Migrant Caravan Arrives At U S Border, Despite Trump’s Threats

Migrant Caravan Arrives At U S  Border, Despite Trump’s Threats

The caravan of Central American asylum-seekers that sent the Trump administration into a frenzy of anger prepared to cross into the United States on Sunday. 

The caravan’s organizers, immigrant rights activists and legal observers marched toward International Friendship Park, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border, as the caravan’s participants prepared to walk from Tijuana to San Diego. 

On the U.S. side of the border, a group of about 100 people chanted “No borders! No wall! Sanctuary for all!” as they marched along the beach toward the port of entry. Roughly 200 of their counterparts in Mexico gathered in front of the metal fencing that divides the two countries, with more than a dozen people hoisting themselves atop the barrier

We have to push back against this administration,” demonstrator Laiken Jordahl, a borderlands campaigner for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told HuffPost. “Its culture of hate, bigotry and fear cannot be accepted. The administration doesn’t even talk to us, we had to come out and march.”

Another demonstrator, Roberto Saravia from Los Angeles, said: “This goes back further than the Trump administration. I find it ridiculous that any time there is an issue in the U.S., immigrants get scapegoated, they get mistreated, they get criminalized just for existing. This border is just a divide that shouldn’t be here and I want to see it gone ― it shouldn’t divide us.”

The Trump administration has launched a full-court press in anticipation of the caravan’s arrival. The president dispatched the National Guard to the border shortly after railing against the group of migrants. The secretary of homeland security issued a statement likening the organizers to “smugglers.” And the attorney general threatened to prosecute them. 

But for all the noise, it remains to be seen whether the White House’s actions will have much of an impact on the roughly 600 Central Americans who plan to present asylum claims. 

Trump’s fulminations against the caravan stem from larger concerns he’s expressed since he first started running for president three years ago. He wants the U.S. to stop releasing unauthorized immigrants caught at the border with notices to appear in immigration court instead of uniformly detaining or deporting them — a practice he and his supporters disparagingly call “catch and release.” Sessions is one of his most enthusiastic partners in that project. 

Unfortunately for them, ending the practice is not currently possible under U.S. law. When space in detention centers runs out, there’s simply no place to put people who can’t be quickly deported. Many immigrants from Mexico can be deported quickly. But many of the people crossing the border these days are Central American children and families, who aren’t as easy to deport — and generally can’t be detained for long. Unaccompanied children must be released to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and the mothers cannot usually be locked up with their kids for longer than three weeks due to a federal court order. Migrants have a right to apply for asylum, whether or not they get detained in the process. And immigrants who get picked up within the interior of the country often qualify for bond hearings.

None of this matters to the Trump administration, whose actions and statements have likened the arrival of a few hundred Central Americans seeking asylum to a national security crisis. In an attempt to deter them, Trump mobilized the National Guard to help patrol the four Southwest border states, despite the fact that its presence will be purely ornamental — the National Guard can’t make immigration arrests, and the caravan’s members plan to travel through legal ports of entry.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen chipped in with a similarly aggressive but toothless statement Wednesday, saying the department was “monitoring” the caravan’s movements. She encouraged asylum-seekers to stay in Mexico. 

“Let me be clear,” Nielsen’s statement says. “We will enforce the immigration laws as set forth by Congress. If you enter our country illegally, you have broken the law and will be referred for prosecution. If you make a false immigration claim, you have broken the law and will be referred for prosecution. If you assist or coach an individual in making a false immigration claim, you have broken the law and will be referred for prosecution.”

Nielsen’s repeated statements targeting the caravan met with criticism from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security. 

“It’s overkill,” Thompson told HuffPost. “You would have expected [Trump] to