You know\nthe crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border is real when “America’s\nNewspaper” calls for action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
USA\nToday is hardly restrictionist on immigration policy — far from it, actually\n— but even its editors now agree that the record waves of asylum seekers and\nmigrant “family units” are collapsing the system and creating a\n\u201cmess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After again floating the dubious proposition that U.S. taxpayers dispatch billions more aid dollars to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to “re-establish control and order over their countries” (read: line the pockets of Northern Triangle oligarchs<\/a>),\u00a0a USA Today editorial promoted a better idea:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The second best approach \u2014 one that Democrats as well as Republicans should embrace \u2014 would be to amend a 2008 anti-trafficking law so that people [FAIR clarification: specifically Unaccompanied Alien Children, otherwise known as UACs] from the three affected countries fall under the same restrictions that people from Mexico and Canada do,” USA Today opined<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Now, only people from\nAmerica’s immediate neighbors can be sent home while their\napplications for asylum or refugee status are pending. This has had the\nperverse effect of causing some desperate Central Americans to think\nthere is a green light for them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nnewspaper is absolutely correct. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Examining the\u00a0Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act<\/a> (TVPRA)\u00a0last year,\u00a0<\/strong>FAIR<\/a>\u00a0said the “well-intended humanitarian law, which was designed to protect minors from sex traffickers, is now being exploited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMinors\nfrom across the globe are now sent to our borders by families hoping to\nestablish an immigration anchor in the United States. The overly broad\nprovisions of the TVPRA virtually guarantee that unaccompanied minors will be\nadmitted to the United States, and allowed to stay, in order to complete\nlengthy judicial proceedings that inadvertently encourage both fraud and\nfurther exploitation of children by parties savvy enough to exploit the\nsystem.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is\nexactly what is happening. Anyone with eyes can see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Department of Homeland Security<\/a> reported that under TVPRA and the futile catch-and-release policy it helps trigger, more than 267,000 UACs and family units were released into the interior of the U.S. from Fiscal Year 2016-2018. The current accelerating influx<\/a> is on track to more than double that number before this year is out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet,\naccording to USA Today, “the president has never\nlaunched any kind of campaign to [fix TPRA], even when he had sympathetic\nmajorities in both chambers of Congress.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The newspaper’s ritual\nsniping at the White House aside, Congress must take responsibility for the law\nit passed eight years before Trump took office. TVPRA helped set the surge of\nUACs in motion, and lawmakers from both parties own this problem. They have the\npower to shut down a critical migrant magnet that’s magnifying a humanitarian\ncrisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The American people expect\ncommonsense, effective bipartisan action here. Isn’t it high time they got it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You know the crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border is real when “America’s Newspaper” calls for action. USA Today is hardly restrictionist on immigration policy — far from it, actually — but even its editors now agree that the record waves of asylum seekers and migrant “family units” are collapsing the system and creating a \u201cmess.\u201d<\/p>\n