Booray said:
Rawhide said:
Booray said:
The answers I am getting are: (1) we have an open border and (2) people have to be smuggled across the open border. There seems to be a conflict between those two things.
Go at it a different way: what policies need to change to stop the flow of illegal immigration and specifically, to prevent episodes like yesterday's?
Yes, we have a more open border under biden.
As far as policy, The biden administration could enforce the damn immigration laws we have now instead of shipping them all across the country
As I understand it, "enforcing the laws we have" means that arrestees must be kept in detention center until trial. That is logistically impossible currently and would take a huge investment and years of building to get there.
yes and no. No, we do not have jail capacity to store hundreds of thousands of illegals for weeks on end waiting for a deportation hearing. But most illegals facing imminent deportation waive deportation because deportation is a permanent statutory bar against ever entering the USA again legally, meaning even if they came back illegally, they could never have a pathway to legal status. So lawyers always advise, and illegals usually accept, voluntary departure once deportation becomes inevitable. That's not what's causing the back up. the refugee process is the problem now.
Refugees and their support NGOs and the cartels and the nations involved, know that our processing capacity for asylum requests is quite limited. So everyone crossing the river knows exactly one word of English - "asylum." That diverts them from the deportation process, effectively forever. They can't be deported until their asylum hearing, and our asylum process is set up for a 5-digit number per year, not a 6-digit number per month. We could ramp up, deputize, etc....more asylum officers, but we don't want to. (because we WANT the inflow of people to keep the demographics looking right).
The solution to this is obvious: USBP, immediately upon apprehending illegals in the pasture, takes those illegals to the nearest US Port of Entry (POE) for those illegals to present their application for entry to the USA to an immigration control officer. That officer will refuse them (because the law in front of an immigration control officer says "no visa, no entry.") Then the illegals are released to walk back across the bridge to Mexico. That is what happens at an airport when someone gets off a plane and is refused entry to the USA. They are physically on USA soil, but not legally in the USA until they are admitted by immigration control. So anyone refused entry at an airport does not get deported. They get put on the next plane out (at airline expense). That's why the airlines check your visa. They are liable to bring you back should you be refused entry. The premise is that one is not in the jurisdiction of US courts until the immigration control officer stamps one's passport. Well, 99% of those illegals do not even HAVE a passport, much less a visa.
The moment that word gets out that the word "asylum" doesn't get you released into the USA, the illegals will quit giving cartels money to bring them here. The whole flow is predicated on a moral hazard - there is no risk of getting returned whence they came. If they get caught, they say "asylum" and they get released with a future date for a hearing they will never attend. If they don't get caught, well, they don't get caught. So the odds of success are 100% assuming they don't die or physically fall out somewhere along the line. So that means a $5-10k investment is a pretty good investment. The moment failure is perceived to be 100% if caught, the number of people willing to give their life savings to the USBP will plummet.
I held a consular commission for 8 years and have worked the process. Have an in-law who is currently an immigration judge (and BU grad) working southern border. We talk shop. Illegals and the NGOs/cartels supporting them know our law well and are exploiting loopholes. We close the loopholes, the flow stops. Admins (R and D) know this full well, but are not really interested in stopping the flow. Illegal immigration is good for demographics and the economy. But rule of law gets trashed, as it's a de facto end-run around restraints on legal immigration.
That's the outrage here. Rule of law. Our bureaucracy is being intentionally abused by elected & appointed officials to execute policy they know full well the American people do not support. Yet they do it anyway. That creates the moral hazard which entices the flow.