Im-Politic: A Mainstream Media Award for Spreading Immigration Misinformation

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Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden, Biden administration, Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security, Evans Bishop, Haitians, Herblock, Im-Politic, Immigration, Lalo Alcaraz, Library of Congress, Michael Cavna, migrants, misinformation, Texas National Guard, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, Washington Post

The American Mainstream Media complex has already established the practice of not rescinding major journalism awards it’s handed out for stories that seemed plausible when published or broadcast, but have since been debunked. So I wasn’t surprised to find out yesterday that this national news establishment has taken its biases and its contempt for accuracy to the next level.

But I was disgusted nonetheless – and you should be, too – by the honoring of a political cartoonist whose work was exposed as fraudulent by the time the decision was made. Even worse, the U.S. Library of Congress, a part of the federal government that you and I pay for, has lent its name to this outrage.

The latest recipient of the Herblock Prize (named after the late, famed Washington Post editorial cartoonist) is Lalo Alcaraz, and it’s certainly noteworthy, as reported in the Post, that he’s the first Latino to win.

The problem, however, which was overlooked by the Herb Block Foundation, the Library, Post reporter Michael Cavna, and apparently every single one of his editors, is that Alcaraz has purveyed the falsehood that last year, U.S. Border Patrol agents used whips against migrants from Haiti trying to enter the country illegally. In fact, as shown in the article, he insinuated that such brutality has long been Standard Operating Procedure by the Border Patrol. (For some reason, I couldn’t manage to reproduce an image of the drawing here.)   

When it came out, it was plausible that this incident deserved investigation. After all, even President Biden declared, “I promise you, those people will pay.”

Almost immediately, however the claims of whipping began falling apart. The photographer who took the pictures in question declared that “I didn’t ever see [any agents] whip anybody, with the thing. [The agent he photographed] was swinging it. But I didn’t see him actually take — whip someone with it. That’s something that can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”

In fact, it quickly turned out that what were described as whips were really split reins. Even Open Borders-happy Alejandro Mayorkas, the Biden administration Secretary of Homeland Security, stated that these reins were being used to ensure control of the horses – before following up by claiming that the pictures “horrified him.”

Late last month, a representative of the Border Patrol agents’ labor union told the New York Post that the accused officers had been cleared of criminal wrongdoing, though the Customs and Border Patrol agency of the Homeland Security department is still conducting an “administrative investigation” that could still cost them their jobs. And in early April, a group of Republican Senators, noting that more than six months had passed for a probe that Mayorkas had promised would be “completed in days, if not weeks,” pressed the administration to release the findings. Yet they still remain secret.

None of this wealth of exculpatory information, however, seems to have impressed Alcaraz – much less persuaded him to apologize for spreading such misinformation. And why should he, when mainstream news organizations like the Washington Post actually continue codding his treatment of the controversy. Indeed, here’s how reporter Cavna described the award-winner’s drawing: “In one work, he drew a rope-wielding member of the U.S. Border Patrol on horseback in the style of an antique engraving — visually evoking last year’s viral photo of an agent trying to stop a Haitian migrant in Texas.”

Alcaraz is lucky in one respect though – he has a chance to make amends. As widely reported, late last week, a Texas National Guard member Evans Bishop drowned in the Rio Grande River while trying to save a migrant struggling to swim across. The Guard isn’t the Border Patrol, but it’s carrying out the same border security mission. How fitting if Alcaraz drew a tribute to his selflessness.  And how seemingly unlikely.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! The Washington Post’s Open Borders Deniers

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Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden administration, Border Patrol, border security, Department of Homeland Security, FoxNews.com, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Haitians, illegal aliens, Immigration, migrants, Open Borders, Republicans, The Washington Post, United Press International

“The numbers belie the Republican claim that Haitians have been

admitted into the country wholesale.”

– The Washington Post, October 13, 2021

“Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday

that as many as 12,000 Haitian migrants who made their way to the

U.S.-Mexico border have been released into the United States.”

