SUSPECTED HONDURAN TERRORIST ATTEMPTS SHAKEDOWN AT
U.S. CONSULATE, A case for a border wall or Israel-style fence, by Joseph
Klein, 12/14/18, Frontpage.
Approximately 100 Central
American migrants marched to the U.S. consulate in Tijuana on Tuesday delivering a
letter with a 72-hour ultimatum: either “allow free entry to
all members” of the caravan into the United States or pay them $50,000 each to
return to their “homeland.”
Organizer
Alfonso Guerrero Ulloa of Honduras, a suspected
terrorist allegedly involved in a 1987 bombing that wounded six American soldiers
in Honduras, claimed that $50,000 was “a small sum compared to everything the
United States has stolen from Honduras.” The money, he said, could be used to
return home and start a small business. So much for any fear of persecution in their “homeland”
that would give these migrants a legitimate basis for seeking asylum! Simply
pay each of the migrants $50,000 and they will be happy to go home.
A
second group of about 50 caravan members delivered on Tuesday their own letter
to the U.S. consulate, claiming that slow processing of asylum requests violated
U.S. and international law. This letter did not contain any demand for money
but pressed for an increase in the daily number of asylum-seekers admitted at
the San Ysidro Port of Entry to as many as 300. The current rate is between 40
and 100.
Alfonso
Guerrero Ulloa, the migrant group organizer pushing the alternative free entry
or pay shakedown demands, is not a migrant himself. After denying involvement
in the 1987 bombing in Honduras, Mexico granted him asylum. He has been
living there since 1987. Whatever the truth of his denial of involvement in the
bomb attack, Ulloa was by his own admission a member of
a now defunct left-wing group known as the Popular Revolutionary
Forces-Lorenzo Zelayaas.
A
report published by the U.S. government in April 1990 described the Popular
Revolutionary Forces-Lorenzo Zelayaas as one of several “leftist guerrilla
groups [in Honduras] that have resorted to terrorist tactics in the past.”
Now
posing as an organizer on behalf of Central American migrants even though he
was not part of the caravans himself, Ulloa has taken contempt for the rule of
law to a new level. The demand he delivered for free entry into the United
States or payment of money should be placed in the circular file. If this
alleged terrorist, who already has asylum protection in Mexico, ever makes his
way illegally into the United States, he should be immediately arrested and
deported back to Honduras to stand trial.
The
U.S. consulate staff in Tijuana went far beyond the call of duty in allowing
Ulloa and the migrants into the consulate to present their demands and giving
them what one of the migrants described as a “warm welcome.” Such a show of compassion
is misplaced. It will only encourage more migrants to try the same ploy or to
up the ante with staged encounters for the cameras. It is not a stretch to
envision migrants, some with babies in their arms and holding the hands of
small children, entering the U.S. consulate the next time and refusing to leave
the premises until their demands are acted upon. Hunger strikes that have taken
place near the consulate may move inside to gain more attention. More caravans
of migrants from Central America will follow, demanding open borders.
Last
March, a group calling itself Refugee Caravan 2018, together with the open
borders activist organization Pueblo Sin Fronteras that has been involved in
organizing the caravans, issued a press
release declaring
“that by uniting we can abolish borders.” They demanded Mexico and the United
States “to open the borders to us because we are as much citizens as the people
of the countries where we are and/or travel.” Of course, the United States is
their real target since many of the caravan migrants have refused offers of
asylum in Mexico.
If
the United States is to preserve its sovereign right to control its own
borders, the Trump administration must continue to
pursue a maximum border security policy.
President
Trump’s threat to allow the government to shut down if he does not receive the
$5 billion he is seeking to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico
shows he means business. After President Trump’s televised clash at the White
House on Tuesday with the Democrat House Minority Leader (and presumed next
speaker of the House) Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Pelosi
derisively referred to President Trump’s focus on the “wall thing” as “like a
manhood thing with him.”
In
her December 6th press
conference, she shot
down the idea of supporting some degree of wall funding if she got in return a
permanent bona fide solution on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).
