Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) has been secretly sending staff members to Mexico to coach immigrants on how to exploit loopholes in the asylum process and re-enter the country, according to multiple U.S. and Customs Border Protection (CBP) agents.
Reports suggest that Escobar’s staff members are being dispatched to identify migrants who have been sent back south of the border under the recently implemented bilateral Migration Protection Protocols — commonly referred to as the “Remain in Mexico” policy — whereby those seeking asylum are required to wait in that country for their claims to be formally processed, something that may take up to five years.
Once they establish contact, these same staffers instruct the migrants to claim, under questioning by CBP personnel, that they do not speak fluent Spanish, a circumstance which, under an existing legal loophole, permits their return to the U.S. Such claims are often made despite the fact that the same migrants communicated in Spanish in prior discussions with CBP agents.
“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 senior official said.
The staff members have reportedly attempted to interview upwards of 6,000 of immigrants who were sent back to Mexico, subsequently encouraging them to lie about their language skills or their health status in order to return to American soil.
Undermining key policy
“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,” A Border Patrol union representative told the Washington Examiner.
Another official lamented the blatant disregard being shown for the “Remain in Mexico” policy. “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,” he said.
Before the policy was put in place, most immigrants seeking asylum never returned for their hearings, and instead disappeared into the U.S. interior permanently.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly discussed the need for the asylum process to be fixed and for loopholes to be closed. He stated in a recent tweet, “The Democrats should change the Loopholes and Asylum Laws so lives will be saved at our Southern Border. They said it was not a crisis at the Border, that it was all just ‘manufactured.’ Now they admit that I was right — But they must do something about it. Fix the Laws NOW!”
Legal jeopardy
Mark H. Metcalf, a former federal immigration judge indicated that Escobar could face criminal charges of fraud and making false statements to officials because of her staff members’ actions.
Metcalf wasn’t sure how directly Escobar was involved in the efforts, however. He acknowledged that the situation could be “more of a stunt than a genuine threat to the integrity of the process.”
Escobar and her staffers must be held to account for encouraging asylum seekers to lie in order to get back into the U.S. If nothing happens to them, you can bet that other Democrats will follow the congresswoman’s lead.
It’s sad that so many Democrats are hell-bent on doing whatever they can to prevent Trump from succeeding at the border, even if it hurts their own country in the process.
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