RIGHT SPEAK: The Border as an ‘Attractive Nuisance’

Chris Wattie/Reuters

If you have a swimming pool, you can be held liable if a trespassing child falls in and drowns unless you’ve taken reasonable steps to keep children from getting to the pool, like a fence. An unfenced pool (or trampoline or a discarded refrigerator that locks from the outside, among other potentially dangerous things) is thus called an “attractive nuisance.”

The loopholes in our asylum laws make our nation’s borders an attractive nuisance, as well. Of course, no matter what we do, there will always be people who will try to illegally infiltrate our borders, and it’s inevitable that some of them will die in the process — whether by drowning, exposure, dehydration, or other causes. But when we fail to take the most elementary steps to dissuade people from trying to sneak in — heck, when we reward people for sneaking in with kids in tow and making bogus asylum claims — we share the responsibility for those deaths.

The heart-wrenching photograph of a Salvadoran father and daughter who were found drowned Monday on the banks of the Rio Grande forces us to face this issue. Julian Castro was right when he said at last night’s Democratic debate, “watching that image of Oscar and his daughter, Valeria, is heartbreaking. It should also piss us all off.”