She called the wall “immoral, ineffective and expensive.” Even if Mexico were
to pay for the wall, Pelosi said, “it's immoral still.”
Pelosi
and Schumer claim they support border security. However, they and their open
borders friends are acting immorally when they oppose a life-saving solution to
the increasing surge of illegal immigrants into the United States. They cannot
explain how forcing border agents to risk their lives in confronting thousands
of illegal aliens, who could have been stopped from entering the country in the
first place by an impassable wall, is a morally superior option.
As
Terence P. Jeffrey, the editor in chief of CNSnews.com, succinctly
wrote, “More wall means
less confrontation.” I would add that less confrontation means a lower
possibility of deaths and injuries to both the border agents and the migrants
themselves. Yet Pelosi, Schumer and their progressive Democrat base prefer the
status quo in which thousands of illegal aliens (in their minds, future
Democrat voters) who make it into the country are caught and then released.
They are even willing to hold the DACA migrants hostage to their obstinacy on
the wall issue.
Perhaps
President Trump could compromise by proposing to build the kind of large
sensor-rigged, razor wire-lined border fence that Israel has with Egypt. This
fence has substantially cut the number of illegal immigrants entering Israel.
According
to a 2017
Majority Staff Report of
the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the
construction began in 2010. Most of the construction took two years to
complete. “In 2010, Israel saw 13,807 illegal entries at its border with Egypt,
largely from sub-Saharan Africans looking for work,” the report said. During
those two years, “16,514 illegal entries were recorded in 2011 and 10,042 were
recorded in 2012,” the report added. “Illegal entries fell substantially
after the completion of the security fence—to 43 in 2013 and 12 in 2014.” After
Israel discovered that ladders were being used by illegal immigrants, causing
the number of illegal entries in 2015 to rise to 213, “Israel increased the
height of the fence, rendering the ladders ineffective. In 2016, illegal
crossers dropped to 11.” This represented a 99 percent decrease from
2011.
Given
the turnover of majority control of the House of Representatives to the
Democrats next year, President Trump has a narrow window during the remainder
of this year’s lame duck session to have any chance of securing the full $5
billion he is seeking to build an effective barrier along the U.S.-Mexico
border, whether a concrete wall or the kind of border fence that Israel has
successfully constructed.
So
far, Senate Democrats appear willing to filibuster anything approaching
the $5 billion figure. The president needs to stick with his pledge
to shut down the parts of the government not already funded to push the Democrats
in his direction, although they may be perfectly willing to let him take the
political heat for a government shutdown.
If
President Trump does not get his way with Congress this year, he should
consider as his first order of business in January declaring a state of
emergency in accordance with the National Emergencies Act. Such a
presidential declaration may allow the Secretary of Defense to terminate or
defer the construction, operation, maintenance, or repair of any Department of
the Army civil works project that he deems not essential to the national
defense. He can then repurpose the resources, including funds, to the
construction, operation, maintenance, and repair of authorized civil works,
military construction, and civil defense projects that are essential to the
national defense.
There
is already some limited legislative authority for construction and repair of a
border barrier, to which President Trump could direct the Defense Secretary to
add the repurposed funds under the presidential emergency declaration. There
are requirements for regular reporting to Congress. Moreover, Congress can
enact into law a joint resolution terminating the president’s emergency
declaration, which. however, would be unlikely to succeed in the
Republican-controlled Senate.
Litigation,
most likely brought by open borders advocates in the liberal 9th Circuit,
is certain to follow the president’s declaration of a national emergency. The
usual cast of left-wing activists can be expected to challenge the president’s
authority in court to declare the illegal immigration crisis a legitimate
national emergency and to challenge his authority to order the diversion of
funds from their current purposes to pay for a border wall or Israel-style
fence. The 9th Circuit judges will likely side with the
plaintiffs challenging the president’s constitutional and legislative authority
to act forcefully for the security and well-being of the American people, as
these judges invariably do. That will be a fight worth having. The open borders
leftists must be stopped from putting Americans at risk and obliterating U.S.
national sovereignty.
Joseph
Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth
Assault on America’s Freedomand Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein
Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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