DHS Nielsen: Border Security Is in ‘System-Wide Meltdown’
Mar. 28, 2019
Neil Munro
The fast-growing migrant rush over the U.S. border is collapsing border security and overwhelming the ability of border agents to process and protect migrants, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a Thursday letter to all members of Congress.
“We face a system-wide meltdown … We are witnessing the real-time dissolution of the immigration system,” the head of the Department of Homeland Security wrote March 28 in a six-page letter. She added that she will soon ask for an emergency funding bill:
I will be working with the Office of Management and Budget to provide you additional details in the near future, but the situation is so dire we want to make notification to you now that we will require additional resources … to ensure immediate safety and care of individuals in our custody.
Her letter emphasized her concern for the aid and welfare of the migrants, and she minimized any mention of Americans’ concerns about the personal and financial costs imposed by the cartels’ trafficking of drugs into U.S. communities and of cheap labor into U.S. workplaces. She also did not mention the opposition by Congress and the business sector to legal reforms that would curb cheap-labor migration, such as the E-Verify system, which exposes employers who try to hire illegals. She wrote:
My greatest concern is for the children [brought by the migrants], who are put at high risk by this emergency and who are arriving sicker than ever before after travelling on the treacherous trek … a resource surge is needed throughout the system to ensure efficient throughput and proper care [of migrants] … including conducting [health and] welfare checks, preparing meals, and accounting for personal property.
Nielsen’s statement did include vague references to the harm caused by the migration to Americans:
We are grappling with a humanitarian and security catastrophe … The result is a dangerous and growing backlog of individuals in custody that has forced us to begin releasing large numbers of aliens … Without additional assistance, we will be forced to increase the releases of the single-adult population from ICE — the only population for which we can currently effectively enforce U.S. immigration laws.
But her letter includes far more appeals to help provide for the welfare and safety of the migrants who have triggered the crisis, including the statement that “our most urgent need is to increase [migrant] throughput to avoid threats to life and property.”
Once the migrants get through the border, they are free to take jobs at wages that are below the level sought by blue-collar Americans. But the migrants’ willingness to work service jobs for cheap is a financial and status boon for employers and upper-income Americans.
Katherine Faulders
@KFaulders
NEW - DHS Sec Kirstjen Nielsen is asking for immediate action from Congress to address a “dire situation” at the border including a request for new authority to send unaccompanied minors back to their home countries. “Now we face a system-wide meltdown,” she wrote in a letter.
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3:02 PM - 28 Mar 2019
On Monday, border commissioner Kevin McAleenan provided reporters with some details about the Central Americans’ rush into Americans’ society, jobs, and schools. The March inflow alone will include roughly 15,000 parents and 40,000 children in “family units” who will ask for asylum — and then will be released — plus roughly 35,000 single adults who will try to evade border officers, he said.
McAleenan pinned the blame on Congress and the judges who have jointly cut legal holes in the border fences by allowing migrants to stream into U.S. cities, jobs, and schools if they merely ask for asylum:
The increase in family units is a direct response to the vulnerabilities in our legal frameworks where migrants and smugglers know that they will be released and be allowed to stay in the U.S. indefinitely pending immigration proceedings that could be many years out. This is due to court orders that undermine the integrity of our immigration system. There is no questioning [about] why this is happening.
Current trends suggest that almost one million migrants — including perhaps 400,000 workers — will rationally grab Congress’s tacit invitation to migrate into the United States during 2019.
That migrant inflow augments the normal inflow of roughly 400,000 illegal migrants who sneak across the border, the overstay of several hundred thousand legal visitors and tourists, the arrival of roughly one million legal immigrants, and the arrival of at least one million new white-collar and blue-collar temporary visa-workers. All told, the federal government is expected to allow roughly three million additional legal or illegal foreign workers to flood the U.S. labor market in 2019, just as four million American youths begin looking for the well-paid careers they need to get married, buy houses, and raise families.
On Thursday, Trump displayed anger at Mexico and the Central American governments for not stopping their poor citizens from migrating into Americans’ rich and peaceful society.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country. They are all talk and no action. Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for years, and do Nothing. The Dems don’t care, such BAD laws. May close the Southern Border!
3:24 AM - Mar 28, 2019
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...wide-meltdown/