Making America Grate Again

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

The “security crisis” at the United States-Mexico border is a political creation that played a big part in President Donald Trump’s election victory, and continues to energise his base — particularly through the constant coverage Fox News gives the issue and serious crime carried out by illegal immigrants.

Facts don’t matter here so much as emotion, grievance and political advantage. While the morality and effectiveness of a wall can be debated, the numbers crossing the border argue strongly against there being a crisis now. In the year 2000 more than 1.6 million migrants were apprehended on the US-Mexico border; the last year when more than 1 million were intercepted was 2006; numbers then fell steadily over the next five years to about 330,000, and have hovered below or around 400,000 since then.

Studies also indicate immigrants are more likely to be victims of crime and less likely to commit crime (including violent crime) than native-born US citizens.

Yesterday, in his first television address to the nation from the Oval Office, Trump correctly said leading Democrats have supported a physical barrier in the past (the Secure Fence Act of 2006, a $1.4 billion border security package).

He also said 300 US citizens die each week from heroin, “90 percent of which floods across from our sourthern border”. While nearly all heroin in the US does come from Mexico, the US Drug Enforcement Administration says only “a small percentage” is seized between the legal entry points through which most of it is smuggled.

Yet this fake crisis has now shut down a quarter of the US federal government for 19 days — the second longest shutdown in US history — after Trump and Democratic politicians hit an impasse over his request for ?$5.7 billion in funding for a wall on the US-Mexico border.

The logical solution would be to separate the border security debate from the government funding bill Trump attached it to, so the shutdown ends. Pressure from his own party will only build for that as the shutdown continues, so Trump is probably about to declare a national emergency — to bypass Congress and use military budget for his wall. Only in Trump’s America.