5/22/20

By Josh Rubin

We notice when things change. And last week as we watched the flights of ICE Air, we noticed something different happening. New flights, from near the border, to Mexico City.

What are these flights? They are expulsions of Mexican nationals. Not deportations. A deportation requires a procedure that involves ICE custody. But these folks are never in ICE custody. They are just like the immediate expulsions at the border that are being carried out under the orders of the Centers for Disease Control that pretend that we are being invaded by carriers of the Covid virus. I say pretend because our government has been wanting to do this all along: to hell with all the legal pretense, just go back where you came from.

Well, it turns out that pushing all these people back into Mexico right near the border has its problems. Like the people turning around and trying again. When you are on the run from poverty and violence, you are persistent.

So, the flights to Mexico City, where do they come in? First, it takes a lot longer to get back to the northern border if you dump them in the Mexican interior into one of the largest cities on earth. But, perhaps there is a bonus, a gruesome one. We are very wrapped up in our own Covid crisis here. So wrapped up we may not be noticing that a crisis of perhaps even greater proportions is happening right now, is on its brutal upswing in Mexico, especially in the capital, where hospitals are full and breaking down before the tidal wave of grief and death coming their way.

So when you send refugees to Mexico City, you sweep them into the storm about to break. And maybe, just maybe, you never see them again.