Speaking on Fox & Friends on Thursday, Customs and Border Protection Deputy Commissioner Robert Perez said border apprehensions have plunged for the second straight month, and that the Trump administration’s deal with Mexico to help slow the flood of immigrants to the southern border is working.
Perez stated, “It’s absolute proof. Unquestionably, an agreement with the government of Mexico that was literally unprecedented by way of the degree of cooperation, the commitment they’ve made, to enforce and go down in numbers with their National Guard and law enforcement along their border … [with] Guatemala.” He continued, “Interior enforcement up, as well as enforcement along our southern border — that coupled with the collaboration with the migrant protection protocol and some of the work that we’ve been doing with the northern triangle countries — all combined, you’ve seen those numbers drop now in two months in a row.”
Fox News reported, “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported a significant drop in apprehensions at the southwest border in June, after an agreement with the Mexican government. For the month of July, DHS reported more than 72,000 apprehensions, down from more than 132,000 in May.”
Perez responded to Democrats in Congress who have slammed law enforcement dealing with the problems at the border, claiming there is a “dehumanizing culture,” as well as 600 Google employees who signed a public petition accusing CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of caging and harming asylum seekers. The Google employees refused to work on any cloud computing work Google might help U.S. Customs and Border Protection with and also compared the idea of working with ICE to IBM working with the Nazi regime. The petition stated:
It’s time to stand together again and state clearly that we will not work on any such contract. We demand that Google publicly commit not to support CBP, ICE or ORR [Office of Refugee Resettlement] with any infrastructure, funding or engineering resources, directly or indirectly, until they stop engaging in human rights abuses … In working with CBP, ICE or ORR, Google would be trading its integrity for a bit of profit and joining a shameful lineage. We have only to look to IBM’s working with the Nazis during the Holocaust to understand the role that technology can play in automating mass atrocity.
Perez fired back:
From my perspective, 26 years-plus of being in this business, policy debates are perfectly acceptable. The vilification of law enforcement professionals, not appreciating and understanding, frankly, what these dedicated public servants are doing every day, taking a sworn oath to protect their communities to put the lives of others before their own. Our border patrol agents alone have rescued over 4,000 people in the middle of the deserts, in running dangerous rivers just this year. That is what’s really concerning to me.
The deal with Mexico, which was signed on June 7, included this paragraph:
If the United States determines, at its discretion and after consultation with Mexico, after 45 calendar days from the date of the Issuance of the Joint Declaration, that the measures adopted by the Government of Mexico pursuant to the Joint Declaration have not sufficiently achieved results in addressing the flow of migrants to the southern border of the United States , the Government of Mexico will take all necessary steps under domestic law to bring the agreement into force with a view to ensuring that the agreement will enter into force within 45 days.