Conservative focus misplaced in dealing with border crisis

The photographs say crisis. The faces of Central American children and families peering from behind fences, crowded rooms, makeshift beds on hard floors of Border Patrol facilities illustrate a humanitarian emergency that has overwhelmed federal government.

The tales of why the tens of thousands of immigrants are coming tear at the heart. One social worker from El Salvador told the New York Times this week that she left a good job to get her 11-yearold away from the gangs in her neighborhood.

“The gangs came to my house,” the daughter was quoted saying. “They told my mother: ‘Take care of your daughter. Her body is becoming so pretty.’”

Yes, it is a crisis. But some political hardliners on immigration seem to see something else, too — a windfall.

Candidates like Dan Patrick, the Republican nominee for lieutenant

governor, couldn’t have dreamed up a better backdrop for their crusades against immigration reform if they’d paid a political consultant to stage it.

In a way, Patrick, a Houston state senator, finally got photographic proof of those invading Mexicans he’s been ranting about on the campaign trail.

Except, these folks aren’t Mexicans. They’re largely from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. But they’ll do. Timing is perfect as well, coming just after Republican delegates at the state convention scrapped a practical solution to immigration reform, including a guest worker program, in favor of a demand to secure the border first. As if the latter could ever be accomplished without the former.

Arguments, not answers

It can’t. And that’s the point, I guess. To keep the argument burning. Not to solve anything. But to rile. To enrage. To mobilize.

Hardline Republicans and conservative websites quickly seized on the situation as an expected outgrowth of failed border policy by the Obama administration.

It isn’t just a humanitarian crisis created in large part by worsening poverty and increasingly violent conditions in the immigrants’ home countries. It is a crisis in border security — one even worthy of warfare rhetoric, it seems.

Texas’ top leaders, led by Gov. Rick Perry, channeled Iraq on Wednesday when they approved a “surge” of Texas law enforcement to “combat” the influx of immigrant children, families and others.

And if you read a Patrick press release these days, you might think it was IMMIGEDDON. A recent statement managed to evoke disease, hardened criminals and terrorists all in the first paragraph.

There’s never been a publicly documented case of a known terrorist entering the country through our southern border. Serious terrorists, as one policy expert told me, simply have better options — such as visas.

Patrick then called on state leaders to immediately allocate $1.3 million a week in emergency spending for the rest of the year for added border security — which effectively is what they agreed to Wednesday.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the GOP nominee for governor, meanwhile, asked for $30 million in federal funds for state-based border security operations.

“With the Border Patrol’s focus shifted to this crisis, we have grave concerns that dangerous cartel activity, including narcotics smuggling and human trafficking, will go unchecked because Border Patrol resources are stretched too thin,” Abbott wrote.

Yes, we have a crisis on our hands. But here’s the thing: It wasn’t caused by lacking border security. And it won’t be fixed by further militarization of the Rio Grande. Most of these children and families aren’t trying to sneak across the border, as those crossing illegally usually do. They’re not evading the Border Patrol; they’re running straight to them, behaving like asylumseekers, not invaders.

‘Just a crazy system’

According to news reports, many seem to be under the false impression that they will be given a temporary permit to stay in the country.

The rumor is probably rooted in the fact that many immigrants who can’t be immediately deported are given a notice to appear in court. But the backlog for a court hearing to help determine if the immigrant has a good claim to stay here is 577 days, according to the Migration Policy Institute, and 363,239 removal cases are in the queue.

“That’s just a crazy system,” said the institute’s Marc Rosenblum. “And there’s no way to defend that. Nobody should think that’s good.”

The lag time not only causes the government to lose track of immigrants, who often don’t show up for hearings, but it creates an incentive for folks to come here if they’re guaranteed more than a year of sanctuary.

All the focus on frontline security, and not on processing, is part of the problem, according to a recent institute report. While the number of Border Patrol agents has soared from about 4,000 in 1992 to more than 21,000 in 2013, funding for immigration courts hasn’t kept pace. In the past decade, funding for the Executive Office for Immigration Review has grown about 70 percent, while funding for enforcement has grown by about 300 percent.

The answer isn’t as simple as adequately funding the courts, but it would go a long way. Much farther than demanding more boots on the ground or drones or more miles of fence.

“Even if we had a fence,” Rosenblum said, “all of those kids would present themselves at a port of entry and make the same claim.”

Instead of more money for enforcement, Rosenblum says Texas’ leading gubernatorial contender, for one, should make a different request: “Abbott should be saying to Obama ‘give us some more judges down here so we can process these cases.’ ”

But then, judges don’t poll in Texas like guns, and boots, and fear.