Illegal immigrants

The Trump administration's dream of reopening Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay appears to have stalled. But more than 3,000 miles away, the state of Florida and Governor Ron DeSantis are making that dream come true anyway. Scheduled to open as soon as July 1, Florida is building “Alligator Alcatraz,” a 1,000-bed temporary migrant detention center on an unused airstrip deep in the Big Cypress National Preserve, part of the Everglades region. They’re naming it after Alcatraz because, according to Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, “There’s not much waiting for [detainees] other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.” Calling it “Climbing Fern Gitmo” or “Everglades Abu-Ghraib,” while also catchy, wouldn’t play.

President Joe Biden announced an executive order this week that he claims will “help us to gain control of our border, restore order to the process” by banning migrants from seeking asylum if they cross the border illegally. At first glance, this seems like a welcome move to reduce a major pull factor for illegal crossings, even if it flies in the face of Biden’s claim in January that he had “done all I can do” on the border.As always, though, the devil is in the details. First, the limitations on asylum seekers only kick in once illegal crossings exceed 2,500 per day, which is nearly 1 million per year. As Ammon Blair, a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation told me, Biden is going to “meter the invasion.

The first thing you see when you climb out of the Rio Grande into Eagle Pass, Texas, is the homely site of the municipal golf course. Nine holes along the river expanded to eighteen via different tees, the pruned grass of the course is scuffed and torn from the hundreds of thousands of footsteps that have crossed it just this year, rubber soles that trekked from Central and South America to get to this godforsaken patch of green that signifies the US of A and everything it holds for the migrant who dreams of a new life. As welcomes go, it’s no sparkling torch of Lady Liberty.

It was sad to see the glee with which pro-choice advocates welcomed the news that the ten-year-old Ohio rape victim was real. Surprisingly she lacks a nom de guerre yet, something like Victim Zero, Baby Doe or Child Jane. She went from victim to martyr to symbol within a news cycle or two. The story just received new life as Indiana, where the abortion was performed, has since voted to ban most abortions. We know now an illegal alien who should never have been in the United States (his status is never to be talked about again of course as it's outside the narrative) twice raped the ten-year-old.

To hear New York mayor Eric Adams tell it, you would think that a crisis has gripped the streets of our nation’s largest city as busloads of illegal immigrants arrive from Texas. Some of the new arrivals, courtesy of Texas Governor Greg Abbott — who wants to send a message about the very real crisis in his state — have been met in person by the mayor. He claims the city is now scrambling to take care of them. It’s a lie. Thus far, Abbott has sent 75, maybe 100 illegal immigrants to New York, a city of 9 million people, a city which, in fact, already has a population of 500,000 illegal migrants. Are we really to believe that a few dozen more from Texas has our system at the breaking point?