U.S. officials estimate more than 100,000 people would be apprehended or encountered at the southern border in March, more than in any month since 2007. They also estimate 90 percent are seeking asylum — with 60 percent of them families — adding to the gigantic backlog of 700,000-plus asylum seekers awaiting a hearing before immigration judges. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan believes the “breaking point has arrived” for the U.S. immigration system.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration is playing good cop, dumb cop with its response.
Constructively, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has asked Congress for more resources and more authority to deal with the issue and has met with Mexican and Central American officials to strategize on reducing this migrant influx. On a temporary basis, she has reassigned hundreds of immigration officers from vehicle and cargo screening to deal with asylum seekers.
Counterproductively, President Donald Trump has threatened to “close the border, or large sections of the border” this week, and the administration intends to end direct aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the nations whose citizens make up the vast majority of asylum seekers.
Closing the border could trigger a deep recession, with farmers and automakers at particular risk. There was $611 billion in cross-border trade last year, according to the Commerce Department, with the San Diego-Tijuana region responsible for more than a third of the total. This binational economy is so important that a San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce-led delegation, including San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and several other neighboring mayors, is in Mexico City to to discuss trade and infrastructure issues with senior Mexican officials.
Trump knows the importance of trade with Mexico. It’s why he made such a big deal of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, his administration’s update to the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993. When he visits Calexico today, he can expect local officials to thank him for the deal. So perhaps Trump’s bluster will be just that.
But it appears more likely that he will deny all aid — more than $500 million a year — to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras despite policy experts’ warnings it would hurt residents of the crime-ridden, impoverished nations and trigger more asylum seekers. His action comes as Gov. Gavin Newsom travels to El Salvador to see how desperate conditions are propelling so many asylum seekers north.
Trump doesn’t seem to grasp that U.S. aid isn’t a cash bribe to foreign leaders. Instead, as Michael Gerson of The Washington Post wrote Monday, the aid often goes to nongovernmental organizations to promote public health, fair criminal justice systems, economic growth and other positive causes. This reflects the view that then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly offered in 2017: “If we can improve the conditions — the lot of life of Hondurans, Guatemalans, Central Americans — we can do an awful lot to protect the southwest border.”
This is just common sense. The links are clear: Shore up Central America’s economies, shore up its borders. Let’s hope the president understands this.
— The San Diego Union-Tribune
