A broken system's fallout
At a meeting this week of the Oklahoma County Jail Trust, citizens called for the two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to be expelled from the jail. Echoing criticism of ICE heard in places across the country, one speaker declared, “I believe that funneling people into ICE and the deportation machine does not make us safer.”
At Fort Sill last weekend, protesters blocked an entrance for more than an hour in a demonstration against a plan to house migrant children at the Army post.
On the southern border of the United States, agents with ICE and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection have worked furiously to try to manage the large flow of migrants seeking to enter this country not just from Mexico and Central America, but from around the globe. This flow has resulted in criticism of the conditions in which migrants are being held — the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security has called it a “ticking time bomb.”
All this is the result of a U.S.
immigration policy that's been broken for years but hasn't been fixed because politicians refuse to do it.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma City, spent time this week in McAllen, Texas, observing operations at the nation's busiest border crossing. He commended the work being done by law enforcement, but said their task is overwhelming.
People are housed in a facility that was meant to be used for processing, not for living. The makeshift arrangement has adults “most definitely overcrowded” but those being held have access to showers, bathrooms, meals and supplies. A facility for juveniles was “extremely well done,” Lankford said.
The effects have been significant of a longstanding legal agreement that limits how long children can be held, and treats those from Mexico differently than people from other countries. Mexicans can be turned away, but those from other countries can make time-consuming asylum requests. Consequently, Lankford says people from 63 countries have tried to enter at McAllen, including from such places as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria, many of them with children.
“Sometimes the child is traveling with their mom or dad; sometimes they are traveling with another adult in their family or from their village,” Lankford said. “But sometimes small children are being `rented' by smugglers to help adult males cross the border more easily. Children continue to be abandoned or face severe conditions in the desert.
“This problem needs to be addressed by Congress. Only Congress can close the child migrant loopholes that encourage child smuggling.”
Vice President Mike Pence said essentially the same thing following a recent visit to the same area along the border. Many politicians from both parties concur, or say they do, but immigration reform remains unrealized.
Unless that changes, we'll see only more protests and criticisms of agents placed in no-win situations through little fault of their own.