Trump’s new border directives may stop fanning the flames. But it’s time to douse them

The situation along the southwestern border has long surpassed unsustainable or emergency levels and has ventured into uncharted, untenable waters. Looking back, the situation at the border that led to the five-week partial government shutdown now appears to be child’s play. What started out, around this time last year, as confusion over radical court rulings regarding prosecutions at the border and children being separated from parents has morphed into a full-scale invasion and the breakdown of our duly passed immigration laws. Now is not the time for blame, half-truth, or half-measures. It’s the time to decisively act! Nibbling around the edges on peripheral aspects of this issue might have worked to stem the greater tide a year ago, but the present situation calls for a complete shutoff at the border.

On Monday, the White House announced a new directive for the DHS and the attorney general to establish fees for asylum requests, to end work permits for those coming in at the border, and to establish regulations to adjudicate claims within 180 days. These measures are either vague, long overdue, and/or deal with the tangential aspects of the invasion and further accede to the premise that we can adjudicate our way out of this invasion.

The DHS not only releasing hundreds of thousands of aliens, but providing them with work permits was an egregious policy of the Obama administration and was never even promulgated in a formal regulation. It should never have been continued by this administration. Yet the Trump administration handed out 750,000 work permits to bogus asylum seekers or those presumed to have a credible fear. And that was just through last September, before the large numbers began coming over. Even now, the president is calling on DHS to “propose regulations” barring work permits rather than immediately terminating Obama’s policy today. And while getting rid of this horrible policy is certainly a welcome move, it merely removes one gratuitous act of fanning the flames; it doesn’t extinguish the flames by flatly denying all credible fear at the border, as is within the president’s power.

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