A large and growing army from Central America is making its way to our southern border, and a second is already forming to follow in its footsteps.
The first wave of invaders marches proudly under the flag of Honduras — a nation many of them ostensibly find so abhorrent that they are willing to walk the entire length of Mexico to escape it. Meanwhile, their supporters defiantly burned an American flag outside the U.S. embassy in Honduras.
Trump has pledged that he will deploy the military to defend our territory, but the Democrats are demanding that we throw open the gates and let the hordes through unchecked.
The migrants themselves frequently employ both martial and religious terminology, referring to themselves as “warriors” and vowing that nothing will stop them from entering the U.S. “No one will stop us, only God,” one migrant vowed, while another declared that “Donald Trump is the antichrist.”
The caravaners frequently profess that they are hoping for a better life in the United States, yet the very first action many of them will take upon reaching U.S. soil will be criminal in nature. Others plan to exploit a loophole in our immigration law by reciting a script that will guarantee them an asylum interview, but in both cases, the one thing they will not be doing is going through normal legal-immigration channels.
But then, criminality is not a foreign concept to at least some of those currently trudging toward the Rio Grande. Just as President Trump suspected, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Tuesday that “there are individuals within the caravan who are gang members or have significant criminal histories.”
DHS also reported that people from the Middle East, South Asia, and other countries outside Central America are also en route to the U.S., which is particularly troubling in light of the fact that we know there is a terrorist presence in Central America. On October 10, just days before the caravan crossed from Honduras into Guatemala, the Guatemalan government announced that it had arrested 100 people “highly linked to terrorist groups, specifically ISIS.”
That hardly implicates the caravan as an elaborate cover for terrorist infiltration, but it does mean there is a risk that some terrorists — Middle Eastern or otherwise — will be able to use the caravan as camouflage to improve their odds of crossing the U.S. border undetected.
It’s anyone’s guess what those unsavory elements plan to do once they get here, but history gives us a better idea of what to expect from the economic refugees who make up the bulk of the caravan. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the average immigrant household consumes about 33 percent more welfare than citizen households, but immigrant families from Central America and Mexico are abnormally expensive, costing taxpayers a whopping 86 percent more than non-immigrants.
And the 10,000 or more migrants in the Honduran caravan are just the beginning of what is rapidly becoming a deluge. Already, thousands more are assembling in Guatemala to make another coordinated dash for the U.S.
Whether this copycat caravan succeeds in breaching our borders will likely hinge on our response to the one that is currently underway. If the first group receives kid-gloves treatment, the second group will only be emboldened to follow closely on its heels.
These migrant caravans are a serious national security threat, and must be treated as such. President Trump understands this, which is why he’s promised to deploy the military to stop them, if necessary. The Democrats either cannot or will not recognize the threat, which is why they want to roll out a red carpet for the invaders.
Without borders, we fail to exist as a sovereign nation. President Trump is not only right in his approach to fixing our broken immigration system in America, he’s righteous in his convictions about enforcing the rule of law and protecting American communities in the process.
Jan Brewer is the former governor of Arizona and a member of the Donald J. Trump for President Inc. Advisory Board.
