Wall debate obscures other problems at border
SAN DIEGO — In Washington, it’s all about the wall. At the border, it’s only part of the story.
Border authorities are struggling with outdated facilities ill-equipped to handle the growing increase in family migrants, resulting in immigrants being released onto the streets every day. The immigration court system is so clogged that some wait years for their cases to be resolved, and lacks funding to pay for basic things like in-person translators. An increase in sick children arriving at the border is putting a strain on medical resources.
But the Washington debate has focused almost exclusively on the $5 billion in wall spending that President Donald Trump wants.
“The wall is a tool. Unfortunately even if it’s implemented across the border it isn’t a solution to all the problems,” said Victor M. Manjarrez, a former Border Patrol sector chief with more than 20 years of experience, now a professor at the University of Texas-El Paso.
The backlog in immigration courts has more than doubled to 1.1 million cases since shortly before Trump took office, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Families and children account for about six of 10 Border Patrol arrests, but there are only about 3,300 family detention beds, and the number of unaccompanied children in government care has soared under Trump.
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.
In addition, the wall will do little to address qvisa overstays — when immigrants come to the country legally and remain here after their papers expire. Authorities say there were nearly 740,000 overstays in a recent 12-month period.
David Aguilar, the Border Patrol chief from 2004 to 2010 and a former acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, said agencies that oversee longterm immigration custody need more funding to immediately step in after the Border Patrol makes an arrest. He says the agency is “overwhelmed” in dealing with all the children and families coming across the border.
“The demographics and the flows that are crossing the southern border are very different from the demographics and flows when we built the original walls … back in 2006 and 2008,” he said.