Be bold, Mr. Trump

JUÁREZ, Mexico — There are no politics when you’re feeding a child.

Only volunteers in hairnets preparing beans, rice and shredded chicken for a line of eager-eyed youngsters who came before they were called. The cook chuckles a bit and blows the long-awaited whistle signaling dinner is served. Smiles grow wide as dozens of children from Central America reach for the plates, each crowned with a fresh piece of bolillo bread that seems to reassure: No one will go hungry tonight.

Don’t ask about President Donald Trump here, or about the Mexican government’s shifting policies regarding migrants. People will have little to say. On a recent night at Casa del Migrante in Ciudad Juárez, an immigrant shelter across the border from El Paso, the focus was far from the partisan politics and divisive rhetoric that so often dominate the news.

This week in Juárez and El Paso, the editorial board found that there was little time to think beyond filling the immediate needs of helping parents and children seeking shelter, hot meals and warm showers for the first time in days.

The luxuries of hand-wringing, pontificating and judging are not theirs. Nor does the incessant finger-pointing belong to the legions of our fellow Texans and their counterpart volunteers in Mexico — hundreds marshaled by churches, charities and their own moral compasses — handle the burdens of caring for the strangers.

They are the best of us — these men and women whose kindness is not rationed by geography or tribe. Every day, every hour, they reap asimple reward: gratitude in a migrant’s eyes.

Then there are the others — those we see on TV and read about in headlines. These are often our leaders charged with finding solutions who, at best, have failed to do so through incompetence and, at worst, are simply scoring political points off chaos.

This abdication of responsibility to find a solution goes all the way up to, and in many ways begins, with the president himself. When Trump visits California today, he will, if the past is any guide, repeat his familiar mantra about keeping the border secure and Americans safe.

His threats to close the border, from which on Thursday he appeared to retreat, conjure the image of asteel curtain coming down along the almost 2,000-miles between Mexico and the United States, but in reality it means shutting down legal ports of entry and choking off trade — which in the Houston-Galveston area alone represents almost $67 million a day — and damaging border communities. It also does nothing to stop the number of migrants coming into the country.

That’s because most of these migrants are seeking asylum. Regardless of how they enter the country, American laws guarantee due process. Ironically, it’s likely many are making their dangerous trek into and through Mexico precisely because of, not in spite of, Trump’s talk of shutting down the border and cutting aid to their home country. Who would blame them from hearing the unspoken sales pitch: If you’re thinking of going to America, the time is now!

Maybe this has been Trump’s plan all along. Maybe failing to prepare for a highly anticipated, increased flow of asylum-seekers would help build support for his wall, and for his declaration of a national emergency.

Spend any time at a shelter here and that story falls apart. Talk to migrants and you’ll meet mothers and 5-year-olds — unlikely criminals. All they want is a shot. A chance at abetter life. Whether they’re fleeing violence or extreme poverty, few are looking for a handout.

What’s happening at the border is a humanitarian crisis — one of our government’s own making. Neither the Trump nor the Obama administrations ramped up our border infrastructure — that is, judges, courtrooms, hearing officers and more — to adequately process the populations many had predicted would come. Instead, especially in the past two years, the attention has been on adding agents and building walls to keep out the kind of border-crossers who used to be so common — the single men, most from Mexico, who come for work — but whose numbers have been dropping for years.

As he visits the border, we urge the president to change course, to do something bold. Why not meet with the people here who live on both sides of the border? The tens of thousands of shoppers, tourists, students and workers who cross every day, or the truck drivers behind the wheel who help our economies prosper? And yes, why not meet the migrants, too, and the volunteers at places like Annunciation House in El Paso who do so much to help?

We wish the president would step outside Casa Oscar Romero, the shelter here for newly arrived migrants. He’d walk past the beat-up basketball court, the four shopping carts the children can’t help but play with, up to the faded backyard play set that looks over the back wall and into the El Paso airport.

He might even be lucky enough to eavesdrop on a mother and her two boys, talking and looking up into the sky, as we did this week, pointing at the plane they might be on some day.

Would it stop Trump from demonizing immigrants and work toward a humane solution? That might be too much to hope for, but once you spend time with the people here, you realize that hope is what the border’s all about.