Congressional Democrats, with the help of the national media and too many Republicans, have made it so that controlling a foreign country’s border is much easier to do than managing our own.

It would cost what amounts to pennies of our federal budget to erect more barriers on our own southern border. And it would literally cost nothing to change the asylum hole in our immigration laws that’s incentivizing the hordes of Central Americans to trek to the U.S. After all, they can lock in the legal right to stay by simply saying that magic word, despite having no meritorious asylum claim.

But the default position of the Democratic Party is that anyone who shows up gets free healthcare, welfare, and the indefinite right to be here. So, at the moment, and perhaps forever, tending to our own border isn’t an option.

The Department of Homeland Security is instead operating in Guatemala to stop the human smuggling coming from there and passing through from Honduras and El Salvador.

[Also read: Top sheriff warns: Trump's 'done' if illegal immigration isn't slashed]

Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan said on a phone call with journalists Wednesday night that the key to halting most or all of the endless caravans of thousands of migrants turning up at the U.S. border is to disrupt the network of smugglers who prey on migrants desperate to leave those collapsing countries.

The Trump administration on Monday signed an agreement with Guatemala’s government that allows both nations to cooperate in Guatemala's law enforcement and border control. McAleenan said the goal is to bust up professional smuggling rings that are carting human cargo up from El Salvador and Honduras, through Guatemala.

“Without those organizations, they can’t move out of Guatemala,” McAleenan said. He also said that he expects the operation to have an impact and that making border security “more robust” in Guatemala will “disrupt the cycle.”

It’s a noble effort, but that’s billions of dollars we’re sending to Guatemala, a country that I’m not convinced has any real incentive to stop droves of people who want to leave. McAleenan told me that the Guatemalan government’s incentive is halting crime and protecting children, which (thanks again to Democrats) serve as a human shield against deportation for adults who cross illegally into the U.S. But there’s a reason these people want to get out of where they are, and it’s not because their government has shown a crippling care for the children.

What happens when DHS packs up and leaves? Or are they supposed to be in Guatemala forever?

These are the yarn-and-glue measures the administration is forced to improvise because Democrats refuse to do anything that would stop even just one foreigner from strolling into the U.S. and, without anyone knowing who he is or what he’ll do here, calling America his new home. Oh, and if he can suck up a bunch of resources that might otherwise go to, say, a poor black person already here, that’s fine.

Aiding Guatemala in controlling its rampant human smuggling problem is a worthy project, so long as it’s already underway. But it’s not a substitute for securing our own wide open border.