Whether ordered by Barack Obama or Donald Trump; sending National Guard troops to the border, it must be clear, has always been about optics, no more.
Indeed, previous administrations have done so.
But it remains true that the National Guard can act as “extra eyes and ears for border guards,” and no more, notes The Economist, in its April 7th-13th (2018) issue. As we know all so well, “there are legal constraints on using soldiers for law-enforcement.”
In Trump translation: “We have horrible, horrible and very unsafe laws in the United States.”
The president was, therefore, wrong when he announced in April that, “We are preparing for the military to secure our border between Mexico and the United States.”
Certainly President Trump’s “proclamation to deploy the National Guard” does nothing to stop Central American asylum-seekers. These brazen border-crossers “rarely hide from border agents,” for they know that, to stay in the US, and live off the American taxpayer’s avails, all they need do is “lodge a legal claim to stay.”
In Trump translation: We have the crappiest, most liberal immigration laws.
RECENT HISTORY: “During Trump’s first nine months in office, arrests for immigration violations were 42% higher than they were during the same period in Barack Obama’s last year. Non-border deportations rose 25% in fiscal 2017. Deportations of illegal immigrants who have committed no other crime, and who were not a priority in the Obama era, nearly tripled. Refugee admissions have plummeted. This fiscal year 16% of them are Muslim, compared with 42% a year ago.”
ICE agents have increased their presence at courthouses. ICE said they will use courthouse arrests only for “specific, targeted aliens” with criminal records, gang affiliations or removal orders, or who pose national security threats.
MOREOVER, I don’t know if Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice has done so yet, but it was “to set quotas for clearing cases for immigration judges to hit.”
White House officials had been “drafting a package which would, among other things, make it easier to deport children who arrive alone at the border.”
All good stuff the sainted Sarah Sanders, White House spokesperson, never mentions.
So, to bypass the shitty lawmakers who’re unprepared to heed the country, should Republicans “eliminate the rule that most new laws can pass the Senate only with a 60-vote supermajority”? Should they, before it’s too late?
(Source: “Be Very Afraid: Donald Trump takes a hard turn on immigration.“)