Texas effectively destroyS the right to legal abortion.

 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

In the light of day today, the political fallout from Texas’s anti-abortion S.B. 8 law and the Supreme Court’s acceptance of that law continues to become clear.

By 1:00 this afternoon, the Fox News Channel had mentioned the decision only in a 20-second news brief in the 5 am hour. In political terms, it seems the dog has caught the car.

As I’ve said repeatedly, most Americans agree on most issues, even the hot button ones like abortion. A Gallup poll from June examining the issue of abortion concluded that only 32% of Americans wanted the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision overturned, while 58% of Americans opposed overturning it.

"’Overturning Roe v. Wade,’" Lydia Saad of Gallup wrote, “is a shorthand way of saying the Supreme Court could decide abortion is not a constitutional right after all, thus giving control of abortion laws back to the states. This does not sit well with a majority of Americans or even a large subset of Republicans. Not only do Americans oppose overturning Roe in principle, but they oppose laws limiting abortion in early stages of pregnancy that would have the same practical effect.”

While it is hard to remember today, the modern-day opposition to abortion had its roots not in a moral defense of life but rather in the need for President Richard Nixon to win votes before the 1972 election. Pushing the idea that abortion was a central issue of American life was about rejecting the equal protection of the laws embraced by the Democrats far more than it was ever about using the government to protect fetuses.

Abortion had been a part of American life since its inception, but states began to criminalize abortion in the 1870s. By 1960, an observer estimated that there were between 200,000 and 1.2 million illegal U.S. abortions a year, endangering women, primarily poor ones who could not afford a workaround.

To stem this public health crisis, doctors wanted to decriminalize abortion and keep it between a woman and her doctor. In the 1960s, states began to decriminalize abortion on this medical model, and support for abortion rights grew.

The rising women's movement wanted women to have control over their lives. Its leaders were latecomers to the reproductive rights movement, but they came to see reproductive rights as key to self-determination. In 1969, activist Betty Friedan told a medical abortion meeting: “[M]y only claim to be here, is our belated recognition, if you will, that there is no freedom, no equality, no full human dignity and personhood possible for women until we assert and demand the control over our own bodies, over our own reproductive process….”

In 1971, even the evangelical Southern Baptist Convention agreed that abortion should be legal in some cases, and vowed to work for modernization. Their convention that year reiterated its “belief that society has a responsibility to affirm through the laws of the state a high view of the sanctity of human life, including fetal life, in order to protect those who cannot protect themselves” but also called on “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

By 1972, Gallup pollsters reported that 64% of Americans agreed that abortion was between a woman and her doctor. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans, who had always liked family planning, agreed, as did 59% of Democrats.

In keeping with that sentiment, in 1973, the Supreme Court, under Republican Chief Justice Warren Burger, in a decision written by Republican Harry Blackmun, decided Roe v. Wade, legalizing first-trimester abortion.

The common story is that Roe sparked a backlash. But legal scholars Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel found something interesting. In a 2011 article in the Yale Law Journal, they showed that opposition to the eventual Roe v. Wade decision began in 1972—the year before the decision—and that it was a deliberate attempt to polarize American politics.

In 1972, Nixon was up for reelection, and he and his people were paranoid that he would lose. His adviser Pat Buchanan was a Goldwater man who wanted to destroy the popular New Deal state that regulated the economy and protected social welfare and civil rights. To that end, he believed Democrats and traditional Republicans must be kept from power and Nixon must win reelection.

Catholics, who opposed abortion and believed that "the right of innocent human beings to life is sacred," tended to vote for Democratic candidates. Buchanan, who was a Catholic himself, urged Nixon to woo Catholic Democrats before the 1972 election over the issue of abortion. In 1970, Nixon had directed U.S. military hospitals to perform abortions regardless of state law; in 1971, using Catholic language, he reversed course to split the Democrats, citing his personal belief "in the sanctity of human life—including the life of the yet unborn.”

Although Nixon and Democratic nominee George McGovern had similar stances on abortion, Nixon and Buchanan defined McGovern as the candidate of "Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion," a radical framing designed to alienate traditionalists.

