Just in case you wrongfully assumed that President Trump and Attorney General Sessions were credible authorities on border security, read this summary of a recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report.

Sneaking across the U.S. border from Mexico is tougher than ever before, and U.S. agents are catching or stopping the majority of those who attempt to do so, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security.

The report, published last week by the agency’s Office of Immigration Statistics, estimates that 55 to 85 percent of attempted illegal border crossings are unsuccessful, up from 35 to 70 percent a decade ago. In one telling sign of the difficulty, the number of illegal migrants and deportees who make repeated attempts to get in has also fallen dramatically, because so many would-be migrants are giving up.

The report’s findings challenge depictions of the U.S. border as a place where American law enforcement is overwhelmed and ineffective. President Trump has ordered DHS to make preparations for the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico, and last week he met with Democratic Party leaders to negotiate additional border security improvements.

The new DHS report indicates the agency has already made significant progress in its ability to stop people from sneaking in or consider trying. Arrests along the Mexico border fell to historic lows during the Obama presidency, then dropped further after Trump took office vowing a crackdown.

 Trump’s defective posture on immigration.

While the Mexican government has enacted certain reforms to address the needs of asylum seekers in the country, the Kino Border Initiative has identified significant shortfalls.

• "Lack of adequate screening to determine candidates for asylum.
• Misinformation about the asylum process and rights, or active discouragement of seeking asylum.
• Lack of access to legal assistance or representation.
• Prolonged detention as well as poor and often intimidating conditions there, including use of force and other mistreatment.
• Poor training and supervision of immigration agents.
• Expedited asylum decisions that don’t give full consideration to the applicant."

I spoke with Parker Asmann of Insight Crime yesterday for his article "In Huge Momentum Shift, Guatemala President Retains Immunity." There was a bit of thinking out loud on my part during our conversation. Basically, I originally thought that Congress...

In Guatemala, a five-member commission of legislators unanimously voted to recommend President Jimmy Morales' immunity from prosecution be removed so that he would have to answer for his political party's campaign finance irregularities from the 2015 election. However, yesterday, the full Guatemalan Congress voted against such a move.

Only 25 of 158 legislators supported stripping Morales of his immunity. According to the AP's reporting,

since the measure failed to meet a threshold of 105 votes either for or against needed to settle the matter for good, it now goes into a kind of dormant state and can be reconsidered in another session of congress.

Obviously, the response to yesterday's vote was split.

“Democracy isn’t built by changing the president every two years,” said Congressman Raul Romero, head of the Fuerza party, referring to the corruption cases that led to the 2015 resignation of Morales’ predecessor, Otto Perez Molina.

... 

“Members of Congress are making a pact of corrupt officials now that they are afraid of being investigated themselves for illegal electoral financing,” said Alvaro Montenegro, head of the anti-corruption organization Justicia Ya.

President Jimmy Morales celebrated the vote.

Morales, who has denied any wrongdoing, issued a statement late on Monday praising the vote as a sign of the country’s unity and “democratic maturity” of its institutions.

“I call for an end to the political and ideological confrontations and together we’ll continue to build the Guatemala we all desire,” the statement said.

CICIG Commissioner Ivan Velasquez has no intention of resigning, but we seem to be waiting for the next effort by powerful criminal forces to undermine CICIG and its Commissioner's work. A(nother) time of reckoning in Guatemala

Yesterday afternoon, President Trump sent his Attorney General to do his dirty work. Attorney General Sessions announced that the administration would be discontinuing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program which had protected 800,000 undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the US as minors. While a majority of the American people and Congress appear to support DACA, elections have consequences. President Trump does not. Or maybe he does.

Anyway, while the announcement was terrible news for millions of people in our country, not just the 800,000 currently protected by DACA, they had to listen to AG Sessions slander them in his press conference and demonstrate how little he knows about immigration.

Sessions claims that the extension of DACA to people who had arrived in our country before 2007 was responsible for the unaccompanied minors crisis seven years later, in 2014.

Sessions proclaimed that the rule of law was at stake, days after pardoning Sheriff Apaio who had been accused of violating the rule of law to harass people who "look" Latino, US citizen or not.

Sessions claimed that DACA recipients stole US jobs, when most evidence indicates that they have been a net positive to the economy. Their deportation will damage the economy, an unusual move for someone like Trump who campaigned on a slogan of Make America Great Again. Why the self-inflicted economic wound?

If the "illegal amnesty" of 2007 caused the unaccompanied minors crisis of 2014 and cost American workers hundreds of thousands of jobs, one would expect the President to finally put an end to such damage to the American people and economy. Instead, he called on Congress to get to work, presumably to make DACA law.

Congress, get ready to do your job - DACA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2017

He gave Congress six months to fix the program that he announced he was dismantling, a program that benefited 800,000 people who call the United States home. If they didn't, DACA was going to be phased out. Hours later, though, he appeared to have changed his mind.

Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can't, I will revisit this issue!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2017

Should Congress not meet the deadline that he set, he will "revisit this issue!" Asking Congress to make law a policy that had such "devastating" effects does not make sense. Passing the buck to Congress and then giving Members a firm deadline to resolve the legal status of nearly one million people in our country, only to walk back that deadline hours later, makes absolutely no sense. The Art of the Deal for which a minority of the people voted.