of our country’s legacy:
Pope Francis compares Trump’s border security to Berlin Wall
Trump Admin Prioritizes Border Wall Makeover As Children Lose ...
Border Patrol is confiscating migrant kids' medicine, U.S. doctors say
Migrant children stuck at border stations, sleeping on concrete, because of HHS overcrowding
The crisis of children dying in custody at the border, explained
Over 200 Allegations of Abuse of Migrant Children; 1 Case of Homeland Security Disciplining Someone
Jonathan M. Katz op-ed at the Los Angeles Times drives home the seriousness of the moral crisis facing the country over our indifference to the administration’s policies about immigration enforcement.
If we call them what they are — a growing system of American concentration camps — we will be more likely to give them the attention they deserve. We need to know their names: Port Isabel, Dilley, Adelanto, Hutto and on and on. With constant, unrelenting attention, it is possible we might alleviate the plight of the people inside, and stop the crisis from getting worse. Maybe people won’t be able to disappear so easily into the iceboxes. Maybe it will be harder for authorities to lie about children’s deaths.
Maybe Trump’s concentration camps will be the first thing we think of when we see him scowling on TV.
The only other option is to leave it up to those in power to decide what’s next. That’s a calculated risk. As Andrea Pitzer, author of “One Long Night,” one of the most comprehensive books on the history of concentration camps, recently noted: “Every country has said their camps are humane and will be different. Trump is instinctively an authoritarian. He'll take them as far as he’s allowed to.”
***
Now, troops dispatched to the border are fighting the good fight by painting a mile mile stretch of the “wall” black for aesthetic reasons.
The Pentagon pushed back on news reports about the task by saying “it’s anti-climb paint.”
From Time:
It’s just the latest task assigned to U.S. forces since President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration more than a year ago. The Pentagon was ordered to support the Department of Homeland Security at the border, a mission that has steadily evolved with various tasks. There are now about 5,000 troops, including 2,000 members of the National Guard, deployed along the 2,000 mile-long southwest border.
Next up, border arrests will drop dramatically, as they do every summer, due to the heat. And the President will claim credit.
***
The latest iteration of the Trump savior syndrome, namely threatened tariffs on all goods coming from Mexico, ended with the announcement that a “deal” had been struck.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1137363899420950530
Eh, not so much. Knowing Republicans in the Senate and key elements in the business sector were prepared to break publicly with him should tariffs be imposed, the President simply backed down.
Here’s the short version, from CNN:
Mexico had already promised to take many of the actions agreed to in Friday's immigration deal with the US -- months before President Donald Trump's tariff threat, officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations told the New York Times in a story published Saturday.
Trump moved to accept the existing agreements in a deal Friday after negotiations prompted by his threat to impose growing tariffs on Mexico in response to the border situation dragged on over several days. Talks between Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and State Department officials lasted for more than 11 hours Friday.
The Mexican government had pledged to deploy the National Guard nationwide with a focus on its southern border -- a key part of Friday's agreement -- during what the Times described as "secret talks" in March between former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Mexican interior secretary Olga Sanchez in Miami, the officials told the Times. DHS confirmed in a March 26 news release that Nielsen and Sanchez met in Miami and discussed the Migrant Protection Protocols and other security measures.
Less than 24 hours later, the Trump campaign was fundraising on the back of the Mexican agreement. His campaign sent out a “donate now” email reading in part, “Art of the Deal! Mexico has agreed to help END ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. Promises Made. Promises Kept.”
On Saturday and Sunday Trump told his 61 million Twitter followers via an all-caps message that Mexico had agreed to “immediately begin buying large quantities of agricultural product from our great patriot farmers.”
The President also spent time over the weekend attacking the news media, deploring the “sick journalism” of The New York Times and CNN for reporting there wasn’t little, if anything, new in his Mexico deal.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1137697507218264064
Presidential pushback consisted of two elements: promises of an immediate increase in agriculture purchases by Mexico, and vague comments about as yet unannounced parts of the deal.
The Mexican government was diplomatic, to say the least, in responding to announcements about part of a deal they hadn’t agreed to.
Via Bloomberg News:
Increasing Mexico’s purchases from the U.S. beyond current levels wasn’t discussed during the Washington talks, said the three people with knowledge of the deliberations who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Mexico has no state-owned agricultural conglomerate to buy food products or handle distribution, or a government program that could buy farm equipment for delivery to producers.
Trump earlier on Friday suggested the talks were covering trade in agriculture, and not just border security issues as members of his administration had said -- and that the State Department communique listed. If a deal was made, Trump said at the time, “they will begin purchasing Farm & Agricultural products at very high levels.”
On Monday, the presidential Twitter account teased about a “very important” part of the deal that had been “fully signed and documented" but was first subject to a vote by Mexico’s legislature. He went on to say that failure to approve the deal would lead to tariffs being reinstated. Needless to say, this information can’t be confirmed, and if past performance is any indication, that’s because there’s nothing there to confirm.
I’ll end this post where I started, with a quote from Timothy L. O’Brien at Bloomberg suggesting something about President Trump and fire:
This is a man flailing, much as he did several months ago after threatening to keep the U.S. government shut down unless he got the funding to build a wall along the southern border. More experienced and deft politicians than him torpedoed that gambit and the government reopened.
Trying to govern by threat and blunt force isn’t really governing at all, and if enough bluffs get called, the players on the other side of the table tend to stiffen their spines. That’s not a good scenario for anyone involved, because a predictably unpredictable person lacking self-confidence, restraint and principled, courageous advisers may eventually try burning things down just to prove his point.
The president of the United States isn’t playing chess. But, like a kid with matches, he’s only too happy to play with fire.
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