As Nixon split the U.S. in two to rally voters, his supporters used abortion to stand in for women's rights in general. Railing against the Equal Rights Amendment, in her first statement on abortion in 1972, activist Phyllis Schlafly did not talk about fetuses; she said: “Women’s lib is a total assault on the role of the American woman as wife and mother and on the family as the basic unit of society. Women’s libbers are trying to make wives and mothers unhappy with their career, make them feel that they are ‘second-class citizens’ and ‘abject slaves.’ Women’s libbers are promoting free sex instead of the ‘slavery’ of marriage. They are promoting Federal ‘day-care centers’ for babies instead of homes. They are promoting abortions instead of families.”

Traditional Republicans supported an activist government that regulated business and promoted social welfare, but radical right Movement Conservatives wanted to kill the active government. They attacked anyone who supported such a government as immoral. Abortion turned women's rights into murder.

Movement Conservatives preached traditional roles, and in 1974, the TV show Little House on the Prairie started its 9-year run, contributing, as historian Peggy O’Donnell has explored, to the image of white women as wives and mothers in the West protected by their menfolk. So-called prairie dresses became the rage in the 1970s.

This image was the female side of the cowboy individualism personified by Ronald Reagan. A man should control his own destiny and take care of his family unencumbered by government. Women should be wives and mothers in a nuclear family. In 1984, sociologist Kristin Luker discovered that "pro-life" activists believed that selfish "pro-choice" women were denigrating the roles of wife and mother. They wanted an active government to give them rights they didn't need or deserve.

By 1988, Rush Limbaugh, the voice of Movement Conservatism, who was virulently opposed to taxation and active government, demonized women's rights advocates as "Femi-nazis" for whom "the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur." The complicated issue of abortion had become a proxy for a way to denigrate the political opponents of the radicalizing Republican Party.

Such threats turned out Republican voters, especially the evangelical base. But support for safe and legal abortion has always been strong, as it remains today. Until yesterday, Republican politicians could pay lip service to opposing the Roe v. Wade decision to get anti-abortion voters to show up at the polls, without facing the political fallout of actually getting rid of the decision.

Now, though, Texas has effectively destroyed the right to legal abortion.

The fact that the Fox News Channel is not mentioning what should have been a landmark triumph of its viewers’ ideology suggests Republicans know that ending safe and legal abortion is deeply unpopular. Their base finally, after all these years, got what it wanted. But now the rest of the nation, which had been assured as recently as the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh that Roe v. Wade was settled law that would not be overturned, gets a chance to weigh in.

 

MISCELLANEOUS India’s pandemic death toll has passed 300,000. That number, likely an undercount, is the third-highest official Covid-19 death total in the world, behind only the United States and Brazil. [BBC] Half of US states have now vaccinated at least 50 percent of their adult populations as Covid-19 rates continue to fall; case and death counts are now at their lowest point since early last year. [CNN / Christina Maxouris] Beto O’Rourke may be getting set to challenge Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for the governor's mansion in Austin. Actor Matthew McConaughey is also mulling a run. [Axios / Orion Rummler]

Trump says he’s ready to resume rallies. The risks are numerous.

VOX

• President Donald Trump said he is ready to resume his campaign rallies, insisting that he feels “perfect,” one week after he first announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. The president says he does not believe he is contagious. [CNN / Kevin Liptak and Ben Tinker]
• But the government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Thursday on MSNBC that to ensure that he is not contagious, he must go 10 days without symptoms and receive two negative tests 24 hours apart. [AP / Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin, and Jonathan Lemire]
• On Saturday, Trump plans to give remarks from a White House balcony to hundreds of people on the South Lawn. Trump also wants to hold a rally in Florida on Monday. This “peaceful protest for law & order” is supposed to be the precursor to him returning next week to full-time campaigning.
• CDC guidelines state that individuals should isolate themselves for 10 days after experiencing Covid-19 symptoms. If Trump were to follow those guidelines, he would have to wait until Monday at the earliest to start holding public events again. [The Hill / Brett Samuels]
• It doesn’t help that, when interviewed on MSNBC, White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern refused six times to say when Trump had last tested negative for coronavirus, indicating that either he was not regularly being tested—contrary to what the White House said—or he tested positive earlier than the public knows. 
• The president insists he is fine, and that the danger of the coronavirus has been overblown. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drafted an order for masks on all public transportation, but Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the White House Coronavirus Task Force, refused even to discuss it. Trump’s reelection pitch is that the coronavirus is not a big deal, and we should just live with it. He told Limbaugh: “People are going to get immediately better like I did. I mean, I feel better now than I did two weeks ago. It’s crazy…. And I recovered immediately, almost immediately.” Today more than 850 Americans died of Covid-19, bringing our official total to more than 213,000.

