The virtual closure of national borders from Guatemala to the United States because of the Chinese Virus might end the migration of Central America’s poverty-stricken hordes to the United States, but only if the controls stay in place long enough to become settled policy. Mass apprehensions at the border have dropped by more than half. Helping, of course, is the knowledge, even among illegal aliens, that one might contract the deadly microbe on the trip north, but the border controls are what counts. The virus will pass. Stopping a return to the status quo ante depends on President Trump’s surviving the social and economic upheaval the Asian pathogen has caused, which means Trump—The Sequel must begin on January 20.
With that introduction, some encouraging news:
From March 21 to April 9, border agents deported 10,000 illegal aliens, who are now, of course, almost uniformly called “migrants” or “refugees” [Trump administration has expelled 10,000 migrants at the border during coronavirus outbreak, leaving less than 100 in CBP custody, by Nick Miroff, The Washington Post, April 9, 2020].
“Those who are undocumented or don’t have documents or authorization are turned away,” explained the acting director of Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan.
“Migrants” are getting the message: illegal crossings are down 56 percent.
Unsurprisingly, Univision offered the usual sob story about the expulsion policy. A poor Mexican fellow it called “Joel Alexander” jumped the border on April 8 “looking for work” [“Me montaron en un carro y me tiraron para México”: las deportaciones exprés en tiempos de covid-19 (“‘They Put me in a Car and Threw me over to Mexico’: Express Deportations in the Times of Covid-19”), by Jorge Cancino, Univision, April, 12, 2020].
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