Children used as human shields against immigration enforcement
“We will not apologize for doing our job,” declares DHS Secretary Nielsen.
There is a coordinated effort now by some Democratic Party leaders and their allies to stop any immigration enforcement involving children. Oregon’s Senators and Reps. Bonamici and Blumenauer participated in a demonstration in Sheridan OR this past week-end.
In a statement released today (6/18/2018), Mark Krikorian, Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, analyzes the media hysteria created thus far and exposes the deceit and misrepresentation being used in the campaign. Read the entire article, 'We will not apologize for doing our job' .
Below is an excerpt:
The manic wave of "concentration camp" accusations and Hitler comparisons is reminiscent of the atrocity propaganda that helped propel us into World War I (stories of Germans "bayoneting Belgian babies", raping nuns, and the like). Democratic politicians are weeping on television, staged photos are widely retweeted, and even former President George Bush's wife has penned an op-ed calling for a "kinder, more compassionate" means of enforcing our immigration laws.
The reality is more mundane. Border apprehensions of adults bringing children with them skyrocketed during the Obama administration, from about 15,000 in Fiscal Year 2013 (the first time separate statistics were reported) to more than 75,000 in FY 2017. Before the Obama years, it was rare for a parent to bring children with her when trying to infiltrate the U.S. border. No parent, after all, would subject her children to such risks unless there was an incentive to do so.
And that incentive was not flight from gang violence; research has shown almost everyone leaving Central America is motivated by economic reasons. Instead, the prospect of being released into the United States if you brought a child with you was what has caused the spike in arrests of what he Border Patrol calls "family units" at the border.
As the New York Times reported earlier this year:
Some migrants have admitted they brought their children not only to remove them from danger in such places as Central America and Africa, but because they believed it would cause the authorities to release them from custody sooner.
Others have admitted to posing falsely with children who are not their own, and Border Patrol officials say that such instances of fraud are increasing.
Children have served as get-out-of-jail-free cards for border infiltrators, ensuring the whole family's release with a notice to appear in immigration court some months or years in the future, and when they failed to appear, the Obama administration's prioritization rules meant no one would track you down.
When you reward something, you can expect to get more of it. …
These problems could be fixed with legal changes present in both immigration bills expected to be voted on this week, as my colleague Andrew Arthur explained earlier today. The alternative is to surrender to the use of children as human shields against immigration enforcement, which will only invite even more widespread use of children as tickets to America, not only for Central Americans but also for illegal immigrants from around the world using Mexico as a springboard to sneak into the United States.
