Sometimes even Democrats have to pretend the United States is a nation.
Nations, of course, have borders. And normal nations defend those borders.
Except for the U.S., when Democrats want cheap votes and their friends in business, including Republicans, want cheap labor.
We know what happens then. We’ve been living it for years.
Borders? We don’t need no stinkin’ borders. Migrants, criminals, would-be terrorists, carriers of disease — it doesn’t matter who you are, bienvenidos, come on in.
Except now, with miles of holes in the Border Wall That Trump Built, even Democrats are quietly reacting.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is taking to plugging some of the holes, Fox News reported.
But don’t call it that.
U.S. immigration policy has long been a cornucopia of contradictions. A great example is the Biden administration telling Congress to cut off funds for the border wall while Mayorkas is quietly funneling previously appropriated money to plug holes and replace gates.
Should the U.S. finish the wall along the entire border with Mexico?
The Department of Homeland Security announced the effort on May 27.
Shhhh. Don’t say it’s about fixing the wall. There are environmental issues, don’t you know?
Border money is being laundered through the Pentagon, which is billing the funds as fighting soil erosion, addressing safety near construction sites and plugging holes to prevent flooding.
But it’s not about protecting the border. Couldn’t be. After all, just last year, the White House declared, “Wall construction along the Southern border in recent years is just one example of the prior Administration’s misplaced priorities and failure to manage migration in a safe, orderly, and humane way.”
So now, as a Mayorkas-approved project puts gates under a bridge, please note that it’s not to protect the border. No, it’s to make things safer for Border Patrol agents and migrants and to avoid “hazardous river waters.”
Yep.
And in a popular migrant throughway, the Rio Grande Valley, Mayorkas is finishing 17 gates. Those, too, are not about border security. Border security, leftists inform us, is xenophobic and immoral.
Rather, the completion of those gates is to help border agents access areas and to help first responders take care of urgent situations.
And even as the Biden administration continues to make provisions for the border invasion, DHS is pushing projects stemming back to appropriations for former President Donald Trump’s wall efforts.
But it’s saying those projects address “life, safety, environmental, or other remediation needs and has begun environmental planning, to include planning consistent with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), for not yet completed projects in accordance with the Department’s plan.”
That convoluted government-speak means, “We’re working on Trump’s wall, but we’re not calling it that.”
Trump, of course, had no problem telling everyone he was building a wall. And he did — 452 miles of it.
Some border officers apparently appreciate the latest DHS efforts to fill the gaps.
Border Wall Update:
Support is coming! Gaps & Gates approved by DHS:
•San Diego Friendship Circle
•San Diego Tijuana River
•El Centro Train Gate
•El Centro New River
•Yuma Hill Gap Closure
•El Paso Train Gate
•RGV Access Gates
More:https://t.co/iMwz58ZANN pic.twitter.com/vXcUi3utYj— Chief Raul Ortiz (@USBPChief) June 1, 2022
The Biden administration, while continuing to tell Congress to defund border wall construction, is calling for border security measures that are “smart” or “proven” and to use already appropriated funds “to install barrier system attributes,” whatever those are.
But holes in the border wall are a problem. Besides the Rio Grande Valley, another big migrant gateway is Yuma, in southwestern Arizona. There, migrants flock through three holes that total some seven miles, according to Fox News.
Thwarted by the completed wall on the California border, the migrants are marshaling through Yuma in attempts to reach the relatively close metro areas of Tucson and Phoenix.
The number of migrants at Yuma has increased from a daily average of 50 to 80 to more than 1,000.
In the past 40 minutes over 600 migrants have crossed illegally into Yuma and hundreds more are running in – I’ve never seen anything like this , migrants from Central and South America , Eastern Europe and Caribbeans as well. @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/UeY88RAJ11
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) June 10, 2022
Local farmer Cory Mellon said increased numbers of migrants represent a danger not only to his workers but to themselves. That’s especially true with the brutal temperatures of the lower-elevation Arizona summer.
“It’s very taxing on a community that’s built for 200,000 to have this many people show up at your doorstep and [have needs],” Mellon said.
He is not without empathy. “There’s definitely people in these groups that are trying to find a better way of life. …We have a legal system to do that — that’s what we should be doing,” he said.
The legal system, of course, is onerous and expensive for those wanting to immigrate the right way. And the U.S., especially during Democrat administrations, has for the most part made it clear that officials will look the other way when migrants want to violate the southern border.
That’s frustrating for Border Patrol agents, according to Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls.
“They’re overworked. They’re stressed. They’re not even doing the job that they are, that they’ve joined up to do, so their passion, their mission is to protect the border, to secure the border, not to handle irregular immigration,” he said.
As the number of migrants increases, Nicholls said, “We’re going to get this backlog — this pushback of just the network not being able to handle this flow from other areas.”
“We’re going to be in the situation where people are on the streets, people are going to be sleeping in parks, they’re going to be looking for resources — food, shelter and eventually transportation,” he said.
While Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa has submitted legislation to send construction materials left over from the Trump wall to states for their own border protection, perhaps the Biden administration will continue its feeble efforts under the guise of environmental progress or something to plug holes in the wall.
Maybe it can pretend there are endangered snail darters or spotted owls near Yuma and can develop a fiction that completing the wall there will somehow protect the creatures.
But if anyone asks, it has nothing to do with keeping the border secure.
