Trump is right to stop illegal alien caravan instead of rolling out welcome mat Trump will stop the caravan, defend our border, keep out criminals, and protect America. Democrats want to abolish ICE and keep a weak asylum system.

Brandon Judd | Opinion contributor

Show Caption Hide Caption Pentagon sending 5,200 troops to border The Defense Department says it's sending 5,200 active duty troops to 'harden' the southern border against a migrant caravan making its way through Mexico (Oct 29)

Another “caravan” of several thousand illegal aliens is marching towards our southern border, and the Democrats want to lay out the welcome mat.

All that stands between the United States and total lawlessness on the border is President Donald Trump and his administration’s determination that American law — not the open borders lobby — decides who enters this country.

These Central American caravaners make it very clear that they want to enter the United States, and they don’t really care what the people of the United States have to say about it. Singing their national anthems and carrying their national flags, the would-be invaders scoff at the notion that immigration laws apply to them.

With the encouragement of American liberals, Democratic politicians and international open borders groups, this spectacle has become a regular occurrence. This spring, a group called Pueblo Sin Fronteras — literally “people without borders” — led a caravan of about 1,500 Central Americans through Mexico to the U.S. border.

Democrats help migrants exploit asylum system

After weeks of fawning news coverage, the migrants split up at our border. Some dispersed into Mexico, where they were offered residency. Some made a break for it and illegally crossed into the United States. Others presented themselves at California border crossings and, carefully coached by American lawyers, told U.S. immigration officials the exact magic words that trigger a “credible fear” determination for asylum.

Knowing they have the support of “abolish ICE” Democrats, the very same organizers are trying these proven tactics again.

Caravaners know that if they simply claim to fear persecution in their home country, they stand a very good chance of being allowed to enter the United States with no proof. Once in, it could be years, if ever, before they have to defend that claim in an immigration hearing, let alone face deportation.

This cynical exploitation of our generous asylum laws is deliberately enabled by Democrats and open borders groups. Through years of lawsuits and Obama-era executive orders, they’ve manipulated the system to a breaking point. Now the same people are resisting Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, as he tries to return asylum policy to its original purpose.

With Trump's full support, Sessions is making clear that asylum is for people who are being persecuted for their “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” — not anyone whose home country is less prosperous or more dangerous than America.

More: My son was murdered by an illegal immigrant. Neither he nor Mollie Tibbetts deserved to die.

Forget the wall already, it's time for the U.S. to have open borders

Warning to Trump: Caravan focus could backfire and cost Republicans in the midterms

Since Donald Trump's entry onto the national political scene in 2015, he has advocated tirelessly for a secure, physical wall to put an end to this chaos at the border. But Democrats have time and again threatened to scuttle vital budget bills if the legislation funded even a portion of that wall.

While his congressional allies continue to fight for wall funding, the president has threatened to cut off foreign aid to Central American countries if those governments refuse to stem the tide of illegal alien caravans tramping through their territory to reach the United States.

President Trump is also pledging to use his command of the U.S. military to counter this wanton disregard for our borders. “In addition to stopping all payments to these countries, which seem to have almost no control over their population, I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught — and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!” he tweeted this month.

That’s no idle threat. In April, after the last caravan breached our borders, Trump ordered thousands of National Guardsmen to support U.S. Border Patrol operations. That deployment led to more than 10,000 arrests of deportable illegal aliens and the seizure of several tons of illegal drugs.

The border is a national security issue. The work our immigration enforcement agencies do is essential to keeping Americans safe from crime, drugs and the vicious transnational cartels that peddle both. Chief among these agencies is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the same ICE that many Democrats want to abolish.

Trump wants to keep criminals out of US

In fiscal 2017 alone, the ICE-Homeland Security Investigations unit seized nearly 1 million pounds of drugs, including tons of the deadly opioids that are fueling the worst drug overdose crisis in U.S. history.

Stemming the flow of violent crime, much of it linked to MS-13 and other brutal transnational criminal gangs, is also impossible if we can’t control border crossings. Fully 74 percent of the 143,470 suspected illegal aliens ICE arrested for removal proceedings in 2017 had criminal records, including almost 10,000 sex offenders and more than 1,500 convicted killers.

It’s the goal of the Trump administration to get these people out of our country and keep them out.

Democrats and open borders advocates, though, want to abolish ICE, leave our weakened asylum system unreformed, and ignore the fact that foreign governments are enabling the mass invasion of American borders. They oppose Trump’s immigration agenda at every turn because they’re convinced that continued mass illegal immigration and, eventually, mass amnesty, will bring them an endless supply of liberal votes.

Regardless, they will learn that, despite their best efforts to degrade our border security, Trump will continue to stand in their way and enforce the rule of law in America.

Brandon Judd is the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the exclusive labor representative of approximately 16,000 Border Patrol agents.