Progressives Fund Migrants’ Catch-and-Release Strategy

Progressives are raising funds to help released Central American parents unite with their children and settle in the United States.

“I’m going to be tweeting about this in the days to come, but if any of you work for an airline please direct message me because these families will need vouchers and discounted tickets to be reunited over these thousands of miles,” Hillary Clinton told a New York audience on Saturday, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“Help reunify children separated from their families at the border by donating to pay for airfare, hotel, and personal items for children and parents released from detention,” said the pitch by Families Belong Together, a coalition assembled by several progressive groups, including the ACLU and the FWD.us advocacy group.

According to the group’s page at the ActBlue fund-raising site:

This money will be immediately used for family reunification travel expenses, including transportation, lodging, and a small personal kit to help families get started. It will also help Spanish speaking immigration experts acting as volunteers who are traveling to ensure that all families are supported and reunified. Since the Trump Administration is not reunifying families at the appropriate pace, any additional funds that cannot be used for travel will go to support efforts to reunify the families immediately.

The immediate beneficiaries are some of the roughly 2,500 parents recently released from detention by judges at the request of the ACLU.

Most of the migrants split their families in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in the hope of getting a legal foothold in the United States via the progressives’ catch-and-release border loopholes. The parents typically leave their spouse and other children behind and bring one child northwards to trigger the nation’s catch-and-release laws. Those laws include the Flores legal settlement, which requires border officials to release children after 20 days detention.

The strategy often worked until May 5 when President Donald Trump adopted a policy of detaining all migrants until their asylum cases were resolved. Progressive protested, saying the detention policy split the already-split families by sending the child to an agency home until the parent’s case was processed. But Trump backed down June 27, amid pressure from the establishment’s media, business leaders and judges, who urged the migrants be released pending their courtroom hearings.

Officials are detaining some of the family migrants who cross the border in family detention centers. But many are released into the United States after giving a promise to appear in court. Only about 5 percent of migrants who are released from detention report back to the federal government for deportation when their asylum claims are rejected.

The coalition members in the fundraising group include the National Domestic Workers Alliance, ACLU, Women’s Refugee Commission, MoveOn, United We Dream, and FWD.us.

United We Dream is a union-backed, progressive-run advocacy group for younger ‘DACA’ illegals. FWD.us is a coalition of wealthy technology investors — including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — who push for greater use of foreign white-collar workers in the United States. The group is providing some manpower from its well-funded network of pro-immigration activists, including amnesty advocate Alida Garcia:

The ACLU is also part of the family reunification effort, even though ACLU lawyers are offering to help migrants seek asylum for their children after the parents have been sent home. If the child gets asylum, the family will remain split for years.

Progressives are also recruiting lawyers to provide free legal services to help migrants get a legal foothold in the United States.

The Immigration Justice Campaign says:

28 families separated by ICE were recently released from detention in El Paso, Texas, and urgently need your help! The Immigration Justice Campaign requests your pro bono support to ensure that these families have a knowledgeable attorney by their side for their first ICE check-ins across the country. Once matched, we ask that volunteers reach out to these families and accompany them to their initial check-ins. Please note that these cases vary greatly in terms of posture and available supporting documents. While we are asking that volunteers accompany these families to their first check-in, we also encourage volunteers to guide and assist families with the next steps in their immigration case (i.e., requesting a credible fear interview, if necessary; ensuring the families know about the one-year filing deadline for asylum; and telling the families how they can check on their next court dates). However, there is no requirement or expectation that you represent the family beyond the ICE check-in. Please give back to these families who were unjustly separated and sign up for a case today!

Lawyers working for migrants say they gain satisfaction by getting migrants into the United States, such as a migrant from the Congo who claimed political persecution:

After testimony and cross-examination, S.U. was granted full asylum, the government waived appeal, and he was released that evening. The power of that proceeding to transform his life took our breath away, and left us elated that we had been able to play a role in that successful outcome …

Assisting this kind, intelligent and courageous gentleman, whose determination and optimism both moved and impressed us, has been a tremendously rewarding experience.

But the progressives’ support for the migrants is helping to grow the political and economic power of the people-smuggling cartels.

The support also wrecks communities in Central America. For example, the progressives’ catch-and-release policies lure young men to seek work in the United States, entice people to sell their houses and go into debt, and deter investment in Central American countries.

The New York Times reported about a Guatemala family which split itself to gain a catch-and-release legal foothold in the United States:

The Pulexes are frank about their motivations for heading north: They thought they might have a chance of making more money, getting a better education for their daughters and generally improving their lives.

“We wanted to live there and leave behind everything bad about life in Guatemala,” Mr. Pulex explained …

The family had come up with a plan: Ms. Pulex and Marelyn would leave first, with the aid of a migrant smuggler, and try to make it to the home of a relative who was living with his family in Texas. Once the two were settled, Mr. Pulex would follow with Emily.

The plan failed because of Trump’s decision to detain all migrants until their court cases were completed.

The Pulex family is middle-class family, not threatened by spousal abuse or criminal gangs, but they sold their house to fund their migration into the United States:

Before they decided to migrate, Mr. Pulex drove a bus for work, and Ms. Pulex ran a store that sold food and household products out of the couple’s small house. But they weren’t quite making ends meet — and their thoughts turned to North America …

Weeks ago, Mr. Pulex was forced to sell the family’s house to pay debts, including the $5,000 smuggling fee, and the family is now living in Ms. Pulex’s parents’ house, sleeping on two mattresses on the floor of a room above a small variety store. What remains of their furniture is scattered among their network of relatives: a stove in one place, a dresser in another.

The Washington Post reported a similar catch-and-release strategy by another family in Guatemala:

José [Ottoniel] paid $7,500 to a smuggler, most of it borrowed from a bank. The plan was for José to work and for Ervin to study. Elvia and the other three children would remain in Las Nueces until, they hoped, José and Ervin could get some kind of legal status, so they could move back and forth freely …

He still owes $4,000 that he borrowed to pay the smuggler, a loan he can’t imagine paying back, even though he knows the bank might eventually seize his home.

Migration Economics

Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market — but the government provides green cards to roughly 1 million legal immigrants, temporary work-permits to roughly 3 million foreign workers, including at least 400,000 migrants seeking asylum.

The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with foreign labor. That process spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. The policy also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.