You may have seen last week that soldiers from Colorado are heading to the border with Mexico, joining an estimated force of 15,000 being sent to keep a migrant caravan away when it is expected to arrive on foot weeks from now.
Soldiers from Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base will take part in the mission. Orders issued by Secretary of Defense James Mattis state that active-duty units will not engage immigrants, although this has been muddied by President Donald Trump’s statement that they could fire upon refugees – which Trump subsequently downplayed.
It has been dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot. That is in keeping with the inflated language Defense prefers. Recall that the massive U.S. invasion of Panama at Christmas in 1989 was called Operation Just Cause. As Christmas dragged into New Year’s with no apparent need for such force, bored soldiers renamed it Just Because.
If we were to be that cynical, we might imagine that while Trump did not organize this so-called caravan any more than George Soros did, its inflated specter served his purposes before the election.
“Did you watch tonight?” Trump told a rally in Florida Saturday. “I sent the United States military to our borders. And I looked at those young, great people and I looked at those generals giving the orders ... and I watched that barbed wire being put down. Barbed wire!”
We cannot conceive this show of force has as much use now. After all, arrests of migrants along the southwest border were fewer in fiscal year 2018 than the average for the last decade. In 2017, they were fewer than they’d been since 1971.
Nevertheless, there are people in need fleeing Central America. So what is to be done?
Two things come to mind, when Congress reconvenes.
The first may be a forlorn hope, but Congress could find bipartisan leadership to enact comprehensive immigration reform, including clearer definitions of how many people and which can seek help in the U.S. We have always been a haven for many of the world’s less-fortunate. It is what we do, who we are. And who better to help than our neighbors?
The second is to hold hearings as part of an inquiry into what has gone so badly wrong in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, the three countries from which most of this latest wave of emigrants are coming.
The point would be to search for solutions that might make it possible for more to stay home and help rebuild their shattered societies.
In Honduras, shattered may be an understatement. The rule of law and government at many levels has evaporated. Gangs are in control.
In El Salvador, lush with vegetation, more than 90 percent of surface water sources are contaminated. And it has the world’s highest rate of homicide.
Think of a house set ablaze, because that is what these people are leaving. And then, imagine that as the occupants emerge onto the lawn – a mother, a father, a child, in whatever they could throw on – they are kept by force beside that blaze. Emergency personnel say, “It’s not our fault your house is burning. And we don’t know who you are.”
We saw a cartoon the other day. On the right side of the frame was a hulking U.S. soldier in full combat gear on the southern border. On the left was a tiny girl with a backpack looking up at him and saying, “Por favor, señor ... is this home of the brave?”
It felt like a punch in the gut.
We are better than this.
