Comedian Bill Maher says the media are “doing Donald Trump’s bidding” on coverage of the Central American caravans wending their way north through Mexico.
If Leftist activists are upset, their anger is misdirected.
Since Congress has failed to provide the Executive Branch the authority to detain families as a unit until a determination can be made about their claims to enter the United States, the administration has been forced to revert to catch-and-release policies. The inevitable result is that parents with children have been crossing in record numbers. In September, 16,658 family members were arrested along the Mexican border, up 80 percent from July and more than any other month on record.
With catch-and-release policies back in place, more caravans are ramping up. Central American migrants say they are making the journey because they know they can make it out of detention easily with children in tow.
“If they feel there will be separation, they don’t come,” President Trump said this month.
Inverting the president’s logic, mainstream media outlets reporting on the renewed migrant surge concluded that zero tolerance policies at the border “don’t work.” This is nonsense, since zero tolerance was never given the time to work.
Now that zero-tolerance been zeroed out, human smugglers are back to hustling business.
“Before, they would say it wasn’t a good time to go,” relates Dora Alonzo Quijivix, a community leader in Guatemala’s western highlands. “Now they offer to make your dreams come true.”
The New York Times, Esquire and other media outlets repeatedly discount and deride Trump’s legitimate concerns about the Central American caravans as mere campaign rhetoric. While soft-pedaling the obviously orchestrated aspects of the sojourn, journalists ridicule the president and marginalize the executive’s constitutional duty to secure America’s borders.
When discussing the administration’s options, the media reduce them to an extreme binary (and false) choice: mobilizing U.S. troops or admitting the migrants on “humanitarian” grounds. In fact, there are several solutions in between.
“This isn’t a military problem. It’s a law-enforcement problem, and one that ordinary civilian law enforcement can solve if provided with the right tools,” notes Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies. Read his list of policy options and legal reforms here.
Clearly, serious immigration issues demand serious reporting. If we can agree with Maher on anything it is that media coverage of the caravan has been remarkably unserious.