Trump spent much of the last two days calling in to the Fox News Channel and Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and ranting in a manic way that suggests he is having trouble with the steroids he is taking for his illness.

In the interview with Rush Limbaugh today, Trump boasted that “our nuclear is all tippy top now,” and said about Iran, “If you f*** around with us, if you do something bad to us, we’re gonna do things to you that have never been done before.” He tweeted that “Obama, Biden, Crooked Hillary and many others got caught in a Treasonous Act of Spying and Government Overthrow, a Criminal Act. How is Biden now allowed to run for President?” 

As their chief is imploding, lots of key Republican players are silent. A number of people who were at the September 26 event have gone off the radar screen, including Attorney General William Barr.

Barr has, though, told top Republicans that the review of the origins of the Russia probe by his own, hand-picked investigator after the Inspector General for the Department of Justice determined the investigation had been begun legitimately and conducted without political bias, will not be out before the election. Barr had been promising the release of the report by U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham in time to sway voters, although such a release ran contrary to DOJ policies.

Last month, top aide to Durham Nora Dannehy resigned from the investigation, allegedly out of concerns about political pressure. The comments of a Republican congressional aide to Axios confirm that this “investigation” was about politics: “This is the nightmare scenario. Essentially, the year and a half of arguably the number one issue for the Republican base is virtually meaningless if this doesn't happen before the election.”

The repercussions from the September 26 event in the Rose Garden celebrating Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court continue to pile up. Today, news broke that a teacher and two students from the school some of Barrett’s children attend have tested positive for coronavirus. This may or may not be related to the White House event, of course, but it increases attention to the irresponsibility of the organizers and attendees of that event.

A conservative activist who attended the Sept. 26 ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett – and who sat just feet away from 11 attendees, including Trump, who have since tested positive – failed to isolate at home in accordance with CDC guidelines. Instead, she’s traveling across the country in a bus tour to rally support for Barrett. Penny Nance is traveling as part of the “Women For Amy” campaign of the Concerned Women for America group that she runs. So far, she’s appeared at events in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. There are nearly 30 more stops ahead. (Teo Armus)

Both sides of the abortion debate are certain that Amy Coney Barrett would roll back Roe v. Wade. “A Fox News poll released this week found that 61 percent of registered voters said the Supreme Court should let the ruling stand, while 28 percent said it should be overturned … In private one-on-one meetings with senators, Barrett has been discreet on the question of precedent.

Congressional Republicans are wildly silent about the president's behavior, except for inklings they are distancing themselves from him and focusing on the confirmation of Barrett to the Supreme Court. Even this, though, does not suggest great support for Trump. To the contrary, Republicans appear to be determined to jam her through because they expect Trump to lose the election. Although 59% of Americans think the next president should fill the seat, and although the Senate is ignoring a desperately needed coronavirus relief bill, they are planning to shepherd her through to a seat on the court before November 3.

Today, the second debate between Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was cancelled when Graham refused to take a coronavirus test despite the fact he was exposed to the virus on October 1 at a meeting that included Mike Lee (R-UT) who has since tested positive. Graham is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a positive test would delay the start of the Barrett hearings, slated for Monday.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have asked Graham to postpone the hearing in light of the positive tests of two Republican committee members, Mike Lee (R-UT) and Thom Tillis (R-NC). Concerns about the spread of the disease have made Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recess the Senate until October 19, and the Democrats have noted that “no plausible public health or scientific rationale justifies proceeding with Senate Judiciary Committee hearings next week.”

After temporarily halting negative ads against Trump while he was hospitalized, the Biden campaign unveiled several new commercials on Friday morning, including a few 30-second spots aimed at seniors. “Trump’s pushing to slash Medicare benefits. He’s proposed eliminating the funding source for Social Security, a plan that would drain Social Security by 2023,” a narrator says in one of the new ads, which will run in 16 states. “Joe Biden will protect Medicare, and he’s proposed a plan to increase Social Security benefits. The choice is clear.”

