No border wall or any other immigration enforcement policy can stop the effects of national suicide. We are being told by this administration that unless Congress acts, there is nothing the administration can do to stop the crisis of Central American teens creating a smuggling economy for drugs, sex trafficking, and MS-13. If that is the case, then we’ve already lost our sovereignty, and no act of Congress can rectify this insanity.

The controversy began when CNN accused the DHS and the HHS of losing track of 1,475 unaccompanied alien children in this country – as if they were somehow lost in a desert desperate for food and diapers. The reality is that they were resettled with illegal alien parents or other relatives. They are only “lost” in the sense that the government lost control over them in order to deport them, and they are now free to join MS-13 and terrorize our families.

These are not unaccompanied trafficking victims; they are self-smuggled

Naturally, the DHS and the HHS were defensive about the accusation and put out a press release lamenting how “No good deed goes unpunished.” They noted how rather than losing them in some dangerous setting, all of the 7,000+ aliens were resettled with “their sponsors—who are usually parents or family members and in all cases have been vetted for criminality and ability to provide for them.” It’s just that 1,467 of them never returned their calls following up to ask how nice their stay in America has been.

The problem is that this statement is an indictment of administration policy. Now that they admit the UACs were all placed with family members, by definition, they are not eligible for refugee resettlement and must be deported. As we noted before, UAC refugee status is only conferred on an alien under 18 who A) was a victim of a “severe form of trafficking” and B) doesn’t have a parent or guardian present in the country. In this case, they indeed have parents in the country who are also illegal and are self-trafficking their own kids and helping the drug cartels make a killing and continue bringing in drugs and gangs. They are the very perpetrators who served as the impetus for the original anti-trafficking law, not the victims of it. The parents and the teenagers must all be deported.

As Judge Andrew Hanen warned right as the drug crisis was ramping up in 2013, “By fostering an atmosphere whereby illegal aliens are encouraged to pay human smugglers for further services, the government is not only allowing them to fund the illegal and evil activities of these cartels but is also inspiring them to do so.” This is why Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said from his experience on the border that “until we shut illegal immigration down, we will not be able to put a stop to illegal drug smuggling once and for all.”

While members of Congress are virtue-signaling over “separating immigrant families,” what about separating American families – permanently – through the drug and MS-13 crisis created by these very incentives? Fox News reported last week that the MS-13 gangbanger who burned a Texas man a live last year was an unaccompanied “dreamer” who came in during the border surge under Obama. Only five of the 7,635 UACs who were placed with family members between October and December of last year have been deported. Just five!

The truth about presidential power over immigration

The president ordered the DHS during the first week of his administration not to refer UACs to the Office of Refugee Resettlement unless they properly fit the definition of the statute. Why has this policy not been implemented? Why is the administration continuing Obama’s catch-and-release policies at a time of a drug and gang crisis when we have statutes to prevent this? There are too many people in the White House convincing the president of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s position – that the president is compelled by law or the courts to bring in all asylum and UAC applicants. That is simply not true. As we’ve noted before, the president always has the prerogative to block the entry of anyone, particularly at a time of such grave national security concerns related principally to these teenagers and the economy of organized crime and drugs at the border. This is inherent in the president’s Article II powers as well as delegated authority under Sec. 212f of the INA. This would be true even if the UAC statute required self-smuggled aliens to be released, which it does not.