The Trump administration is planning new action to address the influx of Central Americans and others participating in the latest migrant caravan now making its way northward through Mexico.
Most Americans are hoping for a firm response to prevent the migrants from entering illegally or from making frivolous asylum claims at the border. The administration cannot repeat the mistakes made last spring when, despite the tough talk, most of the approximately 500 caravan migrants who made it to the U.S. border ultimately were able to gain entry by asking for asylum.
This outcome is part of the reason we are now looking at another, larger caravan, timed to arrive at our border just in time for a hotly contested mid-term election that could affect the balance of political power. Still another caravan has formed behind it, now approaching Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala.
This time, the Trump administration has been more pro-active. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has pressed the Central American and Mexican governments to do what they can to break up the caravan.
We may never know exactly what he said, but it seems to have worked. Instead of looking the other way, or worse, facilitating the caravan’s passage by issuing transit visas and organizing shelters, these governments have found ways to break up the groups of migrants and slow their progress.
While there is not much the Hondurans and Guatemalans can do to stop people from leaving, the Mexican authorities have applied a variety of carrots and sticks.
They have offered the migrants the opportunity to apply for asylum and receive work permits, schooling and medical attention in the southernmost regions of Mexico, in what they called the “You Are At Home” program. Most of the migrants, however, have declined Mexico’s offer.
At the same time, authorities have been interdicting and deporting groups of migrants hitching rides in trucks and buses.
Nevertheless, the caravan reportedly still includes about 3,500 people, with thousands of others following in its wake. It’s clear that the organizers are hell bent on reaching the U.S. border. Their goal was not to find jobs for the marchers in Mexico, their goal was to demand open borders and to challenge the Trump administration’s commitment to defending the U.S. border.
What can Trump do? He just announced the deployment of more than 5,000 U.S. military troops to support the border patrol. The mission for these troops will be more extensive than the National Guard; they likely will be armed, and reportedly one of their first tasks will be to put up razor wire fencing along the parts of the border that currently have no barriers.
This will make it harder for the caravan migrants and any other prospective illegal crossers to gain a foothold on U.S. soil, literally, enabling them to demand asylum.
These new boots on the ground also will help lessen the chances that the criminals, gang members, prior deportees and other bad actors who typically infiltrate these migrant groups can slip through while border agents are busy dealing with the family groups.
The president should not hesitate to invoke the existing mass migration emergency plan if needed, which was drawn up several years ago by Obama’s top homeland and national security officials, who were told to keep it on the shelf. It calls for the deputization of state and local law enforcement officers as well as adding temporary detention capacity.
But shoring up the border to prevent illegal crossings will not be enough. The core group of caravan migrants is planning to crash the legal ports of entry and ask for asylum, as most of the spring caravan marchers did, and as thousands of others have been doing for years.
This is the Achilles Heel of our border control system. According to immigration court statistics, almost all of those who ask for asylum at the border are allowed in, but only about half of them end up filing asylum claims, and about half of those will skip out on their hearings. Only about 20 percent of Central Americans who go through the asylum process are ultimately found to qualify for asylum.
Reportedly, the president is prepared to shut down the legal ports of entry as well, as needed, to deny the caravan the opportunity to exploit our asylum system. That’s fine for now, to deal with this stunt, but the line will form again as soon as the gates are opened.
For the long term, we need to drastically change our asylum process. One option is to cease accepting visa-less asylum seekers at the border. Instead, those seeking protection should do so at one of our embassies, far from the border, as was the policy as recently as the 1990s. In this way, those who don’t qualify cannot disappear into the larger illegal population.
If we do accept asylum requests at the legal ports along the border, then we should be prepared to process them at the border promptly, rather than keep tossing the cases onto the pile of 300,000 others awaiting adjudication in the immigration courts and allowing applicants to wait it out in the United States.
The administration has been testing such a program at the San Ysidro port of entry, our busiest, and if it works it should be expanded to other ports, including at the northern border.
Of course, it makes no difference where and how the asylum cases are adjudicated if the standards are so generous that anyone can qualify. The President should have his agencies work to develop the appropriate criteria, consistent with our law.
These changes will help us deal with not only the caravans, but also the less noticed, daily stream of illegal arrivals from Central America, India, Haiti and now Romania, who are caught and then released to the destination of their choice anywhere in the country.
Supporting these migrants has been a burden in many communities where they have settled — the classic unfunded mandate on local taxpayers caused by the federal government’s failure to do its job. A firm response now to prevent their entry will spare American communities huge costs later.
Jessica Vaughan is the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.