The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Since the Department of Homeland Security was formed in 2002, the U.S. has spent more than $400 billion on border security. We have trained an army of 21,000 Border Patrol Agents, assembled the best available detection technology, built walls and fences along western deserts where criminal coyotes abandon stragglers to die in the blistering summer heat. Still, they come, the parade of the desperate, proving that massive enforcement may slow the flow but cannot defeat a dream.
The presumptive Republican nominee calls migrants “animals” who must be exterminated, words that Hitler might have used describing the Jews. Generations too young to experience the catastrophe that Fascism wrought may think Trump is joking, but he is not. He is encouraging violence and offering up migrants for target practice. President Reagan, who signed the last comprehensive immigration bill four decades ago, would have condemned Trump’s words in the harshest terms.
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Statistics on immigration are complicated enough to make your hair hurt, and they are easily twisted by politicians seeking political advantage. When determining the effectiveness of interdiction efforts, what years and months are chosen make all the difference. MAGA fact sheets typically seek periods that will show the largest percentage increases, say from 2020 in the midst of depressed pandemic levels to a post-pandemic rush. This manipulation makes no contribution to a solution and instead pours fuel on Donald Trump’s rabid anti-migrant crusade.
Contrary to partisan claims, President Biden’s border program has been a tough one. After reversing the most inhumane policies he inherited, the President invested heavily in the enforcement system. Last year, 3.2 million undocumented migrants were either incarcerated or sent home. Those who were allowed to remain in the country were given temporary parole or sent into the legal amnesty program which under existing law requires that each petitioner get a day in court. The case backlog is as long as the Rio Grande because Congress refuses to update the law. Immigrants who violate the terms of a 2-year parole are subject to expulsion, more than 520,000 in the last nine months.
It is increasingly obvious that the best enforcement money will buy cannot of itself stop the march of the desperate. Two visionary Arizona humanitarians, Earl and Suzanne de Berge, saw this apparent truth three decades ago when homeless Guatemalans became increasingly visible on the streets of Phoenix. Encounters with the migrants led them in time to start a remarkable non-profit that teaches agronomy in villages laid waste by civil war and drought.
“It didn’t take many visits for Suzanne and me to absorb the pathos we were witnessing. These were good, hard-working people who wanted to live in their homes, but the land around them was lifeless after years of neglect. We decided to teach basic agronomy and called it Seeds for a Future. We focused on life-sustaining crops, and families working together,” de Berge said.
By now Seeds for a Future serves 19 communities across Guatemala with almost 40,000 residents benefiting from thousands of home gardens created as well as protein animals raised. The result: almost 5,000 families can survive where they want to live. The program was recently praised by the respected Institute for Nutrition in Central America which recommended expanding it throughout the region.
Years ago the de Berges invited my wife Nancy and me to tour the Mayan societies with whom they had fallen in love. We were left with indelible images of some of the hardest-working people we had ever encountered: women barely five feet tall hoisting heavy loads of essentials on their backs up the sides of mountains, men and children farming plots so vertical one would struggle to balance, master needle workers selling goods at weekend markets like the famous Chichicastenango. This was not the dangerous place we had been warned about. And these certainly were not the subhuman species Trump defames.
I find myself wondering if the U.S. were to subtract $1 billion of the $400 billion we spend on border security and apply it in Central America to programs like Seeds for a Future how the parade of the desperate might slow. Imagine what one percent of our military budget could do to change the face of Central America, creating jobs, infrastructure, and food. Maybe that is a more humane and cost-effective way to defend our southern border. Maybe two Arizona humanitarians, Earl and Suzanne de Berge, have put their fingers on the real solution to the “border crisis.” Now there is a dream for us all.
Terry Bracy, a regular contributing columnist, has served as a political adviser, campaign manager, congressional aide, sub-Cabinet official, board member and as an adviser to presidents.