It’s hard to know who is telling the truth: the Mexicans or the Hondurans.
The Mexicans say the “mother of all caravans” is heading our way.
The Hondurans say no such caravan has formed.
President Trump, apparently, believes the Mexicans, which is one reason he twice threatened to shut down the border.
And it’s probably the reason he might, the Associated Press reported, appoint an immigration czar.
Caravan Coming?
As for the caravan, the New York Post and other outlets reported, Mexico officially warned that the “mother of all caravans” is heading for the U.S. border with Mexico. Like the “migrants” in previous caravans, these hope to break down the U.S. border with Mexico and enter the country for jobs and welfare.
The riff off Saddam Hussein’s threat to give the United States the “mother of all battles” during the first Gulf War came from Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero, who said a horde of people from the Northern Triangle — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — “are already gathering in Honduras.”
Said Cordero, “we have information that a new caravan is forming in Honduras,” she said, “they are thinking it could have more than 20,000 people.”
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And, the Post reported, “it comes as another caravan of about 2,500 Central Americans and Cubans is making its way through Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas.” The secretary promised that federales and immigration cops would form a “containment” barrier to block the migrant tsunami from rolling toward the United States.
If true, that’s a departure from Mexico’s offer of year-long visas to “migrants” that would permit them to scatter around the country as they await a chance to get into the United States.
Then again, Trump tweeted a second threat to close the border on March 30:
Mexico must use its very strong immigration laws to stop the many thousands of people trying to get into the USA. Our detention areas are maxed out & we will take no more illegals. Next step is to close the Border! This will also help us with stopping the Drug flow from Mexico!
Maybe that threat got Mexican officials off their honkers.
On the other hand, a pair of subversive open-borders “activists” and the Honduran deputy foreign minister told Time magazine the Mexican interior secretary is wrong.
Irineo Mujica of the anti-American Pueblo Sin Fronteras (People Without Borders) said the reports are false. “This is information that [U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen] Nielsen is using to create fear,” the radical told Time. “There has never been a caravan of the size that Sanchez Cordero mentioned.”
Another radical, Bartolo Fuentes, told time the reports are “part of the U.S. government’s plans, something made up to justify their actions.”
Mujica and Fuentes have been arrested for their roles in organizing the caravans and pushing them through Mexico.
Agreed Deputy Foreign Minister Nelly Jerez, “there is no indication of such a caravan.”
Immigration Czar?
Whatever the case, the number of illegals and inadmissibles border agents have caught at the border so far in fiscal 2019 — more than 300,000, with another 100,000 expected when the numbers for March are released — explains why Trump threatened to close the border and might just appoint an immigration czar.
Quoting anonymous sources, AP reported that the two top candidates are former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.
An official with the Department of Homeland Security told AP that “czars have been appointed in the past when there has been an ‘urgent need’ for sustained, inter-agency policy coordination. While Homeland Security often plays a leading role when it comes to immigration policy and enforcement, the department is not in charge of officials at the departments of Health and Human Services, State, Defense and Justice, which often play key roles.”
Thus, the need for what amounts to an orchestra conductor on immigration policy.
Kobach, AP noted, is working with We Build The Wall, Inc., a nonprofit that is raising private money to build Trump’s long-promised but yet-to-be-delivered border wall, while Cuccinelli backs “denying citizenship to American-born children of parents living in the U.S. illegally, limiting in-state tuition at public universities only to those who are citizens or legal residents, and allowing workers to file lawsuits when an employer knowingly hires someone living in the country illegally for taking a job from a ‘law abiding competitor.’”
AP called both men “far right conservatives.”
We can only hope.
Photo: AP Images