Biden pollster John Anzalone believes health care, Social Security and Biden’s frequent talk about bipartisanship have also played a major role in luring seniors, in addition to the coronavirus. He told Greg Sargent this week that the campaign’s research has found seniors remember that Biden made a good-faith effort to negotiate with GOP senators when he was vice president. Anzalone added that seniors feel like they “know” Biden because he’s been on the national stage for so long and that they tend to be perceive him as moderate, empathetic and trustworthy.

Guests that Trump may have exposed to the virus are scattered across America.

“With no systematic effort to trace or advise the hundreds of guests at the Rose Garden ceremony and other events in the surrounding days, many made their way home and resumed their busy schedules, according to interviews with more than 40 people who attended events with the president between Sept. 25 and Oct. 1, when Trump announced he had tested positive,” Isaac Stanley-Becker, Rosalind Helderman, Dawsey and Amy Gardner report. “Guests of the president and his campaign returned to at least 20 states, often by plane. They visited college campuses and sat across the dinner table from elderly parents. They attended church and addressed crowds at indoor conventions, including on the topic of election security. Upon learning they may have been exposed, some chose to quarantine or get tested. Others were waiting instead to see if they developed symptoms — despite months of warnings from scientists that it is possible to be contagious without feeling ill. And in many cases, the attendees said they were not worried, expressing faith in the health precautions taken by their hosts despite the outbreak.” The CDC is still playing a limited role. 

The NIH’s former top vaccine expert, Rick Bright, said he resigned this week because Trump has so heavily politicized the pandemic response. “The administration has in effect barred me from working to fight the pandemic,” Bright writes in an op-ed for today’s newspaper. "The country is flying blind into what could be the darkest winter in modern history. Undoubtedly, millions more Americans will be infected with the coronavirus and influenza; many thousands will die. Now, more than ever before, the public needs to be able to rely on honest, non-politicized and unmanipulated public health guidance from career scientists."

Trump appears to be planning to combat his low numbers by spurring his supporters to violence and by rigging the system. Yesterday, he told Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity that Pence’s “best answer” at the vice presidential debate was when he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in January. He is now saying that Biden committed “treason” and “shouldn’t be allowed to run.” His rhetoric is stoking radical fires, as extremists hear his advice to “Stand back and stand by” as a rallying cry.

The president is pushing the idea that, unless he is reelected, the election will be fraudulent, and that he will not accept the results. His campaign says it has recruited 50,000 volunteer poll watchers—polls already have certified watchers from both parties—who seem likely to try to disrupt the election in swing states. Republican leaders have tried to limit voting, with varied success: Texas Governor Greg Abbott [above] ordered all Texas counties to have a single ballot drop box (Democratic-leaning Harris County is bigger than the state of Rhode Island), but today, a federal judge ruled against him.

The Trump campaign is also looking the other way as Russia again interferes on his behalf.

In all of this—except the Russia part—Trump looks oddly like President Andrew Johnson, who took over the White House after Abraham Lincoln’s death at the hands of an assassin. Johnson was a former Democrat, and could not stand the idea of the Republican government ending systemic Black enslavement and leveling the playing field among races. He wanted to reclaim the nation for white men. Convinced he was defending America from a mob and that his supporters must retake control of the government in the midterm election of 1866 or the nation was finished, Johnson became increasingly unhinged until he began to compare himself to both the martyred Lincoln and Jesus Christ. He called his congressional opponents traitors who should be executed.

Egged on by the president, white supremacist gangs attacked Black Americans and their white allies, convincing Johnson that his party would sweep the midterms and he would gain control of the government to end Black rights.

Voters heard Johnson, all right. They were horrified by his attacks on the government and the violence he urged. It was an era in which only white men could vote, but even so, they elected to office not Johnson’s white supremacists, but Johnson’s opponents. And they didn’t just elect enough of those reasonable men to control Congress… voters gave them a supermajority.

Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/09/republicans-ready-to-diss-trump-428433

refuse to say:

andrew kaczynski @KFILE

Watch White House spokesman Brian Morgenstern refuse to answer on MSNBC when asked six times when the president's last negative test was.

October 9th 2020

8,412 Retweets26,302 Likes

fundraising email:

Seth Cotlar @SethCotlar

The very normal campaign of our very normal President just sent out a very normal fundraising email accusing Obama, Clinton, and Biden of treason, and saying that Biden shouldn't be allowed to run for President.

