Thread by @richardclarke

Terrorists at the Border, Not

The Administration is attempting to persuade the American people that terrorists are flooding our southern border. They have been quite specific, claiming 3,755 terrorists were rounded up. You may not remember the press conferences when these... 1/

terrorists were arrested, the plots that were revealed. That would be because the Administration's statement was a lie. There is no other word for it. The 3,755 "terrorists" caught at the southern border were mainly individuals who showed up at airports around the world... 2/

(not on the southern border) and were rejected because their name, or one like it, was on a no fly list or the even larger list of names of people barred from entry into the US for any one of dozens of reasons. Had they been wanted terrorists, in most countries they would... 3/

have been arrested by local authorities on the spot. Indeed, if known and wanted terrorists had shown up at the southern border Customs and Border Protection officers would have taken them into custody. That, of course, did not happen. The DHS Secretary also claimed that... 4/

there were 3,000 "special interest aliens" who were stopped. What you may ask is, what is a special interest alien? Merely being a citizen of any one of almost two dozen nations can result in that designation. While the Administration would like us to imagine these people... /5

sneaking in where a wall could have stopped them, they were actually people who showed up at border crossings or airports. The Administration's claims about terrorists on the border were part of a stream of erroneous and distorted data produced to justify the claim that... /6

there is a "Crisis on the Border." To be perfectly clear, there is NO crisis on the border. What exactly is the problem and how would it be best addressed?

What is true is that there has been an increase in the number of families and individuals from Guatemala and other... /7

Central American countries seeking asylum by walking the hundreds of miles to a US border. They are fleeing failed states where there is severe economic distress and rampant violence from gangs and police. Few, however, are trying to sneak in to the United States. /8

Typically, they voluntarily turn themselves in and ask for asylum. Under US law, anyone asking for asylum who appears to have a credible claim of a fear of violence does have a right for that claim to be reviewed. Ninety percent of those seeking asylum allowed to wait in... /9

the US for adjudication do show up for their hearing, rather than just blending into the US population as some would have you believe. Only a fifth are granted asylum in the US, fewer than twenty thousand a year or about 0.006 percent of our population. /10

If the Administration wanted to deal with the problem that exists, it would not waste billions of dollars on a wall, but would focus instead on how to increase the ability to process those showing up and applying for asylum. /11

If the number approved for asylum seems like a "crisis" to the Administration, they could ask Congress to change the asylum law. More importantly, if the asylum seekers from Central American nations were a crisis, the Administration should be moving... /12

urgently to help improve the situation in those countries. It could ask for an Emergency Supplemental appropriation for development and security programs there. It could work with other donor countries and international organizations to make such efforts a major initiative. /13

But the Administration is not really concerned with solving the crisis that it claims exists. What the Administration really wants is not to address an actual crisis or even to deal with a non-crisis problem. When they flood the media with distorted statistics... /14

we should reveal their falsehoods, but we should not be diverted by them. We should not accept the basic premise that there is a major problem with border control, or that border control improvement should be among the top issues for the White House or the Congress. /15

What the Administration is really doing is seeking to whip up a portion of our country that is anti-immigrant. It is not about stopping imaginary terrorists along the Rio Grande, not about border control, it is about generating fear. /16

The President of the United States is attempting to cause his supporters, a minority of the American people, to maintain their devotion to him by fanning their prejudices and paranoia. That is the real crisis. /17