Welcome to the Latest Chapter in the US Mexico Border Crisis

If it doesn't cause pain, it's not part of the GOP game

My forecast for the coming weeks includes fake pictures (see above) of supposed hordes trying to get over the border. A post on Reddit claims 90,000 migrants have crossed the border in 10 days, blaming the lifting of Title 42 restrictions (they haven’t lifted yet). 

The picture being bandied about in right wing circles has been shown to be a picture of something else (migrants crossing the Mexican border with Honduras in 2018), but that won’t stop anti-immigration types from reposting it on social media. After all, they want you to be afraid, to make the leap over logic to say Joe Biden’s “open borders” policy is at fault.

And being afraid of “them” is key to paving the way for the authoritarian government desired by bigots and their Republican enablers.

While the Trump administration waffled on the dangers of COVID-19 with the American public, the borders were zones where there was no doubt about its lethality.

In March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  –under orders from the Trump administration– invoked Title 42, a move designed to block asylum seekers and other migrants from entering the United States. 

It also allowed border officials to expel migrants to Mexico, regardless of their nationality, without reviewing their requests for protection if they crossed without permission.

Now that the declared health emergency is ending there is no longer any justification for Title 42. Thousands of migrants have been stacked up in Mexico, waiting for a chance to legally present themselves at the US border.

Many will request asylum, i.e., refuge from repressive governments, gang wars, famine, or natural disasters. By treaty, the U.S. is obliged to give them a chance to tell their story. In reality, we do not have the infrastructure to handle a potential surge.

From the Union-Tribune:

• “We’ve had the right to asylum since 1980, and this is the first time it was massively stopped in a formal way,” said Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America. “It’s the first time we massively denied protection to people who needed it on this scale since World War II. We don’t really know the full human cost of that.”

• Human Rights First documented more than 13,400 violent attacks on asylum seekers stuck waiting in Mexico because of Title 42 during the Biden administration’s first two years in office.

• As the policy goes away, some of the vestiges remain. That includes requiring asylum seekers to use the smartphone app to request asylum by appointment at ports of entry.

• Administration officials are also working to finalize a rule that would largely make migrants ineligible for asylum if they enter the U.S. without permission or come to a port of entry without an appointment and fail to apply for protection in another country on the way.

Despite the basic sadism used to justify restrictive measures during the Trump administration, the actual flesh and bones of the Biden administration’s efforts are much the same. There are additional processing centers in Latin America coming, but they won’t be in place in the near future.

“The difference is in the rhetoric, and that’s basically it,” director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program, Pedro Rios, told the Union-Tribune.

Tomorrow’s (Thursday) the day when the restrictive health order will be lifted. Fifteen hundred troops have been dispatched to help with physical logistics. The Department of Homeland Security will be relying on “expedited removal,” a fast-track process to preliminarily assess migrants’ requests for protection while they wait in Border Patrol custody and deport those who don’t qualify within days or a few weeks.

Although there has been much political posturing about border crossings, a gradual increase in deterrents dates back to the Clinton administration. President Trump characterized immigrants  as criminals, mostly not worthy of admission to the U.S.

The Biden administration has been making attempts to ameliorate the situation at the border, encountering Congressional resistance for funding and sub rosa shenanigans by law enforcement officers who are supposed to be guarding the nation.   

Lately, Republican elected officials have been making publicized trips to the US/Mexico border hoping to catch migrants in the act of entering into the country. Governors Greg Abbott (Tx) and Ron DeSantis (Fla) have been herding migrants onto planes –promising them services upon landing– and sending them to large cities, all of which are majority Black with Democratic Black Mayors. 

Senator Ted Cruz arranged for a plane full of migrants to be shipped to Martha’s Vineyard based on a supposition that “liberals” vacationed there. He stopped beating his breast about his stunt when local residents greeted his captives with warmth and humanity.

There can be no humane solution to handling border crossers without cooperation from the Congress, and Republicans have torpedoed every attempt at reforms since 2013. This “invasion” is a key talking point for GOP electeds, and they have no intention of compromise, ever.

