It’s a crime OK, though you wouldn’t know it from recent developments along the southern border. As noted here, on Saturday Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal helped five migrants across the border. According to the report, the five had initially been denied entry, but Jayapal wrote in a tweet, “I was able to successfully assist 5 asylum seekers — 2 unaccompanied minors, a mother and her 9 year old child, and a young man with a serious medical condition — into the United States.”
In a second tweet she claims that she was “able to intervene and ensure that they could simply present themselves for asylum in the United States.” It’s not at all clear what she means by this since having credentials that show you’re a member of the U.S. Congress carries no weight if you show up at the border with a bunch of migrants. Nor is it obvious that she escorted the five migrants in through a port of entry, in which case she was abetting a crime, not to mention cutting in front of the others waiting their turn in Tijuana.
Speaking of which, some thirty migrants in Tijuana got tired of waiting and set off in search of a way to skirt the border barriers, BuzzFeed reports.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
[Javier] Piñeda was one of about 30 people who’d … been kicked out of the sports complex where they’d been housed since arriving in Tijuana about two weeks ago, but instead of moving to the new shelter authorities had set up on the outskirts of town, Piñeda and the others had decided they’d try crossing the border along the beaches, where Tijuana meets the Pacific Ocean.
The three dozen or so would-be illegals had company in the person of Meghan Dhaliwal, who writes for BuzzFeed and tagged along to chronicle their exploits.
As Jazz Shaw points out at Hot Air:
Seeing reporters embed themselves in the middle of the action is nothing new, including in war zones. … Going down to Mexico and speaking to members of the caravan, telling their stories and recording interviews is just basic journalism. No problem there. But what about when the reporter joins in with a group of people who state up front that they are planning on breaking the law? This reporter was on the run with the group and watching some of them digging holes under the fence and searching for illegal tunnels. At what point are you no longer reporting, but aiding and abetting criminal conduct?
[…]
We’re back to the question of why illegal immigration is somehow treated as a “lesser crime” than most others. Surely there are some eithical [sic] questions to be addressed here.
