Imagine if you will, showing up at an emergency room with a dehydrated, malnourished child suffering from exposure.  You explain to the staff that you had taken the child on a six-week trek across the desert, without adequate food, water, or protection against the elements.  Add to this, you have zero documentation to adequately prove who you are, nor the identity of the child.  Would you expect the doctors and nurses to simply say, “Okay.  We’ll take it from here”.

Hardly.  You would be detained for arrest, faced with multiple charges ranging from child endangerment to child trafficking to attempted murder.  The child would be treated for its maladies, placed in protective child services, and you would held in custody to await arraignment and hope to make bail.   But if you are an illegal alien, arriving to the US border with a child in this condition, Border Patrol does indeed say, “Okay.  We’ll take it from here”.  And the responsible adult companion is rewarded with a foot in the door toward asylum in the US.

So why is it that an American citizen who neglects a child in such a life-threatening manner is jailed, and an illegal alien given a free pass?  How is it that the citizen is criminally culpable and the illegal is not?  A citizen-driver who fails to secure a child in a five-point harness system can be criminally sanctioned, while an illegal alien can float a kid across the Rio Grande in a wicker basket without legal liability.  Who manufactured this double standard?

The administration is committed to seeking ways to interdict the loopholes inherent in the asylum statutes that incentivize border crossings with children.  This, at a time when the US government is being held ever more accountable should the journey prove fatal to the child. Inexplicably, the parent/guardian/relative/custodian/adult/stranger accompanying the child-victim escapes culpability.  Criminal negligence involving the well-being of a child is one of the more aggressively pursued prosecutions at every level in the US.  And yet, in a classic misdirection of responsibility, the media excoriates only the immigration and border protection agencies should tragedy befall a child when such a ruthlessly perilous journey is undertaken.

Why not criminally charge any alien adult bringing a child into the country who has been subjected to the peril and rigors of the migrant caravan?  A child endangerment charge is serious business to any citizen, yet the illegal alien has apparently earned a legal immunity from this crime, even when it is undeniably evident to law enforcement.  It seems the criminal element involved in illegally crossing the border can be mitigated by recognized refugees and asylum seekers, provided they commit no other criminal acts in the course of, or in the aftermath of, their illegal entry., i.e., assault, contraband, theft, lying to federal officers, etc.  But if a child endangerment charge were to be levied upon entry with a child in distress, the legal basis for arrest and immediate deportation would be laid.  How can those groping for an administrative solution fail to grasp such an obvious provision in the law?

You want to interdict the flow of migrant children being exploited as “gateway pawns” for adult asylum?  Charge the adults, convict the adults, deport the adults.