There are two things that we’ve discovered this past week about the caravan of migrants currently at the United States border.

The first is that a significant percentage of them have, in the words of one MSNBC reporter, “not articulated (the) need for asylum.” The second is that when those individuals try and cross the U.S. border illegally by breaching the wall, the Border Patrol is willing to meet them with the force necessary to repel them.

And, according to some of the individuals involved in the caravan, that’s enough to send them back to their home countries.

According to tweets from Adolfo Flores, BuzzFeed’s national security correspondent for immigration, the number of self-deporting immigrants in Mexico doubled the day after Sunday’s incident at the border.

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“An agent with Grupos Beta, the humanitarian arm of Mexico’s immigration authority, told me 30 people from the caravan have elected to self deport this morning,” Flores reported Monday.

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“It’s double than the 15 they get daily and believe it’s because people are scared after yesterday.”

An agent with Grupos Beta, the humanitarian arm of Mexico’s immigration authority, told me 30 people from the caravan have elected to self deport this morning. It’s double than the 15 they get daily and believe it’s because people are scared after yesterday. — Adolfo Flores (@aflores) November 26, 2018

There was photo evidence of that trend, too.

“People outside the outdoor shelter are signing up to leave Mexico and return home,” Flores tweeted.

“Many cite fear of staying after yesterday’s clash at the border and discrimination in Tijuana from residents.”

People outside the outdoor shelter are signing up to leave Mexico and return home. Many cite fear of staying after yesterday’s clash at the border and discrimination in Tijuana from residents. pic.twitter.com/A5VbwBtgzh — Adolfo Flores (@aflores) November 26, 2018

“The border is not like people and the news back home says it is … they said it was safe and easy,” Javier Gonzalez, one of those voluntarily going home, told Flores. “We came to find the American dream and all we found was a nightmare.”

“The border is not like people and the news back home says it is…they said it was safe and easy,” said Javier Gonzalez, who is voluntarily going home. “We came to find the American dream and all we found was a nightmare.” — Adolfo Flores (@aflores) November 26, 2018

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Using force against people isn’t pleasant, even if it’s necessary. Let’s start there. However, it’s part of a civilized society. Almost any social contract requires individuals to enforce a set of laws; definitionally, for that legal authority to enforce laws also requires them to use force if lawbreakers don’t comply. That force must be used at a minimum level, but be used it must.

Several years ago, most people would likely agree with this assessment. And many still do — but there’s a loud group of leftists who believe any attempt to enforce our immigration laws on the southern border is racist and/or cynical. And their reasons for believing this are usually — but certainly not always, it must be noted — racist and/or cynical. The fact remains that the idea we ought to enforce our own laws is seen as “tough.”

Fine. It pays to be tough.

The American dream is for immigrants. But the American dream doesn’t entail breaking immigration law. What an individual who’s self-deporting is saying is that they a) have no realistic asylum claim and b) are fearful of Border Patrol reprisal because they were going to illegally breach the border as opposed to asking for asylum at a port of entry.

Indeed, Mr. Gonzalez seems to confirm this when he says “they said it was safe and easy” to cross the border. It’s impossible to know for sure, but that doesn’t sound like someone who was planning to follow the appropriate law to enter this country legally.

In other words, the Trump administration’s decision to enforce the law — which, incidentally, was the same way that the Obama administration enforced the law — worked, at least in microcosm. This is anecdotal, of course, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see this happen on a macro scale in the weeks to come.

That the enforcement of the law via the minimum force necessary produces the appropriate result shouldn’t make any of us gleeful, but it should reinforce our belief that the Trump administration’s plan works — no matter how much the left may crow about it.

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