Consequences of Fake Compassion

New York City officials are hoping to provide a total of nearly 6,000 luxury hotel rooms to illegal border crossers arriving on buses from Texas even as rents for city residents skyrocket to unsustainable prices.

Are open borders really an act of biblical compassion? Or is it merely a political guise for something more sinister and destructive?

An honest look at the dishonest acts at our border.

Be informed, not misled.

The New York Post (link 1) says, "New York City officials are hoping to provide a total of nearly 6,000 luxury hotel rooms to border crossers arriving on buses from Texas even as rents for city residents skyrocket to unsustainable prices."

The Post says, "A luxury Manhattan hotel once touted as the 'Lullaby of Broadway' will soon be providing beddy-bye to hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants.

Mayor Eric Adams plans to convert the Row NYC — formerly known as the Milford Plaza and located in pricey tourist-packed Times Square — into an intake center and shelter for as many as 600 migrant families amid the city’s spiraling homelessness crisis, three sources familiar with the matter said.

“In a month or two, we’re about to open up for [the city Department of Homeless Services], homeless,” a hotel staffer told The Post on Monday."

The daily weekday rate for a standard room with one full or queen bed in mid-September — around when the hotel could begin housing migrants – – ranges from $414.42 to $435.07 per night, including taxes and “facilities fees” and depending on the view.

People, of course. are responding differently.

Tourist Jennifer Hacking, 39, from Reno, says the "migrants have been through a lot, and need somewhere to stay." Flight attendant Tania Carrara who was staying at the hotel between assignments said, "It's better that the migrants stay in a hotel than a homeless shelter." I'm sure they would agree.

Hotel guest David Carpenter,74, a tourist from Tennessee, told the Post, "I wouldn't come back to this hotel if there were migrants staying here."

Then he said this: "If they secured the border like they should, the migrants wouldn't be here in the first place."

And therein lies the problem.

Selective compassion is not biblical compassion.

The secular progressives claim that compassion drives their policies on immigration and border security. But that is simply not true.

While tens of thousands pour through our borders daily, the drug cartels are living their dream.

The amount of fentanyl seized nationwide tripled in July to 203 percent compared to the month of June, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

More tangibly, law enforcement seized 2,071 pounds of fentanyl last month compared to 680 pounds in June. July’s amount is “equivalent to 469 million lethal doses," reported FAIR, which is based on government data.

The amount of fentanyl seized nationwide tripled in July to 203 percent compared to the month of June, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn says, "Biden’s filling up record books for all the wrong reasons. We’re seeing more fentanyl trafficking and more illegal immigrants cross our border under his leadership. This should concern every American."

Biden’s filling up record books for all the wrong reasons. We’re seeing more fentanyl trafficking and more illegal immigrants cross our border under his leadership.

This should concern every American. pic.twitter.com/JgAfgHfOAx

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) August 17, 2022

The left claims to have compassion for the migrants, but refuses to act out of any compassion to control our borders on behalf of our own kids and young adults who are dying from fentanyl---and for our country as well. Sen Blackburn is right, this should concern every American.

Retaking the moral high ground on Immigration.

Greg Sindelar wrote an op-ed earlier this year in which he addressed the real issues of open borders---and compassion.

He said in part:

From the actual high ground — from the bluffs overlooking the Rio Grande River — it’s hard to see how any of this makes sense. President Joe Biden’s inaction and inept policies on the southern U.S. border only increase the human carnage and suffering wrought by the Mexican drug cartels. This isn’t compassion; it’s complicity.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation led members of our Border Security Coalition on a fact-finding trip to the border last week. We learned about the hardships, the abuse, even the deaths of those being smuggled into the U.S. by the cartels, and how Biden’s refusal to secure the border gives criminal organizations a free hand to expand their cruel operations.

Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steve McCraw, who leads Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, calls this “false compassion.”

“The reality is it’s not compassionate at all,” he told us. “Just look at the rates of rape, of both women and children, and sex trafficking. [The administration] may think they’re being compassionate. I think they’re being naïve.”

He’s right. As the New York Times reports, “you have to pay with your body” to reach the border. An estimated 80% of women and girls are sexually assaulted and abused en route to the United States.

There are deaths; last December, 54 migrants were killed when the truck pulling the trailer they were crammed into rolled while taking a sharp turn in southern Mexico. Hundreds more die every year in the deserts and brushy vastness of south Texas.

Our group spoke with Don White, the search-and-recovery deputy with the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office. He responds to reports and phone calls about missing migrants, who are abandoned at the border by the human traffickers working for the cartels. He said migrants are often given a jug of water and told to just head north.

“There’s no above-ground water,” he said. “The brush is thick. The air is hot. You just can’t carry 30 pounds of water — but that’s what you’re going to need.”

The answer isn’t to simply open the border — a policy whose adherents like to pat themselves on the back for having the moral high ground. The fact is that if we open the southern U.S. border, the land just a few yards away, across the Rio Grande, is still 100% controlled by Mexican drug cartels. Our change in policy won’t suddenly cause them to change their ways and give up the money they’re making from human trafficking and the drug trade.

No. Every migrant that comes into the U.S. from Mexico does so at the hard-bought sufferance of the cartels. That’s true today, and that will be true whatever the Biden administration (and subsequent administrations) do until Mexico addresses its own corruption and complicity and shuts them down.

When we talk about the border, we’re not talking about abstraction. We’re talking about a real place, and it’s being besieged.

Until we decide to truly secure the border, migrants themselves will continue to be just a commodity to the cartels, and inevitably, the collateral damage. They deserve better. They deserve real compassion — and that’s not open borders.

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.