As important as building more miles of wall on the border is, it will do absolutely nothing to address one of the biggest problems with immigration in Texas, as President Trump just acknowledged.
Border Patrol agents at the Rio Grande Valley sector of Texas told me that the pieces of wall constructed in Texas right now are immensely effective in apprehending immigrants crossing from Mexico. But as Fox News reporter John Roberts said Friday to Trump in the Oval Office, the wall doesn’t actually sit on the border, separating the U.S. from Mexico.
The border wall separates the U.S. from more of the U.S., an expansive mass of land covered in brush, trees, and dirt, all the way to the Rio Grande. The river, just a few yards wide, is the border, and a wall can’t be built right along hundreds of miles of river.
That’s why Central Americans are making their way to that particular sector. They know that once they arrive, they’re not greeted by a wall, they’re greeted by a short trip across a river before they’re on American soil. Once they get there, whether it’s one person or a family unit, they need only find an agent to say the magic word: asylum.
The thousands of people who claim asylum are instantly given legal protections. About 90 percent of the ones from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — that’s where the majority of them are coming from in Texas — are screened in, turned loose, and made to promise that they’ll show up for a court hearing, according to data provided to me by Citizenship and Immigration Services.
PolitiFact estimates that up to 40 percent of those people don’t bother with the court hearing. They simply disappear into the country.
Trump admitted that the issue requires more than a wall. “Well, we’re going to solve the problem, and we’re also working on different things because there’s so many loopholes,” he said. “You’re right, touch the land and all of a sudden it’s a catch-and-release deal. They go into the country and in some cases, if they’re criminals, they’re released into our country. It’s a ridiculous thing. It’s a loophole.”
True. So maybe we need to start talking about that, too, in addition to “the wall.”