October 10th 2020

32 Retweets78 Likes

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/09/world/covid-coronavirus#at-a-school-attended-by-some-of-amy-coney-barretts-children-one-teacher-and-two-students-have-tested-positive

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/trump-media-tour-limbaugh-hannity-bartiromo-tucker-interview/2020/10/09/b28e4700-0a3a-11eb-9be6-cf25fb429f1a_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-will-speak-at-a-public-event-at-the-white-house-it-is-not-clear-if-hes-still-contagious-with-coronavirus/2020/10/09/8ba71562-0a36-11eb-a166-dc429b380d10_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/09/coronavirus-covid-live-updates-us/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/nora-dannehy-john-durham-trump-russia/2020/09/11/8bf49890-f466-11ea-b796-2dd09962649c_story.html

https://www.axios.com/barr-durham-report-election-3c02ec6a-7613-4083-b35c-4844de6da16b.html

Senate letter:

Sahil Kapur @sahilkapur

Senate Judiciary Democrats Patrick Leahy, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris ask Chair @LindseyGrahamSC to establish a “clear testing regime” for Covid-19 before proceeding with the Supreme Court hearing, citing infected senators.

October 9th 2020

288 Retweets573 Likes

/photo/1

Sahil Kapur @sahilkapur

Senate Judiciary Democrats Patrick Leahy, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris ask Chair @LindseyGrahamSC to establish a “clear testing regime” for Covid-19 before proceeding with the Supreme Court hearing, citing infected senators.

October 9th 2020

288 Retweets573 Likes

/photo/2

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/president-likely-toast-trump-s-woes-raise-gop-fears-blue-n1242753

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/09/republicans-ready-to-diss-trump-428433

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/09/politics/south-carolina-debate-lindsey-graham-jamie-harrison/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/politics/cnn-poll-supreme-court-appointment/index.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/08/trump-election-poll-watching-427008

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/09/texas-ballot-drop-off-locations/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/12/politics/russian-meddling-2020-us-election/index.html

Ebola Test Is Positive in Second Texas Health Worker

An ambulance on Wednesday took Amber Joy Vinson to the Dallas airport for transport to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Credit Jaime R. Carrero/Reuters       

N.Y. TIMES

New shortcomings emerged Wednesday in the nation’s response to the Ebola virus after it was revealed that a second nurse was infected with Ebola at a hospital here and that she had traveled on a commercial flight the day before she showed symptoms of the disease.

The nurse, Amber Joy Vinson, 29, was on the medical team that cared for the Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan after he was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 28 and put in isolation. Ms. Vinson should not have traveled on a commercial flight, the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said after learning that she was a passenger on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 on Monday, flying from Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth.

But hours after the director, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, made that statement, one official said that Ms. Vinson had indeed called the C.D.C. before boarding the plane, but was allowed to fly because she barely had a fever.

----------------

1. The CDC is now trying to reach 132 passengers who were on the plane with her as a matter of urgency. 

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New York’s premier public hospital will become a center for treatment of the Ebola virus in the city, hospital and city officials said on Tuesday, amid widespread concerns that the disease may not be so easily contained by every hospital that has an isolation unit.

Bellevue Hospital Center, the country’s oldest public hospital, would receive any confirmed Ebola cases within the 11-member public hospital system, a Bellevue spokesman said. It would also be available to receive transfers from private hospitals in the city.

US Ebola patient 'fighting for his life'

Thomas Eric Duncan, who is being treated for Ebola in Dallas, is shown at a wedding in Ghana in a 2011 photo provided by Wilmot Chayee. Photograph: Wilmot Chayee/AP

THE GUARDIAN     10/6/14

US Ebola patient 'fighting for his life' as authorities find homeless man

• Unidentified man may have had contact with Thomas Duncan
• Victim is not receiving experimental treatments for Ebola
• CDC chief to give a briefing to Barack Obama on Monday
• NBC cameraman with Ebola reported on way to Nebraska

