FEAR AND THE WALL
David Nakamura analyses the US President’s televised speech to the nation
As he warned a primetime audience of millions about the dangers of “uncontrolled, illegal migration” — employing gruesome language to describe rapes and murders of Americans — President Donald Trump made no mention of the vast number of immigrants who have lived in the United States illegally for years.
He did not speak of the estimated 1.8 million or more who were brought to the country as minors, a group known as “Dreamers”. He ignored the 4 million immigrant parents living in the US with at least one child who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
And he said nothing of the 8 million undocumented people who have lived in the US at least five years and, according to a government study, would likely have earned citizenship under a comprehensive immigration bill proposed in 2013.
“Over the last several years, I’ve met with dozens of families whose loved ones were stolen by illegal immigration,” Trump said. “I’ve held the hands of the weeping mothers and embraced the grief-stricken fathers. So sad. So terrible . . . How much more American blood must we shed before Congress does its job?”
For Trump, the nine-minute address from the Oval Office marked the latest rhetorical effort to paint immigrants broadly as terrorists, criminals and a threat to US society — one that began with his campaign announcement in 2015, when Trump spoke of rapists coming from Mexico.
At his first State of the Union address in 2017, Trump met the “angel families” of Americans who were killed by undocumented immigrants, including two widows of California police officers killed on duty in 2014. The families sat in first lady Melania Trump’s box in the House chambers during Trump’s speech to Congress.
Yet Trump is not known to have met with a “Dreamer” since two years before his campaign launch in 2015, even as he has professed to be interested in showing “great heart” in finding a solution over their future.
Last night Trump offered none of the uplifting rhetoric predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush used in prime-time immigration speeches from the White House in 2014 and 2006, respectively. Both had painted most immigrants as hard workers who sought to assimilate, calling on the nation to remember its history as a “nation of immigrants”.
“Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country, and thousands more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now,” Trump said. It is not clear what statistics he was referring to, although it appears likely he was including the more than 3000 Americans who died in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
In recent days, Trump and his top aides have said 4000 immigrants with terrorist ties have been stopped trying to illegally cross the US-Mexico border. Yet the Administration has provided no evidence and a report this week from NBC News found only six terrorists had been captured at the border according to government statistics provided to Congress.
Over the years, several studies have found immigrants, including illegal ones, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans — and that the 1 million-plus migrants who are awarded green cards every year granting them legal permanent residency boost America’s economy.
In his 2006 address, Bush spoke of a Mexican immigrant severely wounded in Iraq while serving in the US Marine Corps, later earning citizenship. In 2014, Obama showcased an undocumented student who came as a child and was working on her third college degree.
Near the end of his remarks, Trump, too, offered some real world examples — of Americans killed by illegal immigrants. “To those who refuse to compromise in the name of border security,” he said, “imagine if it was your child, your husband, or your wife?”
US President Donald Trump says there is a security crisis at the border with Mexico that can be addressed only by spending US$5.7 billion on a wall. Democrats have flatly refused to agree to the funding.
But the debate raging in Washington largely overlooks the reality on the border — where issues are not easily solved by a barrier.
Changing demographics
One of the biggest challenges isn’t just stopping people from crossing the border, but figuring out what to do with those who have already crossed illegally. Border Patrol agents are apprehending far fewer people than they once were — a sign that the number of people crossing illegally has plummeted since 2000.
But while most of those crossing illegally used to be Mexican men looking for work, now nearly half are families and unaccompanied children from Central America.
They can’t be immediately returned — the government must coordinate flights to their home countries and secure travel documents, which take time, plus many make claims for asylum in the US.
Customs and Border Protection officials have long said that their stations are not equipped to manage the growing influx of children and families.
As a result, border crossers are stuck in short-term holding cells for days and there has been a spike in sick migrant children, including two who died in custody. CBP referred 451 cases, more than half of them children, to a medical
Asylum claims
More families and children travelling alone are surrendering to authorities to seek asylum — instead of trying to elude capture, as most did just a few years ago. The number of asylum seekers jumped nearly 70 per cent from budget year 2017 to 2018.
Nearly 93,000 people cited a credible fear of being targeted because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinions or social group. That is up from nearly 56,000 migrants who asked for asylum the previous year because they feared returning home.
Only 10 per cent of cases are actually granted. So that means there are a lot of people waiting. Officials along the border are “metering,” a policy that limits the number of people who can apply for asylum in a single day. In Southern California, for example, at San Ysidro, the busiest port, up to 100 asylum claims per day are being processed. A migrant caravan of more than 5000 is marooned in Tijuana.
The immigration court backlog has more than doubled to 1.1 million cases since shortly before Trump took office, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Trump significantly increased the number of immigration judges, but Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said that came without enough support staff.
And there isn’t enough detention space available. There are only about 3300 family detention beds. Officials used to help find shelter for families, but are now dropping people off on the streets and nonprofits that host migrant families are at capacity.
Plus, the number of unaccompanied children has soared, and they’re being held longer in part because officials have tightened restrictions on how sponsors can get custody of children.
Visa overstays
The border wall wouldn’t address the problem of people overstaying their visas. About 40 per cent of people in the US illegally came with visas that later expired.
What about fences?
Border Patrol leaders have struggled to say with any degree of precision how well fences work, in part because it’s unknown how many people get away. A wall built in the Yuma sector in the mid-2000s saw a decrease in border apprehensions by 90 per cent, and arrests dropped after the wall in San Diego was completed in the 1990s. Walls and fencing cover about a third of the border. Contracting, designing and building new wall systems complete with updated technology could take years.