News and Analysis from the Border that You're Not Likely Seeing
Byron York and others repeat or report news and information - and interesting takes - on the Biden's Bungled Border and certain Democrats' mindless NIMBY and inane "human trafficking" retorts
Emphasis added.
Byron York (Washington Examiner):
MARTHA'S VINEYARD FREAKOUT: IGNORING THE REAL PROBLEM. Much of the nation's political and commentary class had a near-nervous breakdown when 48 Venezuelans who had crossed illegally into the United States arrived at Martha's Vineyard Airport, not far from the summer homes of some of the country's wealthiest and best-connected people. When they realized what had happened, many Democrats and allied voices in the media expressed white-hot anger at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who arranged the immigrants' trip. Meanwhile, Martha's Vineyard residents volunteered to feed and care for the immigrants for 24 hours, after which the National Guard whisked them off the exclusive island.
Now move 2,200 miles west and south, to Del Rio, Texas. During the 24-hour period from Saturday to Sunday, according to reporting by Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, Border Patrol officers encountered 1,707 illegal crossers in the Del Rio Sector, which covers 245 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Officers encountered even more illegal crossers in the El Paso Sector to the west: 1,967 illegal crossings. And in the Yuma Sector still farther west, there were 757 illegal crossings. That is 4,431 illegal crossings in just three of the nine sectors of the U.S.-Mexico border.
So what happened when they crossed illegally into the U.S.? Were they turned back? Allowed to stay? According to Melugin's tweet, which is entirely consistent with statistics on the border, only 335 illegal crossers were expelled from the El Paso Sector on what is called a Title 42 expulsion, referring to the rule used to reduce the spread of COVID. In Del Rio, there were 514 expulsions. And in Yuma, there were 39 expulsions.
In total, there were 4,431 illegal crossings in the three sectors in a single 24-hour period and 888 Title 42 expulsions. That means 3,543 illegal crossers were allowed to stay in the U.S. In just three sectors, in just one day.
Whatever number you choose, 4,431 total illegal crossings or 3,543 allowed to stay, the number is a lot bigger than the 48 immigrants who landed in Martha's Vineyard. And yet, the outrage! Critics lined up to call DeSantis's transfer of illegal crossers to a luxury redoubt in Massachusetts cruel and inhuman and un-American and anti-American and “literally human trafficking” and more. A Boston-based group called Lawyers for Civil Rights demanded that the Justice Department and the Massachusetts attorney general investigate and possibly prosecute DeSantis for an alleged "conspiracy to deprive our clients of their liberty and civil rights and interfere with federal immigration proceedings."
There were many reports that the immigrants on the plane said they were not told where they were going or that they were told they were going to Boston or that they did not learn where they were headed until midflight. There were other reports that the immigrants were given written materials stating specifically that they were going to Martha's Vineyard. And in any event, they all agreed to go. Upon crossing illegally into the U.S., many had destinations in mind if they were allowed to stay. For some, making it to the Northeast would be a step toward a goal, not an inhuman ordeal.
And then we learned that the city of El Paso, led by a Democratic mayor, has been regularly busing illegal border crossers to New York City. Melugin reported that El Paso has sent at least 51 buses with a total of 2,365 immigrants to New York since Aug. 23. More buses are on the way. New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who has complained that immigrants are overwhelming his city's social services capabilities and who has bitterly denounced Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's buses to New York, has actually made an agreement with El Paso to accept as many as 200 immigrants a day.
OK, so Adams is partisan. So the lawyers on Martha's Vineyard are hysterical. So much of the press coverage is biased. The problem is that this debate is not about the real problem. Everyone is talking about how to accommodate illegal border crossers once they are in the country and not about how to prevent people from crossing illegally into the U.S.
On Monday morning, Melugin tweeted, "We are now 19 days into September and the federal government still has not reported migrant encounter numbers at the border for August. Those numbers will put us well over 2 million encounters for Fiscal Year 2022 with a month left to go, and they don't account for 500,000+ known gotaways."
Isn't that the real problem? Isn't the real problem the enormous numbers of people crossing into the U.S.? And how to reduce that number? And how to deal with those who do manage to sneak across to make sure that only the relatively small number who have legitimate asylum claims are allowed to stay? Isn't that the real problem?
