Trump got the horrific images he wanted
Tear-gassing and pepper-spraying asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border couldn’t have played out better for Donald Trump.
The president finally got the images he wanted: Migrants defying Mexico’s security to forcibly climb over border barriers in their attempt to reach U.S. soil.
And you can thank a handful of migrants or whoever is advising them for it.
The migrants lost. Trump won — at least for now.
Tear-gassing people seeking asylum is wrong. The United States must carefully and expeditiously consider every petition and determine whether individuals pass the legal test or not.
Yet thousands of Central Americans who for weeks trekked through Mexico have been camping at a sports complex in the border city of Tijuana, waiting for the chance to seek asylum in the U.S.
Trump used their perilous journey to rally his base with fears of a migrant invasion leading up to the Nov. 6 election, and he succeeded to some extent in keeping the U.S. Senate under Republican control.
But Trump seemed to have forgotten about the migrants after the election – until this weekend, when some activists from Pueblo Sin Fronteras reportedly advised the migrants that a run for the border would draw attention to their plight.
Mission accomplished. They got international attention. But at what cost?
The Mexican government is reportedly poised to deport roughly 500 Central Americans arrested Sunday after they forcibly attempted to cross to the U.S. illegally. Meanwhile, Trump is hailing federal agents’ actions while threatening to “seal” the border permanently to keep everyone out — including legal crossers.
The uproar comes just days before yet another federal budget deadline, and Trump is once again threatening a government shutdown if Congress doesn’t approve funding for a border wall.
Trump won the presidency by promising to make Mexico pay for the border wall, but has since sought $25 billion from Congress for it. Congress last year approved only $1.6 billion for that purpose. The Dec. 7 budget deadline is Trump’s last chance to push through wall funding before Democrats take over the House in January.
“The attack on our southern border by a mob attempting to enter our country illegally, in part to force us to change our laws and policies, is nothing short of an invasion,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., wrote in an op-ed published by Fox News. “One mob is at the border and, having successfully forced entry into Mexico, attempted to force entry into the United States.”
And thus, the migrant drama is a godsend for Trump’s last-ditch attempt to rally Americans so they can pressure their federal representatives.
What about the migrants’ plight? Nobody seems to really care about them, and that’s the real tragedy. These migrants are genuinely fleeing poor and violent-prone Central American countries, but everyone is using them as political pawns.
Their plight is infuriatingly painful because they’re caught in a political war between two countries. And they’re caught in an ideological war between Republicans and Democrats in the U.S.