The Crisis On Our Doorstep

As the volatile Middle East tops U.S. foreign policy and national security priorities, another humanitarian and security crisis demands urgent attention, one that hits closer to home: the influx of more than 100,000 migrants to our Southern border in the past year.

Most of the migrants are unaccompanied minors; three-quarters have made the dangerous journey thousands of miles north from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The Obama administration was caught off guard, but for those who have long warned against a Latin America policy defined largely by neglect, the flood of minors is the manifestation of fears that the United States has been courting trouble at its doorstep for some time. 

“In comparison to other global threats, the near collapse of societies in the hemisphere with the associated drug and [undocumented immigrant] flow are frequently viewed to be of low importance,” says Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command. “Many argue these threats are not existential and do not challenge our national security. I disagree.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel shares Kelly’s concerns about “threats emanating from the South, particularly from transnational criminal networks, which are causing a lot of the instability, which is encouraging these young children and their families to flee,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby says.

But the politics obstructing the administration’s effort to respond are as intractable as the root causes Defense officials cite. Thus, though the pace has slowed, as is typical in hotter months—the migrants will keep coming. 

In July, the White House requested $3.7 billion in emergency funding from Congress to increase border security personnel, immigration judges, detention resources and assistance to Central American partners. But lawmakers balked at the price tag. Homeland Security Department Secretary Jeh Johnson warned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would run out of funds by mid-August, and Customs and Border Protection by the end of September. But Congress punted on the funding request before leaving for the August recess, forcing department officials to divert more than $400 million: $276 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund, $31.5 million from the Coast Guard, $34.7 million from the Transportation Security Administration and $70.5 million from CBP. 

The crisis proves our immigration system is broken and Congress should pass immigration reform, President Obama says. “Failure to act will undercut our ability to continue to effectively and efficiently address the situation at the border [and] delay efforts to address the root causes.”

Our backyard is a graveyard of American ambition; Obama is the fourth successive president to fail to enact comprehensive immigration reform. 

The last to succeed was Republican President Ronald Reagan, who signed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, offering the opportunity for legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants. But you won’t hear that from conservative politicians who continue to block efforts to address the issue. In fact, most everything you will hear from politicians is wrong.

Critics say Obama must “secure the border,” but rates of illegal immigration have largely stagnated since the U.S. financial crisis. Reform advocates call Obama “Deporter in Chief” because his administration has conducted more deportations in six years than the George W. Bush administration did in eight. Spending on immigration enforcement spiked 300 percent between 2002 and 2013 to roughly $17 billion per year.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, other Republicans and some Democrats have demanded that Obama send in the National Guard, though the migrants have been turning themselves in and nearly 21,000 Border Patrol agents already work along the Southwest border, an increase of 94 percent since 2004, according to the White House. 

One Indiana congressman even suggested the children could be carrying the Ebola virus, despite the fact that no one has contracted Ebola in the Western Hemisphere. That kind of fear- mongering has inflamed the “not in my backyard” attitude that has blocked government attempts to find housing for the children across the country. 

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and others derailed emergency funding by demanding an end to what they call the president’s “amnesty.” They say policies such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program invited the influx of migrants. But DACA passed in 2012, years before the spike, and recent arrivals don’t qualify. It’s unlikely many migrants track U.S. politics to that degree. 

Unaccompanied minors from Central America apprehended in the United States aren’t immediately deported—unlike those from Mexico—due to the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, unanimously passed by Congress and signed by Bush. The law is a major stumbling block in the emergency funding debate, with many Republicans demanding its repeal and Democrats defending its humanitarian intent. The measure has added to the backlog in immigration courts, meaning many migrants will remain in the United States with family while awaiting deportation proceedings, which can take years. Thus, immigration court notices are sometimes referred to as “permisos,” a pass to stay, and coyotes— the opportunists who shepherd drugs and humans across the border—are profiting.

But “I told you so” politics ignores the crucial question: Why are they coming? 

Asylum requests from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to neighboring countries have skyrocketed by 712 percent since 2009, according to the United Nations. Due in part to criminal networks that cater to the world’s largest drug market—the United States— Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have the first, fourth and fifth highest homicide rates in the world, as well as chronic poverty. They are “near- broken societies,” Kelly says. 

Facing these grim numbers, Obama says a dysfunctional Congress has forced him to take further action: potentially, broad legalization for up to 5 million undocumented immigrants who have been living and working in the country. Critics now say if he takes such action, it could lead to a government shutdown.

But the binary politics of the immigration debate deny reality; our immigration policy is not merely domestic. As the world erupts in security crises, resources are stretched ever thinner, and we cannot afford to ignore one on our doorstep.