A Southern Border Immigration Snapshot

by Jack Dallas  June 26, 2019

Our immigration system has been broken for decades. We haven’t addressed the root cause, we haven’t improved our legal processing facilities for asylum seekers, and we haven’t passed laws that would address the core issues. While there is currently a humanitarian crisis at our southern border, much of this was created by poor management and new government policy.

Illegal southern border crossings are lower now than in decades. 

As much as President Trump would like to blame President Obama for everything related to immigration, Trump’s policy changes and re-interpretation of existing laws are wholly responsible for making a  problem which needed solutions, more unmanageable. Trump ran his campaign in 2016, on “the southern border immigration crisis” and he inflamed a portion of our citizenry who were looking for a scapegoat to blame for his or her own problems.

Southern border annual death toll illustrated.

President Trump desperately needs an immigration crisis, particularly one that will last through the elections in November of 2020. Like the reality show host that he is, he will either create a crisis where none existed or make an existing problem worse. This is so he can use his “stable genius” mind to solve the problem he created.

Our problems didn’t start with Trump or Obama. This decades-old problem has recently been exacerbated by a number of issues:

• Climate change is responsible for horrible droughts in Guatemala and Honduras, which in turn has caused crop losses and a food crisis for many.
• Drug cartels have expanded into the lucrative human smuggling business and have been very effective in their efforts to move refugees toward our southern border.
• Smugglers have told migrants that, if they travel with children, things will be easier for them in the U.S. (see chart below)
• Honduras has 61% of its population living in poverty, it is the second poorest in Central America, has widespread gang violence, and a per capita annual income of $2,150.
• Guatemala has 59% of its population living in poverty, 23% of those live in extreme poverty (living on less than $1.25 per day).
• El Salvador has one of the world’s highest homicide rates, 38% of its population lives in poverty, and it has an average per capita income of $3,920.
• President Trump, amidst all the above, is cutting $550 million in federal aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the rest of Central America, providing a greater incentive for impoverished people to leave home.
• President Trump and his then DOJ chief, Jeff Sessions, implemented a new immigrant family-separation policy, hoping this new level of human cruelty would act as a deterrent.

The immigration problem was bad when Trump took office. It had been bad for decades. Trump ran much of his campaign in 2016 stating he would solve the immigration problem with a simple wall that Mexico would pay for. His MAGA-Hatters bought this hook, line, and sinker. His Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean border wall will never be built and Mexico certainly won’t pay for the thing. His aid cuts to Central America will make things worse. Trump’s new policy of family separation didn’t work as a deterrent because, as he soon discovered, starving immigrants don’t own televisions and they don’t watch Fox News.

2019 saw a drastic increase in the percentage of family unit crossings

Trump’s Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, John Sanders, will resign July 5, 2019. He will be replaced by another acting head. The old acting Homeland Security director was replaced last April with another acting head. They will join the acting heads of White House Chief of Staff, UN Ambassador, OMB, SBA, FAA, OSHA, FDA, CPSC, EEOC, FEMA, ICE, and USCIS. Trump thinks by making everyone “acting” gives him more control.  It certainly doesn’t give the “acting” head of any agency or office the respect or authority to do a job befitting their full potential.  I’m guessing that Donald Trump slept through the Management 101 class where they discussed how insane it is to give someone responsibility without authority.  Anyone who has made a substitute teacher’s life a living Hell can vouch for how well that works.