The numbers of asylum-seeking migrants arriving at America’s southern border may be dropping, but the political pressure is not. President Trump and his opponents seem to be locked in a weekly struggle over immigration and identity in America. Critics decry the conditions and methods that thousands of migrants have been subjected to at the border. Last week, a Nicaraguan man became the 12th person to die in the custody of U.S. immigration authorities since September.
Trump remains undeterred and is sticking to his hard-line stance. He sees the influx of predominantly Central American migrants as an epochal crisis — and a political opportunity. In rallies, he has sought to rile up a nationalist base with his misleading insistence that his Democratic opponents favor “open borders” and zero enforcement. Even after securing funding from Congress for a raft of border security measures, he has renewed his promise to carry out mass deportations of undocumented migrants living in various parts of the country.
“I don’t know when I leave in the morning if I’ll come home in the night,” said Eva, who arrived illegally 19 years ago from Mexico and whose teenage daughter is a U.S. citizen. “They could come and get me at any time.”
View the complete July 8 article by Ishaan Tharoor on The Washington Post website here.