'Operational Control': GOP's Zero-Tolerance Border Bill Would Be a Disaster Dara Lind - Vox
go to original January 26, 2015

This could be the only thing keeping Border Patrol from declaring "operational control," and they'd still fail the test the House bill would set. (John Moore/Getty)

Congress has been pushing to pass bill that turns border security into a matter of zero tolerance: by 2020, every single person entering the US from Mexico illegally must be apprehended. Every. Single. One.

If even a single unauthorized immigrant gets across the border without being caught, DHS will get hit with penalties — getting everything from overtime pay to government aircraft access taken away from them.

You're probably going to be hearing more about this idea in the coming months, as both the legislative battle between Congress and the president over immigration reform and the 2016 presidential election heat up. The border bill was scheduled for a House vote the week of January 26, though it's been pulled from the schedule. The Senate has introduced a similar bill, and might try to pass it soon — maybe even making it a condition of Department of Homeland Security funding. And among Republican primary candidates, guaranteeing 100 percent border security should be an obvious first step. (One candidate, doctor Ben Carson, said that the next president should promise to "seal the border" within his first year in office.)

But the zero-tolerance standard is plainly unrealistic, according to experts. Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute, who worked for the Congressional Research Service on measuring border security, says that "no serious student of the border" could possibly believe that the GOP's standard is a good idea.

Read the rest at Vox

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