– United Press International, September 26, 2021

Number of migrants overall released into the United States since

August 6, according to leaked Border Patrol documents:  c. 72,000

– FoxNews.com, October 13, 2021

 

(Sources: “How the Biden administration can help Haitian migrants without sending the wrong message,” The Washington Post, October 13, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/13/how-biden-administration-can-help-haitian-migrants-without-sending-wrong-message/; “DHS secretary: Up to 12,000 Haitian migrants released into U.S.,” by Daniel Uria, United Press International, September 26, 2021, DHS Secretary Mayorkas: As many as 12,000 Haitian migrants released into United States – UPI.com; and “Leaked Border Patrol docs show mass release of illegal immigrants into US by Biden administration,” by Bill Melugin and Adam Shaw, FoxNews.com, October 13, 2021, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/leaked-border-patrol-docs-release-immigrants-us-biden-administration)

Im-Politic: Good Luck to Biden Keeping Up with Immigration’s Root Causes

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Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden, Biden administration, Caribbean, Central America, Cuba, Department of Homeland Security, economic development, Haiti, Im-Politic, Immigration, Kamala Harris, Latin America, Mexico, nation-building, Northern Triangle, Western Hemisphere

Remember that advertising campaign launched by Jamaica a few decades ago, reminding Americans that “We’re more than a beach. We’re a country”? Lately it seems that the area’s islands are doing their best to reinforce this message, in the process presenting yet more reasons to doubt that President Biden’s policy of stemming immigration largely by addressing its “root causes” in the sending countries (especially in Central America’s “Northern Triangle”) will produce results in the policy- (and politics-relevant) future.

After all, in the last week alone, not only has Haiti lapsed into chaos again, but Cuba has been roiled by what are being described the biggest protests in decades against Communist rule. So undoubtedly heading state-side is looking especially attractive in those countries now. In addition, Venezuela keeps looking like a candidate for a political explosion (its migrant outflows have already been considerable for years as the left-wing regime’s policies keep destroying the economy).

Nor do these countries exhaust the list of deeply troubled countries whose inhabitants are increasingly flocking to the U.S.-Mexico border. As the Washington Post reported earlier this month, U.S. government data show that “From South America, the Caribbean, Asia and beyond tens of thousands of migrants bound for the United States have been arriving to Mexico each month.” Further, the shares represented by Mexico and Central America are going down, and those of nationals from “beyond” are going up. Many more migrants from regions further afield, moreover, are apparently on the way.

Indeed, in 2018, Gallup research found that more than 150 million adults worldwide want to live in the United States permanently. Of course, not every one will try to migrate. Nor does every one come from a homeland afflicted by various combinations of poverty, dictatorship, corruption, major disorder, and out-and-out conflict. But clearly most of them do. Meaning that there’s a massive amount of root causes out there to be addressed if that approach is to be the Biden strategy’s main pillar long term.

And it’s not like Washington has a great record in promoting the kind of nation-building (see, e.g., here) or even narrower economic development needed to root out those causes, or that lots more money – public or private – will be forthcoming (assuming that money is even the biggest obstacle to begin with). Heck – Americans haven’t even done a decent job of addressing the root causes of violence in many of their own inner cities.

Therefore, given the high and growing amount of turmoil in the United States’ backyard and beyond, to avoid swamping the nation with ever greater numbers of migrants, the Biden administration will need to return American policy to a border security-centric approach. It’s true that both Vice President and immigration point person Kamala Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have both publicly warned not to try to enter the country.

But this message clearly has been drowned out by dozens of other administration decisions that de facto put out the welcome mat (see, e.g., here) – including a virtual halt to interior enforcement that supercharges the odds that newcomers who make it into the United States will be able to stay in the United States. Which is why the longer the current Biden policy mix lasts, the more the root causes dimension of his administration’s immigration strategy looks like a dodge aimed at greasing the skids for much wider border opening.

Im-Politic: Is the Open Borders Crowd Signaling ‘Criminals First’ Priorities?

