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Estudios Fronterizos, Vol. 17, Núm. 33 (2016)
Tabla de contenidos
Tabla de contenidos
Artículos
Salvador Salazar Gutiérrez
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David J. Luquetta Cediel
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Karina Navarro–Chaparro, Patricia Rivera, Roberto Sánchez
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Karen Isabel Manzano Itura
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Eliseo Díaz González, Gabriel González-König
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Jorge Garza–Rodríguez
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Carlos Obed Figueroa Ortiz
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Rodrigo Vera Vázquez
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José Jorge Mora Rivera, Jesús Arellano González
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Reseñas
Ernesto Sánchez Sánchez
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Miguel Ángel Vázquez Ruiz
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El Salvador: Bleak Prospects in the Face of Criminal Violence - STRATFOR
February 9, 2016 | 09:00 GMT
Summary
Encompassing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Central America's "Northern Triangle" is one of the world's most violent regions. The area saw 17,000 murders in 2015 alone. The region's weak governments have proved unable to stem the growth of gang-related organized crime. Until El Salvador — and the region, for that matter — deals with its deeper economic and sociological problems and is able to provide a stable and non-corrupt government, the problem of powerful organized crime gangs and the violence that accompanies them will continue.
Analysis
El Salvador is the epicenter of the Northern Triangle's gang-related violence. It is now officially the world's most violent country, with 104 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. Crime in El Salvador has reached such unprecedented levels that the U.S. Peace Corps halted operations there in late December 2015.
The origins of El Salvador's violence stretch back to 1932, when a peasant uprising against Gen. Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez led to more than 25,000 deaths. After the failed uprising, the military ruled El Salvador, Central America's most densely populated country, for more than 45 years. In a bid to topple the country's military government, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrilla movement emerged; the guerrillas and the military waged a 12-year civil war, which ended in 1992.
Substantial numbers of Salvadorans moved to the United States to escape the conflict and the poverty that persisted after it ended, with almost 500,000 living in the United States by the 1990s, largely in the Los Angeles area. But violence would find them there too. To fend off the already established Mexican- and African-American gangs, Salvadorans formed the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 neighborhood protection units. In time, these groups evolved into archrival organized gangs.
In response to the increased crime in Central American immigrant communities, the United States began deporting Salvadorans convicted of crimes — simultaneously exporting their criminal skills to El Salvador. A poor, corrupt country such as El Salvador proved no match for the deportees' gang culture, which they also exported to Honduras and, to a lesser extent, to Guatemala thanks to the lack of border controls between El Salvador and its two neighbors and the poverty, corruption and impunity enjoyed by criminals there.
Homicides in El Salvador began trending upward starting in 1999. In response to the increase, San Salvador adopted tough anti-gang policies beginning in 2003 known as Mano Dura ("Hard Hand") and Super Mano Dura ("Super Hard Hand"). This in turn caused El Salvador's prison population to surge, with the number of gang members rising to 8,000 by 2008, double the 2004 figure. The increased numbers of prisoners translated into increased clout, with MS-13 and Barrio 18 taking control of the prisons — directing extortion, human smuggling and kidnapping on the outside.
In light of these failures, San Salvador changed tack, and by 2012 it had brokered a truce between MS-13 and Barrio 18. Homicides had dropped considerably by then, but by 2014, the truce began falling apart. By 2016, more than 100,000 unaccompanied Central American minors had left for the United States, many seeking to escape the violence in El Salvador and Honduras. This sparked a political backlash in the United States and prompted Washington to promote anti-graft commissions to strengthen Central American government institutions and economic development to curtail illegal migration.
After the truce ended, the FMLN-led government launched a full-fledged offensive against the gangs. Since mid-2015, gangs have been labeled terrorist organizations (though in actuality they differ from terrorists in that their goal is financial, not political). Moreover, a security-related tax of 5 percent on telecommunication transactions was levied to fund security programs, including new elite military-trained police squads. In spite of these actions, San Salvador's efforts continue to fall short.
