The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly
A total of 60,000 tough young
men from Morocco
suddenly arrived in a small town of Spain in northern Africa, many
carrying their cell phones in plastic bags to protect them from the
water they crossed by inner tubes and swimming. This migration is
greater than the population of 95% of American cities and towns.
A recent pro-immigration
ruling by the Tribunal
Supremo, the
Supreme Court of Spain, sparked this invasion, creating a lesson for
our crisis of illegal aliens in the United States. A week after our
own Supreme Court’s disastrous
decision
in favor of illegals getting birthright
citizenship,
Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that migrants captured at sea cannot be
immediately returned to their native country, known as a “pushback.”
Spanish Territorial Policy
Minister Ángel Víctor Torres specifically referred to the ruling as
a factor contributing to unlawful invasion. He also said that legal
experts think the decision will allow eventual deportation of these
illegal aliens, but only after time-consuming due process is provided
to each of the invading migrants.
The language of Morocco is
Arabic. But Spanish is the language of the two Spanish territories in
northern Africa, named Ceuta and Melilla, such that many of the
migrants cannot communicate with local officials.
Ceuta is located on the
African side of the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Atlantic Ocean
meets the Mediterranean Sea, and residents receive their food as
transported by trucks carried by the 30-60 minute hourly ferry ride
from Spain. Melilla is located 250 miles eastward on the
Mediterranean coast.
These migrants have
overwhelmed the local facilities, and are sleeping on beaches with
limited access to food or drinking water. Due to the court ruling,
they must be admitted for processing in compliance with Spanish
immigration rules, which takes time.
If released during this
process, as many illegal aliens in America have been, they may not
show up for court hearings or appointments with immigration
authorities. They can roam about for years, and have rights to
migrate further into any European Union country once they are
lawfully in Spain.
Social media are being blamed
for spreading the word that if migrants swam or boated to Ceuta or
Melilla, they would then have a right to stay. This has been
criticized as a misinterpretation of the court ruling, but the court
did grant special due process rights to those who came by sea rather
than by land.
This fiasco gives new meaning
to the famous Longfellow poem which exclaimed about the signal to be
sent by one or two lanterns in the belfry of Boston’s Old North
Church: “One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite
shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm.” Spread the
alarm, indeed.
The most common water route is
a 3-mile swim or to hang on to an inner tube while paddling through
treacherous waters. Only some young men are fit enough to do that,
and reportedly more than 50 have died during this invasion with many
dead bodies seen floating in the water now.
CBS News interviewed migrants
after arriving in Ceuta, and they explained that they spontaneously
jumped in the water and swam the three miles. Crossing the Rio Grande
River at our southern
border
is much easier than that, and President Trump pointed out that it
will happen here if Democrats take control again.
No jobs awaited these rugged
men upon their arrival, and it is inevitable that local laws will be
violated as they look desperately for food, clothing, entertainment,
and shelter. Thousands of these men roam the streets, and frightened
residents sheltered inside while shops closed up, afraid of vandalism
and looting.
One Ceuta resident, Rocío
Gil, said on Spanish television that “as a woman, you have to live
this to understand what it’s like. It’s an invasion
… and there is no law.”
Sound familiar? Judicial
rulings in the United States against sovereignty
and border security here have caused similar travesties, including
the admission of at least a million illegal migrants during each year
of the Biden Administration.
President Trump has been
trying hard to return
migrants
who have been here on Temporary Protected Status (TPS), as brought in
primarily by Democrat presidents. But repeatedly lower federal judges
have been blocking President Trump’s orders to deport illegal
aliens, and to detain them for deportation without releasing them on
bond.
The U.S. Supreme Court
delivered a victory
for Trump
in late June by authorizing him to deport Haitians and others on TPS
status
without interference
by lower court judges.
The High Court said that these presidential decisions to deport are
largely unreviewable and yet, not long after this decision was
rendered, another federal district court judge blocked Trump again on
this issue concerning Somalis.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.
