‘In plain English, it was a giant s**t show…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Despite President Donald Trump’s directive to block all nonessential foreign travel between the U.S. and Mexico, some Customs and Border Protection officials are continuing to allow non-citizens to enter the country, according to the Washington Examiner.
“We’re letting them through. And that’s pretty much the gist of it,” one CBP official in Arizona said.
Hundreds of non-citizens who claim they need to shop, visit family or attend medical appointments have still been allowed to cross the border, the official said.
“Nobody’s enforcing it,” the official said of the Trump administration’s directive. “It was put up — the president put it out. The chief patrol put it out. And we’re just not doing it.”
The directive requires CBP’s Office of Field Operations to turn away all non-citizens unless they have a permit to work in the U.S., are a legal permanent resident or are a student. CBP supervisors, however, have told officers who inspect vehicles at the border crossings not to obey the mandate, the officials said.
One officer said that in a 10-hour span, not a single vehicle out of the hundreds that crossed the border was turned away.
“In plain English, it was a giant s**t show,” the CBP official said. “Nobody followed the directive, a plain and simple directive. You’re trying to keep the coronavirus from going north … yet you just let it bleed through anyway, so you’re not doing the job you’re directed to. That’s what’s aggravating.”
When asked why CBP supervisors were deliberately ignoring the Trump administration’s order, a Border Patrol official said, “Basically, second-line didn’t want to make the public angry. But that’s pretty much your job at the port—to make people angry.”
The Trump administration’s strict border policies have, however, impacted illegal immigration. In fact, illegal crossings have been cut in half since Border Patrol began directly returning illegal immigrants to Mexico rather than detaining them.
“We’re not going to take you into our custody,” Mark Morgan, the acting head of CBP, said on Sunday. “We don’t know anything about you. You have no documents, we’re not going to take you into our facilities and expose you to CBP personnel and the American people as well as immigrants.”