With overfilled detention centers and an open desert, the time to get caught and released has never been better.
The locations may have been different. The decade may have been different. The tragedy and threat are the same. I want to say up front, that this article is not an indictment or attack on the majority of Mariel boatlift survivors. It is though on the failure of laws regarding immigration and refugee status.
We face at our southern border, one of the worst crises concerning refugees and immigration. Possibly since the Mariel boatlift. When 125,000 Cubans were evicted from Cuba to South Florida. When they arrived, both Customs and Military personnel were ill-prepared to service the vast numbers of Cubans. Most were innocent and saw arrival to this country as a miracle, despite being forced by the Castro regime to leave the only homes they had ever known. Political dissenters, religious minorities like Jehovah’s witnesses, and the elderly. Though only 2.2% of the boatlift population, 2,746 confirmed criminals were discovered to have arrived on the sunny shores of Miami. Because they had no country to deport them to and they had not yet committed a crime in the United States, many were released.
A crime wave would ensue, lead by the rise of Marielito street gangs. Four adult males that entered the country, would later go on to commit infamous acts of murder. This inspired the young and oddly enough conservative at the time Oliver Stone, to reset the 1932 Howard Hawks classic to the backdrop of the Mariel boatlift. Though the film is by no means a right-wing propaganda film. It illustrates in an entertaining way the cost of the 1980’s version of catch and release. Letting foreign criminal detainees loose into the country, simply because they claim asylum and you have no other grounds to deport them. To this day, there still several dozens that remain free on our shores.
Another side effect of the boatlift, was while wages remained the same for Non-Cubans. For Miami’s Cuban community, the effect was a steady decline in wages, due to the exploitation of lower skilled and less educated workers. We now face a similar crisis at the southern border. Thousands of migrants. Many looking more for an economic future, than political or religious freedom. However, small the criminal element may be thought of these recent caravans, we cannot continue the same policies through to please our noble sensibilities, as hard as it may be emotionally swallowed.
With overfilled detention centers and an open desert, the time to get caught and released has never been better.
Yesterdays Marielitos are now replaced by MS13 and Mexican Drug cartel Soldiers/Sicarios. Faces in the crowd that will disappear and never be seen again, until another Americans child is taken from their parents. Children like Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, that were killed by a young caught and released MS13 gangbanger on Long Island, and young woman like Sabrina Starr. The names could go on. While most aren’t here to commit these types of crimes.
We really have to ask ourselves the hardest question concerning this crisis. Is the risk of being heartless, not worth keeping Americans safe? I say let’s take that risk.
One too many lives have been lost. One too many families no longer have a heart, because it has been broken by murder and an even greater betrayal of human decency, an indifferent government. Yes, we need a wall, but that alone will not be the only part of fixing this crisis that has reached a breaking point. Until we end catch and release, end the ability to claim asylum at U.S. ports of entry, and enact a zero tolerance policy for any violation of immigration law. We will continue to see many more caravans. Many more crime waves. Many more dead sons and daughters, with no end in sight.
