Last month I told you that Border Patrol agents report being told to let in “children” with gang tattoos. I said then: “Obama is so invested in the idea of allowing illegals into the country that he really doesn’t care if any of them are gang members or even footsoldiers for the cartels.” I added:

[T]he cartels know the U.S. Government is doing this. So if they can find willing 16- or 17-year-old footsoldiers — and they can — the cartels can deliver those footsoldiers across the border, with the assistance of the U.S. Government.

I have absolutely no doubt that this is happening. Drug cartels are using Obama’s policies to deliver footsoldiers into our country.

Was I crazy? No . . . as it turns out, I was right:

With the system being overwhelmed, Border Patrol agents are concerned about minors who have admitted to being MS-13 members, a brutal street gang from El Salvador that has been successful in infiltrating American communities. Agents are also concerned about minors who have committed acts like torture and murder in their home countries before heading north to the United States.

“We have six minors in Nogales who have admitted to killing and doing grievous bodily injuries. One admitted to killing as young as eight years old,” an agent tells Townhall anonymously for fear of losing his job for speaking out. “They are being held for placement in the U.S.”

By U.S. legal standards many gang members operating in Central American countries and traveling north are classified as minors due to being under the age of 18. However, many young males are actively engaged in violent cartel and criminal activity, yet are treated as children when processed through the Department of Human Services or Department of Homeland Security systems.

But they’re just innocent children! And we love children!

Fortunately, they’re all being essentially released into the country, to face chimerical deportation proceedings that will happen in approximately never.

They probably won’t kill you, so why would you care?

[guest post by Dana]

The previously mentioned amount of $2 billion the president would be requesting to process the unaccompanied minor detainees more quickly, has now almost doubled.

The White House on Tuesday formally requested $3.7 billion from Congress in emergency funding to deal with an influx of unaccompanied minors from Central America, a far higher amount than the Obama administration had previously signaled.

The money would go to several federal agencies, including the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, State and Health and Human Services. Funds would be allocated to send more immigration judges to the southern border, build additional detention facilities and add border patrol agents.

The move is aimed at more quickly deporting the tens of thousands of women and children who have entered the country illegally across the souther border, most of them in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

Also, as President Obama is still refusing Governor Rick Perry’s invitation to visit the southern border while the president is in Texas, Valerie Jarrett has invited Governor Perry to shake hands with the president on the tarmac.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has reportedly rejected President Barack Obama’s offer to briefly shake hands when Air Force One lands in Austin on Wednesday. Instead, the governor came back with a counteroffer.

“I appreciate the offer to greet you at Austin-Bergstrom Airport, but a quick handshake on the tarmac will not allow for a thoughtful discussion regarding the humanitarian and national security crises enveloping the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas,” Perry wrote in a letter to Obama. “I would instead offer to meet with you at any time during your visit to Texas for a substantive meeting to discuss this critical issue.”

As a result of Governor Perry’s refusal, or likely because someone in the administration with half a brain figured out that the optics of arrogantly offering to shake hands on a tarmac with the sitting governor in a state that is literally the flashpoint of a “humanitarian crisis” might not be so good, the administration has instead offered to meet with Governor Perry:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said he plans to meet with President Obama to discuss the influx of women and children at the southwest border.

Perry will meet with Obama and local faith and elected leaders in Dallas on Wednesday. Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett invited Perry to the Dallas meeting.

“Governor Perry is pleased that President Obama has accepted his invitation to discuss the humanitarian and national security crises along our southern border, and he looks forward to meeting with the president tomorrow,” Perry spokesman Felix Browne wrote in an e-mail.

And lastly, the first in a series of ads commissioned by U.S. homeland security officials to deter Central American minors from illegally crossing the southern border, has been released:

The public service announcement, in Spanish, is airing in Guatemala as part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials’ $1 million multimedia campaign to deter future border crossers.

CPB’s campaign includes about 6,500 public service announcements to run on radio and television in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala through Sept. 7, the Associated Press reports. Billboards throughout Central American countries will warn parents about the dangers of the journey to the U.S.

The Dangers Awareness Campaign also will run in U.S. cities with large Central American populations, including Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Washington, D.C.

The translation of the ad follows:

Dear Uncle: My mom continues warning me about heading north. She tells me the maras [violent street gangs] are on the train and the [Mexican] cartels kidnap immigrants. That you have to walk for endless days in the desert. That might be the case, but there are no rewards for those who don’t risk it. I can already imagine myself in the States making great money and relieving my mother’s worries. Thanks, Uncle, we’ll see each other soon.

Then comes the voice of an announcer over images of the boy’s fate:

This idea that it’s now easier for our children to receive documentation in the U.S. is false. What’s true is that we’d be subjecting them to the elements, to the coyotes [violent smugglers of humans], and the [Rio Grande] river. They are our future. We must protect them.

–Dana

If all the legalese has your head spinning, here’s all you need to know:

1) The text of the ObamaCare law makes subsidies available only to one who enrolls in a health plan “through an Exchange established by the State under [section] 1311.”

2) The ObamaCare law says that if a State does not establish the exchange, “the [HHS] Secretary shall . . . establish and operate such Exchange within the State.”

3) Follow me here: when the HHS Secretary establishes an exchange, the exchange was established by the HHS Secretary.

4) The HHS Secretary is not a “State.” A State is defined in the ObamaCare law as “each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia.”

5) So when the exchange was established by the Secretary, it was not established by a “State.”

That’s pretty much it.

By the way, the D.C. Circuit put out four new opinions today, and none of them was the Halbig decision. I can’t guarantee they won’t put out any more today, but it’s looking like Friday at the earliest.

“Report: 300,000 Central American immigrants heading to U.S.” That’s Noah Rothman’s headline at Hot Air, and it’s about as disturbing as it gets. He quotes a San Antonio radio station as saying:

In fact, one source told Newsradio 1200 WOAI as many as 300,000 Central American immigrants are now ‘en route’ to the United States through Mexico, and the Department of Defense has asked military bases around the country to find 180 barracks, holding centers, and other facilities to house the flood which is not expected to stop coming any time soon.

Basically, as the word gets out that everyone who crosses the border gets to stay, more and more people are headed north.

Obama blames the influx on a 2008 law signed by President Bush that prevents immediate deportation for Central American immigrants. The New York Times is eager to repeat the talking point, giving us this headline: Immigrant Surge Rooted in Law to Curb Child Trafficking. That’s . . . a stretch, given that the law was signed in 2008, and last time I checked, it is now 2014. Clearly, a six-year-old law did not provide the initial motivation for tens of thousands of children to suddenly come to the U.S., and the obvious culprit is Obama’s unilateral announcement that he will not deport certain children. Central Americans aren’t picking up on the nuance that this policy applies only to children here since 2007.

But while the law signed by Bush is not the reason they first came, it probably has a lot to do with why they keep coming. After all, a big part of the reason Central Americans seem to think the Obama non-deportation policy applies to everyone is because, effectively, it does. These children aren’t getting deported. They’re being shipped around the country and placed in homes. They will enter taxpayer-funded schools next year. And they’ll face years-long deportation proceedings that will lead to almost nobody actually being deported.

So why not repeal this law, today?

Obama is reported to be considering “changes” to the law. No. The House should move quickly to repeal it in its entirety. The bill can be just a few lines; repealing a law should not require a lot of verbiage.

That way, when Harry Reid’s Senate refuses to take up the repeal, Republicans can tell the country that Obama can’t blame the law any more.

I understand this law was passed unanimously, in a bipartisan fashion. Lovely. But laws tend to have unintended consequences, and we’re seeing that today. So repeal it. Don’t whine about it. Just do it. Now.