Shortly after Donald Trump’s upset 2016 victory and January inauguration, official state of Texas business brought me to two ICE immigration detention centers in South Texas. It was part of my routine then to help the feds interview apprehended aliens from Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, and Afghanistan to collect intelligence about potential Islamic terrorism.
The South Texas Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas, some 100 miles from the Mexican border, was always filled to the brink with detainees. But to my surprise, for the first time, it was as empty as a football stadium in baseball season. So was ICE’s larger, ever-packed-to-capacity Port Isabel center near Brownsville, Texas.
“Where is everyone?” I asked the ICE intelligence officers separately at both facilities.
The same surprising answer went something like this: People throughout Latin America heard Trump’s campaign vows to crack down on illegal immigration and decided to stay home, the intelligence officers explained. Most of these people who did try were here, in their ICE detention cells, all the money in smuggling fees they’d spent to get over the border gone with nothing to show for it. The ones back in their home countries didn’t want to risk the money with Trump promising to deport them, so they stopped coming, they explained.
It was the first time I’d heard such a thing, although it seemed so obvious.
Before people gambled thousands of dollars in smuggling fees, they wanted reasonable assurance that the money would pay off with successful entries and long-term stays working
