By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to build a wall has triggered a surge of Central American families flowing into the U.S. to escape poverty and warlike conditions.
Smugglers are telling migrants they better cross the border soon before the wall is erected, the Boston Globe reports.
For Smugglers, fears of Trump building a wall have been a selling point.
To handle the influx, the U.S. sent 150 additional agents to Texas to shore up the border.
The Globe writes:
Here at the border, the obstacles to Trump’s plans appear daunting. To hold, quickly process, and deport the tens of thousands of arrivals each month, the Trump administration would have to add scores of immigration judges and dramatically expand detention facilities, which have faced legal challenges. A wall could cost billions.
Some here welcome a Trump crackdown. Many Border Patrol agents resent what they see as a ‘‘catch-and-release’’ approach to the flood of Central Americans. To them, Trump’s win has delivered the morale-boosting equivalent of a Red Bull.
‘‘We’re going to be able to do our jobs again,’’ said Chris Cabrera, a Border Patrol agent and a spokesman for their union, which endorsed Trump for president.
‘‘We’ve turned into a detention agency,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re not out there enforcing. We’re doing jailer work and sometimes babysitting.’’
But analysts, lawyers and elected officials on both sides of the border say it is a place that has always defied easy fixes and expensive barriers.
