Border Evaporates

The Friday afternoon news dump included an item from the New York Times. There was a ruling by Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. He ordered the Obama Administration to stop detaining women and children who were caught crossing the border illegally.

The Times frames this decision as "finding that the administration has been too hard on border enforcement." That's a good one. That's like calling Obama the Deporter-In-Chief, because Obama doesn't deport anyone. His administration counts turn-backs at the border as "deportations." I wonder if the Times is aware that Obama wants to give every illegal immigrant a work permit, social security card, and Earned Income Tax Credits (welfare).

The reason we had a surge of Central American immigrants last year is because they found a way to game the system. Just show up at the border, claim you are a refugee seeking asylum, and you are in. And it doesn't need to be for political persecution anymore. You can claim that you are a victim of domestic violence. You can claim that your gangster son's friends are after you.

Judge Boasberg waved his hand and determined that none of the 66,000 "family units" (single mothers with minor children) nor any of the 57,000 unaccompanied minors (many of them members of M13 gangs) posed any flight risk or national security risk. He ruled that anyone showing up to the border and claiming "credible fear" could be waved through with nothing more than a court date.

Judge Boasberg was the same judge who in 2012 denied the public's right to view government photos of a deceased Osama Bin Laden on national security grounds. Photos of a dead Bin Laden might harm our national security, but importing Honduran gang members won't? Boasberg was appointed by President Obama in 2011. This lawsuit by the ACLU is nothing more than jurisdiction-shopping.

The reason Boasberg gave for the order was that, in his opinion, the detentions were being done solely "for the purpose of deterring future immigration." He justified this decision based on Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson's remarks that the detention policy was devised to send a clear message to migrants, that "If you come, it is likely you will be detained and sent back."

Boasberg wants immigration authorities to consider each asylum case to determine if the migrants would present risks to public safety if they were released while their cases moved through the courts. That is impossible. Asylum requests from Central America doubled last year, and the year before that. The system is overwhelmed, and they are going to be turned loose, and we have only the hope that they don't skip their court dates.

And if a hard-core terrorist or two can pass as a minor, they'll have to be let in and released.

The people this really hurts are those who are really fleeing religious or political persecution, like foreign born CIA contractors helping the United States destroy radical Islam. No asylum for you! We have a well-coached Guatemalan woman who knew the secret phrase "credible fear" and "drug violence."