on the border, who are the people who have studied it. let me just make a couple of quick points here. one is that this was passed by voice vote unanimously as an anti-trafficking law. so the kinds of problems we re seeing, fleeing violence, are not the kind of problems that they first made this law to deal with. and when you talk to the people who sponsored the law, the co-sponsors of the law will tell you they never in a million years imagined that it would come to this kind of situation. it was never meant to handle these kinds of numbers, this breadth of people and these number of different kinds of reasons that they are coming into the united states. and so you need to look at that law and the way that they are trying to apply it and they are seeing that in so many of these cases, and this is what the president has been trying to say, the reason he s made the point that most of these children will not qualify for any kind of asylum is that they are not covered under this law. that
1400 people a day that were picking up that many in the rio grande valley area. now it s about 1,000 a day. sometimes considerably below that. sometimes a little above, but 1,000 is about an average. an official says there s no reason to celebrate. that may just be a temporary blip but they are looking at it very carefully n wondering why this may be happening. thank you so much, mark, for that. a lot of people do atribute to to the border. a blame game going on. the other element that s contentious is the time frame. three different administrations in play. first up, accusations that clinton era anti-immigration legislation is to blame. that s partly because they instituted a zero tolerance policy that resulted in the deportation of some 20,000, mostly l.a.-based gang members all the way to central america. some say that contributed to this current gang culture in those countries and the current spike in violence. jose, how such that the root of the gang violence we re seeing explod
crisis. that is unfolding right now and has gotten white hot for so many around the country. we ve just been discussing where the origin point of that crisis is with our fabulous panel here today. we ve got jose diaz balart, victoria, steve rattner on the economic side and chris jansing and mark potter, as well as stephanie gosk on the phone. a lot of different firsthand perspectives from those who know this issue. right before we broke, we were talking about the line of blame that goes all the way back to the clinton administration. and whether america deporting gang violence from l.a. down to central america is part of the root of what has become a humanitarian crisis there. and it s causing this flight into the united states. now i want to look at another line of blame. people saying that george w. bush administration is actually the origin point of this in the form of a 2008 law designed to protect victims of trafficking. making sure that they can t be deported immediately. making
question of why unaccompanied minors are leaving these countries without their parents, you ll hear people embrace one reason or another depending on their politics. but the reality that we ve seen on the ground here is that this is very much in a squishy middle. there are lots of reasons why these kids leave. and we talked to a bunch of teenagers in one of the most violent neighborhoods of san pedro sula, one of the most violent cities in honduras. they said violence is a problem. gangs are a problem. also, jobs are a problem. they don t see a future for themselves. and every single one of them, also has a neighbor or a friend down the street that has left in the last few years and has been allowed to stay. whether they are in the deportation process or whether they got through or whatever it is, it is perceived down here that they were allowed in. so all of these factors together need to be addressed separately but also with an understanding that they are all contributing the issue.
every single white, pure line of cocaine that americans put up their nose is filled with the blood of people who have died so that these people, in this country, could consume illegal drugs. we have a quota of responsibility and this is not going away whether we wish it to or not. and jose, you mentioned that america fuels demand. its response in the form of the war on drugs has contributed to the violence. we re engaged in brutal proxy wars frod providing funds and arms that often makes its way into some of the gangs and factions causing these problems. i want to get a look at what it looks like on the ground. jose? i was just going to tell you that is exactly what this is part of the problem. and it s not going away simply by putting more troops on the ground in the border or wishing it to go away. all right. so we ve looked at this question of maybe there are deep roots in american policy that are certainly if not causing, contributing to this problem on the ground. i want to