A significant part of this failure is due to the evolution of Salvadoran gangs into sophisticated transnational organized criminal groups with many non-Salvadoran members, although both gangs lack a centralized leadership. This means that both MS-13 and Barrio 18 subgroups are not necessarily monolithic — cliques can cooperate as much as they can remain independent from one another. Both groups have capitalized on their Central American roots and links to the United States to establish a presence extending from the Northern Triangle to Los Angeles and Washington. Another factor explaining El Salvador's failure to rein in the criminal groups is the fact that during the truce period, the country's gangs took advantage of the lack of police and military control to infiltrate the security forces. Finally, San Salvador has been overwhelmed by deportations from the United States. Since 2014, the United States has deported an average of 20,000 Salvadorans per year — deportees who will find few legal employment opportunities. And even were San Salvador somehow able to imprison most of the gang members, they would likely continue their operations from prison.
In light of this bleak picture, El Salvador clearly needs foreign assistance. But while the United States has approved a $750 million aid package to bolster government institutions in the Northern Triangle, disbursement of 75 percent of these funds will depend upon the implementation of anti-graft policies on the rationale that a strong government means strong institutions — and strong institutions will be able to fight organized crime more effectively.
Of the three countries, however, El Salvador has been the most reluctant to establish an anti-graft commission. But without a major, sustained infusion of cash, Salvadoran institutions will remain weak. Given that gang-related violence threatens to overwhelm, El Salvador has little choice but to implement Washington's anti-graft requirements. Until El Salvador — and the region, for that matter — deals with its deeper economic and sociological problems and is able to provide a stable and non-corrupt government, the problem of powerful organized crime gangs and the violence that accompanies them will continue.
For US Border Security, Economics Trumps Politics – Stratfor
For Border Security, Economics Trumps Politics
February 11, 2016 | 08:00 GMT
(Stratfor)
In this presidential election year, much of the focus has been on national security, and one idea that has come up repeatedly is that walls can be built along the United States border with Mexico to keep contraband and people from crossing illegally.
This suggestion ignores the fact that powerful and basic economic forces make it simply impossible to hermetically seal the U.S.-Mexico border.
Walls and Fences
Constructing border walls and fences to provide national security is an age-old concept. The Athenians built "long walls," such as one running to Piraeus, as military fortifications. Chinese emperors built the Great Wall to help protect against Mongol invasion. The Romans erected Hadrian's Wall to guard settlements in modern England from marauding Picts and other tribes. And the Berlin Wall was erected almost overnight — though not so much to keep people out of the Communist territory east of the wall as to keep people in.
The idea of barrier walls along the U.S.-Mexico border is likewise not a new idea. Along some parts of the border, there have been fences for decades. The U.S. government constructed enhanced border fences in urban areas in the 1990s — many made using surplus metal runway mats from the Vietnam War.
Modern construction techniques in border fencing began to appear in 1995, when a three-tier design was created at Sandia National Laboratories. In this design, the layer closest to the foreign country is a substantial metal wall — using the runway mats in some areas. A well-lighted open area separates that layer from a 5-meter (15-foot) metal mesh fence (designed to keep out pedestrians) that is about 46 meters farther in. The open area, with an access road for Border Patrol agents, is blanketed with an array of technologies — heavy video coverage, thermal imaging and embedded sensors that detect metals, heat and movement. In regions prone to heavy cross traffic, there is a third, low fence in from the mesh structure.
In 2006, the Secure Fence Act extended existing border fences, but even with the extensions, there are still gaps of hundreds of kilometers along the nearly 3,200-kilometer border. Legislation to fund fence-building in these areas has been proposed on several occasions but has not been approved because of serious doubts about the effectiveness of fences in actually deterring illegal border crossings. If one visits areas that have had fences for decades such as San Diego, California; Nogales, Arizona; or El Paso and Brownsville, Texas, it is plainly evident that the fences have not stemmed the flow of contraband or of people. There is a powerful reason for this: money.
