Trump Is Keeping Promise as BP Commissioner Says 'Catch & Release' Ending at SW Border Within Weeks
The entire point of a national border is to have control over who enters the country, but “catch and release” policies have undermined that goal for years. Now that could be finally changing, as part of yet another win for President Donald Trump on immigration issues.
As it currently stands, migrants who are caught by authorities after they illegally enter the United States from Mexico are often released into the country anyway as their court cases are pending. Obviously, this is often abused by migrants, many of whom simply vanish into America and never appear in court.
But not anymore, at least if Trump gets his way. On Wednesday, both Trump and the head of Customs and Border Protection told the media that “catch and release” will be ending soon, echoing past promises by the president.
Immigration authorities are “confident that in a couple of weeks we’re going to be able to end catch and release at the southwest border,” CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said, according to The Epoch Times.
Speaking from aboard Air Force One, the president was equally optimistic.
“There will be no more catch and release. Nobody coming into the country … And that’s without the Democrats,” Trump said, clearly enjoying the chance to jab at open-border liberals in Congress.
“It would’ve been easier, we could’ve done it the other way, but because it won’t be done through legislation and what we’re doing from Mexico, we won’t have catch within two weeks, we’ll be free of catch and release, releasing people,” the president added.
In place of “catch and release” will be a modified policy that is intended to keep illegal border crossers in Mexican territory, limiting the chances for rule breakers to exploit the immigration system.
A key part of the new policy is a rule that requires refugee seekers to request asylum in the first foreign country they enter, a change intended to prevent migrants from places like Central America from passing through Mexico without even trying to apply for help there.
That change wouldn’t have been possible without a recent Supreme Court ruling that sided with Trump and reversed an injunction which had stymied the administration on this requirement.
“U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar twice tried to issue the injunction, despite being chastised by an appeals court, on an administration rule that doesn’t let migrants apply for asylum if they declined to apply for asylum in another country they passed through on the way to the United States,” Epoch Times explained.
Now that the highest court in the land has spoken, administration officials plan to use the “remain in Mexico” rule along with revised migrant protection protocols to take a conservative border approach.
“We’re going to be able to utilize [the court ruling] across the southwest border, as well as MPP, the migrant protection protocol, so those are two significant things that are able to drive us in [ending] catch and release,” Morgan said.
However, there are a few barriers to putting this policy in place. For one thing, detention centers are already overcrowded, so detaining migrants could prove difficult, Bloomberg reported.
The Trump administration has also not reached a “safe-third country” agreement with other nations that would require asylum seekers to seek asylum in those countries before coming to the United States.
In a gesture that hinted at renewed cooperation between Mexico’s first-year president and the White House, the CBP chief also acknowledged our southern neighbor’s recent commitment of troops to deal with the immigration crisis from the other side of the border.
“What they are doing is absolutely — I know we use this word a lot, but it’s true — it’s unprecedented,” he said. “Mexico has never stepped up, and has [never] really seen this issue as a true regional crisis like they have now.”
If “catch and release” does indeed end soon, this is a major win for Trump on an issue that arguably got him elected. The fact that he was able to make significant progress even while Democrats drag their feet will certainly be noticed by supporters on the right and could give him a serious boost with his base as the 2020 election season heats up.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
