$12 million dollar photo opportunities on SW Border?
Governor Rick Perry is making national and international headlines with his plans to send up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the Texas border. Perry intends to use the Guardsmen to help law enforcement as a surge of illegal immigrants, many of them children, flood across the border. While this seems a logical plan to stem the flow, someone needs to tell “Emperor Perry” that he has no clothes.
It is estimated that the cost of putting the Guard on the border will run Texas taxpayers $12 million per month. $12 million! What will the residents of Texas get for their $12 million? Not much. Not what the residents would get when the Guard gets called out for natural disasters. Why? Because the Guard’s primary mission in the homeland is for humanitarian relief efforts. What is the Guard supposed to do on the border? In accordance with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), youths detained at the border are automatically guaranteed an asylum hearing. Does the Guard assist with rounding up children and transporting to detention facilities? How does this help law enforcement? The Guard is not and was never meant to be a law enforcement entity. While the Posse Comitatus Act does not pertain to the Guard per se, it was never the intent of our Founding Fathers to have the Guard take on law enforcement roles. Governor Perry needs to understand this. Further, Americans need to understand that Guardsmen are Citizen Soldiers. Putting them on the border is taking them out of the work place. And if the Guardsmen are in a State Active Duty status, they receive no medical benefits or retirement points for serving. What happens when a Guardsman ties up with a drug smuggler?
Some in Congress have been quick to try to score political points by accusing the Obama administration of having brought on this influx of children and families. The first congressional hearing on the issue was tellingly named “An Administration Made Disaster: The South Texas Border Surge of Unaccompanied Alien Minors.” At the hearing, House Republicans argued that lax border enforcement and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program—which grants a two-year reprieve from deportation and a work permit to eligible undocumented youth—has given children in Central America an incentive to come to the United States. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) even called on President Barack Obama to end DACA and to begin deporting those with the temporary legal status in order to send a message to prospective child refugees that they should not come to the United States.
Contrary to what the administration’s opponents may claim, however, it is clear that U.S. border enforcement policies are not the primary drivers of children coming to the United States. Instead, much of the surge stems from the interrelated challenges of organized criminal violence and poverty that adversely affect individuals in Northern Triangle countries.
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador were three of the five most dangerous countries in the world in 2013. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, found that Honduras had the world’s highest per-capita homicide rate in 2012, at 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people. El Salvador was fourth in the world, with a rate of 41.2 homicides per 100,000 people, and Guatemala was fifth, with a rate of 39.9 homicides per 100,000 people. To put these numbers into context, consider that the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo, from which nearly half a million refugees have fled, has a homicide rate of 28.3 homicides per 100,000 people. By contrast, other countries in Central America—such as Costa Rica, at 8.5 homicides per 100,000 people; Nicaragua, at 11.3 homicides per 100,000 people; and Panama, at 17.2 homicides per 100,000 people—all have significantly lower rates of homicide. These safety differentials help to explain why some from the Northern Triangle countries are fleeing to neighboring countries.
If Governor Rick Perry really wants to stem the flow of illegal child immigrants, he needs to work with Congress to send Guardsmen to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to assist in the restoration of order. This is a mission more suitable to the Guard and Active Component military. Undocumented children have a legal right to enter the country and putting one thousand Guardsmen on the Texas border won’t change that.