Economics
In the 1992 presidential election, Bill Clinton campaign strategist James Carville famously coined the phrase "it's the economy, stupid" in his efforts to focus the campaign on what he believed was the race's most crucial issue. I'd like to do the same here. I would argue that when considering the flow of contraband and people across the U.S.-Mexico border, the prime factor influencing that flow is economics. Other factors such as international relations, customs and immigration regulations, national and state laws, and law enforcement tactics and strategy pale by comparison — it's the economics, stupid.
As long as smugglers are able to make huge quantities of money hauling drugs and people north and guns and bulk cash south, they will be impossible to stop. Barriers may redirect the flow, but the powerful law of supply and demand will ensure that no matter what barriers are put into place, creative smugglers will find ways to circumvent them. Besides shifting the flow to areas that are not fenced, smugglers have also simply cut holes in the fence to pass through in sectors where there are barriers. They also use ladders and vehicle ramps to scale the fence, dig tunnels to pass under it and employ a variety of means — as complex as ultralight aircraft and catapults and as simple as tossing items by hand — to pass or launch contraband over the fence.
This creativity is driven by the economic law of supply and demand. As we've previously discussed, a kilo of cocaine that sells for $2,200 in the jungles of Colombia can be sold for upwards of $60,000 on the streets of New York. Mexican drug traffickers have to buy cocaine from South American producers, and sometimes Central American middlemen, lowering its profit margin some, but other classes of drugs offer even higher profit margins. A kilo of methamphetamine that might cost $300 to $500 to synthesize in Mexico can sell for $20,000 in the United States, and a kilo of Mexican heroin that costs $5,000 to produce can sell wholesale for $80,000 and can retail for as much as $300,000 north of the border. With the ability to parlay a $5,000 investment into $300,000, it is little wonder that there has been such an increase in the amount of Mexican heroin smuggled into the United States. High profit margins also explain why Mexican drug gangs are directly involved in retailing U.S. heroin rather than in selling the drug to retail distributors as they tend to do with cocaine.
The principle of supply and demand also applies to firearms flowing south over the border. Guns legally purchased in the United States can be sold for three- to five-times their purchase price in Mexico. This has given rise to an entire cottage industry of gun smuggling from the United States into Mexico. Though there has been a lot of focus on semi-automatic assault rifles that are shipped to Mexico where they are modified for fully automatic fire, cheap .380-caliber and .22-caliber weapons are among the guns most commonly traced back to the United States.
Hiding in Plain Sight
Despite a variety of methods used to sneak contraband over, under and through the walls, the vast majority of high-value narcotics is smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border at legal points of entry, camouflaged among the legitimate goods and people that cross every day. The U.S. border with Mexico is the most heavily trafficked land border in the world, and some $1.45 billion in legal trade crosses it every day. This translates into some 6 million cars, 440,000 trucks and 3.3 million pedestrians crossing the border from Mexico into the United States every month. The flow of goods and people crossing by train, bus, air and sea adds even more volume, all which must be checked for contraband.
The value of the flow of illicit goods through points of entry has been clearly demonstrated by the pitched battles that Mexican criminal organizations have waged to control land crossings. It is no accident that we have seen brutal cartel wars break out for control of lucrative border crossing cities such as Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas; Tijuana, Baja California; and Juarez, Chihuahua. Smugglers are continually developing imaginative and innovative methods to hide narcotics shipments in goods and vehicles and even on people crossing the border. They are engaged in a perpetual game of cat and mouse with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. But when this game becomes too difficult, Mexican smugglers have frequently found it necessary to stack the deck in their favor. They accomplish this through corruption.
Indeed, as border security has tightened and as the flow of narcotics has been impeded, the number of U.S. border enforcement officers arrested on charges of corruption has increased notably. This is a logical outcome in the progression of enforcement. As the obstacles posed by border enforcement have become more daunting, people have become the weak link in border security. In some ways, people become like tunnels under the border wall — merely another channel employed by traffickers to help their goods get past the border and to market. This corruption has affected every level of U.S. law enforcement: local, state and federal. It has ensnared county sheriffs and high-ranking federal agents. It also figures into human smuggling. As it becomes harder for people to cross the border, there is more pressure to obtain illicit border crossing cards, visas and passports.
