Someone posted a USA Today article today, the premise of which was that President Trump is playing arsonist and firefighter, extinguishing a border issue with Mexico that he manufactured. I saw it reported exactly this way tonight on NBC – “some Democrats say” was the intro.

I’m going to stop linking to trash articles like the USAT piece because they are just a waste of everybody’s time to read – search and read it at your peril – but I do want to take a look at the illegal immigration…AGAIN.

President Trump ran on controlling the border, so for him it is something he has talked about for close to four years now – building a wall is hardly a current focus or recent development. 20 to 40 million illegal aliens living in the US is not a recent development, either – but for nearly 50 years, there are those who openly advocate open borders and illegal immigration and continue to encourage it.

Let’s look at who and what encouraged the rise in border jumpers:

• When Obama was in office, the New York Times acknowledged the border was in crisis and many progressives nicknamed President Obama the “Deporter in Chief” – although he didn’t change his “catch and release” policy until 2016 – when it could hurt Hillary in the election. Obama changed immigration law by executive fiat, creating the DREAM program by HHS memo.
• The Obama administration sued the State of Arizona for passing SB 1070 in an attempt to control its border with Mexico.
• The Trump administration was blamed for separation of illegal immigrant families even though the issue is the “Flores Settlement” that was reached in 1997 during the Clinton administration – two decades BEFORE Trump took office.
• Pope Francis sent $500,000 to Mexican churches to help “migrants” in the “caravans”.
• The Mexican government just said that funding for the “caravans” came from individuals and organizations in the U.S., England, Africa, and Central America.
• The caravans were created and guided by an open borders group called Pueblo Sin Fronteras – founded in Chicago.
• The National Lawyers Guild provides legal support for Pueblo Sin Fronteras.
• Two members of Pueblo Sin Fronteras were arrested last week for human trafficking.
• Democrat politicians have called the surge at the border “fake” and “manufactured” and fought against a declaration of a national emergency.
• The sycophantic media (CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, Washington Post, New York Times) joined in with Democrats to ignore the crisis at the border, uniformly and consistently blaming the Trump Administration for Obama era policies and signaling to illegal immigrants that the Democrats would protect them through blocking Trump’s attempts at immigration reform.
• The progressive, activist federal judiciary blocked the Trump administration from implementing changes in the asylum policy – making applicants stay in Mexico until their cases are heard. After release into the interior, a recent pilot program showed that 87% of them did not show up for their court dates.
• Progressive mayors and governors have created “sanctuary” cities and states and have announced they will not cooperate with immigration enforcement entities. Berkeley became the first city in the United States to pass a sanctuary resolution on November 8, 1971. Additional local governments in certain cities in the United States began designating themselves as sanctuary cities during the 1980s and have continued at the state level.

Illegal immigration has been an issue for decades, but an issue that gets ignored on both sides of the aisle – for different reasons, but to the same effect. This is not a crisis of President Trump’s making; this is a perpetual crisis because it has been ignored by every president since Reagan tried to work with Democrats in the 80’s. It was created and supported by progressive Democrats and exacerbated by do-nothing Republicans.

The ONLY reason the issue is getting front page attention today is that we have a President who is trying to resolve a situation he didn’t create and there are those in the worlds of media and politics who simply don’t want the problem highlighted, much less solved. Democrats and the media are the ones who are playing arsonist and firefighter by suborning illegal immigration and then attacking anyone with the temerity to attempt to stop it.