The situation at the border has reached crisis, if not humanitarian and national security disaster, levels.
Loopholes in the law and policies implemented by the current administration have encouraged migrants — and in particular unaccompanied alien children, their parents, and adult migrants with children traveling in family units — to enter the United States, in the expectation of remaining in this country permanently.
The situation at the border has created severe — and extremely deleterious — consequences for those migrants themselves, Border Patrol and other law-enforcement personnel, the people of the United States, and the environment (both at the border and in the interior of the United States).
As Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) explained at a May 13 Senate hearing: “The first step in solving any problem is admitting that you have one.” It is beyond time for Congress and the administration to realize that there is a problem at the border, and to respond with something more than apprehending, releasing, and dispersing migrants into communities across the United States.