The good news? After months of claiming that there was no crisis on America’s border with Mexico, declaring the situation was “manufactured” and “phony,” and claiming President Trump’s call for a border wall was little more than a “medieval vanity project”, Democrats and the liberal media have now come to realize that we do indeed have a problem on the southern border.
The bad news? After politically posturing and ignoring the crisis for years, they now claim it’s all Donald Trump’s fault.
In March, Border Patrol agents detained or denied entry to more than 103,000 people along the border with Mexico, a 35-percent increase over February, and more than twice the number for March of 2018. In the past six months, more than 360,000 have been apprehended along the southern border, all while Trump was pounding the table to get a wall built. It’s gotten so bad on the southern border that not even Democrats and the mainstream media can deny the crisis anymore.
Unsurprisingly, both Democrats and the mainstream media are at their two-faced best on the situation. After months of calling President Trump’s calls for a border wall to combat illegal immigration a “manufactured crisis,” the Dems and their media brethren are now on board. The New York Times, for instance, now says the border crisis is at a “breaking point,” even though as late as February, fact checkers for Trump’s claim of a crisis at the border tweeted out, “this is false.”
But now the media are struggling to catch up and report somewhat accurately on the situation. And both the Democrats and the media are getting in all the Trump-bashing they can.
Representative David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who co-chairs the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, claims that the president has exacerbated the situation by not using funds available for border facilities and personnel and by cutting off aid to Central American countries who are sending migrants into America.
“The administration has responsibility in all these areas. And we can appropriate funding and we can pass legislation but ultimately, they are responsible for executing the immigration laws in this country,” Cicilline said.
Democrats are pulling out the same tried and un-true strategy that they always pull out during immigration debates: Immigration reform, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called “inevitable.”
“I’m not giving up on the president on this,” Pelosi said. “I still say to him, ‘we’ve got to have comprehensive immigration reform.”
Since regaining control of the House in January, no “comprehensive immigration reform” bill has been put forward by the House. Probably because no House Democrats believed that the border situation was a crisis, except in the mind of President Trump.
Two weeks ago, the president threatened to completely close the border, issuing a terse and candid statement to those who would cross our border illegally. “Our country is full,” the president said. “Can’t take you anymore. I’m sorry. Turn around. That’s the way it is.”
Today, the president fired another shot across the Democrats’ bow on immigration, threatening to put detained illegal immigrants into so-called sanctuary cities in order to relieve overburdened detention facilities.
“Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities only,” Trump tweeted.
Trump added, “The radical left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy — so, this should make them very happy.”
A report by the Washington Post claims that the administration has twice floated the sanctuary-city idea to immigration officials since November.
The president is also considering sending more troops to the southern border to assist the overburdened Border Patrol. “I’m going to have to call up more military,” Trump said during a visit to Texas.
When the president declared a national emergency in February in order to divert funds to get some sections of the wall built, official Washington — even many Republicans — became apoplectic, even to the point of voting to block the declaration, a resolution that Trump quickly vetoed.
Now, even the media and Democrats are recognizing that there is an emergency on the border, and that something needs to be done. The president and a large portion of American populace believe that a barrier is job one toward securing the border. When there is a large wound, logic says, you stop the bleeding first. A wall or barrier, many believe, is just the tourniquet this country needs. We can argue about “comprehensive immigration reform” once we stop bleeding to death.
Photo: AP Images
