Cruz Gets the Border Crisis Wrong

It's apples, oranges and bananas. Yet for conservatives, it's all one anarchic fruit salad.

Veering off course, Cruz has introduced bills that would prevent the Obama administration from expanding DACA, change the 2008 anti-human trafficking law, provide resources for state and local governments, and empower border states to send the National Guard to the border.

Seriously? So the way to get children to stop coming here is to punish 20-somethings who have been here for years?

Behold the Republican agenda. They never liked DACA, and they're opportunistically using the border crisis as an excuse to kill it.

Yet, those dots don't connect. Check the timeline. Texas Gov. Rick Perry claims that he sent Obama a letter warning about a larger-than-normal flow of Central American minors coming across the U.S.-Mexico border back in May 2012. But that was a month before DACA was unveiled.

So the kids were coming -- before the change in policy that Cruz insists promoted them to come.

The senator's fast-and-loose approach to the immigration issue will hurt him if he runs for president. A Hispanic Republican strategist recently told me that, as badly as the GOP has done with Hispanics in recent elections, it could do more poorly in 2016 if Cruz is the nominee.

In 2012, Mitt Romney got 27 percent of the Latino vote.

"If Ted is the nominee," the strategist predicted, "he'll get even less of the Hispanic vote than Romney got."

This sounds about right. The low-water mark for Republicans is Bob Dole, who in 1996 got a paltry 21 percent of the Latino vote. Cruz could do worse. Whereas Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could make inroads with Latino voters, Cruz would probably end up roadkill.

As someone whose community has entered the United States on a red carpet thanks to that Cold War relic known as the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, Cruz ought to tread lightly with immigrants and refugees.

Instead, he comes across as Cuban-American royalty telling less worthy peasants from Mexico and Central America to eat flan.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com.