Tag Archives: Border Patrol

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Border madness must be handled

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am going to concede that conditions on our nation’s southern border need attention, they need serious repair, they need an administration that is willing to get tougher than it has been so far.

A neighbor of mine is a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who is leaving soon for a temporary-duty assignment southeast of Laredo.

He describes the situation on the border as “an out of control mess.”

My neighbor blames President Biden’s administration for it. He didn’t say so directly, but I believe he endorsed the Donald Trump administration policy of rounding up undocumented immigrants, fast-tracking their status while being held and then sending them back to the country from which they fled.

The Biden administration approach is more an “open border” matter. I reminded him that the border isn’t “open” and that Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are stopping illegal immigration every single day.

He acknowledged that but said that the Biden administration’s more tolerant policy is enticing people to flee to this country.

I get that Joe Biden has taken a dramatically different approach to undocumented immigration than the one used by his immediate predecessor. However, I will not accept the notion that our borders are “open” and available for anyone to enter this country.

My neighbor, though, is joining other DPS troopers to assist local and federal law enforcement officials in doing their job. He believes this DPS involvement will last a while, that the situation along our border is too grave to clear up over the short term.

He is a bright young man. I will accept his diagnosis of the problem.

However, I am going to swallow the hook that contends that an “open border policy” is to blame for it.

This matter needs a concerted federal and state effort to resolve. I am going to hold out hope that Gov. Greg Abbott will resist the temptation to hurl blame and insults and will get to working with the president and his team to resolve this matter.

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Mr. VPOTUS, spare us the platitudes about detainees

This brief comment is directed at you, Mr. Vice President.

I understand you took a tour today of a detention center in McAllen, Texas, where Border Patrol and Customs officials showed you the crowded conditions in which authorities have placed these migrants.

I am going to ask you, sir, to spare the nation any phony platitudes about how “well” the detainees are being treated. You said you “weren’t surprised” at the “tough stuff” you saw.

However, I am half-expecting you to issue statements denigrating the complaints that are coming from other detention centers, such as the one in Clint, near El Paso. Frankly, Mr. Vice President, I wish you had gone to that facility to see up close what all the protests have been about.

But you didn’t.

Mr. Vice President, there are too many reports of mistreatment of children in Clint. You cannot ignore what I know you are hearing. Oh, sure, the president is in full denial and given that you’re the No. 2 man, you must feel the need to parrot what the No. 1 man in the government is saying.

Except that it isn’t true, Mr. Vice President. Yes, you got a taste of what these people are enduring.

For you to downplay, if not outright deny the mistreatment of migrants — especially the children — makes you complicit in the lies that Donald Trump keeps blathering.

Shame on you both.

International news

Is it really a ‘national emergency’ on the border?

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I cannot possibly profess to know all there is to know, but one current issue has me baffled in the extreme.

I am unable to discern where along our nation’s southern border we are experiencing a “national emergency.” Donald Trump is now threatening to declare that such an emergency exists if he doesn’t persuade Congress to appropriate $5.7 billion to build The Wall.

The president has just backed down from a standoff he engaged in with congressional Democrats. The partial government shutdown was called off. Trump didn’t get any money for The Wall. He said he would keep the government shuttered for as long as it takes until he got money for The Wall. Then he caved, blinked, backpedaled, retreated . . . whatever you want to call it.

Now comes the threat to declare a national emergency. What does it mean? It means that Trump can deploy military personnel to build The Wall and move money appropriated for other projects to finance its construction. Former U.S. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, a Texas Panhandle Republican, has said such a move runs counter to Pentagon policy and that the military mission should not include wall construction.

What’s more, if he does declare such an emergency, the president can expect an immediate and ferocious legal challenge from congressional Democrats.

I do not live along the border, but I do live in a border state. Texas shares the longest stretch of any of the four states that border Mexico. The entire Texas-Mexico border is along the Rio Grande River. In some areas along that river, it is virtually impossible for anyone to enter one country from the other.

Back to my point. Is there really and truly an emergency occurring down yonder? I have trouble believing that the illegal immigration situation today is any worse than it has been for decades. Indeed, I keep hearing about surveys that tell us that illegal border crossings have declined in recent years. Border Patrol agents have been arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants for as long as the agency has existed.

Trump has sought to scare the daylights out of Americans by implying that hordes of illegal immigrants are pouring across the border to commit all manner of crimes against unsuspecting Americans. I will admit I haven’t spent a lot of time on the border, but I have been there and have wondered where the hordes of criminals have been hiding.

I am simply not going to accept the president’s assertion about the need to declare an emergency. I really wonder if it really exists.

International news

Border Patrol: shutdown collateral damage

Talk about an unintended consequence.

