Tag Archives: Mexico

national news, political news, State news

Obama is 'deporter in chief'?

Well, what do you know about this?

The Obama administration has broken its own record for the number of illegal immigrants deported in a single year. To think that critics believe President Obama is “soft” on illegal immigration.

http://www.panhandlepbs.org/blogs/state-news/2014/10/03/obama-administration-breaks-own-deportation-record/

Soft squishiness has produced angry protests from the Latino community who want the president to act on immigration reform.

I happen to agree that there should be some action — executive action, if necessary — to further the case for reforming national immigration policy. However, to suggest that the administration has looked the other way while people flood across our “porous” southern border is to resort to demagoguery.

In 2013, the Immigration and Naturalization Service deported 438,421 illegal — or undocumented — immigrants. That beats the former record set the previous year. What’s more, the deportations include 198,400 immigrants with criminal records. How is it, then, that critics keep harping on the feds’ inattention to the crime wave that’s sweeping into the country from Mexico and points south? I guess it’s because they’ve gotten quite good at distorting these issues for their own gain.

As the Texas Tribune reports: “The statistics are not likely to draw praise from Republican lawmakers. Despite the administration’s record-breaking deportations over the past several years, conservative lawmakers have criticized the president for what they consider his lax enforcement policies, which they say lure illegal crossers.”

Whatever. I’ll consider the deportation push to be a poke in the eye of those very critics.

I’ll also consider it time for the president to act where he can legally to start fixing the immigration problem. If Congress won’t act, then it falls on the president to, as the Tribune reported, “to expand relief to more of the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally.”

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Pentagon sucked into partisan battle

Of all the federal agencies charged with looking after our national interests, one would think the Pentagon — the military arm of our massive federal bureaucracy — would be immune from partisan political bickering.

Guess again.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, no doubt seeking to change the subject from his indictment back home over abuse of power and coercion, says Islamic terrorists might have slipped into the United States across our southern border.

How did that play in the Pentagon? Not well.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/215761-pentagon-no-evidence-of-isis-at-southern-border

“I’ve seen no indication that they are coming across the border with Mexico. We have no information that leads us to believe that,” Admiral John Kirby, press secretary for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN’s “New Day.”

Kirby said the governor has no basis for making that suggestion, which he did in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Perry is considering a run for president in 2016. He’ll have to dispose of the indictment handed down the other day in Travis County. Good luck with that, governor.

He’s going to be making more of these statements in the weeks and months to come, especially after he leaves the governor’s office in January.

It is troubling that politicians are able to make assertions without providing a scintilla of evidence.

ISIL — or ISIS, as it is also known — is a despicable terrorist organization that has taken credit for the beheading of American journalist James Foley in Syria. Have the monsters infiltrated our southern border? Kirby says the Pentagon has no evidence of that happening.

That won’t stop the Texas governor from making potentially reckless statements. He’s got a proven record of it already.

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Mexico is responsible, too

I’m trying to imagine this conversation occurring at the White House, or perhaps at Los Pinos, Mexico’s official presidential residence.

It would involve U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Enrique Pena.

Obama: I’m glad we’re meeting today. Let’s talk about that refugee crisis on our common border, shall we?

Pena: Certainly, Mr. President.

Obama: OK, then. What are you going to do to stop the flow of young people from your southern border, all the way through your country and into my country?

Pena: Well, we’re doing our best. But we have about 1,500 miles of territory from our southern frontier to our border with the U.S. Do you want us to stop these children en route?

Obama: Yes, I do. Look, Mr. President, I’m getting pounded by critics at home because — they contend — we’re not doing enough to protect our borders. But the way I see it, protection also must depend on our neighbors doing the best they can to protect their own territory against trespassers. Oh, and by the way, we are rounding up these children and young adults by the thousands, holding them in detention, and trying to figure out what to do with them. You said it yourself: Those refugees are traveling several hundred miles through your country to get to ours.

Pena: Well, you know what? You make a good point. From this moment forward, I’m going to mobilize our military, notify our local police authorities to ensure that they search out, locate and intercept busloads crammed with young people heading north. I would suppose they’d be easy to detect.

Obama: Good to know, Mr. President. That’s what hemispheric neighborliness is all about.

***

Has this conversation occurred? I don’t know. Should it? Absolutely.

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Troops to the border

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The more I think about Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s decision to mobilize approximately 1,000 National Guard troops to patrol the Texas-Mexico border, the more ridiculous it sounds.

Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka had a brief post on it Monday. Here is most of what he posted: “What is the purpose of sending the Guard to the border? The National Guard is a military force. Is its mission military or humanitarian? Who is the giving the orders? What are the rules of engagement? Who is the enemy? Are the troops going to cross the border and invade a foreign country, as Pancho Villa did in Columbus, New Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution? Meanwhile, what happens to the refugees? And, by the way, what is this going to cost? These are good questions in search of answers.”

If there ever was a political stunt meant to appeal to an audience outside of Texas, the governor has just performed it — clumsily, I should add.

Perry’s decision is pure showboating.

As for the cost, it became known earlier today. The troops will cost the Texas treasury an estimated $12 million per month.

To do what? The National Guard has no jurisdiction in the effort to stem the tide of children fleeing their Central American nations. Fox News’s Brit Hume asked Perry about that very thing. The governor’s response? He said the troops were there for show. He knows they cannot arrest anyone, or that their “adversaries” are unarmed children who are surrendering in droves quite willingly to local police and federal Border Patrol agents.

The governor wants to run for president in 2016. This National Guard stunt is aimed at the Republican Party primary base in places like Iowa and New Hampshire that is going to eat this stuff up.

It’s another embarrassing display of grandstanding.

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What about the children?

