Nebraska Republican and U.S. Senate nominee Ben Sasse is calling on President Obama to “travel to Central America” to “stop the bleeding” and make it clear that unaccompanied minors entering the United States will not be welcomed to the United States or granted amnesty.
Sasse believes that the President can stop the influx of children by traveling directly to the bloody, gang-plagued countries and letting them know that amnesty is not an option. Most of the unaccompanied minors comes from what’s known as the isthmus, the region that stretches from Nicaragua to Guatemala. The area has the highest murder rates in the world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. In fact, Honduras is home to the deadliest city in the world, San Pedro Sula, where 169 out of every 100,000 people are murdered.
“Let’s fix the problem. This is actually one of those places where your pen and your phone – actually, your megaphone – is needed. Use it. The American people are sick and tired of political gamesmanship. Go to Central America and stop the bleeding,” he says in a campaign video he released this week.
Sasse acknowledges that the influx of unaccompanied minors is a “horrible human tragedy.” He goes on to talk about rumors that many of the young girls are sent on their journey with birth control “in case they are raped,” he says, and, “The only thing that matters is why is this happening, and how do we stop it?”
The answer, of course: OBAMA! Although it has been widely reported that gang violence, a sense of hopelessness, and unrelenting economic depression has caused a record number of immigrants to send their children on a treacherous journey fleeing Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for the United States, this is simply not the case.
They’re coming to the US, Sasse says, because Obama let them “believe” in amnesty. “President Obama, whether deliberately or not, has let this (amnesty) belief take hold. It is the reason that we have this crisis today,” Sasse said. “Let’s fix the problem. This is actually one of those places where your pen and your phone – actually, your megaphone – is needed. Use it. The American people are sick and tired of political gamesmanship. Go to Central America and stop the bleeding.”
“He needs to say to the people of Latin America, ‘The United States’ borders are not open, we are not going to have amnesty. Please, keep your babies with you, don’t break up your families, don’t load your kids onto trains,'” Sasse said.
In Central America, most long-distance journeys must generally be made by bus or plane, there is no reliable mode of rail travel between countries.
The majority of over 50,000 undocumented minors who have made the harrowing, and often deadly, journey to US borders are usually smuggled by traffickers. They travel by every means possible — in trucks or vans, hidden in cramped quarters with hardly any food or water, by foot and by water. The children often recount how they walked hundreds of miles through the desert, while others arrive on rafts ferried by human smugglers, called “coyotes”. Those too poor to hire a coyote to arrange transport are forced to walk and hitchhike much of the way to the US border. Many traveling migrants will hop aboard a freight train for the final leg of the trip once they reach Mexico.
Many of the unaccompanied children don’t make it across bodies of water or long stretches of desert at all, and many die of sickness or dehydration before they reach the final leg of their trip.
Below is a video from Ben Sasse’s campaign with his full statement:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/cd5D5elEsk8[/youtube]