Two Democratic legislators and immigration lawyers escorted a group of Central American caravan migrants in Tijuana past U.S. guards and through border gates on Monday evening.

The group of favored migrants at the Otay Mesa port of entry included Maria Meza, the Central American woman who was photographed when she brought her two children right up to the U.S. border as border officers launched tear gas to repel aggressive migrants. The group also included several teenagers who will soon turn 18 and lose the legal protections set for non-adult migrants.

“After 7hrs, I can now confirm: Maria Meza & her kids — featured in this @ Reuters image fleeing tear gas at the border last month — just filed for asylum,” tweeted California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gonzalez. “They’re on American soil.”

After 7hrs, I can now confirm: Maria Meza & her kids — featured in this @Reuters image fleeing tear gas at the border last month — just filed for asylum. They’re on American soil.@RepBarragan & I are still here observing conditions on the ground. #RefugeesWelcome @fams2gether pic.twitter.com/t8cEDRtGIQ — Rep. Jimmy Gomez (@RepJimmyGomez) December 18, 2018

The political event in Tijuana was arranged by several pro-migration groups, including “Families Belong Together.” In a series of tweets, the group said:

We went to Tijuana with @ RepJimmyGomez, @ RepBarragan, @ AlOtroLado_org and @ IMUMIDF to personally escort a handful of the most vulnerable refugees to a port of entry, including the mother and children pictured in the iconic tear gassing photo. Among the group were unaccompanied children, Maria and her 5 children from the iconic photo, and 7 children who are at risk of aging out of protections because the Trump administration is forcing them to stay in Tijuana past their 18th birthdays. When we got to the border, @ CBP officials did not let us pass. There was zero transparency and their reasons kept changing. Deserving refugees didn’t even have a chance at safety. The Trump administration created this crisis by deliberately stalling border processing and forcing refugees into a months-long wait to request asylum, placing their safety and lives at

Asylum laws do not allow economic migrants to get green cards and then jobs, so most will be rejected by immigration judges.

It is not clear if any of the migrants will be released into the United States or be held at family detention centers until their pleas for asylum are rejected.

The staged event sought to highlight the effort by border officers to slow the northward flow of poor, uneducated migrants who are seeking U.S. welfare, schools, healthcare, and jobs. Currently, the border patrol is “metering” the number of migrants who are allowed to apply for asylum at the border, to prevent many migrants from overwhelming the borders curbs. The metering system allows roughly 100 migrants at the border gate to apply for asylum each day.

Democrats say border officials are not allowed to temporarily turn away migrants who ask for asylum — even if the processing system becomes overloaded and then releases many migrants into the United States where they will force down wages earned by blue-collar Americans and divert education spending away from American kids.

Five million Central Americans want to migrate into the United States, according to a Gallup survey published mid-November.:

In Gallup’s most recent global estimate, between 2015 and 2017, 15% of the world’s adults — more than 750 million people — said they would like to move to another country permanently if they could. In Central America, this percentage is one in three (33%), or about 10 million adults. Three percent of the world’s adults — or nearly 160 million people — say they would like to move to the U.S. This includes 16% of adults from Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica, which translates into nearly 5 million people.

The two legislators from California, Gomez and Rep. Nanette Barragan, posted videos of their effort to help the favored migrants jump the line of asylum seekers at the border.

At this time, @CBP border officials aren’t letting us in. There is zero transparency and their reasons keep changing. Hear more from @RepJimmyGomez: pic.twitter.com/AFbcmCS2Kj — Families Belong Together (@fams2gether) December 18, 2018

The two Representatives worked with three pro-migration groups, including Families Belong Together. They also were accompanied by U.S. immigration lawyers, including Ava Benach.

The Families Belongs Together group supports policies force the catch-and-release of migrants. This release allows the migrants to get jobs, disappear into the huge population of illegal migrants, and evade deportation orders when their pleas for asylum are rejected.

The group says:

Families Belong Together opposes the cruel, inhumane and unjustified separation of children from their parents along the U.S. border with Mexico and at other ports of entry into the U.S. We protest the conditions in which these children are kept. We protest the irreversible trauma that has already been perpetrated on these children and their parents for the crime of seeking a better life.

The IMUMI group tweeted:

We went to Tijuana with @RepJimmyGomez, @RepBarragan, @AlOtroLado_org and @IMUMIDF to personally escort a handful of the most vulnerable refugees to a port of entry, including the mother and children pictured in the iconic tear gassing photo. #RefugeesWelcome — Families Belong Together (@fams2gether) December 18, 2018

One of the immigration lawyers, Benach, said the group helped the mother and children jump the line, which now includes a few thousand migrants whose places in the moving line are logged by a group of the migrants. Benach tweeted:

The other five is a family. They arrived in Tijuana today and asked for asylum at Otay Mesa. They were not part of our crew. They know nothing about the list and stumbled into our little encampment. — Ava Benach (@avabdc) December 18, 2018

Another immigration lawyer, Kara Lynum accompanied the group:

Since President Barack Obama reduced border protections in 2010, hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants have used catch-and-release border loopholes to get into the United States and take jobs. Democratic lawyers and judges have widened those loopholes, principally by establishing the 2015 Flores court settlement which requires officials to release most migrants after 20 days if they bring a child over the border.

The huge inflow of migrants and asylum seekers forced officials to issue 400,000 work permits in 2017. That is roughly one new migrant worker for every 10 Americans who entered the workforce that year. The huge inflow has also jammed the immigration courts, ensuring that new migrants can work for a few years before a judge decides their case.

The inflow of asylum-seeking migrants, nonetheless, is far smaller than the inflow of legal immigrants and temporary visa-workers, which added roughly 2 workers in 2017 for every four Americans who entered the workforce.

Nationwide, the U.S. establishment’s economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white collar and blue collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor that blue collar and white collar employees.

The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.

Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that investment flow drives up coastal real-estate prices, pricing poor U.S. Latinos and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland.