The kritarchs in the 9th Circus Court of Appeals have ruled that the Remain In Mexico policy for asylum seekers arriving at the Mexico-US border is illegal. I, of course, am responsible for this Trump Administration policy. I was the one who advised the Administration that they had a number of alternatives to stop this wave of fraudulent asylum claims deliberately organized by alien smugglers, including arresting the smugglers who are here in the United States running their conspiracy, deploying the Brown Water Navy, closing the border by holding Mexico responsible for this flood, and, of course, just enforcing current law that says any alien applying for admission at a land border who is found inadmissible must wait outside the United States for their immigration court hearing. [More Options For Trump On The Caravan: Make Applicants For Asylum Wait IN MEXICO, by Federale, VDare, October 20, 2018]

To summarize, the Immigration and Nationality Act is quite specific on aliens who apply for admission at the border and are found inadmissible. They must wait in either Canada or Mexico, depending on which country they applied from. There is no question as to whether this is legal; it is the law.

(d) Service custody. The Service will assume custody of any alien subject to detention under paragraph (b) or (c) of this section. In its discretion, the Service may require any alien who appears inadmissible and who arrives at a land border port-of-entry from Canada or Mexico, to remain in that country while awaiting a removal hearing. Such alien shall be considered detained for a proceeding within the meaning of section 235(b) of the Act and may be ordered removed in absentia by an immigration judge if the alien fails to appear for the hearing. [Code of Federal Regulations, Title 8, Immigration and Nationality, Section 235.3(d), Legal Information Institute]

But some strange assortment of kritarchs says the law as written by Congress is illegal.

On Wednesday, the court said it remains “very clear” that a lower court was correct in ruling that the Trump administration program — technically called the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP — may violate the law. “It is equally clear,” the court added, “that the MPP is causing extreme and irreversible harm to plaintiffs,” many of whom are asylum-seekers themselves. Judges were not certain, however, about the scope of their injunction. Because such a legal question is “a matter of intense and active controversy,” they said, the program can continue in regions “outside the geographical boundaries of the Ninth Circuit.” The court said it will wait until March 12 for its order to take effect to see “if the Supreme Court has not in the meantime acted to reverse or otherwise modify our decision.” [Court Blocks Trump’s ‘Remain In Mexico’ Policy Along Part Of The Border, by Colin Dwyer, NPR, March 5, 2020]

The Trump Administration is preparing for a failure of SCOTUS to overturn this obviously illegal decision. But there are options the Administration has other than sending in the military police.

The U.S. government says it is sending 160 military police and engineers to two official border crossings to deal with asylum seekers in case a federal appeals court strikes down one of the Trump administration’s key policies.

Senior Customs and Border Protection officials said Friday that active duty personnel will be in place by Saturday at ports of entry in El Paso and San Diego, where a large caravan attempted to cross the border in 2018, resulting in chaos and the closure of the San Ysidro port, the nation’s busiest land crossing. Officials say 80 service members will be sent to that port and another 80 to the El Paso one. The deployment is in response to a crowd of asylum-seekers that gathered at an El Paso crossing last Friday after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily struck down the program known as “Remain in Mexico,” which forces asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases wind through court in the U.S. Officials shut down that border crossing for several hours that evening before the court reversed itself. [US Sending Military Police To Two Border Crossings, by Astrid Galvan, AP/Yahoo News, March 6, 2020]

This decision by the 9th Circus kritarchs is illegal. The Trump Administration has a number of options. The first, and most desirable, is the Andrew Jackson Option; ignore the order and continue on with Remain In Mexico, publicly claiming that the law is quite clear that the policy is legal and that the Supreme Court has already ruled that the President can exclude any alien under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Put the kritarchs in their place. An object lesson to the usurpers.

The second option is the give the kritarchs a little jujitsu: follow my recommendations to Stephen Miller. Notify the Mexican government that it and its citizens will be held responsible for any third-country alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States. The consequences will be restricted entry of Mexican government officials, halting new visa issuance to Mexicans, a slowdown at border posts where third-country nationals attempt to enter, and, eventually, the closing of the land border Ports-of-Entry (POE) on the Mexican border in California and Arizona to any traffic.

That means if the kritarchs want illegal aliens to be able to apply for asylum at POEs, that can only occur if there are POEs to apply at. A closed POE is effectively not a POE at all. The best option would, of course, be that Mexico decides to act in its own best interest and immediately deports all the third-country nationals so there is no problem caused to Mexican nationals

Undoubtedly pretty boy Chad Wolf is behind the policy of not using initiative and imagination in responding to illegal impositions of the kritarchy, but I think Ken The Knife and Stephen Miller are looking for imaginative solutions. Well, I have those solutions. Defiance, close the borders, or have the Mexicans deport the asylum seekers. The solutions to this kritarch problem are very simple. I don’t object to sending the Military Police to the border, but there are better solutions.