In the course of his assertion responding to final weekend’s barbaric assaults in Israel, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis veered sideways right into a non-sequitur about American immigration coverage.
In a post to X (previously referred to as Twitter), DeSantis stated President Joe Biden should freeze all international assist flowing to Hamas, the terrorist group liable for Saturday’s assaults that left greater than 1,000 folks useless, and freeze cash “made obtainable to Iran.” Then, DeSantis added, Biden should “instantly shut down America’s wide-open southern border to make sure we’re able to raised defend People right here at dwelling from these actual threats.”
That’s…fairly the leap.
Sure, it is true that Saturday’s assault on Israel concerned folks crossing a border, and that immigrants coming to the U.S. additionally cross a border as a part of that course of. That is actually the one similarity.
To be clear: Immigrants seeking to return to the U.S. to stay and work are completely not terrorists conducting a paramilitary operation. Mexico and the U.S. should not Israel and Palestine. And, as Saturday’s assault makes clearly clear, even essentially the most excessive measures designed to “shut down” a border could be defeated.
Conflating these points solely serves to make the controversy over U.S. immigration coverage extra poisonous and silly than it already is.
Sadly, DeSantis is not the only one doing this. Former President Donald Trump, by no means one to care a lot about precisely describing the standing of U.S. immigration coverage, claimed in a TruthSocial submit on Monday that “the identical those who raided Israel are pouring into our as soon as stunning USA, via our TOTALLY OPEN SOUTHERN BORDER, at Document Numbers.”
In the meantime, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley—who has at instances appeared just like the metaphorical grownup within the room throughout this GOP presidential main contest—made a similar claim throughout an look on Meet the Press on Sunday. “We have now to keep in mind that what occurred to Israel may occur right here in America,” Haley said. “We have now an open border. Persons are coming via; they don’t seem to be being vetted.”
There is no such thing as a inner logic in anyway to those comparisons.
Let’s begin with essentially the most acute drawback. There should not many borders on the planet extra closely militarized than the one between Israel and the Gaza Strip. It ought to stand in stark distinction to how these Republican politicians are describing America’s southern border.
The truth is, the Gaza border wall went far past something that might be possible or reasonably priced for the U.S./Mexico border. As Amir Tibon, a journalist who survived Saturday’s assault in Israel, described to The Atlantic on Monday, the construction included an “underground wall” meant to forestall Hamas from digging tunnels.
And guess what? The wall did not work.
“This was a significant infrastructure venture for the state of Israel. And that venture allowed us to sleep at night time, as a result of you may cope with rockets falling over your head in case you have a protected room in your own home, but when terrorists are infiltrating underground they usually can stroll into your neighborhood, that is a recreation changer,” Tibon advised The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg as a part of a harrowing, must-read interview.
“And within the morning hours of Saturday, October 7, after we heard the gunfire outdoors our window, we realized that this venture is an utter and full failure,” he added.
Journalists ought to ask DeSantis (and Trump, and Haley, and others making this nonsensical comparability) what precisely he’d wish to see accomplished on the U.S./Mexico border. Are they asking for a degree of militarization that exceeds what Israel has accomplished on its border with Gaza? As a result of that is what this comparability implies, and even then Saturday’s incursion ought to trigger some rethinking about how helpful partitions on borders could be.
However even desirous about this comparability at that degree appears absurd, given what number of different issues there are with making the Israel-is-to-Gaza because the United-States-is-to-Mexico comparability. Fortunately, the U.S. has not been in a decades-long, slow-simmering battle with our neighbor to the south—although some Republicans now appear eager to start one. There is no such thing as a terrorist group in Mexico motivated by centuries-old spiritual and cultural hatred that refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the American state or the rights of the individuals who stay in it.
Most significantly, there’s little proof that any terrorists searching for to hurt People are passing via the southern border. Conservatives usually level to the truth that people named on numerous terror watch lists are occasionally apprehended whereas attempting to cross the border—and use these incidents to extrapolate a large however unseen risk to America.
In actuality, that displays how overly broad America’s terror watch lists have develop into. They embrace nicely over 1 million names, together with many people who’ve by no means deliberate or tried to assault America. Because the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh has pointed out, “zero people have been killed or injured in assaults on U.S. soil dedicated by terrorists who illegally crossed the Southwest border.”
Certainly, one of the simplest ways to deal with no matter precise threats would possibly exist can be to allow more immigrants into the country legally—leaving solely those that can’t clear background checks to be sneaking over the fence illegally. That is the other of shutting down the border.
Immigration coverage and anti-terrorism insurance policies are each core features of the federal authorities and proper now both have deep flaws. We deserve leaders who take these points significantly, however this type of flippant and clearly defective conflation of the 2 does not accomplish something productive. If a politician cannot inform the distinction between migrants coming to the U.S. for jobs and terrorists hell-bent on homicide and mayhem, they should not be trusted with making federal coverage in both enviornment.
