Subject: Re: Record crossings @ border
What enforcement action? They're being handed phones with an app for a court date...that's years in advance. In the meantime they're being released into the United States.

Does that sound like enforcement to you?

Absolutely. It's like any other enforcement process. Most people who are arrested - and nearly all people who are arrested for nonviolent misdemeanors - are released pending their trial date. It's the most common scenario for an enforcement process for nonviolent nonfelonies.

The reality of the situation is that the system is overwhelmed and this has been allowed to happen on purpose.

Absolutely - it's been allowed to happen on purpose by both immigrant advocates and immigration hardliners.

The system is overwhelmed because there are five true things that are impossible to make work in an orderly way:

1. The law allows those presenting a prima facie claim of asylum to do so from within the U.S., and remain in the U.S. while it is pending. It is not illegal for them to be here.
2. The law allows, but does not require, adults to be detained pending their asylum claims.
3. The law does not allow children to be detained pending asylum claims for longer than one month - which means that when families arrive with children, within one month either the children have to be separated from their parents or the whole family released.
4. Congress has not allocated sufficient resources to process the current caseload of asylum claims faster than four years (on average).
5. Congress has not allocated sufficient resources to detain adults awaiting asylum claims for four years.

As long as these things are true, the system cannot deal with large numbers of asylees. Only Congress can change these things (except #3). Congress cannot change these things if there isn't an agreement. Neither side will agree to changes.

Immigration hardliners resist all attempts to make it easier for asylees to get the hearing they're entitled to quickly. Partially because around 40% of asylum claims are granted, and they want the process to be as difficult as possible - but mostly because chaos at the border is a useful tool to try to make the laws governing asylum more stringent, and disarray (bordering on cruelty) in handling migrants is perceived as a deterrent. Immigrant advocates want massive resources allocated to processing asylee claims, but resist all attempts to make it physically more difficult for migrants to reach the U.S., or to provide the resources to detain them during the pendency of asylum claims; mostly because they believe it is inhumane to lock people that have a valid asylum claim up in camps for years.

There's no "Cloward-Piven" strategy, or whatever conspiracy theory gets tossed around in conservative discussions. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by bureaucracy. The southern border enforcement system was set up to deal with single men trying to sneak into the country undetected so they could send money back home - the key was to catch them. It was not set up to deal with families who arrive at the border without trying to sneak in, but just cross and turn themselves into ICE and present an asylum claim. Because the current system doesn't work, the only way to get a system that works is to change it - but without an agreement in Congress, it can't be changed. And neither the immigration hawks or doves can agree on what to change it to.