Hey, remember how we were being swamped last summer by illegal immigrant kids that were The Hugest Threat To America, until Ebola became The Hugest Threat To America? Which was shortly before illegal ISIS border crossers with Ebola became The Hugest Threat To America and then the elections happened and the nation's greatest existential threat went back to being just plain old Obama and gay marriage? Turns out that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) did their very best to get rid of as many of those kids as possible, right down to faking their paperwork -- like the border agents who filed a form saying that they'd interviewed a three-year-old boy who crossed the border to get work. Thank god they caught him -- we need to preserve America's block-stacking job sector for American preschoolers.

According to an amicus brief filed in an appeal by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the border official filed a form attesting that this exact series of questions and answers took place as the agents interviewed the tiny miscreant, identified as "YF":

Addressing Y-F- directly in Spanish, a government agent told YF that "I am an officer of the United States Department of Homeland Security." He informed YF that "I want to take your sworn statement" and warned YF that "[t]his may be your only opportunity to present information to me and the Department of Homeland Security to make a decision." Under oath, the agent interrogated YF. "Do you understand what I've said to you? Yes. Do you have any questions? No." On and on the interrogation went. Near the end of the interrogation, the agent asked YF "Why did you leave your home country or country of last residence?" YF responded, "To look for work."

The statement was sworn by the agent who did the interrogation, and countersigned by a second agent who said they'd very definitely witnessed the interview. And yes, the interviewee was a three-year-old. Dumb kid obviously forgot his lines, because as we all know from the Great Immigrant Kid Panic of 2014, all he needed was to be coached by his parents to say "I have a credible fear of death or harm in my native country," and then the kid would have been showered with all the free stuff that illegal immigrants are showered with in America, like EBT cards, frozen crab legs, and as many free Korans and prayer rugs as they can carry.

AILA used the interrogation as evidence that -- and you will be shocked to hear this -- Homeland Security didn't exactly do rigorous investigations of whether Central American immigrants might have legitimate asylum claims. Instead, the standard procedure seems to have been finding any excuse to deport them, though never enough to please the anti-immigration loons, and then sending them on their way back home, where, big surprise, conditions remained terrible. And some of the children we deported died, but hey, American Exceptionalism was protected.

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The AILA says, in what sounds like one hell of an understatement, that many of the alleged immigration testimony transcripts “are not inherently reliable because they often contain fake responses, do not accurately reflect testimony presented, and were almost always created under coercive conditions.” But there is an appeals process: if the three-year-old had a problem with how the form was filled out, he could have filed an appeal with ICE ICE, Baby.

Think Progress also notes that this has been going on for ages, because the priority has always been to deport as many people as possible:

A 2005 United States Commission on International Religious Freedom report found evidence that some CBP officers faked responses. Researchers found that in some cases, the questions required to screen for “credible fear” — such as, “Why did you leave your home country or country of last residence?” — were not actually asked, yet the paperwork “incorrectly indicated that the question had been asked and answered” in nearly 87 percent of the cases.

Yeah, but there are STILL too many immigrants getting in! We don't actually care whether they're refugees or just here to take all the good spots on the play rug. Why aren't we building a big YOOGE wall like the one Donald Trump wants? Instead, we keep housing them in luxury hotels (which are actually run-down motels converted into dormitories) and ignoring God's commandment to deport everyone like Jesus wanted.

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Even though many immigrant families have expressed "credible fear" of death or persecution if they're returned, they remain locked up as their cases grind slowly through the courts. Oh, but here's something sure to result in massive demonstrations: Think Progress reports, "About half a dozen women and children may soon be released from Karnes County Residential Center, a family detention center in Texas, in coming days." Get ready for some morons to start blockading YMCA summer camp buses again.

[ThinkProgress]