Hullabaloo

Friday, March 29, 2019

 
No Trump, these asylum seekers are not prizefighters

by digby

Trump mocks immigration lawyers and asylum seekers pic.twitter.com/ekYhGcFLpa

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 29, 2019

I think we know who the big fat con is, don't we?

Here is reality:

The translator leaned over, telling her about upcoming court dates & the importance of attending -- or being subject to a deportation order in absentia.

Of course this little darling had no idea what was going on. She blew raspberries my way & giggled the whole time.
2/x

— 𝙅𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙋𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙮 (@Jose_Pagliery) March 28, 2019

When it was all over, she didn't want to get up & leave. She seemed so content just sitting by my side and swinging her legs from the pew.

I complimented the rainbow unicorn on her jacket. It's cold outside & you should really put it on, it's such a beautiful jacket, I said.
4/x

— 𝙅𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙋𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙮 (@Jose_Pagliery) March 28, 2019

The child care center worker held her hand, and they walked out.

I have no idea where her mom is. She has no idea where her mom is.

I couldn't stop thinking about little Merolin for the rest of the day.

5/5.

— 𝙅𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙋𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙮 (@Jose_Pagliery) March 28, 2019

Trump is now threatening to close the border by next week unless the Mexican government stops all the asylum seekers.





Dara Lind at Vox explains that part of the reason for the upsurge in migrants crossing outside ports of entry is the administration's slowing of the process. So naturally, Trump wants to make everything much, much worse:

Shutting down ports of entry would be an economic disaster. It would also disrupt the lives of border communities that rely on the flow of people between the US and Mexico — including the major cities of San Diego (and Tijuana) and El Paso (and Ciudad Juarez).

Approximately $1.5 billion worth of commerce happens along the US-Mexico border every day. Nearly half a million people cross the border legally every day through Texas ports alone.

Even reductions in port capacity or temporary shutdowns tend to lead to panic among the business community and local residents. El Paso is currently concerned that already-long waits at the ports could get longer as agents are reassigned to care for unauthorized migrants. When the San Ysidro port of entry in San Diego shut down for a few hours in November, as agents responded with force (including tear gas) to an organized march of asylum seekers, the temporary closure cost about $5.3 million in lost business revenue.

Of course, making it harder for people to cross legally generally only encourages people to cross illegally — something that’s already been seen as the US has limited the number of asylum-seekers it allows to present themselves at ports.

Trump’s Friday tweets actually tacitly acknowledge that drug smuggling is more likely to happen at ports than between them — something he generally explicitly lies about. But drug smugglers are less likely than, say, banana exporters to just throw up their hands if a port is shut down, rather than finding other illegal ways to get drugs into the US.

Every time Trump tweets something like this, border-state legislators and business associations react with alarm. Generally, DHS officials stress that they understand the importance of keeping the ports open. But Trump by all appearances does not.

It’s not that “shutting down the border” is the administration’s only proposed solution — Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen wrote a letter to Congress on Thursday asking for changes to the law regarding family detention and child deportation, and predicting that they would need more funding. But it’s an idea Trump himself can’t let go of. And now, for the first time — if for completely different reasons — there is an actual prospect that the administration will do something that looks vaguely similar to Trump’s threats.

This is what he wants of course. There was no crisis. But he needs one so he's creating it. And he obviously doesn't care at all how many children and vulnerable people her hurts or even how much he damages the economy. In fact, he wants to damage cross-border business --- so he can blame the vulnerable brown people he and his base hate.

God he is exhausting. But I think that's a feature for him, not a bug.

.
digby 3/29/2019 12:30:00 PM