Border Patrol Agent Blasts Asylum Abuse by Migrant Caravan
Border Patrol Agent Blasts Asylum Abuse by Migrant Caravan
Union official Art Del Cueto says gang members frequently slip into the U.S. along with those claiming they are fleeing persecution
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27 Apr 2018 at 12:34 PM
A caravan of migrants gathering on the U.S.-Mexican border symbolizes America’s broken asylum system, according to a union official representing U.S. Border Patrol agents.
Art Del Cueto, vice president of the U.S. Border Patrol Council, noted on “The Laura Ingraham Show” Friday that current U.S. policy lets asylum seekers into the country — often for years — before resolving their claims.
Del Cueto said he has firsthand experience working the border during the surge of so-called unaccompanied minors who started coming from Central America claiming they had a “credible fear” of persecution.
The U.S. government placed most of those youths in the United States with sponsors who are often illegal immigrants, themselves.
“Some of these supposed kids are 16, 17 years old. There’s no real way that we were able to verify that is their age,” he said. “And now we don’t know where they’re at. How is the immigration system working when you can’t even keep track of that?”
Del Cueto added: “I’m telling you, those kids were not your typical Boy Scouts,” he said. “They weren’t your typical Americans, ‘I want to play, you know, video game’ kids. Some of these kids were hardened criminals already.”
Del Cueto recalled that Border Patrol agents had to put plywood in between chain-link fences of temporary holding facilities to stop youths from selling themselves for sexual acts through the gaps. Later, he said, officers discovered that the youths had drilled holes through the wood.
Most of the immigrants claiming persecution simply do not qualify for asylum, Del Cueto said. They face not political persecution, he said, but crime.
“They just don’t want to deal with the gang violence,” he said. “But they’re going to cities in the United States that have their own gang problems. So that doesn’t make sense already.”
According to The New York Times, Central American migrants in the caravan plan to walk en masse to the border crossing in San Diego on Sunday and present themselves for asylum. President Donald Trump has condemned the effort, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen warned this week that migrants could be prosecuted for making false asylum claims.
Del Cueto lamented that immigration lawyers from the United States have gone to Mexico to “coach these individual on how to pretty much laugh at our immigration laws.”
“I’m Hispanic. I do not put up with that race card. I don’t think race has anything to do with being legal or being illegal. Plain and simple.”
Del Cueto also rejected characterizations of immigration enforcement as racist.
“I’m Hispanic,” he said. “I do not put up with that race card. I don’t think race has anything to do with being legal or being illegal. Plain and simple.”
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