More Police as the Answer
Terry H. Schwadron
Dec. 24, 2022
Even as U.S. senators were flailing about extending the Title 42 authority to use covid protection as an excuse to speed deportations at the border, the influx of unauthorized crossings continued, conditions in cities like El Paso worsened, and the state of Texas started moving on its own immigration enforcement plan.
In the end, nothing that the Senate considered as political protest over immigration enforcement ended up amending the $1.7 trillion “omnibus” government spending bill in that chamber, even though it delayed its passage by several hours. The measure passed the House yesterday.
But in El Paso, Mayor Oscar Leeser had declared an emergency, asking the state to help with beds, buses, public safety, and shelter support for the hundreds of migrants being legally released by Border Patrol each day.
Instead, in the absence of any effective federal response, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott sent in armed National Guardsmen to stand as a human barrier along the Rio del Grande crossing being targeted, and to string concertina wire outward to stop the human flow.
Indeed, The El Paso Times reports, the governor supplied state troopers to support El Paso police in public safety and charter buses to boost the city’s transportation capacity, adding that the deployment is “an exercise in training and preparation” and not part of the city’s request for assistance.
The Guard wasn’t what the mayor wanted to see unless they were helping to erect tents and beds.
Something is horribly wrong here on all sides. Abbott sees an invasion of migrants that he thinks is going unnoticed, and many in the community see a militarized response to a widespread humanitarian problem. Smugglers and cartels see human migration as a growth industry. No one is fully in charge, local mayors and social service agencies are struggling to keep people fed, and Republican governors think the answer is to ship busloads of migrants to Democratic-led cities.
The Supreme Court is weighing arguments from a passel of Republican states to restore Title 42 while the Biden administration, which was forced to end it, now asks only for a few days’ notice to put a plan together to respond to expected increases in unauthorized crossings.
Everyone is waiting for someone else to fix it.
How is Policing the Answer?
By coincidental timing, in Washington, the 18-month look at the insurrection attempt on Jan. 6. 2021, has ended with criminal referrals for former president Donald Trump and some close advisers. Notably, a Republican “shadow committee” issued its own report, finding a way to blame Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, while ignoring Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, for any failures of Capitol policing that day — as if the problem were the number of police rather than the violence of the Trump-inspired mob.
The Republican response to most problems from social justice street protests to drug use and opioid addiction seems to be sending in more law enforcement — ignoring the root human causes for whatever is causing the problem at hand.
At the border, the call from Republicans is for more walls, agents, barbed wire, and closed doors, even when the problem is that legal authorities and processes are overwhelmed and unable to deal with the volumes of migrants headed through personal dangers towards what they hope will be a better life in the United States.
And thus, we get sharp divisions in what should be policies that reflect both American values and orderly security policies at the border. It is easier to send in armed National Guardsmen — prohibited by law from interfering with migrants — than it is to acknowledge responsibilities to provide food and shelter.
That this is happening in Christmas week when the story of casting a homeless family into an animal manger seems even an extra shot of hypocrisy,
Even apart from the humanitarian aspects of this story, there are immediate needs for more legal immigration, resolution of uncertainty for Dreamers, serious questions about synthetic drugs like fentanyl crossing the border, and an array of security issues.
No one is right in this story. But how many images of people sleeping on the street in the cold at holiday time does it take for a U.S. Congress to consider legislative proposals that make these systems make sense?
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