Pleased to read this rebuke by the editorial board of the Austin American-Statesman of Trump's ghastly spectacle of the U.S. military on our southern border. It's good to keep the record straight that this is NOT a national emergency as Trump maintained. Neither did he provide evidence that criminal elements are mixed in with the so-called "caravan," which is a euphemism of families seeking asylum in response to gang violence, corruption, and grinding poverty back home. Plus, according to our own laws, these families have a right to seek asylum.
This is not at all an "invasion," but rather a very small trickle of folks in desperate need of help. What a waste of money and resources to send our troops on a mission of dubious value as indicated herein. And what a sad chapter in our history of relations with our neighbors to the South.
-Angela Valenzuela
President Donald Trump’s warnings about the Central American migrants trudging slowly on foot to the United States could not have been more ominous in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections. A national emergency, he declared.
“This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!” Trump tweeted Oct. 29, one in a steady drumbeat of tweets of fear and foreboding about “many gang members and some very bad people” and “unknown Middle Easterners” mixed in with the migrants. The claims were red meat at the president’s campaign rallies, repeated incessantly on Fox News, his network of choice.
Trump did not provide evidence that bad actors were mixed in with the families fleeing gangs, violence, corruption and overwhelming poverty in their countries. Apparently, he didn’t feel the need as he ordered up to 15,000 military troops to Texas and the U.S.-Mexico border to confront a much smaller number of refugees, who by the way have a legal right to apply for asylum when they reach the U.S.
But that was before the midterms. With the elections over, Trump has been silent about the caravan. The migrants are still headed this way, but his breathless warnings about an invasion have disappeared. What happened to the national emergency?
If there is any doubt the president exploited the caravan to drive his supporters to the polls, we need only look to the border in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, where 5,600 American troops have already been deployed. The troops were rushed there on the commander-in-chief’s pre-midterm orders, but the migrant caravan is nowhere around. The largest group reportedly was more than 1,400 miles — and possibly weeks — away on Wednesday. A small splinter group
arrived the same day, some 1,900 miles away from South Texas, at the other end of the southern border, in Tijuana.
The folly of our military being dispatched to the border to confront immigrants seeking refuge and who aren’t even there yet was depicted last week
in a New York Times report. It painted a troubling portrait of a mission not yet fully defined, ordered by a politically motivated president and a Pentagon incapable of convincing Trump that it was a terrible idea. Unnamed Pentagon officials derided the deployment as an expensive, wasteful use of time, one that will surely hurt troops’ morale.
The cost of the mission could hit $200 million, according to the report, which cited Defense Department estimates. There is no defense spending set aside for the deployment, which could last into mid-December. The Pentagon’s funds are already earmarked for fighting in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the soldiers patiently wait in the makeshift tents that will be their home on Thanksgiving and after. Electricity is sparse and they won’t get combat pay. Federal law restricts the military from engaging in law enforcement on American soil. The troops will have little to do beyond providing logistical support including clerical jobs – duplicating some of the tasks already being performed by National Guard troops sent to the border earlier this year.
Understandably, morale is a serious concern.
The Times report quoted Rep. Anthony Brown, a Maryland Democrat and a former Army helicopter pilot who served in the Iraq war, as saying morale is less of a problem when soldiers are given a “real” mission. “But when you send a soldier on a dubious mission, with no military value, over Thanksgiving, it doesn’t help morale at all,” he said.
The border mission has no military value. That is not in dispute. Addressing soldiers Wednesday at a makeshift camp in Donna, Defense Secretary James Mattis emphasized that their role is to stand behind the Border Patrol
“as a confidence builder.” The mission’s long-term goal, he said, was somewhat in development.
Our brave military should never be used as pawns in a political stunt — an expensive one at that. At great sacrifice, our men and women in uniform volunteer to go anywhere our country sends them, placing their lives in the hands of the commander-in-chief. We owe it to them not to deploy them frivolously or in bad faith.
Campaigning on a fear of immigrants did not work out so well for the president. Democrats took back control of the House. Trump’s appeal to his base may have helped drive turnout in red states where Republicans held onto Senate seats, keeping the GOP majority.
The migrants on their slow trek to the U.S. are not invaders. They are in search of better lives, and under U.S. law they have a right to apply for asylum. Our country’s vast immigration system will determine the validity of their claims. An equally vast immigration enforcement system can police the border without the aid of soldiers whose nebulous role is to be confidence builders.
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