Now, all of this is not to say that efforts to stem the flow of narcotics and other contraband should fatalistically be abandoned. This is also not a call for totally open borders. Indeed, efforts should be made to reduce the flow of contraband and undocumented immigrants to the extent possible. However these efforts should be taken with the understanding that because of powerful economic factors, illegal flows can never be absolutely stopped. Indeed, the only thing that could truly end the supply of drugs, guns and immigrants is a lack of demand. But as long as Americans are willing to pay for illegal drugs and provide jobs to workers without documentation, inexorable economic forces will continue to fuel illegal cross-border activity.
The next time you hear someone discussing how a border wall can seal off the flow of drugs and migrants, remind them: "It's the economics, stupid."
Texas: Judge Again Refuses to Block Refugees
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - FEB. 8, 2016
A federal judge has again ruled against Texas in its efforts to stop the resettlement of Syrian refugees. Judge David Godbey of District Court in Austin said Monday that state Republican leaders’ attempts to block families fleeing the war-torn country needed to be handled through “the political process,” not the courtroom. It was the second time that Judge Godbey had ruled against Texas since it sued the Obama administration over the resettlement. The lawsuit was filed after nearly 30 states vowed to ban Syrian refugees following the Paris attacks in November. The judge said that it would be “foolish” to deny that Syrian refugees posed some danger but that Texas had given no evidence of a substantial risk.
A version of this brief appears in print on February 9, 2016, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Texas: Judge Again Refuses to Block Refugees.
NATO Will Send Ships to Aegean Sea to Deter Human Trafficking
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and SEWELL CHAN - FEB. 11, 2016
Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter during a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday. Credit Virginia Mayo/Associated Press
BRUSSELS — NATO will deploy ships to the Aegean Sea in an attempt to stop smugglers moving migrants from Turkey to Greece, the military alliance’s secretary general said on Thursday.The ships will focus on monitoring the waterways and on providing intelligence to the European Union, which is taking the lead in trying to stem the flow of migrants, according to NATO officials.
NATO will also enhance its surveillance of the Turkey-Syria border to monitor more closely the movement of migrants and the activities of smugglers, the secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said. “This is not about stopping or pushing back refugee boats,” he said.
The operation puts the military alliance in the position of conducting what amounts to a law enforcement operation in the middle of a humanitarian and diplomatic crisis. Even if the military move ends up being largely symbolic, it represents the heightened concern over a crisis that has also become a geopolitical conundrum.
Gen. Philip M. Breedlove of the United States Air Force, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, has ordered ships to the Aegean, Mr. Stoltenberg said. The vessels are from Canada, Germany, Greece and Turkey, officials said.
Interactive Graphic
Countries Under the Most Strain in the European Migration Crisis
European Union officials struggle to cope with the growing crisis.“This mission has literally come together in the last 20 hours, and I have been tasked now to go back and define the mission,” General Breedlove said. “We had some very rapid decision making and now we have to go out to do some military work.”
Mr. Stoltenberg said it was “important to respond swiftly, because this crisis affects us all.”
“And all of us have to contribute in finding solutions,” he added.
Three members of the alliance — Germany, Greece and Turkey — had asked NATO for help with the sea patrols, as they struggle to deal with the number of refugees who have fled violence in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq, Syria and other conflict-torn countries.
About 3,800 people died last year while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach the European Union. An additional 409 have died this year under the same circumstances, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Mr. Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, announced the deployment after meeting with the defense ministers of all 28 NATO countries at the alliance’s headquarters here.
The United States supported the move. Before Mr. Stoltenberg’s announcement, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter confirmed on Thursday that Germany, Greece and Turkey had sought NATO’s help to deal with the migrant crisis, Europe’s biggest displacement of people since World War II.
The defense ministers “tasked NATO military authorities to provide its advice for options for implementing it,” Mr. Carter said, calling the human traffickers “a criminal syndicate which is exploiting these poor people.”
Also on Thursday, the German government agreed to permit refugees who had entered the country as unaccompanied minors to bring over their families, in cases of particular hardship.
