Ex-ICE acting director: Shutting border will do ‘absolutely nothing to stop’ migrant flow

A former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said Monday that President Trump’s threat to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border would be ineffective in reining in immigration.

Shutting down the border would leave “$650 billion in trade with Mexico threatened, and it’s going to do nothing, absolutely nothing to stop the flow of Central Americans into this country,” John Sandweg, who manned ICE temporarily under former President Obama, said on CNN’s “Newsroom.”

{mosads}“The vast majority [of Central Americans] are actually entering the country illegally, so they’re not going through ports of entry,” Sandweg continued.

“Once they get their two feet on American soil they file their asylum claims, we have a process that has worked for decades to deal with that, we just haven’t dedicated the resources necessary to process these numbers of people efficiently or quickly so it’s taking years, thus further incentivizing more to come.” 

John Sandweg, former acting director of US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, says President Trump potentially shutting down the US-Mexico border will do “nothing, absolutely nothing to stop the flow of Central Americans into this country.” https://t.co/rSwIg19h8L pic.twitter.com/mq8Mwl3xBd

— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) April 1, 2019

Trump last week threatened to close the border multiple times in response to growing warnings from his administration about a crisis there.

Roughly 100,000 people have been arriving at the southern border each month seeking asylum, according to Department of Homeland Security tracking. Those surging numbers have caused backlogs of court cases and an increasing lack of proper facilities to hold immigrants.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Sunday said that closing the border would allow agents working at legal points of entry to go out and patrol in the desert where there is no wall.

Sandweg said that Mulvaney’s explanation did not make sense because many immigrants deliberately seek to be detained so that they can apply for asylum.

“It makes no sense, the wall is not going to be terribly effective at stopping this … the majority of people coming across are in the Rio Grande Valley … where the wall will be up to a mile or half a mile inland,” Sandweg said.