Donald Trump said he would shut down the government over construction of The Wall along our southern border to increase border security.

So, part of the government shuts down. The U.S. Border Patrol continues to do its job, which is to secure the border. Except that the shutdown is depriving these valuable officers of their pay. It’s putting enormous stress on those officers.

Thus, it is — let’s see — oh, endangering national security. A stressed-out Border Patrol officer cannot do his or her job as well as someone who isn’t suffering from the pressure caused by a shutdown that deprives them of income.

How’s that security enhancement goal working out, Mr. President?

I’ve got the answer: Not worth a damn!

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The Wall is too costly, obsolete and utterly unnecessary

OK, I now intend to get ahead of the president of the United States, because I pretty much know what he’s going to say when he speaks a little later to his fellow Americans.

He’s going to say we need to build The Wall along our southern border to stop what he says is a horde of terrorists seeking to enter the country illegally. He is going justify the $5.6 billion expense by saying that the alternative is “open borders,” which no sane American wants. Donald Trump is going to foment fear among Americans by declaring that we have to stop this phony menace and he is considering whether to declare a national emergency to do that very thing.

The Wall is a fantasy cooked up by a first-time political candidate in June 2015 when he rode down an escalator and declared his intention to run for the presidency. It drew cheers and hosannas from the faithful.

The Wall won’t do what Trump intends for it to do. It won’t stop illegal immigrants from seeking to enter the country. It won’t stave off any illicit drug traffic. It won’t deter bad guys from doing harm.

As others have noted, we have technology these days that we can deploy: drones, electronic surveillance equipment to name two weapons at our disposal. We can hire more Border Patrol officers and deploy them at entry points identified as most troublesome by federal, state and local authorities.

The threat of terror is overhyped in the extreme. The president is using phony numbers to illustrate what he calls a national crisis. He has told his administration to follow his lead. They are telling falsehoods. They are demagoguing the issue, frightening Americans.

The Wall is a phony remedy to a problem that exists, but not to the extent that Donald Trump keeps insisting that it does.

He will go on the air tonight to tell us our nation is in dire peril from the hordes of rapists, murderers, drug dealers, sex traffickers and international terrorists who, more than likely, are “radical Islamic extremists” packing bombs and assorted weapons of mass destruction.

All the while, part of the federal government remains shuttered. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are in danger of missing mortgage payments, child support payments or credit card payments because they are furloughed — without pay.

Why? Because the commander in chief wants to build a “big, beautiful wall” that won’t do a damn thing.

national news

Knock off the ‘open borders’ demagoguery

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I am going to declare a form of rhetorical war against those who keep insisting that those who oppose building The Wall along our southern border favor “open borders.”

Open borders . . . shm-open borders.

The nation’s demagogue in chief, Donald Trump, keeps harping on that mantra. He is wrong to say it. His true believers are wrong to buy into it and repeat it. Trump is wrong to push for The Wall. He is wrong to suggest that The Wall is the only way to make our nation more “secure” from undesirables seeking to enter this country illegally.

What’s more, he is wrong to demonize every single illegal immigrant in the manner that he’s done. He is wrong minimize the asylum-seekers who are fleeing repression, corruption and personal threats to their lives in their own countries.

It is the “open borders” canard that sends me into orbit.

To suggest that those who oppose The Wall somehow favor a security-free border gives demagoguery a bad name.

I am one American who opposes The Wall. Do I favor stronger border security? Of course I do. So do many other Americans who believe as I do. We want the nation to be a place that enforces immigration laws strictly but also is a welcoming place for those who seek freedom and a better life for themselves and their loved ones.

We can protect this country by enhancing existing security measures: drones, electronic surveillance, more Border Patrol officers.

The president simplifies a complex issue by dividing us into two camps: those who favor The Wall vs. those who oppose it.

I am sickened by the demonization and demagoguery the president keeps spewing, not to mention the parroting of that hideous rhetoric by his allies in Congress and those rank-and-file Americans out here in Flyover Country.

We all love this country. We all want to protect it. We simply differ on the best way to do it.

The Wall is a boondoggle, pure and simple.

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What is so wrong with a ‘pathway to citizenship’?

The 2018 midterm election might be setting an unofficial record for demagogic statements and rhetoric.

One of them goes something like this: Democrats want to grant immediate citizenship to illegal aliens. Hmm. Really?

Here is what I understand is the talking point that Democrats are pitching and it has next to nothing to do with what their Republican foes keep saying about them.

They say they want to grant a “pathway to citizenship” to those who entered the United States illegally. Does that equate in any fashion to granting immediate citizenship? Not to me.

