White House border coordinator Roberta Jacobson became the first administration victim of the border crisis, with Reuters reporting that she "will retire from her role as coordinator at the end of this month." The border situation is not Jacobson's fault, just as it was not that of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, whom President Trump fired during a similar border surge in November 2018. Readers will recall my note on the matter.
Rather, the problem is the underlying construct of border policy. Under an enforcement-based approach as we have today -- one endorsed by the likes of Heritage, Niskanen and Rand (but not CATO) -- migrants must necessarily be treated as either criminals or victims. They are criminals because they cross the border illegally, lie about their age or motivation, work without permits, obtain fake social security cards and evade taxes. In most cases, at least three of five of these are true. These acts are justified in the eyes of the left, however, because migrants are 'victims', fleeing gangs and poverty, and migrants must be handled by sympathetic asylum courts while the administration conducts shuttle diplomacy to address the 'root causes' of illegal immigration. Thus, the current policy framework forces migrants to be treated as either sinners or saints, criminals or victims.
If illegal immigrants are to be treated as 'saints', then the result is 'humane' policy which involves losing control of the border and a political crisis for the administration. Hence Ms. Jacobson's scalp.
The implied alternative, however, is a replacement who is going to be tougher on illegal immigration. We have seen this film before. The number of Border Patrol agents increased 14% under President Obama. The Biden administration will be forced into something similar -- and rather Trumpian -- as I have said before.
One would think that, in 2021, after three decades of increasing border staffing, yet another migrant surge would encourage decision-makers to consider alternatives beyond firing the scapegoat du jour. Not yet, apparently.
Let me once again reiterate that we could obtain vastly better outcomes by migrating to a compensation-based, rather than enforcement-based, approach. And let me add that hickjacking governance in Central America to serve US interests -- that is, to 'address the roots causes of illegal immigration' -- is also a trival matter. But you're not going to see the opportunity peering through a moral lens projecting migrants as either criminals or victims.