The agreement allows family reunifications only when “urgent humanitarian reasons” justify the granting of asylum to the children’s parents. The question of when reunifications would be permitted has been a point of dispute between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democratic Party, with which she governs in coalition. Germany, which received nearly 1.1 million applications for asylum last year, has been trying to stem the flow.
In other developments on Thursday, a trial opened in the Aegean resort town of Bodrum, Turkey, of two Syrians, Muwafaka Alabash and Asem Alfrhad. They are accused of causing the drownings of a 3-year-old Syrian, Alan Kurdi, and of four other migrants, including the boy’s mother and brother, in September. Images of the boy’s lifeless body lying face down on a beach in Bodrum helped focus world attention on the crisis.
The two men each face up to 35 years in prison if convicted of charges of human smuggling and causing the deaths of five people “through deliberate negligence.”
Michael S. Schmidt reported from Brussels, and Sewell Chan from London.
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
10,000 Child Refugees Are Missing
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD - FEB. 10, 2016
Syrian refugees near the Turkish border. Credit Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
According to the European police agency Europol, more than 10,000 children who entered Europe during the last two years have disappeared, vanishing through the gaping cracks in Europe’s chaotic system for dealing with refugees and migrants.The fear is that many of the missing children have been trafficked into the sex trade by the same organized criminal groups that are profiting handsomely by ferrying refugees into and across Europe.
In addition, many children are believed to have fled detention centers, where they do not feel safe and are too often kept in the dark about their rights. Some are teenage boys, many from Syria and Afghanistan, who have been sent ahead by families hoping to join them later. Once on the streets, they are easy prey for drug dealers, pimps or petty theft rings. Younger children and adolescent girls are also at great risk of sexual and other abuse.
Some children may have become separated from their families along the routes refugees take through Europe after landing in Greece or Italy. Others arrive in Europe as unaccompanied minors — 26,000 last year — according to the humanitarian group Save the Children.
And more are arriving every day. The United Nations says that more than a third of refugees crossing the Mediterranean by boat to reach Europe are now children. Last year, more than 70 percent of refugees who arrived in Europe were men.
“The implications of this surge in the proportion of children and women on the move are enormous — it means more are at risk at sea, especially now in the winter, and more need protection on land,” warned Marie-Pierre Poirier, Unicef’s special coordinator for the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe.
Britain’s Department of International Development is setting up a 10 million pound ($14 million) fund to support refugee and migrant children on the Continent. That is helpful, but Britain, which has so far balked at taking any refugees already in Europe, should also take in a fair share of unaccompanied children — as should all other European countries.
The European Union also needs to increase funding to improve services for these children. The trafficking networks must be broken, and any perpetrators of crimes against children must be apprehended and punished.
All European countries have signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and have a duty to provide for the safety and well-being of children on European soil. That Europe has failed to protect these most vulnerable among the desperate people arriving on the Continent is unconscionable.
A version of this editorial appears in print on February 10, 2016, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: 10,000 Child Refugees Are Missing.
Republicans Fire Up Immigration Talk Heading Into South Carolina
By ALEXANDER BURNS - FEB. 12, 2016
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas spoke at a rally on Thursday at the Morningstar Fellowship Church in Fort Mill, S.C. Credit Travis Dove for The New York Times
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — The Republican presidential race has erupted in an incendiary new round of attacks over immigration, laying the groundwork in South Carolina for a monthslong fight that is likely to amplify hard-line talk about border security and migrants before a national audience.With Donald J. Trump leading the way, the candidates have offered contentious proposals to build a wall on the Mexican border, block Muslims from entering the United States and turn away even 5-year-old refugees from Syria.
Party leaders had hoped some of the most provocative speech would have subsided by now as the race moved past Iowa, a state known for its fiercely hawkish immigration politics, and as more conventional candidates, like former Gov. Jeb Bush and SenatorMarco Rubio of Florida, turned their attention toward the general election.
Instead, the battle lines over immigration have only deepened, as Mr. Trump has maintained his upper hand in the race and the primary campaign has moved into South Carolina and a series of Southern states that vote over the next month.
