That policy requires asylum applicants to seek permanent refuge in the first country they arrive in after fleeing their home countries. Any map of Central America will tell you it ain't the USA. And although Mexico is loathe to admit it, Trump also enlisted Mexican President Obrador's help in seizing bank accounts of those financing the illegal migrant caravans snaking up the Sierra Madre to the US southern border.
by Anna Giaritelli at the Washington Examiner:
"Today, not a single person can be found in a 90-minute search of the area. It’s quiet except for the sound of the occasional bird chirp.
The TV weatherman forecast the heat index for 111 degrees, Cabrera says, sitting inside his air-conditioned personal vehicle. He says the extreme heat is one of the two reasons he believes no one is crossing right now at 3:30 p.m. local time.
“This time of year, if [families and children] don’t cross in the dark, they’re gonna cross either really early in the morning or late in the afternoon when the sun starts to go down,” Cabrera says. “But the weather in and of itself is not going to stop it.”
Cabrera explains the Mexican government’s deployment of military to the other side of the border from the Rio Grande Valley is why apprehensions were down in the first two weeks in August. Border Patrol would not share data to back up his statement.
“They’re not allowing anybody to cross,” he says, referring to Mexico’s enhanced enforcement actions following President Trump’s early summer threat to impose tariffs if the Mexicans did not prevent more people from traveling to the U.S.
Cabrera says because of the military, the cartels that control access to the river are blocking paying customers — migrants — from getting into the murky water. The cartel members work for transnational criminal organizations or massive international gangs that charge migrants money to go through land where they have staked their claim. As a result, they dictate when any person crosses the river.
“The cartels don’t want the attention drawn to them because the military’s close by, then nobody’s crossing. And as soon as military moves on to bigger and better things (they move to a different area because a different area’s getting hit), then the floodgates open right back up,” says Cabrera, who names the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas, and Cartel Del Noreste as the gangs playing for control of the border here."
