Americans are no ordinary people
SAN DIEGO -- The idea of America is wasted on most Americans. We don't know how good we have it. People are literally dying to get here.
The body count has risen since the Clinton administration launched Operation Gatekeeper south of San Diego in the mid-1990s. Militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border forced immigrants into the Arizona desert. Thousands died.
The liberal media largely ignored that story, because the president who created the chaos on the border was a Democrat. Just like they slept through the Obama administration's policy of separating families, caging kids and dumping the U.S.-born children of deportees into foster care.
But now that Donald Trump is president, the Fourth Estate is the first in line to protect immigrants and refugees. It's refreshing, but also ridiculous.
America doesn't always live up to the brochure. We're a nation of immigrants that has never liked immigrants. We offer freedom to the "huddled masses" and then put their children in cages.
People don't like hearing that. Just in time for the Fourth of July, a reader chimed in: "I wish you stopped being more Mexican than American."
My Mexican-born wife chuckled. I bleed red, white and blue. I can quote Thomas Jefferson, but I'm weak on Benito Juarez. I'm a Mexican American Yankee Doodle Dandy, a real live nephew of my Uncle Samuel.
Three of my grandparents were born in the United States. On my mom's side of Tejanos, my kids are the sixth generation born in this country.
What set off the reader wasn't Mexicans, but Central Americans. Apparently, we all look alike.
I had criticized the Trump administration for its sadistic treatment of refugees from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The problem isn't that Border Patrol agents -- who are not trained as social workers -- aren't providing soap. It's that they're taking away hope.
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