Mr. Cruz greeted supporters after his rally Thursday. He won the Republican caucuses in Iowa in part on the strength of his immigration message. Credit Travis Dove for The New York Times
The theme of what conservatives call “amnesty” has divided the candidates into two groups: One, including Mr. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, favors strict immigration policies that would never grant legal status to undocumented immigrants. The other, including Mr. Rubio and Mr. Bush, who are both trailing in the polls, has endorsed a crackdown on illegal immigration without ruling out legal status for people in the country illegally at some distant point in the future.Here in South Carolina, Mr. Cruz is airing a television ad attacking Mr. Rubio for his involvement in an attempted overhaul of the immigration system and branding him as having worked “with liberal Chuck Schumer to give illegals amnesty.” A “super PAC” supporting Mr. Cruz has sent campaign mail to voters here and in Nevada showing Mr. Rubio’s face alongside those of Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, and accusing Mr. Rubio of supporting “amnesty.”
Kellyanne Conway, a strategist for the pro-Cruz group, Keep the Promise, said support for legalizing undocumented immigrants was a “complete deal-breaker, an unpardonable sin, among the base.”
But Mr. Cruz, who won the Republican caucuses in Iowa in part on the strength of his immigration message, is also facing newly harsh criticism of his own record. A conservative advocacy group, the American Future Fund, is running commercials that say he “proposed mass legalization of illegal immigrants,” as part of a larger attack on Mr. Cruz’s national security credentials.
Mr. Trump, who has called for a ban on Muslim immigration and for a special “deportation force” to expel undocumented immigrants, released an ad criticizing Mr. Cruz as untrustworthy on the issue. Mr. Trump later pulled the ad, but on Friday put out a different one highlighting the endorsement of Jamiel Shaw Sr., a man whose son was killed in California by a person the commercial describes as an “illegal immigrant gang member who just got out of prison.”
Graphic: Which States Trump, Cruz and Rubio Need to Win
Heading into the debate on Saturday in Greenville, Mr. Rubio, who once championed an immigration bill that would have allowed undocumented workers to obtain legal status, insistently accused Mr. Cruz of being insincere in his support for punitive immigration restrictions.
At a campaign stop Thursday in Myrtle Beach, Mr. Rubio twice tied Mr. Cruz to more lenient positions on immigration that are unpopular here. When immigration was up for debate in Washington, Mr. Rubio said, “Ted was a passionate spokesperson on behalf of legalizing people that are in this country illegally.”Even Mr. Bush, who has taken a more empathetic view of illegal immigration — he has called it an “act of love” for people seeking economic opportunity — has circulated materials at campaign events that stress his stern approach to border security.
“The first priority must be to Secure the Border,” the leaflets say, with the final three words in bold type.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former economic adviser to Senator John McCain’s 2008 campaign, said immigration had become a symbolic litmus test on the right, locking the candidates into a protracted struggle, with potentially grave consequences for the fall campaign.
Senator Marco Rubio addressed a crowd at a campaign stop on Thursday in Bluffton, S.C. Credit Stephen B. Morton for The New York Times
“It’s an authenticity fight — who’s the authentic conservative?” said Mr. Holtz-Eakin, who advocated a bipartisan immigration deal in 2013. “The difference is, immigration is a real issue, it’s a large issue, and you can’t escape that.”Should Republicans enter the fall with a platform based on severe immigration restrictions, it would be the third consecutive presidential race in which the party has tacked to the right on the subject before facing an increasingly diverse national electorate, especially in swing states like Nevada, Florida and Virginia, where there are sizable Latino and Asian-American communities.
After the 2008 and 2012 elections, Republican leaders publicly called for the party to soften its platform on immigration. In the wake of Mitt Romney’s defeat by President Obama, a report commissioned by the Republican National Committee concluded that supporting immigration reform was essential to the party’s viability in national elections.
The gulf between the parties has opened even wider since then: As Republicans have taken a down-the-line conservative stance on immigration, Democrats have lurched still further to the left, and have criticized even the application of existing immigration laws.
In the Democratic debate on Thursday night, both Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont criticized Mr. Obama for deportation raids recently conducted by his administration.
