Border Patrol as chauffers for beggars

AP/MSNBC:

Josefa Gonzalez Loya has sneaked across the Mexican border at least 128 times in the past eight years. And each time, the Border Patrol has been nice enough to give her a lift home.

Gonzalez and a group of other women and children — all Indians from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca — have no interest in staying in the United States. All they want to do is panhandle outside El Paso businesses, using the children as lures.

At the end of a productive day, they wait for the Border Patrol to come pick them up and drive them back to the border.

Little dramas like this play out day after day, accounting for thousands of arrests but hardly any prosecutions in the past several years.

The Oaxacan migrants fall under a loophole that gives border agents discretion to keep some adults and children together and out of jail.

"They do qualify for jail and prosecution," Border Patrol spokesman Ramiro Cordero said. "However, we've got to look at the humanitarian factor first if we are going to have to separate the family."

Nearly 500 Oaxacan women and children in colorful serapes have been rounded up since the fiscal year began in October, accounting for thousands of arrests.

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This is another testament to the failure of the Mexican culture to provide for its own. It is also a testament to the failure of compassion as an effective means of dealing with border enforcement. As long as there is no consequence for the illegal acts, and indeed as long as there is active assistance, the acts will continue.