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border security, Congress, Constitution, crime, Democrats, Department of Homeland Security, equal protection, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Joint Address, Open Borders, Trump, VOICE

Democrats in Congress, many of whom apparently never read the Obamacare legislation before they passed it, seem to be similarly out to lunch on another critical issue – illegal immigration. That’s a charitable explanation for why they so conspicuously groaned last night during the president’s address to lawmakers when Mr. Trump spoke of directing “the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American victims. The office is called VOICE — Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media and silenced by special interests.”

The concern both in and out of Congress is that the administration plans to spotlight crimes committed by all non-native born Americans – and maybe even turn these misdeeds into law enforcement priorities. That would of course be completely unacceptable, since the Constitution grants everyone on American territory, including illegal immigrants, equal protection under the law.

But the Trump-haters on Capitol Hill, and elsewhere, evidently stopped listening at that point. For immediately afterwards, President Trump made clear that he was talking about crimes committed by illegal aliens. The next four paragraphs of his speech singled out family members of Americans killed by immigrants who were not only undocumented (as the favored euphemism calls them) but who had major prior criminal records.     

Even worse, the boo-birds have ignored the statement of administration policy that makes the focus on criminal illegal aliens crystal clear. Which was issued five weeks ago. In a January 25 Executive Order, Mr. Trump has mandated creation of “an office to provide proactive, timely, adequate, and professional services to victims of crimes committed by removable aliens and the family members of such victims. This office shall provide quarterly reports studying the effects of the victimization by criminal aliens present in the United States.”

In other words, if you’re not a criminal who’s in the country illegally (and therefore “removable”), you have nothing to fear from this new initiative. Conversely, if you’re a criminal but you’re a legal resident – native-born or not – you have nothing to fear, either. You don’t even have a problem if you’re an illegal immigrant but not a criminal.  Special treatment is to be reserved only for criminals whose illegal presence in the United States clearly signals a shameful failure to enforce federal immigration law with even minimal concern for the well-being not only of citizens, but of all law-abiding residents, including the foreign-born.         

Before his speech, the president told reporters, “The time is right for an immigration bill if both sides are willing to compromise.” That will be hard to believe if the Open Borders crowd keeps categorically – and even self-righteously — insisting on what looks like a Criminals First immigration policy.    

Im-Politic: The Needless New Immigration Policy Mess

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American Muslims, Center for Immigration Studies, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Egypt, Executive Orders, green card holders, Im-Politic, Immigration, Muslims, Norman Matloff, Obama, Pakistan, refugees, Saudi Arabia, September 11, Syria, terrorism, Trump

The last 48 hours’ flow of immigration policy-related news has been unprecedented – or certainly nearly so. To me, the big takeaway is clear: In the course of developing and announcing a fundamentally sound policy framework for handling immigration- and refugee-related national security issues, the Trump administration has allowed vague and/or confusing provisions to create an unnecessary political firestorm.

The needless confusion stemmed mainly from the apparent treatment of green card holders in the Executive Order on “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States.”  These individuals have been granted permanent resident legal status by the U.S. government, and have extensively vetted. Perhaps that’s why the Order makes no specific mention of them.    

Yet early yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seemed to confirm that the Orders’s 90-day ban on entry into the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries deemed (correctly) to be hotbeds of terrorism and/or Islamic extremism includes green card holders.  

Both moves seemed so mystifying that my first reaction was skepticism. Particularly fishy to me was the source of the DHS statement. It came from a department spokesperson identified by name. But she was described as “acting,”and given that we’re still in the new administration’s earliest days, it was legitimate to wonder where she got her information and whether it’s accurate. And indeed, shortly afterwards, “senior administration officials” (who oddly remained nameless) were saying that the green card measures would be administered on a case-by-case basis. Clearly, this sequence of events doesn’t speak well at all for the togetherness of the new administration’s act.