Instead of dealing with the real problem, everything the Biden administration has done since Day One has been to increase the incentive for would-be immigrants to cross illegally into the U.S. Arguing over how best to accommodate illegal crossers, rather than arguing over how best to return the vast majority of them back across the border, increases the incentive for those considering unlawful entry into the U.S. They know their arrival might set off a debate over whether they should be allowed to stay in El Paso or be sent to Martha's Vineyard, but either way, they stay in the U.S. — their ultimate goal. The argument over the DeSantis flight does nothing to address what is happening on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Fifty-three migrants died in a tractor-trailer in Texas. Coyotes were smuggling them into the country. The smugglers were prosecuted, and the nation moved on.
8,000 migrants a day are streaming across the border in Texas. The Biden Administration says the border is closed. Border Patrol agents have found people from Russia, Ukraine, and the Middle East crossing the border. Many of those coming now had to fly to Mexico City and walk north. God only knows how many people from the Middle East made it into the country, given the number caught.
The Border Patrol tells a similar story these days. The drug cartels are using drones to spy on where the agents are. The cartels then send migrants across the border near where the Border Patrol agents are. As the patrol moves in to stop the migrants, the cartels send drug runners across at different locations. Often, they’ll shoot guns in the air or fire flares once across the border so the Border Patrol knows they’ve gotten across. They’re bringing in fentanyl and other drugs. The migrants are the unwitting decoys.
Over the past year, the crowds have grown and the Biden Administration has done nothing except load migrants onto planes to be shipped around the country. Many have been dropped off in Florida.
Last week, Ron DeSantis loaded fifty into a plane and flew them to Martha’s Vineyard.
Only then did progressives care. Within twenty-four hours, they’d rounded up those illegals and hauled them out of Martha’s Vineyard. As the sun rises this morning, the media firestorm over this bit of theater has not subsided. Progressives and their content creators in the newsrooms of America are outraged.
They’re spending far more time on these fifty illegal aliens than the fifty-three dead ones in Mexico. The Biden Administration is far more exercised about the illegal aliens in Martha’s Vineyard than the ones in Texas. The left often thought Donald Trump didn’t care about things that happened in progressive enclaves. The Biden Administration seems to feel the same way about red states.
Fox News has regular, daily reports on the border crossings. Most other networks have chosen not to cover it regularly. They’re covering DeSantis’s plane full of illegal aliens. They have barely covered how those illegal aliens got to Florida — Joe Biden paid for that plane ride. They have not covered the extent of the porous border of late. They’ve moved on.
I don’t really like the politics of theater. But it seems necessary. As much as part of the right had decided it will be against whatever the left is for, the left has done the same. The right cares about the border, so the left pretends there is no problem.
A closed and secure border should not be a partisan issue. But because the GOP has made it an issue, Democrats across America have chosen to ignore it. To the extent Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis have forced them to pay attention to the issue by bussing illegal aliens to progressive areas of the country, the Democrats are outraged at the stunt, not the problem at the border.
The border is not secured. Illegal drugs are pouring in. There is a humanitarian crisis. Spare me your outrage at the Republicans using illegal aliens as props. Those of you on the left and much of the media have done everything possible to avoid grappling with the extent of the humanitarian crisis.
8,000 people a day are crossing the border in Texas each day. If you can’t understand the border is not closed and needs to be, Republicans need to keep sending these migrants to your cities and states.
They must make you care. It is a major issue. If it takes theater to make you care, so be it.
Tina Lowe (Washington Examiner):
Less than two days. That’s how long the residents of Martha’s Vineyard (average household income: $132,657) tolerated a planeload of 50 Venezuelan immigrants dumped on the tony island off the coast of Massachusetts. As CNN boasts, it took just 44 hours for the immigrants, chartered from Texas to the patrician playground courtesy of Ron DeSantis, to be sent to Joint Base Cape Cod.
The total number of immigrants crossing the southern border is set to cross 2 million in the fiscal year, the highest number in documented history. The 50 immigrants sent by the Florida governor is a mere fraction of those few thousand migrants sent by other red state governors to blue metropolises like New York City and Washington, D.C., over the summer. Those 50 are a mere fraction of those few thousand migrants who cross into border towns like Eagle Pass and Brownsville every single day. Hell, those 50 immigrants are a mere fraction of the 750-odd immigrants who have died at the southern border this year.
And yet, DeSantis’s stunt dominated the airwaves for 72 hours, retreating only for the funeral of the second-longest serving monarch in history.
What was it that made the Martha’s Vineyard story so delectable to conservatives and repugnant to liberals in a way that GOP-chartered migrant buses to Manhattan haven’t?
