Members of a US-bound migrant caravan stand on a road after federal police briefly blocked their way outside the town of Arriaga, Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018. Hundreds of Mexican federal officers carrying plastic shields had blocked the caravan from advancing toward the United States, after several thousand of the migrants turned down the chance to apply for refugee status and obtain a Mexican offer of benefits. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) staff have told The Washington Examiner that Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) has been quietly sending aides into Juarez, a town near the U.S. border, to find illegals who have been deported under the “Remain in Mexico” policy. The migrants are being instructed to pretend they can’t speak Spanish. This will allow them to take advantage of a loophole in the asylum laws and return to the U.S. (Escobar won the seat vacated by Beto O’Rourke.)

The National Border Patrol Council’s El Paso chapter and CBP personnel informed The Washington Examiner that members of Rep. Veronica Escobar’s staff have been working with the local Catholic diocese and have allegedly interviewed thousands of migrants in Juarez recently to find migrants who “may have been wrongly returned” by the Department of Homeland Security.

A senior union official has shared evidence gathered by CBP personnel with the Examiner. He said, “What we believe is happening is Veronica Escobar’s office is going … to basically second-guess and obstruct work already done by the Border Patrol.”

A CBP official explained the “Remain in Mexico” policy (formal name is Bilateral Migration Protection Protocols):

Anyone returned must be fluent in Spanish because they may have to reside in Mexico up to five years until a U.S. federal judge decides their asylum claim. A Democratic politician’s aides reescorting people back to the port are telling officers the Central American individual with them cannot speak Spanish despite their having communicated in it days earlier.

The union representative told the Examiner:

What we’re hearing from management is that they’re attempting to return people, and the story was changed in Mexico, where a person who understood Spanish before now doesn’t understand — where a person who didn’t have any health issues before now has health issues…They went through and interviewed everybody, cherry-picked them, brought them back, and now are using them as tag lines. They’re going over there and manufacturing a lot of these issues. We had finally found a happy medium ‘cause we always get crapped on when it comes to immigration laws, and then they’re finding loopholes to bring them back,” the second official said.

All of the officials are concerned the “interviews might be used to suggest the Border Patrol is wrongfully turning away a large number of asylum-seekers.”

Former federal immigration judge Mark H. Metcalfe said:

The involvement of Escobar’s office was likely more of a stunt than a genuine threat to the integrity of the process. She’s trying to obviously say these people have been wrongly denied their claims and they’re waiting when they shouldn’t be. However, a criminal case would exist if Escobar were found to be complicit in an effort to perpetrate a fraud, which would have to include knowingly injecting false statements during interviews, follow-up conversations, and documents presented to U.S. officials.

A DHS official told the Examiner:

Democrats, nonprofit organizations, and 2020 hopefuls are furious that these migrants are not allowed to await their court dates in the U.S., where they have the opportunity to disappear and slip into the interior never to be seen again.” By opposing a system that assists migrants and speeds wait times, these individuals are exposing a cause that looks more like a cover story for their political motivations. Any efforts to subvert and obstruct federal law enforcement operations should receive a full review.

According to the Examiner:

In one incident, an Escobar aide and diocese official walked a male migrant over the bridge in June and asked for him to be admitted into the U.S. because they had found he had “cognitive disabilities.” Officers took the boy and turned the case over to the Border Patrol, where an agent found a Constituent Information and Privacy Release Form with the U.S. House of Representatives seal on it inside the 17-year-old’s file. Two officials said the paper would have to have been put in his file while he was interviewed in Mexico and was not supposed to have been left there because it would reveal to the Border Patrol that a member of Congress or their staff was meeting with migrants in Mexico. The boy has since returned to Mexico because the medical condition was not diagnosed by a medical professional but by an aide of the congresswoman, one official said Friday. “Management saw that form and was like, ‘What is this?’ and reached out to our International Liaison Unit. And ILU said, ‘Yes, Veronica Escobar and several other politicians are in Mexico trying to defeat the MPP program,'” the union said. In another confirmed case, a female migrant was brought back to the port after claiming to have been raped in Juarez. Officials said they knew of three other incidents where Escobar’s aides had walked back a “Remain in Mexico” program recipient.

If these allegations are correct, then Escobar is using taxpayer funds to reverse already-decided legal action. A CBP official said “these people were found inadmissible under a new program and they must remain in Mexico. They’re trying to subvert that.”

I am not a lawyer, so I can’t speak to the legality of what Escobar is doing. It’s likely that Escobar is not breaking the law. Ethically, however, I find it egregious that a member of Congress would work to subvert U.S. policy. Even worse, American taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for this chicanery.

Suppose a policeman were to coach a suspect on a specific way they might avoid charges for a crime – not something general, but a precise technicality such as the arresting officer had not followed protocol to the letter. And let’s also assume this policeman was doing this deliberately and enlisting his subordinates to actively search for technicalities which could help suspects to circumvent the law. Many Americans would be horrified.

Illegals have become a privileged class in America. In many ways, they enjoy more rights than U.S. citizens. And, if an illegal also happens to be transgender, the treatment becomes better still.

Oh, to be an undocumented immigrant in America.