But there’s no reasonable doubt that much of the tumult that’s surrounded the rest of the Trump immigration moves is nothing more than another outburst of stealth chattering class support for Open Borders policies. This charge is justified for at least two reasons:

First, the notion that Trump’s refugee measures represent a wholesale trashing of America’s humanitarian heritage is juvenile at best and reckless and ignorant (or both) at worst. The Trump-haters who have claiming that the Statue of Liberty is weeping and the like seem to be ignoring how even Barack Obama severely limited refugee admissions from war-torn Syria – to 10,000 in 2016. The previous year, only 1,800 were resettled. And clearly reflecting security concerns, the screening process typically took between 18 and 24 months.

Why didn’t President Obama simply open America’s doors much wider and faster to the immiserated Syrian hordes? Because even he recognized that the nation’s most fundamental self-interest – the safety of its existing citizens and legal residents – can’t be brushed aside even in the face of the most terrible tragedies.

President Trump and many others doubted, however, that even this screening was adequate. And they could point to copious compelling evidence. Principally, mass Middle East refugee admissions have in Europe have included terrorists involved in deadly attacks. In the United States, children of recent Middle East refugees or other immigrants have been responsible for the shootings and bombings in Orlando, Florida; San Bernardino, California, Boston, and Fort Hood. And Muslim residents have been involved (including arrested) in terrorism attempts in numbers vastly higher than their share of the overall American population.

Combine this with the virtual impossibility of getting accurate, reliable records from virtually destroyed countries or thoroughly failed states, and the real question before Americans is not why President Trump has banned entry of any kind from these lands, but why broad restrictions have taken so long to impose.

Second, it’s been frequently argued (including by President Obama) that even if refugees can be tied to terrorist attacks, the numbers of Americans killed have been infinistesimal. In particular, they’re fond of noting that the odds are lower than getting killed in bathroom accidents or everyday activities like driving.

What they keep missing, of course, is the completely different role of government negligence – and therefore preventability or avoidability – involved. Fatal accidents at home, for example, can often be avoided by moving with greater care, or more properly maintaining fixtures or appliances, or keeping clutter off the floor, or in numerous other ways. It’s also entirely possible to increase your chances of surviving your daily auto commute to work – by driving more defensively, by caring for your vehicle, by staying off the road in bad weather, etc.

Will these precautions guarantee your protection 100 percent? Of course not. In particular, they can’t completely remove the related elements of randomness and chance from life – tripping over a hard-to-see uneven stretch of pavement, sharing a road with a drunk driver, or flying in an airplane disabled by a flock of birds, experiencing a natural disaster, etc. Speaking of that last item, I would include in this category a decision like moving to or staying an earthquake-prone location, especially if relocating is a relatively easy option – though the element of randomness there is more debatable.

But reasonable people seem to accept these kinds of inevitable bad breaks. They understand the irrationality of shutting themselves in at home, for example, to stay safe. As for injuries or fatalities resulting from violence perpetrated by individuals admitted to the United States by a policy decision that ignores or downplays well known risks – they’re dramatically and unacceptably different. For there is nothing random about them; indeed, every last one of them was completely preventable. They’re the products of elected leaders who believe that the loss of American lives – in situations well short of war – are acceptable risks to run in exchange for benefits that, to put it kindly, are intangible (e.g., winning good will abroad), speculative (e.g., impeding recruitment by terrorist groups), or subjective (conforming with American values), or some combination of the two.

It’s certainly arguable that the previous administration was well within its rights in making those judgments and decisions. President Obama, after all, was legitimately elected – twice. But it’s just as arguable that Donald Trump’s White House victory owed in part to the public’s rejection of these calculations.

Having said this, at least two more aspects of the new Trump refugee policies are disturbing. First, why were countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan excluded – especially given the role of Saudis and Egyptians in the September 11 attacks cited explicitly by the Executive Order, and the role of Pakistan’s state security forces in supporting a wide range of terrorist activities, including strikes on U.S. Forces and facilities in Afghanistan?

Second, the Executive Order, in my view, admirably seeks to “prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.” But for precisely the same vetting-related reasons that it’s excruciatingly difficult to make sure that Syrians (and other Middle Easterners) aren’t terrorists or other dangerous types, it’s going to be equally difficult to figure out who’s a member of a persecuted religious minority and who isn’t.

