Located about an hour’s drive north of San Diego in Riverside County, California, the city of Murrieta is home to more than 100,000 people. On July 2, 2014, the calm of this vibrant city changed to indignant demonstration. Several hundred local protesters blocked the path of three busloads of 140 illegal immigrants from Central America who crossed the border into Texas.
The citizens of Murrieta were victims of a federal government that is both arrogant and indifferent. Mayor Alan Long had encouraged the protest having heard that buses loaded with illegal aliens would arrive every 72 hours for several weeks.
In 2011, 6,500 minors crossed the Mexico/U.S. border illegally. In the first half of calendar 2014, more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors have entered the country. Commenting on the influx of unaccompanied minor children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, Zack Taylor, Chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers says that the Obama administration’s rhetoric has encouraged it. The cartels tell them they can get benefits of food stamps, public housing and citizenship.
Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio has become a barracks for 1,000 unaccompanied kids. That is about the same number of children that are apprehended daily in the Rio Grande Valley Patrol Sector in Texas. Border Patrol offices have been transformed into childcare centers. The Health and Human Services Department is overwhelmed and the administration has no plan for alleviating the mess. Anecdotal rumors suggest that the President has or will be asking churches to help out.
People who arrange the trip and collect several thousand dollars per child victim are called ‘coyotes’, reported to often be gang or cartel related. The proceeds to individual coyotes and cartels and gangs is reported to add up to several billion dollars annually. Although more than 43,000 illegal children passed through the U.S. court system in 2013, only 3,525 were deported. Part of the reason is that after being released from the preliminary hearing, they are sent away and ordered to report back. They don’t report back and many to most spend years, even their lifetimes in the U.S.
According to President Obama, this significant increase in illegal entry over our southern border is based on a law passed by Congress in 2008, under the Bush administration. As Speaker Boehner asked in a recent response to a reporter’s question, “He’s been President for 5 ½ years. When is he going to take responsibility for something?” That bill, H.R. 7311 called the ‘William Wilberforce Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008’ became law in January of that year. The law was created to protect unaccompanied minors that could be victims of human trafficking and was not a catch-all immigration statute. .
A report from June of this year states that President Obama spoke by phone with Mexican President Enrique Pe?a Nieto. Apparently the conversation was low-key with hopeful remarks about discussing the humanitarian issue. Why wouldn’t our President ask the Mexican President to stop the parade of illegal aliens across their southern border? The President could ask the Mexican government to participate in funding the costs associated with illegal immigration considering that the U.S. buys 75% of Mexican exports and has taken millions of Mexicans off their welfare rolls.
This past week, although the President was touring Texas for fund-raising dinners, ‘could not find time’ to visit the Texas-Mexican border. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest mentioned that, “The President is very attuned to what’s happening at the border; the President is getting regular updates on the situation.” Mr. Obama is asking Congress for $3.7 billion to help solve this dilemma. He wants immigration reform but sues Arizona for enforcing current immigration law.
The calamity at our southern border points up the inability of this President to deal with diverse catastrophic domestic and world events. This is the man that as President has attended a reported 363 fund-raisers, played golf 176 times and seemingly endless vacations in Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard. I hope our next President is serious about being President.
