N.Y. Dems suggestions of border restrictions should be explicit

This Sunday seems to have brought a rhetorical tone shift in the migrant situation, with Mayor Adams’ chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, saying in an interview with WPIX-11 that the federal government and Congress had to do “its job, close the borders.” The same day, Gov. Hochul, on  CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” said that she wanted Congress “to have a limit on who can come across the border,” lamenting that “people coming from all over the world are finding their way through, simply saying they need asylum.”

This is, of course, the way that the asylum system was quite intentionally intended and designed to operate, erring on the side of not sending people back to their potential deaths or persecution while giving them a chance to plead their case. The statements from the top aide to NYC’s Democratic mayor and the state’s Democratic governor, stripped of context, could have just as easily been uttered by Donald Trump himself.

They’d dispute that, of course, and are able to hide behind nebulousness around what they meant. Terms like “close down” and “limit” are hazy enough that they can pack political punch without the pitfalls of specificity. But if they’re going to make such serious pronouncements, policymakers and their advisors should be very explicit about what they’re asking for.

Are they calling for a ramp-up of the so-called prevention through deterrence strategy, which since the 1990s has attempted (and failed) to discourage arrivals by making the border more dangerous to cross, resulting in potentially thousands of excess deaths? Are they of the opinion that fewer people should qualify for asylum — that the United States should, in effect, step back from the humanitarian responsibilities that the newly-formed United Nations negotiated and instituted in direct response to the horrors of the Holocaust and the devastation of the Nazi’s military campaigns?

Is it a call for desperate people to be sent to claim asylum in Guatemala — a nation besieged by the same cartel violence and political instability that drove many people to flee other countries in the first place — as they were under the Trump administration? Is it a request that the Biden administration begin sending asylum applicants to wait again in squalid camps in northern Mexico, as they were under the now-defunct Remain in Mexico policy, during which many were kidnapped, robbed, raped and murdered?

Something else? What, exactly, is the suggestion here? Whatever it is, one thing is for sure: it will make Trump-era anti-immigrant architect Stephen Miller, one of the most callous characters to emerge from that administration’s cauldron, smile. The fringe policies he designed, the abhorrent approach he pioneered, will have at long last reached mainstream acceptance, breaking the last of the unified pro-immigrant approach that hardened in response to a sadism most famously represented by the family separation policy.

So, too, will Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have cause for celebration, with his ever-more successful gambit to shift the city’s politics in his direction, begun last year with the start of his campaign of busing migrants to NYC. Before they continue too far down this track, our leaders should reckon with and clarify what exactly it is they’re asking for her. Perhaps they’ll find it to be a position they can’t defend.