But the stakes appear to be higher for the Republicans as they grapple with the perception that their party is hostile to immigrants and nonwhite voters.
Proponents of immigration reform have sought to raise the alarm about the trajectory of the Republican race. FWD.us, an organization that supports immigration reform, and is funded in part by the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, cited private polling to warn late last fall that support for large-scale deportation would be “disastrous” in a general election.
“Any candidate who in the general supports mass deportation risks negatively impacting the brand of his or her party for generations to come,” the group said in a memo circulated to allies in both parties.
In South Carolina, support for bipartisan immigration reform has not always proved politically toxic. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who supports Mr. Bush, won re-election easily in 2014 after backing the same immigration compromise Mr. Rubio supported.
But voters here are plainly looking to the candidates for reassurance.
At a campaign stop Thursday in which Mr. Rubio criticized Mr. Cruz’s immigration views from the right, Judy Phillips of North Myrtle Beach said some of her concerns about Mr. Rubio’s record had been put to rest.
Ms. Phillips, who runs a small furniture business, said it had been important to hear Mr. Rubio’s plans from him directly, after the barrage of immigration-themed ads that she had seen attacking him.
“They keep running that ad about Schumer and him,” Ms. Phillips said. “I think that’s a damaging ad.”
A version of this article appears in print on February 13, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Division Deepens in the G.O.P.
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
Mrs. Clinton’s Mixed Immigration Message
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD - FEB. 12, 2016
Credit Edel Rodriguez
In Thursday night’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton defended her past statements that Central American migrant children needed to be sent home from the border to “send a message” to other families: Don’t come.Wrong answer — which Bernie Sanders immediately pointed out.
“Who are you sending a message to?” he said, reminding her that mothers and children were fleeing Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to avoid being murdered. “I don’t think we use them to send a message. I think we welcome them into this country and do the best we can to help them get their lives together.”
The sharp exchange on refugees was a welcome break from the Democrats’ one-note squabbling over who is a progressive and who hates the banks more. The border is a subject of manic intensity on the Republican side, but Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton have not been talking about it much. They generally agree that President Obama’s enforcement policies have been too harsh, and they promise to do more than he did to help immigrants live and work without fear of deportation. On the trail, though, they have not always led with this information.
Over the years, Mrs. Clinton has shown an unfortunate tendency to oscillate between harshness and compassion on immigration questions. She seems to reach instinctively for the tougher-sounding policy before coming around, eventually, to positions that more closely reflect American ideals of welcome — ideals that Mr. Sanders voiced fluently on Thursday night.
Running for president in 2008, Mrs. Clinton gave a muddled answer to a debate question about driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. She later clarified — she would oppose such driver’s licenses as president — and then, more recently, decided that she supports them after all.
It was after the number of Central American migrant children at the border spiked in 2014 that she said they should be sent back to send a message. “Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” she said. Now she says children should have access to lawyers and not be held in family prisons, but she was tripped up again by her “send a message” line.
Mrs. Clinton now has an opportunity to clarify her message: Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, introduced a bill on Thursday that would help to guarantee due process for border refugees. It would require the attorney general to appoint lawyers for unaccompanied children and others who are vulnerable, like victims of abuse or torture and those with disabilities. The Department of Homeland Security would have to make sure that all migrants had access to counsel, knew their rights and obligations, and understood what was happening to them. The bill seeks to correct the appalling injustice of refugee children facing court proceedings alone and being deported back to grave danger at home.
The border influx was a humanitarian emergency before it became a concocted homeland-security crisis and political pickle. It will take courage, and require a lot of money, for the country to stand up for the rights of the uninvited and desperate. Volunteer lawyers and advocacy organizations have struggled mightily to provide representation for migrants who face the real threat of death if their asylum claims fail.
Mrs. Clinton tweeted in favor of the Reid bill on Thursday night. If she means what she says about herself — that she is all about tackling difficult problems and helping those most in need — she will go all in to support Mr. Reid’s effort, and let the world know it.
A version of this editorial appears in print on February 13, 2016
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