It took a major contagion, apparently, for President Trump, at last, to do what has needed doing at the border for years.
Starting now, “asylum seekers,” the new word for illegal aliens who jump the border, will be immediately deported to Mexico. And anyone who shows up at a port of entry better have a green card or another valid ID.
The New York Times divulged Trump’s plan to block the importation of more illegals, fearing a widespread contagion along the border and among the border agents forced to deal with the “migrants.”
As of The New American’s last report, border agents were apprehending about 1,000 illegals a day at the border and ports of entry.
Next 48 Hours
Trump will announce the welcome plan in the next day or so, the Times reported yesterday.
The administration says it “cannot risk allowing the coronavirus to spread through detention facilities and among Border Patrol agents, four administration officials said on Tuesday,” the newspaper reported:
The officials said the ports of entry would remain open to American citizens, green card holders and some foreigners with proper documentation. Some foreigners would be blocked, including Europeans currently subject to earlier travel restrictions enacted by the administration. The entryways will also be open to commercial traffic.
But under the new rule, set to be announced in the next 48 hours, Border Patrol agents would immediately return to Mexico anyone who tries to cross the southern border between the legal ports of entry. Under the policy, asylum seekers would not be held for any length of time in an American facility nor would they be given due process. Once caught, they would be driven to the nearest port of entry and returned to Mexico without further detention.
Good thing is, the inevitable leftist lawsuit might fail to stop the deportation plan because the closure is not part of the administration’s altered immigration policy.
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Officials told the Times that the move is “driven by the president’s health advisers and would be in effect only as long as the coronavirus remains a threat to the United States,” and that the “new policy would be based on authorities that can be granted to public health officials in the time of a medical or health emergency, not on immigration laws that the administration has repeatedly cited as justification for past actions at the border.”
As well, the Times reported, officials said the surgeon general can forbid foreigners from countries with communicable disease from entering the United States.
If true, that raises the question of why Trump didn’t institute this policy last year when hundreds of thousands of sick illegals surged across the border with myriad communicable diseases such as flu, mumps, measles, and strep throat, and possibly Ebola virus disease.
The illegals infected border agents with viral and bacterial pathogens, and those front-line guardians of the border worried about contracting EVD.
Illegals who carry lice across the border might well start a major typhus contagion.
When 6,000 illegals piled up at the border in Tijuana in late 2018, more than a third were sick. Another worry: multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.
Border Numbers
Though numbers at the borders have subsided since last year, the rapid spread of the Wuhan Flu suggests that they present a major public-health threat.
Almost all the “asylum seekers” are penniless Central Americans from the Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Others are, of course, from Mexico.
As of today, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus tracking map says that Mexico has reported 93 cases and no deaths from the Chinese-born malady, while Honduras has confirmed nine with no death, and Guatemala six with one death.
But with more and more Chinese trying to enter the United States across the southwest frontier illegally, responding to the coronavirus threat at the border is more urgent than ever.
In December, border agents caught 11 Chinese trying to cross the border in a furniture-moving truck. In November, they uncovered six Chinese behind a false wall in a moving van. They caught another seven after they crossed the border and tried to run.
Few if any of the illegals apprehended at the border are “asylum seekers.” Ninety percent of asylum claims are bogus.
Image: Motortion via iStock / Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
