Trump's minions are creating a border/immigration crisis in effort to change asylum/immigration laws
Something I’ve been noticing has been Trump’s mouthpieces circling questions about the separation of children from parents by saying it’s an issue with immigration laws and that Congress needs to act to change the laws. They are doing this from every quarter even when it is evident that this is a new policy change from them, not continuing application of existing law.
Here’s an example of Giuliani doing this. Note the way he interjects “comprehensive immigration reform” into his answer.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017496807
This is classic Shock Doctrine: create or use a crisis to get changes you wanted all along. It is being done in the most cynical and callous way possible. They have not been successful at getting the draconian changes they have wanted, so they are trying to force a reopening of legislating the “comprehensive” issue. They rip children from parents, then argue that the existing law is forcing them to do this so they can create a way to reintroduce substantive changes in the law.
The New Yorker has an excellent article which includes people identifying the underlying (and lie filled) process:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-trump-administration-is-completely-unraveling-the-us-asylum-system
Just a month after it was announced, the zero-tolerance policy is giving rise to a full-blown crisis at the border. This may give Sessions the pretext he needs to institute further changes. In El Paso, as Texas Monthly reported earlier this month, officers are intercepting asylum seekers travelling from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, before they can cross the bridge that separates the two cities. Elsewhere in Texas, asylum seekers are being told there isn’t enough room to process them on the American side of the border. “They are using that tactic as a way to push people out and deny people asylum,” Ruben García, who runs a migrant shelter along the border, told the Los Angeles Times.
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On Thursday, ice, the federal agency most directly associated with immigration enforcement, directed five medium-security federal prisons in California to take some sixteen hundred people into custody while they wait for a final determination in their civil immigration cases. An agency spokesperson cited a surge in illegal immigration as a reason for the demand for more space, but border crossings are actually at relatively low levels. In fact, much of the crowding at immigration detention centers is a consequence of the new zero-tolerance policy, which calls for the arrest and detention of people who, in the past, would have been released pending the outcome of their cases. “The government is manufacturing a border crisis as a way of saying, ‘This is why we need to change our asylum laws,’ ” Brané, of the Women’s Refugee Commission, said.
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