There’s plenty to upset many Americans about the crisis that has erupted on our southern border with Mexico.

The most troubling to me is how some Americans are reacting to the children who are streaming across our border.

I don’t want our government to be responsible for these children until they reach adulthood. They need to be sent back as soon as it is possible to do so while ensuring their safety once they return.

Therein lies the rub with this mess.

The children who are coming to Texas and other border states are refugees fleeing lives of misery in places like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They aren’t drug smugglers or killers sneaking into the Land of Opportunity to do evil things to people. They’re frightened because their parents, for crying out loud, have sent them here unaccompanied. Some of the kids have been smuggled here by “coyotes,” thugs who deal in human trafficking.

Yet we’ve seen the protests along the California-Mexico border. Americans are carrying signs and shouting epithets at these children.

I’m not for an instant advocating an open-door policy that allows anyone free entry into the United States. We do have a crisis on our hands and the most helpless victims in this crisis are the children who have been detained, held in custody by various state and federal authorities.

Too many of us are condemning these kids.

If we are to direct our anger and frustration it ought to be to the authorities who run our federal and state governments for failing to protect our borders adequately. It happens to be a shared responsibility and a shared failure.

The children? They’re the pawns who deserve our care, not our scorn.

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The Texas/Mexico border awaits, Mr. President

One more thought about the president’s upcoming visit to Texas … and then I hope to move on.

The White House says President Obama has no plans to visit the southern Texas border when he comes to the state today to raise money for Democratic candidates.

White House staffers believe it wouldn’t produce anything positive for the president. They are wrong.

Recall the time Obama went to New Jersey near the end of the 2012 campaign to view the damage brought by Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy. He won high praise from Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for showing up.

Also, recall what happened when President George W. Bush was photographed flying over New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He was pilloried for failing to put his own boots on the soggy ground to view the damage.

Was Obama more caring about New Jersey than Bush was about New Orleans? No.

There is value, however, in seeing these crises up close.

The Texas border is being inundated with illegal immigrants coming into this country from Central America. Most of them appear to be unaccompanied children sent here by those notorious “coyotes” who prey on illegal immigrants. We have a refugee crisis on the border.

The president needs to see what’s happening so he can assess better how to deal directly with it.

He’ll meet with Gov. Rick Perry. The two men likely will have a “frank” discussion — which, in diplomatic language means they might cuss at each other. That’s fine. The meeting is a good idea, too.

The visit to Texas will be complete, though, with a tour of the crisis on our state’s southern border. Take a look, Mr. President.

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Border crisis expands

Linda Chavez asks in a New York Post column why the Obama administration doesn’t “do more” to stem the flow of children from Central America into southern border states such as Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

http://nypost.com/2014/06/20/behind-the-horrible-border-crisis/

I kind of expect that from Chavez, a noted conservative thinker and pundit.

I’ve been wracking my brain the past few days with this question: Why doesn’t Mexico do more to stop the flow of these unaccompanied children all the way through that country and into the United States of America?

Chavez and others have noted that the kids have to travel about 1,300 miles through Mexico to reach the southern border of the United States. How is it that those children are given free passage through a fairly large country to end up in the Land of Opportunity?

If President Obama has a bone to pick, it ought to be with the Mexican government.

Chavez lays out a grim scenario: “According to recent reports, these kids walk right up to border agents as soon as they see them and turn themselves in. They’ve been instructed to do so, sometimes by the criminal ‘coyotes’ who extort hundreds, even thousands, of dollars from the kids’ parents to get them across the border.

“These human traffickers are telling parents their children will be granted a legal right to stay in the U.S. once on our soil. This is absolutely false — but that word is slow in getting to gullible would-be border crossers.”

She wants the U.S. government to blanket Guatemala and Honduras TV airwaves to public service announcements urging parents to stop selling their children to traffickers. That’s fine.

However, geopolitical neighborliness compels one country to do all it can do to protect its orders with another nation.

Critics keep harping on the openness of the U.S. side of our border with Mexico. They forget — or ignore — the fact that we’ve deported record numbers of illegal immigrants in recent years. The problem just has been compounded many times by the flood of these children from beyond Mexico’s southern border.

Whose fault is that? Ours? I don’t think so.

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Mexico becomes migrant thoroughfare

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is making a valid point about the latest immigration crisis to hit Texas and other border states.

All those undocumented immigrants who are flooding into Texas — more than 40,000 at last count — are coming not from Mexico, but from beyond Mexico. They’re fleeing to the United States from Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and points south of Mexico’s border with Central America.

Thus, it is in U.S. interests to help Mexico seal its borders with Central America.

http://www.panhandlepbs.org/news/texas-tribune/cornyn-us-should-help-mexico-seal-its-southern-border/

Cornyn, R-Texas, said during a conference call with reporters, “That 500-mile border between Guatemala and Mexico is a sieve. Once these unaccompanied minors or other adults get in to the hands of the gangs that smuggle them through areas controlled by the Zetas or other cartels, this is not a benign situation. This is a dangerous and deadly … journey.”

They’ve been pouring into Texas, Arizona and New Mexico — but mostly into Texas. Border Patrol agents and local police are arresting them by the thousands.

Naturally, critics of the Obama administration are finding a way to blame them for the trouble. It’s been brewing for years. Cornyn himself has blamed current immigration policy as enticing this flood of illegal immigrants. The view in Central America, Cornyn said, is that “the administration simply will not enforce current immigration laws.”

I would suggest the arrests of the immigrants implies that the U.S. government does enforce those laws.

Helping our neighbor secure its southern border, though, is in our national interest.

It also might be time to remind Mexico of its own responsibility to stop these illegal immigrants from passing through its territory en route to the United States. Perhaps a little geopolitical neighborliness would be in order.