The fact that dozens of migrants who are part of a caravan from Central America chose to climb and sit on top of the border fence at Tijuana, Mexico, over the weekend is proof they have no regard for U.S. laws, according to the president of a union that represents America’s Border Patrol agents.
“These people have absolutely no regard for our laws. Them sitting on our fence, they are in the United States, so they made an illegal entry into the United States. They are sitting on our fence. This is a fence that we have to maintain. They have absolutely no regard for our property. They have absolutely no regard for our laws and a picture is worth a thousand words. Thank goodness that everybody is now seeing how these people act,” Brandon Judd, national president of the National Border Patrol Union and a 20-year Border Patrol veteran, told Fox News on Monday.
Over the weekend, hundreds of caravan members set up camp on the Mexico side of the fence, just miles south of San Diego.
The group refused to leave after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials informed them they cannot process that many asylum seekers in a day, a move Judd said was done only because of President Trump’s instruction to end “catch-and-release” policies that were used during former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s administrations.
“Under the Obama administration, we just let anybody and everybody that came to the ports of entry, we would take them, we would process them. Then we would release them under the catch-and-release program which, of course, was the magnet that caused people to come to the United States and make illegal entries,” Judd told “Fox and Friends.”
Caravan members who arrive at the border have one of two options, according to Judd. They can claim asylum, which a port of entry is allowed to delay because it is allowed only so many admittances per day.
“But, if somebody comes to the port and says, ‘I’m here for admittance. I’m legal, I can come in.’ Then you have to take them into custody and you have to process them,” he added. “The left-leaning outlets — the fake news if you will — what they are trying to do is trying to portray this as a legal process. Well, if you do it legally, the United States has the right to say, ‘Well, no, don’t come in this way.'”
Judd also said Democratic lawmakers would be smart to deal with Trump’s demands for a border wall and other security measures because the issue is a rallying cry among Republican voters.
