Lying All Along the Line

There is not much more satisfying than watching detestable politicians and liars when they slip into panic mode and realize their scam is falling to pieces. The past week has seen as much angst in the Republican Party as there was apparent joy in the Democrat’s convention hall in Chicago. Donald Trump, desperate for any kind of attention, scurried down to Arizona to the border wall, beating on an issue that no longer works. Standing in the 100 degree heat in the desert, his hair singed by the sun and his makeup gone pasty and uneven, the former president looked a bit like a gob of lint from a clothes dryer. Nobody wears a suit in the summer in Arizona; especially when their makeup is at risk of running with sweat. There was not much media present and the cable networks cutaway from his ramblings about insane asylums being emptied to send crazed patients to the US border.

Trump often looked constipated or maybe he was grimacing at the memories of how he had been diminished to a punch line by speakers in Chicago. He was cuddling up next to his favorite issue, snuggled there with his lies about how he had built 400 miles of wall on the border. He did not, of course, only about 80, and 33 of that was reinforcements to existing barriers. There were already 650 plus miles of various types of barrier already in place from previous administrations. Given the fact that the US-Mexico border is 1951 miles in length, there is a gap totaling 1300 miles that even an immigrant as simple-minded as Trump might be able to slip through undetected.

Immigration and the border are not the big political broad axe the GOP used to swing. The number of undocumented crossers has dropped dramatically in recent months. Reductions are considered a consequence of President Biden’s executive order in June, suspending all claims of asylum for anyone who has entered the country illegally. Border Patrol data showed encounters with migrants were down 50 percent in the six weeks after the order was issued, which put the seven-day average of unlawful crossings at 1900 daily, the lowest since January of 2021. The July figure of 56,400 apprehensions was the least in four years, and it was almost certainly language in the executive order that deterred immigrants, and not an artificial barrier. Unlawful entry eliminates the possibility of applying for political asylum, a fact that acts as a significant deterrent.

The reduction in migrants directly coincides with the president’s executive order even though the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, is trying to take credit for the significant change. The Republican seems to think building segments of a wall and putting up razor wire has stopped the overwhelming numbers. His argument falls apart when the stats show a dramatic transformation throughout the entire American Southwest, not just along the Texas-Mexico frontier. Abbott, who has used taxpayer money by the billions to build wall, erect razor wire barriers, and to bus about 120,000 migrants to northern cities, has not rolled a bus since the one that left El Paso on June 27th only half full with 50 people.

What he has managed to accomplish, however, is the ruination of the main community green space in Eagle Pass along the Rio Grande. Abbott has turned it into a militarized man camp with almost no access for local residents. Across the street, there looms a military base that taxpayers are building with their billions and Abbott’s authorization. Texas Guard soldiers stationed there do not have too many distractions these days other than video games because the razor wire and flotation barriers in the river have chased immigrants to new crossing points. There were similar outcomes in the 80s when the DEA and Border Patrol enhanced drug interdictions on the southwestern border. The American Southeast, especially Florida, became the new route for cocaine transit and delivery, and the drug trade boomed as law enforcement made slow adjustments to the new dynamics.

The border is Trump’s last straw as an issue and it is slipping through the grip of his tiny hands. Unfortunately, reporters rarely are able to ask him questions about how he put a knife in the heart of a $20 billion dollar border bill in the last session of Congress. Republicans were integral to writing the measure, which increased technology and personnel dramatically and was considered the most comprehensive new law on border protection of the past half-century. Trump ordered Republicans in the house to refuse to vote on it and told the House Speaker not to bring it to the floor, even though the general consensus on both sides of the political aisle was that there was near unanimous support for passage. Solving the immigration problem, however, created a new political problem for the man who would be an American dictator. How could he accuse the Democrats and the Biden Administration of failure if the bill passed? His party’s officeholders bent the knee to the most ideologically deranged and selfish human to ever walk upright on American soil.

Trump critiques of border operations are as diaphanous and fragile as his intellect. Abbott and the GOP presidential nominee try using the anecdotal approach to sell their fear-mongering strategies even though the statistics bely their claims. Multiple studies, even from the conservative Cato Institute and the American Immigration Council, buttressed by academic research and statistics, have discovered that immigrants, both legal and illegal, tend to have lower crime rates than native-born citizens. In fact, a study by the Cato Institute in 2018 found that illegal immigrants in the U.S. had a 50% lower criminal conviction rate than native-born Americans. Nonetheless, there are sometimes horrific crimes committed by immigrants, just as they are any other demographic cohort.

Abbott blamed the recent murder of a 12-year-old Houston girl on Vice President Harris by claiming she had failed at her job as Border Czar, a title she has never held. Jocelyn Nungaray was strangled to death in Houston in June by two Venezuelan men who were in the country illegally. Abbott criticized Harris for not even mentioning the girl’s name during an early campaign stop in the city. The hollow man’s insult was striking in its hypocrisy for anyone who has followed his failures in the aftermath of mass shootings in Texas and the loss of life associated with his Operation Lone Star on the border. Not one name of a student or teacher massacred at Uvalde has ever issued from his mouth nor has he spoken of the citizens that have died as the result of his elevated border enforcement and high-speed pursuit of subjects.

The most recent report from Human Rights Watch, which is almost a year old, indicated that 74 people were killed and at least another 189 were injured in the first 29-months of Operation Lone Star, tragedies caused by dangerous police chases of suspected immigrant smugglers. One of those was a seven-year-old girl who had gone out to get ice cream with her grandmother and was standing at the wrong place at the wrong time when a police vehicle caused a suspect’s car to skid out of control. Abbott never mentioned her name because he does not know it and never bothered to learn of the death. He has publicly praised some of the 11 soldiers who died in his political border stunt but has kept his measured political distance from mass shootings in Texas. At no time has he ever spoken the name of anyone killed in the El Paso, Uvalde, or Sutherland Springs gun slaughters, or any of the other tragic shootings in Texas.

The conservative Right just might be running out of useful lies.