No sooner did swarms of foreigners from Latin America arrive at San Diego-area ports of entry than reports came in they were scaling border fences.

On a local talk and breaking news radio station, I listened to callers living along the border claim they witnessed hordes of black-haired men sitting atop, or jumping over, the fence near Border Field State Park. Border Patrol agents reportedly reacted to attempted breaches and all would-be crossers were turned away, leaping back over to the Mexican side of the fence.

If agents were only reacting, however, and did not present any deterrent to illegal behavior, that probably means there are chinks in our national armor. Where are the president’s troops to fill in the gaps? And why haven’t more been deployed, considering that the situation is already showing signs of strain with only a fraction of the 7,000 or so “caravanners” at the gates?

The truth is, those thousands of troops already deployed had their hands tied from the start. They are are not in a position to deter invaders, because they cannot functionally perform that task. They are there to observe, report, and assist. For this hamstringing of our protectors, progressive bureaucrats, not President Trump, bear the blame.

But in every crisis, there are silver linings. In this case, the obvious truths that progressives asked us to deny when they asked us to believe them over our lying eyes have been born out.

Take for example the story of the émigré vanguard, constituted entirely of homosexuals.

Among the first to reach the border town of Tijuana were some 80 queer Central Americans. And why was there such a group? It is because these would be refugees found it necessary to splinter from the main body of the caravan after suffering “discriminatory treatment from other travelers and local residents.”

In other words, although homosexuality has not been outlawed in Central America like it has been in Haiti (another popular source of immigration for progressives), being an “out” queer is not infrequently a death sentence in these countries. More bluntly: “Latin America has a homophobic killing problem.” With that in mind, might Shepard Smith reconsider his position that taking in large numbers of unvetted “migrants” from countries such as these is wise policy for America? Has anyone on the Left even considered the possibility that doing so might pose a serious threat to gay American citizens?

Progressives insist the majority of these foreigners simply seek a better life on our side of the border, yet even while they are seeking that better life so many of them seem content to make the lives of their gay and lesbian companions intolerable. Leaving aside the claims of those homosexuals in actual fear for their lives—which, of course, should be investigated—what about those following them? While no one should be forced to embrace an opinion about the morality or immorality of a homosexual lifestyle, in America we do not tolerate those who embrace the harming or killing of homosexuals, or anyone else. If the attitude of some of our would-be new residents is so widely off the mark from our own, shouldn’t we reconsider the wisdom of embracing them? And this is only one aspect of American life with which the vast majority of these migrants have no familiarity and about which it might be naïve to assume we can easily assimilate them. If we cannot trust them to respect the lives and well-being of their fellow homosexual migrants, why, then, should we trust them to do America no harm?

The reality is that there are two kinds of progressives: useful idiots and Machiavellians. The former are ubiquitous, paneling for Fox News and MSNBC alike, espousing the same tired precepts of consensus liberalism that underpin progressivism. These people will go to great lengths to stop their ears against the pangs of reality. On the other hand, the latter are calculating, but not always concealed. For them, immigration is how they will their way to power.

“Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes,” reported the Washington Post in 2014. “Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin.” The Post speculates that “Obama won [North Carolina] by 14,177 votes,” and so it is within the realm of possibility that “5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.”

Perhaps this explains why lawyers representing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) issued objections to the rejection of a provisional ballot cast by a noncitizen. Is it coincidence that thousands of foreigners are surging toward a rogue American state that would offer universal healthcare to illegal aliens?

When Ronald Reagan offered amnesty to illegal aliens in 1986, he sliced a wound in California that has been hemorrhaging ever since. In a 1995 investigative report for The Atlantic, “In the Strawberry Fields,” Eric Schlosser described how millions of foreigners exploited a generous U.S. government during Reagan’s amnesty:

[The program] was expected to grant legal status to 350,000 illegal immigrants. Instead more than 1.3 million illegal immigrants—a number roughly equivalent at the time to a sixth of the adult male population of rural Mexico—applied for this amnesty, most of them using phony documents in what has been called one of the greatest immigration frauds in American history.

The 1986 law was embroidered with assurances of cracking down on future illegal immigration, enhanced law enforcement, restricting employers from hiring workers without permit for legal employment, and more. All broken promises, for Americans. For foreigners, Reagan’s amnesty was proof that the U.S. government did not have the will to resist them, and that it could be pressured into capitulation in the future once more.

The next test of our national will is at hand.

Right now, just beyond our southern border are hundreds of foreign nationals champing at the bit to violate our sovereignty. They have no regard for our laws or for our way of life and we are not now prepared, or even willing, to instill such regard in them. They will soon be joined by thousands more, and, if this wave is successful in penetrating our borders, perhaps millions more will be emboldened to come. Will Trump find the resolve that Reagan could not muster? Or will he capitulate like his predecessors and let our sovereignty go quietly into the night?

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Photo Credit: NBC 7 San Diego