It might yet be turned back in Mexico. It might be thwarted in a show of blunt force by ICE at our southern border. It might flame out well before the border, given the heat exhaustion and medical challenges already being experienced by its participants.
But the already-infamous “caravan,” a contemporary and land-based version of the 1980 Mariel boatlift that deposited Cuban “undesirables” on American shores, looks ever more likely to precipitate a human and political crisis of epic proportions, and a showdown at our southern border pitting the power of the American President against long-established international norms regarding refugees.
One way or another, this growing, mile-long cluster of people seeking an escape from the poverty and rampant government corruption in their Central American countries -- primarily Honduras -- will confront the American people with a choice. Will we extend a compassionate hand to those barely clinging to hope, or establish once and for all how far, if at all, we will bend without breaking the system. Caravanners have promised to reach our border by Election Day, a herculean task to be sure given the approximately 2,000 miles separating them from American soil.
But the final disposition of this ticking time bomb ultimately revolves around the legitimacy of the refugee status sure to be claimed by those in the caravan.
Indeed, there are multiple legitimate reasons to claim refugee status, but poverty is not among them.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) defines a refugee as someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence, and has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. This is why two-thirds of all refugees worldwide come from five war-torn countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, and Somalia.
Indeed, there are multiple legitimate reasons to claim refugee status, but poverty is not among them.
Imagine the opposite, that it was actually considered a legitimate reason to establish refugee status. With hundreds of millions of the world’s inhabitants living in destitution, we would open the floodgates to untold masses of impoverished inhabitants from Central America to the Middle East to Africa.
But what are we required to do as signatories to the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, which declares that refugees have the “right to seek and be granted asylum in a foreign territory, in accordance with the legislation of the state and international conventions”?
While the U.S. signed on to these agreements, no specifics are provided on how individual states are to determine whether an individual meets the definition of a refugee. That gives President Trump the leeway to determine it. But it also presents an opportunity for the left to try and define it far more broadly. And many a Democrat these days is calling for the dismantling of ICE, the only mechanism that can prevent this caravan from overrunning the border.
Can America simply accept anyone claiming refugee status, including those about whom we know little or nothing? Even members of the caravan who have submitted to media interviews admit that criminals are included in their ranks (“we’re not ALL criminals”). And with ICE already overburdened, would these caravanners be caught and released into the general population and, like 97% of those immigrants facing legal proceedings, refuse to show up for court? This would add untold numbers to the swelling mass of illegal aliens already in our country, not to mention setting criminals loose among the general population.
Consider that a recent study by Yale and MIT estimates that 22 million illegals are already living in our midst, double the number previously accepted as the standard.
On the other hand, despite repeated and ultimately failed attempts by leftist judges to thwart Trump in multiple iterations of the travel ban, it is inarguable that the President of the United States possesses the statutory authority to summarily reject any person or group of persons attempting to enter the country. The Immigration and Naturalization Act passed by Congress in 1952, (Section 212 f), lays it out in unambiguous language:
“Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”
“an assault on our country,”
Judicial activism aside, President Trump clearly has the power to reject every single person in this caravan, but the question is how he will employ this power and weigh it against international standards, and how the inevitable raft of lawsuits which would follow his decision might be adjudicated.
So we may be days, more likely weeks, away from a clash of titans – Trump vs. the left and global establishment. This President has proven over and over that he is not given to backing down. And he has won most every battle he has joined - or initiated. He has called the caravan “an assault on our country,” so leftists serving as apologists or even promoters of it would be well-served to steel themselves for a 21st century version of the Gunfight at O.K. Corral.
