Obama's Deportation Game
SAN DIEGO -- In a revealing exchange with Jerry Seinfeld in the comic's Web series, "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," President Obama -- who Seinfeld explains has fired off enough one-liners to appear on the show -- compares politics to football.
Sometimes you move the ball inches at a time, Obama says. Occasionally, you score points. You get hit a lot. And, he notes, much of the time, you punt.
The president forgot one: In politics, most of the time, you hide the ball.
And during the summer of 2014, that's what Obama did when dealing with the refugee crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border.
You'll recall that tens of thousands of women, children and others made a mess of election-year politics because the huddled masses took literally the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty and showed up at our back door "yearning to breathe free."
All they wanted was to keep breathing. This wasn't the usual tale of immigrants coming here for a job, a fresh start, an escape from oppression.
These people came from dangerous countries -- Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador -- where hundreds of police officers have in recent years been assassinated by violent street gangs, and where innocent bystanders are beaten, threatened, raped and murdered. Many of the refugees' friends and family members had already been killed by these gangs, and they had a credible fear they would be next. In fact, some had specifically been targeted.
That border crisis is back in the news. According to The Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security has begun preparing for a series of raids -- kicking off as early as this month -- that would target for deportation hundreds of families who had been apprehended but released with a notice to appear before an immigration court.
Conservatives wailed at the time that folks were getting away scot-free. Now it seems, as usual when it comes to issues related to immigrants and refugees, the right was wrong.
If these people failed to appear as ordered, it's hard to argue they shouldn't be deported. People make choices, and they live with the consequences.
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