Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

The Crisis at the Border is Only a Crisis Because the Trump Administration is Choosing It to Be

| July 15, 2019

Vice President Pence stood before nearly 400 caged men, crowded together inside enclosed fencing, unshowered and kept warm by thermal blankets, some of them jeering. Was it smugness on his face? Or just the realization that this would be hard to spin? He was standing only feet away, looking at the migrants a bit as though they were a part of a species he regarded as similar but not quite the same.

But spin he must, and so he tried. "The American people can see this crisis is real," he said after visiting the detention center in McAllen, Tex., on Friday. This is evidence, he said, of a system that was "overwhelmed."

Clever wording. Call it a crisis, and it might become so. But to believe Pence requires ignoring the geographic distinction between the forces driving immigration to the border and the conditions awaiting the newcomers inside the United States. The Trump administration is using the generic "crisis" language to blur the line between the chaos of the situation along the border (which has many fathers) and the incompetence of its response (which has but one)....

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For more information on this publication: Belfer Communications Office
For Academic Citation: Kayyem, Juliette.“The Crisis at the Border is Only a Crisis Because the Trump Administration is Choosing It to Be.” The Washington Post, July 15, 2019.

The Author

Juliette Kayyem Headshot

Juliette Kayyem

  • Member of the Board, Belfer Center
  • Belfer Senior Lecturer in International Security, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Faculty Director, Homeland Security Project
  • Faculty Affiliate, Middle East Initiative
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