Walls Don’t Stop Caravans of Thousands

President Trump has a warning:

It’s a funny thing. Trump keeps going on about his hobbyhorse wall, but as we all know, last year’s caravan from the Honduras marched straight up through Mexico along the longest route possible in order to end up in the very area with the biggest, most secure wall we have: San Diego. What’s more, as the map below shows, that’s exactly where the Army figured they’d go. And the alternate routes were all big cities with walls too: El Paso, Piedras Negras, Laredo, McAllen, and Brownsville:

These migrant caravans are positively enthralled by the wall we already have! And they’re really easy to stop: When they get to Tijuana—or whatever legal port of entry they’re heading for—you just refuse to let them in so they can apply for asylum. Piece of cake.

So if there is another caravan on its way, there’s no point in building a wall to stop them. No caravan of thousands of men, women, and children is going to cross the US border in the middle of the Mojave Desert or the Arizona Plateau. Their destination is a legal port of entry where they can apply for asylym, and those places already have walls. So maybe we can stop burbling on about the wall and instead do something about our asylum process?

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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