I agree with President Trump that the previous U.S. refugee policy created too many unnecessary security risks, and also that temporary freezes and bans and the like in general are needed to enable his administration to develop a detailed alternative – including better vetting procedures . I also admire the vigor with which Mr. Trump has plunged into the presidency. But in the case of this Executive Order, it looks like too much haste might have needlessly created serious problems today, and the potential for more down the road.

Im-Politic: In Case You Still Think There’s No Special Islam-Related Terrorism Problem

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Department of Homeland Security, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Islam, Jeff Sessions, Middle East, Muslims, Obama, radical Islam, refugees, right-wing terrorism, Senate Judiciary Committee, Ted Cruz, terrorism

Although American politics remains roiled by the issues of admitting refugees into the country from the war-torn Middle East, and whether the U.S. Muslim population presents an unusual terrorism challenge, evidence keeps mounting that this debate should long ago have been put to rest in favor of greater vigilance.

As I’ve written recently, law enforcement records and officials in Europe show that literally dozens of terrorists – including some involved in recent large-scale attacks – have successfully entered the continent disguised as refugees. The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest has now released data showing that, as a news report puts it, “hundreds of terror plots have been stopped in the U.S. since 9/11 – mostly involving foreign-born suspects, including dozens of refugees.”

The clear implication, according to subcommittee chair Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican who’s a key adviser to his party’s presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump; and subcommittee colleague Ted Cruz of Texas (Trump’s strongest primary season opponent): “[T]he United States not only lacks the ability to properly screen individuals prior to their arrival, but also that our nation has an unprecedented assimilation problem.”

These findings could pose big problems for President Obama and his administration, which has consistently maintained that current American screening is adequate, and who strongly opposes any measures that would focus more tightly and explicitly on Islam-related domestic and international terror threats; and for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who favors greatly increasing Middle East refugee admissions.

The subcommittee says that its examination of Justice Department records and open source documents (e.g., media reports) shows that between September, 2001 (when the 9-11 terrorist strikes on U.S. targets took place) and 2014, the U.S. Government convicted 580 individuals on terrorism and terror-related charges. And since 2014, according to a Fox News summary of the data, at least another “131 individuals were identified as being implicated in terror.”

Among the 580 convicted, the subcommittee contends, at least 380 were foreign-born, and 244 came from Middle Eastern countries or from other countries with large majority Muslim populations (like Indonesia and Bangladesh).

Less country-of-origin information is available for those implicated in terrorism. Sessions and Cruz blame this situation on the failure of the Department of Homeland Security to provide them with crucial immigration history details.

At the same time, the overwhelming majority of them “claimed allegiance” to Islam-related organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda. Of the 580 convicted terrorists, 226 claimed allegiance to Islam-related organizations.

Moreover, if you think that these findings reflect the political biases or prejudices of Sessions and Cruz, take a look at similar statistics compiled by the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C. think tank who no one has ever accused of Republican or other right wing leanings. A database maintained by the organization shows that, since 9-11, “violent jihadist attacks” have killed 94 Americans. That’s nearly twice the 48 the Foundation says were killed in “far right wing attacks” during this period. Moreover, the jihadist strikes have wounded 289, while their right-wing counterparts injured 27.

Interestingly, according to New America, the number of right-wing attacks (18) was nearly twice the number of such Islam-related incidents. And whereas only 13 individuals participated in the jihadist attacks, 32 participated in the right-wing killings.

So it’s possible to look at all these numbers and conclude that, according to many of them, far right terrorism is just as big a problem as the Islam-related and immigration/refugee versions, and that no unusual emphasis on the latter is justified.

But ask yourself this: What is the Muslim population of the United States? How many Middle East refugees have been admitted over the years? How do these numbers compare with the non-Muslim native-born American population? The obvious answers should remove any doubt that terrorism in America is disproportionately linked with the country’s Muslim community, and that denying this reality – which by no means precludes vigorous efforts against other forms of terrorism – can only make the nation less safe.