UN Human Rights Chief Condemns U.S. Border Migrant Detention

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on Monday that she is appalled by the conditions in which migrants and individuals seeking refugee status are being held in detention in the United States after crossing the southern border from Mexico. She stressed that children should never be held in immigration detention or separated from their families, declaring that immigration detention is never in the best interests of a child.

Ms. Bachelet is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Many of the migrant families leaving Central America to reach the United States did so to seek better economic opportunities. They were not fleeing government persecution, which would entitle them to seek asylum. They intended to enter the U.S. illegally or to make bogus claims for asylum in order to stay in the country. Others are unaccompanied children, who were sent north alone or with strangers (often smugglers) to hopefully be reunited with a parent or relative who had already emigrated to the U.S. The people who risked children’s lives in taking them, or sending them unaccompanied, on the long perilous journey north from Central America to the United States were the ones who ignored the best interests of the children in the first place. They exposed the children to illnesses, human trafficking and sexual abuse, if they made it alive at all. Smugglers have left unaccompanied children – some as young as 3 years old – alone in deserts or brush on the U.S. side of the border. U.S. border agents have saved such children’s lives. None of this is reflected in Ms. Bachelet’s statement. The president of El Salvador candidly admitted that people desperate for a better life were leaving his country to go to the United States because his country failed them. They wanted jobs paying a living wage but could not find them in El Salvador. “They fled El Salvador, they fled our country,” El Salvador’s president declared. “It is our fault. We can say President Trump’s policies are wrong. We can say Mexico’s policies are wrong. But what about our blame?” He added that “if people have an opportunity for a decent job, a decent education, a decent health care system and security, I know that forceful migration will be reduced to zero.”

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Yes, conditions have been subpar in some U.S. border detention facilities, as noted in the report issued by the Homeland Security Office of Inspector General that Ms. Bachelet cited in her statement. The report described the “serious overcrowding” and prolonged detention, including of children, it found at the Border Patrol facilities it visited in the Rio Grande Valley. However, U.S. border and immigration agents has done the best they can without adequate resources to handle the huge influx of migrants at the border. Without enough funds to relieve overcrowding and provide more adequate facilities, the Trump administration could do little but engage in triage. The U.S. Congress is responsible for appropriating money needed to meet the challenges at the border. Democrats had to be dragged after months of delay to finally support a bipartisan measure to fund additional humanitarian relief, although with no help from their more progressive contingent. This infusion of funding is already resulting in improved conditions. Ms. Bachelet acknowledged that nation states “have the sovereign prerogative to decide on the conditions of entry and stay of foreign nationals.” That’s nice. However, she added that “clearly, border management measures must comply with the State’s human rights obligations and should not be based on narrow policies aimed only at detecting, detaining and expeditiously deporting irregular migrants.” She urged authorities to utilize “non-custodial alternatives for migrant and refugee children – and adults” – i.e., their release into communities across the United States where they can reside undetected.

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Who decides what the “State’s human rights obligations” are in dealing with so-called “irregular migrants.” It should be the United Nations, of course, according to the globalist elites. The UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet noted the findings of several UN human rights bodies that the detention of migrant children may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that is prohibited by international law Ms. Bachelet referenced in particular the conclusions of two UN committees, the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and the Committee on the Rights of the Child. These two committees issued a joint statement in November 2017 on what they claimed were the “legally binding obligations that relate both in general and specific terms to the protection of the rights of children in the context of international migration.” The committees cited the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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The United States is not a state party to either of these conventions and is not legally bound by their terms. More fundamentally, we often find unaccountable senior UN officials and UN committees made up of unaccountable bureaucrats declaring their views of what constitutes “international law,” sometimes in the guise of so-called "international norms." These declarations are taken as gospel by globalists who revel in demonizing the U.S., promoting transnational authority, and subverting national sovereignty at every turn. In a major speech that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered last December in Brussels, he pointed out that multilateralism has become an end unto itself. “The more treaties we sign, the safer we supposedly are,” he said. “The more bureaucrats we have, the better the job gets done.” Regarding the United Nations, he asked, “Does it continue to serve its mission faithfully?” As the UN too often pokes its nose where it does not belong, the answer to Secretary Pompeo’s question is no. The UN’s brand of multilateralism is a perversion of its original mission - to achieve solutions to global problems through cooperation among sovereign nations rather than through the imposition of global governance “rules” and “norms” written and interpreted by unaccountable UN forums.