The Democratic National Committee (DNC) made a calculated decision to elevate the low-tier campaign of former Obama administration Housing Secretary Julian Castro at the fiasco that opened the first of the party's presidential primary debates on June 26. Castro received far more attention than expected in Miami, no doubt in a DNC move to appeal to Latino voters. But in putting this staunch leftist on a pedestal, if only for one night, Dems shone a nationally televised spotlight on their insane propensity to cheerlead for open borders despite the ongoing dire national emergency on our southern porch.
Extremism on Display
Julian Castro
Castro's call at the debate for decriminalizing border jumping even alarmed touchy-feely "we don't need walls to separate us" fellow candidate Beto O'Rourke. Beto, of course, recently has been seen campaigning in Mexico among illegals attempting to enter the United States. Yet even he tread softly on the legality question. But Castro would have none of it and as a result widely was hailed as having "handled" O'Rourke merely because Beto dared to suggest that decriminalization might encourage human traffickers.
The issue has been a cornerstone of Castro's largely ignored campaign for some time now. In a Medium.com post on April 1, he wrote, "[t]he truth is, immigrants seeking refuge in our country aren't a threat to national security. Migration shouldn't be a criminal justice issue. It's time to end this draconian policy and return to treating immigration as a civil — not a criminal — issue."
Emboldened by suggestions that he was a "winner" of the train wreck that was Night One in Miami, Castro has doubled down on his call to lavish favors on those illegally entering our country. In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos that aired on June 30, Castro smugly defended his insistence that American taxpayers provide health care to illegals. "We already pay for the health care of undocumented immigrants. It's called the emergency room. People show up in the emergency room and they get care, as they should," Castro taunted. Giving illegals health care "is the right thing to do," he insisted. "We're not going to let people living in this country die because they can't see a doctor. That's not who we are as Americans."
This, of course, is exactly the kind of extreme position on immigration with which the rest of the lemmings in the Democratic field feel compelled to comply. All ten candidates on the Night Two stage raised their hands when asked if they supported giving health care to illegals. Uneasy pundits and gleeful Republicans later pointed to the moment as signaling the death knell for Dem chances in 2020. But beyond the political damage of such a move, Castro's welcome mat for those inundating our southern border exacts a high human cost on the very Latinos about whom he professes to be so concerned.
Violence and Death
On the same day as the first half of the Dem debate, the Center for Immigration Studies hosted a panel discussion on the crisis on our border. Former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Thomas Homan starkly described how the flood of humanity surging toward our soil has fostered an atmosphere in which the dangerous drug cartels that operate in northern Mexico thrive.
"We all know the criminal cartels control the northern border of Mexico," Homan said. He then added:
"Nothing happens on that border without the blessing and paying off of the drug cartels that control that area. For a criminal organization to smuggle aliens through their territory, they have to pay a plaza fee. They got to pay off the cartels. So what’s happening right now with what's going on on the Southwest border, this humanitarian issue, is making these cartels very, very rich. We’re bankrolling the very same cartels that smuggle drugs – smuggle drugs, weapons, the same cartels that have murdered Border Patrol agents in the past. That's who's getting rich off all this."
Make no mistake, these cartels also physically abuse and kill the hordes of vulnerable Central Americans making their way to the United States. In 2018, Mexico's Federal Police asked the University of Texas's LBJ School of Public Affairs to compile a report detailing the carnage being done to migrants by these cartels as they travel through Mexican territory. Titled Organized Crime and Central American Migration in Mexico, the report determined that Mexican crime cartels earn an estimated $134 million annually by exploiting migrants.
“Migrants traveling through Mexico are frequently subjected to serious human rights violations,” the report stated. “Organized criminal groups in Mexico regularly interact with and victimize migrants. These criminal activities are often predatory in nature and in many cases include rape, kidnapping, or murder."
Rape is so common a part of the journey for female migrants that "Central American women at times [view] it as just another inescapable 'tax' on an already costly journey," the report reads. "Women and girls may also become victims of 'coerced survival sex,' in which they are forced by a smuggler, police officer, migration official, or another migrant to exchange sex for shelter, protection, food, or the ability to proceed," the researchers found. Women who refuse to comply are told they will be abandoned by the smugglers guiding them toward our nation.
Democrats love to rail against the "concentration camps" they claim the Trump administration has set up to deal with this unprecedented sea of humanity and are quick to assail American taxpayers for their "heartless" refusal to provide welfare and health care to those illegally in our country. Yet by their active enticement of massive illegal immigration, soulless politicians like Castro subject Latinos to a living hell far worse than cold showers and thin mattresses. By exacerbating the crisis on our southern border, Democrats line the pockets of sinister and utterly ruthless criminal organizations that view migrants as nothing but prey.
"When we see families seeking refuge, we don’t see criminals, or an invasion, or a threat to national security.... We see people," Castro vapidly wrote in his Medium.com piece. "[W]e must not only expand our political will, but also our moral imagination," he poetically asserted.
It would be far more efficacious if Democrats would set aside their moral imaginations for a moment and take a sober look at the vicious reality they have helped to foment in northern Mexico. But that would mean choosing personal integrity over political expediency. And so they remain ensconced in their self-serving fantasies as more Latinos die.
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