Manufactured!
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Unpacking the Manufactured Migrant Children Crisis.
RUSH: Now, let’s go through this. It can sound very complicated, and I try to make the complex understandable. … You remember — I guess it’d be three or four years ago now — in the early spring, late winter, early spring, massive numbers of minor children, unaccompanied, were arriving at the southern border. Not from Mexico. This is very key to this. They were not coming from Mexico. They were coming from Central America. They were coming from El Salvador. And they were coming from Guatemala. There is a loophole in American immigration law that says if people from Central America come to the United States from a non-contiguous nation, we have to keep them.
That’s why they were coming from Nicaragua and El Salvador and Guatemala, because of that loophole. If they are seeking asylum, once they get to Mexico, they have it. The first nation they get to after fleeing their war-torn torn native land is where they apply for asylum. They have it in Mexico. The fact that they’re waiting and traveling through Mexico to try to get asylum here is one of the many roots of this problem. Now, you have that as a foundational understanding.
In other words, they’re gaming the system. They know exactly what our laws are, and they are trying to circumvent them — and during the Obama administration, they were allowed to. This is the point. It’s been going on — and I have all these people saying, “It doesn’t matter, Rush. You should not use that as a defense of what’s happening now.” I’m not using it as a defense. I’m trying to tell everybody that this isn’t what it’s being made to look like. This is not something where people do care about kids and others don’t. It’s not about that.
This is a political issue, and it has roots in the Democrat Party playbook, as I’ve previously demonstrated. The Democrats have an operating play in their book that says “Republicans hate X,” fill in the blank. “Republicans hate women! Republicans hate blacks! Republicans hate kids! Republicans starve kids!” Democrats, of course, loooove and protect everybody. That’s what’s playing out here. This is a political battle, and the football in this battle is the kids.
KING: But, Chief Padilla, let me stop you for just a second — — because I don’t want to go back to 2014. I know this is complicated for you and your team, but what people are talking about is cruel and humane [sic] behavior.
PADILLA: I’m gonna give you an example here. Because we were releasing family units, we were not taking any action. Just last month, we had an MS-13 — full-blown MS-13 — accompanied by his one-year-old child.
KING: Yeah, but —
PADILLA: He thought that he was gonna get released into the community. That was not the case.
Democrats don’t care any more about ’em today than they did during the Obama administration. January 28, 2016, Washington Post. This is over two years ago. “Obama Administration placed Children with Human Traffickers, Report Says.” This story is literally devastating. Here’s the opening ‘graph. “The Obama administration…” This is the Washington Post, folks, and this is during the campaign. This is before Trump’s been elected. Trump has nothing to do with any of this, okay?
“The Obama administration failed to protect thousands of Central American children who have flooded across the U.S. border since 2011 …
The media certainly didn’t care to find out and report it, because they were not gonna expose Obama to anything. Where was the compassion for the children? Where were all the catcalls that Obama and the country were separating immigrant families? Where was all of the concern that we see and hear about today? It wasn’t anywhere. It was kept below the radar. It wasn’t an issue. This is faux concern. F-A-U-X. This is pretend concern about illegal immigrant kids being separated from their parents.
I’m telling you, folks, it is a manufactured crisis, and it is a political battle — one I don’t want the Democrats to win. This is not about kids. It’s not that. They are just the latest fill in the blank objective — and the Republicans better get in the game on this and not leave Trump isolated because Trump knows what’s going on. Trump knows what the effort really is here. Migrant camps create them. Refugee camps create them. Eventually, bring in the families and let them all have amnesty.
If it’s again going on a long time, why now is it a issue of the day? At the top of the media’s mountain of concern, why is it there? Well, that I can answer without knowing what the issue is.
The reason it’s at the top of the Democrat media mountain of issues of the day is because that’s the latest issue they think they can damage Trump with. After so many years, I fail to accept the premise that so many people do! You can’t blame ’em. The media says it; you believe it. The premise is: “Donald Trump is a mean ogre, and he hates immigrants — and so when they show up as a family, Donald Trump has a policy that sends the kids over to that camp and the parents over to that camp, and they’re done.”
Sorry, I know that doesn’t happen.
So I dug deep, ladies and gentlemen. I wanted to find out what this really is, and so I got some audio sound bites from Kirstjen Nielsen at the Department of Homeland Security. And then in researching this, I came across a very comprehensive column by Rich Lowry at National Review back on May 28th of this year — and interestingly, it’s titled, “The Truth About Separating Kids — Some economic migrants are using children as chits, but the problem is fixable — if Congress acts.”
So here basically… This begins the unpacking of this. “The Trump administration isn’t changing the rules that pertain to separating an adult from the child. Those remain the same. Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child’s parent, or is a threat to the child, or is put into criminal proceedings.” Well, wait! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! That changes everything here. “Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child’s parent, or is a threat to the child…”
I fully believe the media would ignore that.
“It’s the last [item] that is operative here. The past practice had been to give a free pass to an adult who is part of a family unit. The new Trump policy is to prosecute all adults,” all of them who are breaking the law! “The idea is to send a signal that we are serious about our laws and to create a deterrent against re-entry.” This is Trump being serious about enforcing immigration law, folks. And if you cross the border illegally, you have broken the law. Now, here’s a further delineation. Your first illegal entry into the United States is a misdemeanor.
If you try again illegal reentry after having been deported or refused entry, it is a felony. “When a migrant is prosecuted for illegal entry, he or she is taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals. … The child is taken into the custody of HHS, who cares for them at temporary shelters.”
Where it becomes much more of an issue…” This is where you should begin listening very closely. “Where it becomes much more of an issue is if the adult files an asylum claim. In that scenario, the adults are almost certainly going to be detained longer than the government is allowed to hold their children.” Asking for asylum changes everything.
“That’s because of something called the Flores Consent Decree from 1997. It says that unaccompanied children can be held only 20 days. … So even if we want to hold a family unit together, we are forbidden from doing so” by existing law if the migrant is claiming asylum. “[E]ven if we want to hold a family unit together, we are forbidden from doing so. The clock ticking on the time the government can hold a child [twenty days] will almost always run out before an asylum claim is settled…
“This creates the choice of either releasing the adults and children together into the country pending the ajudication [sic] of the asylum claim,” in which case we’re never going to see them again, “or holding the adults and releasing the children. If the adult is held, HHS places the child with a responsible party in the U.S., ideally a relative,” but if not, a sponsor. So, in other words, folks, the parents who decide at the border to ask for asylum in this fashion, rather than going in the front door. Remember, now, these are people attempting to get into the country illegally.
Never forget this.
It’s at the root of all of this, and we have laws against it, and they have not been enforced until recently, and this is what happens when you enforce them. There are consequences to violating the law. So if the parents decide to ask for asylum in this fashion via illegal entry then are getting caught, they’re choosing separation. They’re choosing it! They know, for example, that an asylum claim is gonna take much longer to adjudicate than the U.S. can illegally hold their kids, which is a maximum of 20 days.
This would not be an issue if they weren’t here trying to get in illegally. Who are they, why are they here, why are they choosing the southern border? All of these questions nobody’s asking. Instead, everybody’s accepting some vision that helpless, needy, poor kids fleeing war come to the United States wanting a better life, and Donald Trump decides to separate the families. Well, for God’s sakes, folks, common sense ought to tell you that that isn’t happening. And then when you find out that this has been going on basically since the year 2000 — 1997 — and only now is there a big complaint about it, what the hell does this tell us?
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