One of the most-watched Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate, Texan Beto O’Rourke, has been vilified as someone who favors “open borders,” one who says we have “too much border security” and someone who favors allowing illegal immigrants to vote.

Yes. I actually heard that last thing stated on a Fox News interview O’Rourke conducted with talking head Sean Hannity.

What I believe is the truth is that O’Rourke and other progressive candidates want is to grant a reprieve from deportation for illegal immigrants. Then he has suggested a form of screening of those immigrants, seeking to determine the reasons they are here. He and others want to allow them the chance to apply for citizenship or to seek permanent resident status.

Why, I must wonder, is that such a bad thing? Why is it preferable in the minds of many others to just round ’em up, keep ’em restrained and then deport ’em without giving them a chance to build new lives in the Land of Opportunity?

The xenophobe in chief keeps implying that every illegal immigrant is here to do harm. Yep, grandma and grandpa, along with their small grandchildren, as well as married couples have sneaked into our country to commit terrible, heinous, despicable crimes against unsuspecting Americans. That’s how the demagoguery goes.

It is untrue. It is a lie fomented by those with ghastly motives.

Do I favor “open borders”? Do I favor an absence of border security? Do I want to grant anyone permission to enter this country without the proper documentation? Of course not. Neither do politicians seeking election to important public offices.

None of that will stop the demagogues from continuing their campaign of lies.

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Open borders? Really?

When I hear and read the term “open borders,” I conjure up a definition of, well, totally open borders.

They are borders without guards carrying weapons, without any surveillance, without any restrictions for those seeking to cross them.

Yet the political climate has been poisoned by rhetoric that alleges Democrats across our country favor “open borders.” The Republican demagogue in chief, Donald Trump, is leading the chants against Democratic Party loyalists, contending they favor no restrictions on immigration.

So help me, I haven’t heard a serious politician say anything approaching what Trump and other demagogues are suggesting. They aren’t saying that we take down the Border Patrol stations, letting anyone walk into this country unrestricted.

What these so-called “open border” proponents are saying is they don’t want to build a wall along our nation’s 2,000-mile southern border. They contend it is too expensive, too unwieldy, too fraught with legal difficulty as the government seeks to condemn private land.

They aren’t favoring “open borders.” I am one who opposes the wall but supports strengthening border security using lots measures available to us: more Border Patrol personnel, more drone aircraft, greater surveillance technology, more support for state and local law enforcement agencies, rapid deportation policies.

Open borders? That’s the stuff of demagogues.

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Signs of cracking among the ‘base’?

I am heartened to learn of some second thoughts among Donald J. Trump’s most ardent supporters regarding this ghastly policy of “no tolerance” along our southern border.

It’s the policy that allows U.S. Border Patrol and immigration agents to seize young children from their parents as they enter the United States illegally.

Trump blames a “Democrat bill,” which doesn’t exist, for the policy.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the Bible — as stated in Romans 13 — gives the Trump administration all the authority it needs to invoke this intensely cruel policy.

Now we hear from, say, the Rev. Franklin Graham, one of the president’s most ardent supporters. Graham has declared his opposition to the policy.

Oh, and then former first lady Laura Bush has weighed in with an op-ed column in which she declares the policy “immoral” and said it “breaks my heart” to learn of children being put in cages along our southern border.

The current first lady, Melania Trump, has waffled a bit, calling on “both sides” to cease this humanitarian crisis. I understand the first lady’s difficult spot. But “both sides” aren’t required.

Only one side is needed to fix it. That would be the president, who can end this hideous policy with a phone call and a signature.

International news

Border ‘crisis’ appears to be overcooked

I’m going to speak from the cuff here, but I believe it needs to be said. Donald Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to our southern border appears to me to be a solution in search of a problem.

The president keeps hyping an immigration “crisis” along our border with Mexico. He is implying that the border is being overrun by illegal immigrants. He suggests that the only way to stem that deluge of people sneaking in is to send in ground troops; they need to patrol the border, shoring up security already being provided by Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, local police and electronic surveillance equipment.

When did it get to this point? What is the president trying to prove with this initiative?

I don’t get it. I cannot fathom when this matter escalated to a point that requires a virtual militarization of our border with one of our nation’s closest allies.

Barack Obama deported a record number of illegal immigrants during his two terms as president of the United States. George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security after the 9/11 attacks, giving the federal government another agency responsible for protecting us against potential terrorist entry.

Trump takes office after campaigning on a promise to build a “big, beautiful wall” and forcing Mexico to pay for it. Mexico won’t pay a dime for the wall.

Why in the world is there this need to send National Guardsmen and women to the border when we have plenty of civilian resources available to do the job of catching people who are trying to sneak into the United States illegally?

This looks to me to be a made-up crisis.