President Trump is putting the economic screws to Mexico to control the flow of Central American migrants at the southern border. Unlike his predecessors, Trump is driving a hard bargain.
Exports are Mexico’s economic lifeblood, and a staggering 81 percent of them end up in the US. That’s why Trump’s threat to close the border — even for a short time — gets results.
Shutting the border shuts down Mexico.
No wonder Mexico’s incoming president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, seems open to a “Remain in Mexico” deal that will make his country the waiting room for migrants applying for asylum in the US. In another sign of cooperation with Trump, Mexican immigration officials rapidly deported 98 migrants who tried forcing their way into the US on Sunday.
Under “Remain in Mexico,” asylum seekers would be held south of the border. Because they won’t step foot on American soil, they won’t have a “right” to public schooling, emergency health care and other costly American guarantees — good news for taxpayers.
Making Mexico the waiting room is one part of Trump’s plan. Another is to bar migrants who sneak across the border from applying for asylum. Trump is trying to solve the so-called catch-and-release problem.
Migrants caught crossing illegally simply have to say the word “asylum” to border agents, and voila, they’re released. They disappear into the US, and half of them never actually file for asylum or show up for a hearing, per the Justice Department. They’re turning asylum into a farce.
Unfortunately, a federal judge in San Francisco placed a temporary hold on Trump’s policy. In a laughable decision likely to be overturned, Judge Jon Tigar held that Honduran and Guatemalan migrants miles south of the border can sue the president, via third-party advocacy groups inside the US, to challenge Trump’s policy and assert a right to enter the US illegally.
Judge Tigar’s ruling prompted a spat between Trump and Chief Justice John Roberts, who chastised the president for calling Tigar an “Obama judge.”
Roberts is right about judicial independence, but he sure picked the wrong poster boy for the principle. Judge Tigar is a liberal activist with a history of outlandish decisions, including one compelling taxpayers to foot the bill for sex-reassignment surgeries for prisoners.
The recent war of words aside, the chief justice is squarely on Trump’s side, not Tigar’s, when it comes to the president’s authority over immigration. Roberts in June ruled that federal immigration law “exudes deference to the president in every clause.”
Still, get ready for more legal obstruction. The American Civil Liberties Union plans to sue over any “Remain in Mexico” deal, arguing that leaving migrants “stranded in Mexico would inevitably put people in danger.”
Yet the ACLU is mum about how schools and social services are strained when illegal-immigrant families flood American communities.
Just ask Europeans about uncontrolled migration. The public there is outraged over the 1.8 million refugees from North Africa and the Middle East who have swept into the continent since 2014.
European leaders are belatedly barring the door, and they have turned to the same remedy Trump is negotiating with Mexico — keeping would-be refugees in Turkish and North African facilities while their applications are processed.
Even Hillary Clinton acknowledges that “Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame” of populism. That’s a stunning admission that open-border policies are a failure.
She ought to have the courage to deliver that message to Democrats on this side of the Atlantic, starting with Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
Cummings is adamant that the caravan migrants “should be allowed to come in, seek asylum,” even if they have crossed the border illegally. He vows to torpedo Trump’s plan, insisting the current situation on the southern border “has worked for a long time.”
Worked? Maybe for Dem politicians, but not for the nation.
Betsy McCaughey is a former Lieutenant Governor of New York.