"Do it now," they urge their prospective passengers, before it gets even worse. There is no evidence that even doing the unthinkable, taking infants from their mothers' arms and then failing to keep track of them for an eventual reunion, dissuades migrants from coming. People who are fleeing difficulty and danger with their children are likely to be thinking less about what awaits them at the end of their journey than they are focused on getting their children away from what threatens them right now. The news that the administration is considering transporting migrants to so-called sanctuary cities further underscores the inefficacy of their approach; they appear more interested in using the issue against their perceived political enemies than in solving problems.
But as appalling as the President's approach to immigration is, it is not enough to rail against the administration's careening from one terrible decision to another. We must also find a way, even as the yelling goes on around us, to have a rational conversation about bringing order to this chaos. It's what Americans expect and deserve from their policymakers.
We should start with recognizing that our policies are designed for the border we had 20 years ago, when the migration we sought to control was coming from Mexico and consisted primarily of single adults looking for work. That's what Border Patrol facilities were built to handle. The physical infrastructure, the training that our border personnel receive -- it's all intended for apprehending adults who are seeking to evade our authorities.
The actual traffic at the border right now, on the other hand, is now overwhelmingly families with children and children traveling alone from Central America. They aren't seeking to evade the border patrol; they come looking for our officers in order to approach them for help. In my experience visiting as a government official, the facilities in which our officers work are not equipped for families or for children. We have never seen the number of families and unaccompanied children that are coming now; last month's border apprehensions exceeded the highest point of the last five years by more than 30,000 people.
It's time to design a system appropriate for the border that we actually have. That means that some of the debate about what we spend on detention facilities should also focus on developing the kind of infrastructure that we need at the border. Some of the debate should focus on how to provide decent physical settings for the difficult job of receiving those who come (many of whom have had a harrowing journey), assessing who might have a claim to protection in the United States and dealing humanely with those who do not.
A second necessity is to recognize that the root of our challenge is a refugee crisis in our hemisphere. We cannot hope to be successful with whatever tactics we use at the border if we are not investing in and being good partners with the Central American countries struggling with the violence and economic dislocation that force people to migrate in the first place. President Trump's threats to end aid to the region are the policy equivalent of shooting ourselves in both feet.
This administration also foolishly dismantled the in-country processing that the Obama administration had begun to establish, which for the first time provided potential refugees with the tools to demonstrate that they face danger and seek the possibility of resettlement elsewhere in the region before undertaking the dangerous trek across Mexico. The answer to the staggering problems in Central America was never going to be that everyone who flees gets to live in the United States. But we do have an outsized role to play in finding solutions, and this administration has abdicated all of the moral authority we could have brought to this task.
We should also address our overwhelmed asylum system within the United States. President Trump is using the asylum backlog as an argument to effectively shut down the system, an outcome which the xenophobes he hired have been hoping to accomplish for years. It would be much better -- and more consistent with our history and our values -- to follow the advice of former Immigration Commissioner Doris Meissner, now with the Migration Policy Institute, who reformed the asylum system during the Clinton administration.
She argues convincingly that we can do it again; we already have the resources in hand to create an asylum corps that can handle cases more effectively and efficiently than the system we have in place now. This is in any administration's power to do; imagine if we had a President seeking solutions rather than using self-inflicted crises to rally his base.
Imagine if, instead of an ill-equipped border patrol who might separate you from your child, you were met at the border with decent facilities, with asylum officers trained to make initial assessments and over time reach an informed decision on your case. Imagine if it were clear from the outset that if you met the high standards for an asylum claim, you could expect a fair and expeditious answer, and if you do not, you could expect to be removed in a humane way. The chaos of our current system contributes to migration flow. Clarity, order and clear expectations could begin to curb it.
We must not fall into the trap of believing that these are intractable problems. That's the essence of President Trump's argument for walls and for increasingly harsh treatment of the human beings at the center of this crisis. At the same time, it's also not enough to focus on the terrible results of his work.
It's time for policymakers and advocates to dig in, look at what has changed at the border, and develop an approach for the challenges we face now. It will not be easy to change the dynamics at the border; there are no quick fixes here. But there are policy approaches available for those thoughtful and foresighted enough to look for them, and they can achieve both a secure border and an orderly doorway for those who merit protection under the law. It's not just the migrants who deserve this outcome; the American people deserve it, too.
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