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Claiming to be responding to lax border security, Virginia is spending precious resources to send National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border, as reported in the July 10 Metro article “100 National Guard members deploy to Texas border on Youngkin orders.”
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I was at the border this month, in Del Rio, Tex., and witnessed how troops are being used to secure the border. Just one example: A 40-year-old woman and her husband were fleeing death threats from drug gangs in their hometown in Mexico. At the border, Mexican troops showed them where best to cross the Rio Grande. The couple were told to surrender to U.S. officials. The Americans directed them to report to Texas state troopers waiting on ranch land. The couple obeyed. The husband was arrested for trespassing. The Texas Highway Patrol took their cellphones and their documents. The woman told me she was released. She made her way to a humanitarian respite center, where I met her. She was being boarded on a bus that would take her to D.C. She pleaded for me to help her find her husband: “I have no way of getting in touch with him. I am lost in this country.” She was not bringing fentanyl into the country. She was guilty only of trusting that the United States is a fair and safe place. She did not know that we are a people with leaders who manipulate our fears and waste the lives of innocent people.
The only insecure people on the border would be those who trust us.
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Michael Seifert, Washington
The writer was a community organizer in Brownsville, Tex., for 35 years.
How often does U.S. Customs and Border Protection find fentanyl on migrants crossing outside “lawful” entry points? Just 0.02 percent of the time. Meanwhile, more than 90 percent of the fentanyl seizures happening at border checkpoints, and in most of those cases, the drug is smuggled, sold and consumed by U.S. citizens.
In case basic math doesn’t appeal to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) or Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), mobilizing National Guard troops to the southern border makes even less sense as a deterrent. Border enforcement has a long history of only killing or harming more immigrants.
As an attorney with the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, I work alongside immigrants coming through the southern border who are fleeing persecution, political instability and natural disasters. They are overwhelmingly seeking safety in the form of asylum, a right guaranteed to them by international and U.S. law. So, it makes little sense for them to sneak fentanyl across the border, as it could prevent them from being granted asylum or any other legal immigration status.
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Let’s stop blaming fentanyl’s proliferation on migrants. If all migration stopped tomorrow, we would wake up to the exact same overdose crisis because — to reiterate — immigrants have little to nothing to do with trafficking drugs. If Mr. Youngkin were serious about saving lives, he would focus his efforts at home instead of participating in political stunts and pointing fingers (and weapons) at displaced people who have essentially nothing to do with fentanyl. Nothing else adds up.
Daniel Melo, Raleigh, N.C.
The writer is a senior attorney in CAIR Coalition’s Immigration Impact Lab.
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