I have a theory. Especially since coronavirus lockdowns and the 2020 summer of race riots broke the fundamental covenant between a city and its taxpayers, we expect Manhattan moms and white-collar workers around the White House to cede the public (and publicly funded) spaces of parks and subway benches to bums, addicts, veterans abandoned by the country they risked their lives for, and everyone in between. The working class, unable to upgrade to gym memberships or houses in the suburbs, bears the brunt of growing throngs dependent on Uncle Sam, but the upper classes — the summer set on Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod, and beyond — get to flee.
And more importantly, they get to lock the plebeian class out of their swanky havens.
The apoplectic reaction to DeSantis sending a few dozen Venezuelans to Martha’s Vineyard is clearly indicative of the Left’s immigration NIMBYism (that is, the acronym for “not in my backyard,” an exclusionary brand of policymaking that prevents new housing and business development surrounding existing residential neighborhoods). The hypocrisy of Hate-Has-No-Home-Here liberals acting like Laredo is capable of funding 10,000 new jobless non-English speakers in a week but multimillionaires in Massachusetts can’t is so obvious that it’s beyond parody. But the Martha’s Vineyard mayhem also points a finger at the literal NIMBYism of limousine leftists who zone literal islands into multiacre plots of mansions to the exclusion of everybody else. Leftists everywhere don’t want to reap the consequences of President Joe Biden’s open borders incentives. But it’s the Leftists in areas like Martha’s Vineyard who cannot possibly face those consequences in person.
Unlike most of the blue state cities, which at least have decent physical resources to house vagabonds temporarily, Martha’s Vineyard has legally barred developers from creating that capacity. All six towns on the island have some sort of population density or property lot size maximum, and exceptions to the rules are often explicitly nepotistic, such as this stipulation from Chilmark, which states, “For the purpose of helping young people who have grown up in Chilmark and lived here for a substantial portion of their lives and who, because of the rising land prices, have been unable to obtain suitable land for their permanent home at a reasonable price, and who desire to continue to live in Chilmark, the Board of Appeals may grant a special permit to build a one-family dwelling for owner occupancy upon a lot having an area less than the minimum lot size prescribed by this bylaw for the district in which such lot is located, if the Board finds that placing of a one-family dwelling on such lot will not a material, detrimental effect upon, or be inconsistent with, the established and future character of the neighborhood and the Town, and the applicant for the special permit covenants, in a form satisfactory to the Board, not to sell or otherwise transfer the ownership or lease, except for summer occupancy, such lot for a period of ten years, except for cases of hardship as approved by the Board of Appeals.”
To be abundantly clear, the Left, like the Right, is far from a monolith on NIMBYism. The YIMBY Left ranges from popularlist liberals like Matt Yglesias and literal socialists like Tiffany Caban. But if El Paso represents the most inclusive cadre of the Democratic Party, Martha’s Vineyard represents the opposite. It’s not that the island just so happens not to have a sizable homeless shelter or cheap hotel to house the DeSantis immigrants or enough of a working class to provide sufficient social services to do so — it’s that the voters who boast about their benevolence have legally made all of that so in the name of preserving their own profit potential from local housing values, otherwise known as “the established and future character of the neighborhood.”
None of this is to say that Martha's Vineyard or Laredo or anywhere else should be milking citizens already suffocated by an 8.3% consumer price index increase for more cash for immigrants who overwhelmingly may not have any legitimate claim to legal asylum. So-called chain migration and work visas have been the legal immigration status quo for decades for a reason, a social safety net outside of taxpayer funds, as well as legitimate refugee status restricted to legitimate claims.
But if the same activist Left that cheered on Biden ripping up his predecessor's immigration policies are now reaping what they sow, at least punish those most hypocritical elitists who cannot fathom living alongside the more impoverished of their own countrymen, let alone the illegal immigrants they claim to embrace.
Moves by Govs. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), Gregg Abbott (R-Texas) and Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) to transport undocumented migrants to sanctuary cities beyond their states have produced a torrent of denunciation and claims of racism as being (in the words of one writer) the work of “white supremacists, relying on [a] racism-and-spite blueprint.”
Some pundits and Democratic politicians, such as Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), have called for criminal investigations by the Justice Department on discrimination, fraud, “kidnapping or potential Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) charges.” DeSantis’ Democratic challenger in November, Charlie Crist, echoed calls for a federal investigation of his own state, declaring: “Justice needs to be served here.”
While these objections risk proving the intended political point of the trips, they do not prove a crime. If Attorney General Merrick Garland were to yield to this pressure, he would saw off the very branch of government on which his department sits.
