By Allan Wall
04/06/2020
WuFlu is spreading, with Mexico recording 2,439 cases and 156 deaths, and the U.S. with over 367,000 cases and over 10,000 deaths. But the resulting crisis has produced a silver lining: The border with Mexico is effectively closed to illegal aliens. Border agents are deporting them immediately, and even better, the borders in Mexico and the Northern Triangle are locked down. Granted, “migrants” are held up in Mexico and we must suffer a farrago of sob stories. Yet SARS-CoV-2 proves that we can control our borders — if we want to.
The change at our southwest frontier, thanks to President Trump’s order of March 17 to deport illegals immediately (and no asylum claims either), is astounding — in a good way!
Illegals “are being expelled to Mexico in an average of 96 minutes under emergency coronavirus measures now in force across the U.S. southern border,” The Washington Post reports [Under coronavirus immigration measures, U.S. is expelling border-crossers to Mexico in an average of 96 minutes, by Nick Miroff, March 30, 2020].
That’s about an hour and a half!
Under the new rules, U.S. agents are processing migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras “in the field” before they are able to set foot inside a U.S. Border Patrol station. The migrants are then whisked back to the border and sent into Mexico.
Unauthorized border crossings, Miroff [Tweet him] reports, dropped from more than 1,000 daily to under 600 on March 29. Mexicans are 60 percent of those detained; Central Americans 26 percent.
That last figure is a dramatic reversal of what occurred during the illegal-alien tsunami of the last year or so: 70 percent were from the Northern Triangle. Miroff’s figures mean 86 percent of the illegals are deported right away. Let’s hope border officials aren’t waiting too long to boot the rest. And Mexico is accepting all of them, a not insignificant bonus.
Here’s another telling detail: “In some locations, the Border Patrol has set up outdoor processing tables in the parking lots and garages of its stations.”
Why wasn’t this done years ago before a deadly pandemic threatened us all!?
Legal entries are way down, too, as Reuters reported in its lachrymose lament [World’s busiest border falls quiet with millions of Mexicans barredfrom U.S., by, Lizbeth Diaz, Jose Luis Gonzalez, March 31, 2020]. Mexicans who live on the border and frequently enter the United States can’t get it in thanks to COVID-19.
Boohoo.
Even better, with the borders closed from the Rio Grande to the Suchiate river between Mexico and Guatemala and down to El Salvador and Honduras, the tramping masses of the Northern Triangle are all dressed up with no place to go. As Phillip Connor of Pew Research reported on April 1, 90 percent of the world’s population faces Chinese Virus travel restrictions [More than nine-in-ten people worldwide live in countries with travel restrictions amid COVID-19].
Here’s one of the sob stories: How coronavirus has halted Central American migration to the US. [by Jeff Ernst, April 2, 2020]
(Like that’s a bad thing!)
Ernst’s protagonist is the put-upon Angelica, a 30-year-old college grad who up and decided to move to the U.S., where she has relatives.
Angelica wasn’t exactly invited, but that small detail aside, the Wuhan Flu stopped her cold:
By the time she was due to start her journey north, Honduras had closed its borders and declared a state of emergency. She could no longer leave her city — much less take a bus to northern Guatemala, to meet a coyote who would guide her through Mexico
“I had thought that only a hurricane could stop me,” she said. “But I hadn’t thought of a pandemic.”
Border closures and strict lockdowns prompted by the Covid-19 crisis have disrupted the migrant trail through Central America and Mexico, forcing some would-be migrants to postpone their journeys — and stopping many others in their tracks. The result has been a deterrent more effective than any wall Donald Trump could build.
“Activists” are upset, too, because illegals can’t, well, cross borders illegally: “One Mexican shelter near the Guatemalan border said it hadn’t received a new arrival in a week,” Ernst laments.
And even worse, from their perspective, the three Northern Triangle nations have closed their borders.
“Migrants can’t even leave their countries,” a Catholic nun who helps push the “migrants” north reportedly cries.
Double boohoo!
Ernst reports that with so many migrants traveling the trail, some were stopped en route, including “a large group of Haitian and African migrants who were detained after crossing into Guatemala from Honduras amid the lockdown: “Neither Hondurans or Guatemala wanted to offer them a place to stay.”
That fact provided the chance for Ernst to highlight one last victim, Mohamed, who left Sierra Leone in Africa in 2018, and is not, I’m guessing, a Presbyterian. Mohamed traveled north from Ecuador but is stuck in Guatemala. Unfortunately, he still plans on getting to the United States.
All those “migrants” stranded in “limbo” are causing problems for Mexico, as Milenio reported on March 22 of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas on the Gulf Coast. Some 13,000 — “their dream has been interrupted by the closing of the southern border ordered by President Donald Trump” — are stuck there [Teme Tamaulipas al Coronavirus por la presencia de migrantes que quedaron varados (“Tamaulipas Fears Coronavirus Due to the Presence of Trapped Migrants”), by Jaime Maya].
Problem is, Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco Javier Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, one of those who wanted traffic to Mexico from the U.S. stopped, says “there is no place where they can be concentrated in an orderly manner and with all the basic services, the risk of infection of Coronavirus COVID-19 is higher.”
His solution? The Mexican federal government must provide “a safe place where they can wait until the border is opened again.”
Note what the governor assumes: The border will open someday soon, and the migrants will cross into the U.S. when it happens.
Meanwhile, the migrants are causing trouble across Mexico.
On April 2 in Hermosillo, Sonora, about 180 miles south of Nogales, 300 detained migrants rioted and started a fire [Reportan motÃn en instalaciones de INM en Sonora (“Riot Reported in INM Installations in Sonora”), by Gabriela Medina, Milenio, April 2, 2020].
On April 3 in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, on the border across from Eagle Pass, Texas, about 80 migrants seized control of a shelter because, they claim, they were mistreated [Migrantes en Piedras Negras se amotinan en albergue del INM (“Migrants in Piedras Negras riot in INM Shelter”), by Christian Sanchez, Milenio, April 3, 2020].
Migrant movers warned of “the deplorable conditions” and “a terrible health and humanitarian crisis [Hay emergencia sanitaria por coronavirus en estaciones migratorias: ONG (“Coronavirus Health emergency in Migratory Stations: NGOs”), by Francisco Mejia, Milenio, April 3, 2020].
Maybe, but what’s the solution? Release them all to cause trouble and possibly spread the contagion here? (latest coronavirus numbers here)?
No thanks.
Instead, make immediate deportation a permanent policy. Nothing else will discourage illegals from jumping the border.
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008after many years residing in Mexico. Allan’s wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.
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