Lately, the San Diego Union-Tribune has published shocking accounts of Border Patrol agents imprisoning wannabe border crossers between barrier walls. Here’s a snip:

• When a 33-year-old man from Afghanistan who had worked for the U.S. Army as a translator crossed onto U.S. soil from Tijuana, he thought he’d finally made it to a place where he would be safe.

• Instead, Obaidullah found himself trapped with more than 100 other asylum seekers in what has become an open-air holding cell between the two layers of border wall. He said U.S. Border Patrol agents required them to wait there in custody with no shelter, no food and minimal water, the latest in what has become a pattern for the San Diego sector.

• “There are no rights for humans now,” he said from in between the walls Wednesday morning. “They treat us like dogs, like animals.”

Republicans in the House of Representatives are planning for a Thursday vote to call attention to their displeasure with ending Title 42.

From Politico:

• The House GOP legislation is stocked with items on the party’s immigration wish list, from restarting construction of a southern border wall to placing new restrictions on asylum seekers. Even so, Republican leaders are still lining up the GOP votes they need amid concerns over the bill’s treatment of worker databases and cartels.

• Passing any bill would mark a political victory for Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s conference, which punted a plan to pass border legislation in the first weeks of their majority as they navigated open infighting within their ranks. Republicans view border security as a potent wedge issue heading into the 2024 campaign — and underscoring that strategy, they’re timing a Thursday vote on their bill to the expiration of a Trump-era border policy that lets the U.S. deny asylum and migration claims for public health reasons.

• But should the House GOP muscle its bill through, the win would be largely symbolic. That’s because, across the Capitol, GOP senators are warning that House Republicans will have to make concessions if they want to get a bill to President Joe Biden’s desk.

The net result of any GOP agreement on immigration reform will be to inflict pain in some fashion on those who approach our borders. If you stop to think about it, punishment or retribution is at the heart of many Republican proposals for the country; it’s governance thru sadism.

What do you think will end up happening to homeless people if El Cajon’s GOP Mayor Bill Wells gets to Congress (he’s running against Rep. Sara Jacobs)? Does lock’em up and throw away the key sound about right? I think it does.

How about the latest hostage taking situation over the national debt? If Republicans get their way, millions will suffer, both in the short term (no June Social Security checks) and in the long run (cutbacks on Medicare and Veteran care).

As I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, chaos and division are just steps by those without empathy to ending democracy as we know it. 

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News Snip Roundup Du Jour

Disturbing Posts Show Neo-Nazi Shooter Planned to Target Texas Mall Via The Daily Beast

• Some of the account’s most recent posts appear to foreshadow the mass killing. On April 16, it uploaded a series of pictures outside the Allen Outlet Mall’s H&M entrance, where Garcia would later open fire. It also shared screenshots of a page indicating the mall’s busiest hours, along with location data showing at least two previous visits to the site.

• In late April, the account shared pictures of body armor laden with magazines for a rifle. The bulletproof vest had a patch reading “RWDS,” an acronym for “right wing death squad.” Law enforcement had previously referenced the patch when identifying Garcia as a potential politically motivated extremist. The following day, the account posted pictures of a torso (presumably Garcia’s own) tattooed with a swastika and Nazi SS bolts, alongside a caption railing against “diversity.”

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Nexstar Media Agrees to Acquire KUSI San Diego for $35 Million Via Next TV.

• Nexstar Media Group said it agreed to acquire the assets of KUSI San Diego from McKinnon Broadcasting Co. and Channel 51 of San Diego for $35 million.

• KUSI is an independent station now, but Nexstar plans to make it an affiliate of The CW when that affiliation becomes available. Tegna’s KFMB, a CBS affiliate, currently carries The CW programming on a digital subchannel.

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Some of the first humans in the Americas came from China, study finds Via The Guardian

• “Our findings indicate that besides the previously indicated ancestral sources of Native Americans in Siberia, the northern coastal China also served as a genetic reservoir contributing to the gene pool,” said Yu-Chun Li, one of the report authors.

• Li added that during the second migration, the same lineage of people settled in Japan, which could help explain similarities in prehistoric arrowheads and spears found in the Americas, China and Japan.

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