Although Martha’s Vineyard previously declared itself a sanctuary for migrants, it declared a “humanitarian crisis” this week when some 50 individuals were flown there from Florida, and it denounced their arrival as a potentially criminal act.
Other leaders, such as D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, have demanded the deployment of the National Guard when border states shipped migrants to their jurisdictions. In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker did precisely that — called out the Guard.
The border-state governors have responded that the groups bussed or flown to other jurisdictions are just a tiny percentage of those pouring over their borders, projected to be more than 2 million this year alone.
Yet Newsom’s demand that the Justice Department prosecute such transfers would create a dangerous precedent, one that might backfire on the Biden administration.
The Biden administration has transported thousands of migrants across the country with little public notice, including late-night flights denounced by Republicans as clandestine “ghost flights.” Those transfers have been defended by Democrats and others as standard practice in the past three administrations. This, as thousands of migrants regularly overwhelm border towns despite administration officials — including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and, most recently, Vice President Kamala Harris — insisting the border is secure.
The trips arranged by the three Republican governors have been denounced as a political stunt. And, indeed, they are — but they are not criminal acts, absent new evidence of compulsion or fraud. There are reports of some migrants demanding to be allowed off buses en route to New York, and some migrants are quoted as saying they were induced with promises of opportunities or care in sanctuary cities. Yet there is no evidence of systemic fraud or misrepresentation. Moreover, even if there was misrepresentation, it would not constitute some of the crimes being claimed on cable television, including Hillary Clinton declaring that it constitutes “literally human trafficking.”
Most migrants do not intend to remain in border communities with a huge influx of migrants and limited opportunities — one reason why the Biden administration has moved migrants elsewhere. Thus, if the administration pursued Newsom’s allegation of a possible “civil rights conspiracy in violation of 42 U.S.C. section 1985,” it would potentially make a case against itself. If these governors are discriminating on the basis of national origin, so is the administration.
Let’s consider a few of the other alleged crimes suggested by politicians and pundits:
Kidnapping, human trafficking
The claim by Newsom and others that this could constitute kidnapping is absurd. Kidnapping requires that the culprit “unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise any person.” There is nothing unlawful in conveying individuals who are lawfully in the country pending their immigration hearings; the trips are voluntary, and most migrants appear eager to accept free passage to cities like New York or Chicago.
Human trafficking — a charge suggested by some law professors — is prosecuted by the Justice Department when you exploit “a person for labor, services, or commercial sex.” Gov. DeSantis may have overt political motives for transporting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, but even cable-news programs have not suggested he is doing so for sexual or labor exploitation.
Racketeering
RICO was designed to combat organized crime by allowing criminal charges based on a pattern of underlying criminal acts. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1961 there is a list of “predicate offenses,” and at least two of those crimes can create the needed pattern for prosecution. But there is no established RICO pattern here because there are no established predicate crimes. An effort by the Biden administration to designate political opponents as “racketeers” would raise deeply troubling concerns about weaponizing the criminal justice system.
Illegal transport
One of the most-cited bases for criminal prosecution has been 8 U.S. Code § 1324, which prohibits transporting or attempting to transport undocumented migrants. The law is designed to combat smugglers, not states offering free trips to those released into the country by the federal government. It requires an act of “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact” that the migrant “has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law.”
These trips, however, are not in violation of law or “in furtherance of such violation of law.” The Biden administration’s controversial “catch and release” policy means migrants are free to go anywhere or accept trips from public interest groups, the federal government or the states.
In theory, public interest groups arranging for transportation or individuals giving rides to migrants could be prosecuted on the same basis under Section 1324. In reality, if transporting undocumented migrants after they are released into the country is to be judged criminal, then the Biden administration would be the largest “coyote” in history.
None of this, of course, may prevent Attorney General Garland from using these wild accusations to launch a federal investigation. Biden officials are reportedly discussing options for legal action. Garland may yield to such demands. After all, he was criticized for creating a nationwide task force at the behest of school boards to investigate parents who publicly challenged board members over issues like teaching critical race theory or diversity policies. Such a move would magnify concerns about the Justice Department being used for political purposes before the midterm election.
The governors’ critics are correct: These trips are politically motivated. That is precisely why the proper response is also political, not criminal. Using the criminal code to amplify political points is a dangerous precedent. Frustrating though it may be for sanctuary cities to face an influx of undocumented migrants, criminal irony still is not an offense under the federal code.