Why Not Let Them Leave?

by Dave Bennion · 2009-06-02 09:00:00 UTC
Topics:

Why is the U.S. government arresting and detaining migrants on their way into Mexico with appointment letters in hand for consular interviews to apply for waivers of inadmissibility based on hardship to qualifying citizen family members?

Why does the government routinely arrest asylum seekers on their way to Canada whose cases have been upended by the capricious U.S. asylum process? (pdf) If you legitimately feared for your life, would you sit around and wait to be deported back to your fate after a broken system had rejected your claim?  (I'm talking primarily about those exempt from the inaptly-named Safe Third Country Agreement.)

Why does the U.S. government believe it is so important to arrest, detain, and deport unauthorized migrants who are peacefully leaving the country of their own volition?  I wish I knew ... it didn’t make sense under Bush and it doesn’t make sense under Obama.  It's the sort of behavior that is frankly inexplicable in the context of any rational policy objective.

Dave Bennion
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