President
Obama once said this about his administration’s
deportation priorities: “We’ll keep focusing enforcement resources on actual
threats to our security. That means felons, not families. That means criminals,
not children. It means gang members, not moms who are trying to put food on the
table for their kids.”
Encouraging
words, a year ago. But a new year has dawned upon an appalling campaign of home raids by the Department of
Homeland Security to find and deport hundreds of would-be refugees back to
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The targets are those who arrived in a
recent surge of people fleeing shockingly high levels of gang and drug
violence, hunger and poverty and who offered themselves at the border to the
mercy of the United States, but ultimately lost their cases in immigration
court.
Since
New Year’s, the administration has been sending agents into homes to make an
example of the offenders and to defend the principle of a secure border. A
president who spoke so movingly about the violent gun deaths of children here
has taken on the job of sending mothers and children on one-way trips to the
deadliest countries in our hemisphere. Mothers and children who pose no threat,
actual or imaginable, to our security.
The
Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, said in a statement: “Our borders are not open
to illegal migration. If you come here illegally, we will send you back
consistent with our laws and values.” He added: “This should come as no
surprise. I have said publicly for months that individuals who constitute
enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be
removed.”
It’s no
wonder that Donald Trump is applauding the policy, and taking credit for it.
But Mr.
Johnson is wrong to suggest that frightened Central Americans are a
border-security threat. It’s not illegal to go to the border and seek asylum,
as these families have. And his defense of our “values” jarringly sidesteps
vital questions — Why are people fleeing? And if they are desperate to escape
their murderous homelands, what is the best response of the United States?
It’s
certainly not home raids that send powerless individuals unjustly back to
mortal danger and, as collateral damage, spread fear and panic in immigrant
neighborhoods across the country. The homicidal brutality in Central America
has spawned a humanitarian disaster, but the administration has been treating
it as a Texas border-security emergency, and a political headache. Perhaps this
is why its efforts at deterring the migrant flow have not succeeded. Families
have taken the journey anyway, not because they are determined to flout our
immigration laws — but because they want not to be murdered.
The
administration needs to recognize that this problem cannot be solved in
backward fashion. The answer lies not in sitting idly until refugees arrive and
greeting them with family prisons and prosecution. It requires addressing the
root causes of the bloody violence in the region, and fixing the chaotic,
underfunded legal system at the border, where migrants with no money or lawyers
— or with bad lawyers — confront the infernal complexities of immigration and
asylum law, and lose. The administration should have long ago begun building
routes of escape for families in danger, with safe havens and in-country
screening for those seeking resettlement, in the United States or elsewhere in
the region.
While
federal agents have been knocking on doors and spreading fear, advocacy groups
have been scrambling to help the Central Americans. Humanitarian projects like CARA, a cooperative effort of legal services
organizations, and Raices, which has worked for years with
refugees in Central and South Texas, have placed urgent calls for funds and
volunteers. Protection, due process and outstretched arms for terrorized
families: That’s an approach consistent with America’s laws and values, not
agents at the door, on the hunt for mothers and children.
NY
Times. Editorial. January 8, 2016.
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