Trump wants to catch and detain them all in detention centers until their case comes up for review in front of an immigration judge, then deport them if they don't meet the criteria for obtaining legal entry and a visa. There are four major categories of immigrant visas: family reunification, long-term workers, special immigrants and refugee admissions. There's just no amount of detention centers that could possibly hold these many immigrants for months at a time.
Let's look at what's been done so far. Trump tried to prosecute all adults crossing the border illegally, and had to abandon it in the (understandable) firestorm over the resulting family separations. He’s tried to jawbone Mexico into helping, with some success, although migrants are still traveling through Mexico in large numbers. He’s tried to tighten up asylum policy, but been blocked in the courts. He’s tried to get Congress to fix the rules for dealing with migrants, to no avail. And, of course, he’s tried to build a wall.
It's way overdo, but the U.S. really needs to start at square one. In my opinion, this should be a dual-pronged approach. The first is to deal with the immediate crisis of course. Add more border patrol, increase the number of immigration judges at the borders in order to speed up the process, and run those courts on a 24 hr/7 day a week status until the backlog of immigrants waiting in detention has been lessened. I worked 12 hour shifts, why shouldn't a handful of judges at each border city do the same for the time being anyway? They need to get the masses of people processed quickly and given either a temporary visa or a bus ticket back south.
The other prong is the more intensive but in the long run will result in less people seeking asylum. I would create a consortium, a 'think-tank' so to speak. In addition to experts in Latin America politics like John Coatsworth from Colombia University who is an expert in Latin American political and economic history, or James Mahon from Williams College-another expert in Latin American political economics. I'd put several corporate business owners on that committee and former and current Ambassadors from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala PLUS the Ambassadors from those countries to the U.S. Then add some people that represent human rights organizations like NISGUA in Guatemala a non-profit organization that offers support for the oppressed people in Guatemala.
You get the idea. Convening a commission on Central America immigration and bringing this think tank together to sit there until solutions are worked out will address the root causes of the problems these people are facing that are forcing them to leave their homes. The problem of illegal immigration has been a ball that's been kicked down the road by the past six presidents. For some reason they're afraid to look the problems square in the face and address them. If a dictatorial and corrupt government is stealing everything from the people - then the U.S. has to be the boss and force them to change their ways, clean up their countries' crimes and work on job creation and create more economic stability for the people in their own country. The longer the U.S. procrastinates and focuses on only stomping out the immediate fires created by massive immigration, the longer it will take to address and fix the root causes of these problems in order to put an end to it by finding solutions that work for everyone.