Thomas Duncan, the first person to have been diagnosed with Ebola in the US, is fighting for his life in hospital in Dallas.
On Sunday, Thomas Frieden, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Duncan had “taken a turn for the worse” and was “fighting for his life”. On Saturday, Duncan’s condition worsened from “serious” to “critical”.
Frieden also told reporters that he was scheduled to brief President Barack Obama on Monday as health officials attempt to ensure that the virus others do not contract the virus.
The authorities in Dallas said on Sunday they had located a homeless man who may have had contact with Duncan.
A few hours after officials told a conference call with media the man was missing, a Dallas city spokeswoman, Sana Syed, said he had been located. Officials said the man was not one of 10 people who have definitely had contact with Duncan.
The homeless man, who officials said was in a group of 38 people who may have had contact with Duncan, was said to have shown no signs of Ebola when he was tested on Saturday. Officials say the policy is to monitor the condition people who may have come into contact with an Ebola sufferer for 21 days.

Duncan, who is from Liberia, which with Guinea and Sierra Leone is one of the principal centres of the outbreak – has been in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas since last Sunday.
Frieden said it appeared that Duncan was not receiving any of the experimental medicines for the virus.
Doses of the experimental medicine ZMapp were “all gone”, Frieden said, and that the drug, produced by San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, is “not going to be available anytime soon”.
Asked about a second experimental drug, made by Canada’s Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp, he said it “can be quite difficult for patients to take.”
Frieden said the doctor and the patient’s family would decide whether to use the drug, but if “they wanted to, they would have access to it.”
“As far as we understand, experimental medicine is not being used,” Frieden said. “It’s really up to his treating physicians, himself, his family what treatment to take.”

Tactical Shift by Cartels Contributing To Migrant Surge Of Unaccompanied Children & Adolescents

(Photo: AP/The Arizona Republic, Michael Chow))

U.S.A. TODAY

The masses of unaccompanied youth who have recently crossed Texas' southern border tell of gang violence and economic hardship as main motivators for their treacherous trip north.
But a tactical shift by Mexican drug cartels and their splinter groups could be fueling the exodus as well, analysts and law enforcement officials say.

Recent arrests of the leadership of the Zetas and Gulf cartels, which control much of the illicit human transit just south of McAllen, Texas, has dismantled the groups' hierarchy and led to splinter groups that are shifting away from drug trafficking and getting increasingly involved in human smuggling, said Tony Payan,director of the Mexico Center at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The cartels, now roaming Mexico in smaller, independent groups, work in tandem with so-called "coyotes" – or smuggling guides – to recruit families from their Central American neighborhoods and bring them north through Mexico with promises of better lives in the USA, he said.

As the U.S. has beefed up its border with Mexico, adding 21,000 agents, drones and new checkpoints, these criminal rings avoid venturing into the U.S., Payan said. Instead, they take their human cargo as far as the Rio Grande and tell the families to turn themselves in on the other side.
"This tactical shift by organized crime is in response to the effectiveness of Border Patrol," he said. "Organized crime in Mexico has reconfigured itself."
The Zetas, in particular, are borrowing from a tactic they've used for years while smuggling Cuban immigrants across the Mexican border, said George W. Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., who has written about border security. Under U.S. policy, Cuban migrants who reach U.S. soil are allowed to remain in the USA while they apply for permanent residency. In recent years, the Zetas have shifted that tactic to Central American youth, he said. U.S. policy allows the youth to be released to an adult, while they await a court hearing,
In smuggling the groups from Central America to the Mexico-U.S. border, the criminal rings have found a means of generating large amounts of revenue while limiting their exposure and risk in the USA, he said.

Guatemalan migrant Gladys Chinoy, 14, waits along with more than 500 other migrants, after the freight train they were traveling on suffered a minor derailment.(Photo: Rebecca Blackwell, AP)

Unaccompanied minors have been illegally crossing into the USA for decades. But their numbers have soared in recent years, from around 7,000 to 8,000 a year earlier this decade to 24,668 last fiscal year, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for the youth.
As of mid-June, more than 52,000 unaccompanied minors have been apprehended at the border for the fiscal year beginning in October, mostly coming from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. To accommodate the crush of young immigrants, ORR has had to open new shelters in Texas, California, Arizona and Oklahoma.

The price of getting through Mexico and across the border into Texas could range from $1,000 to $10,000, depending on the client's nationality and ability to pay, says Janice Ayala, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio. The fee is paid in bunches along the way, and all the money goes to the drug cartels

In countries such as Guatemala and Honduras, where average salaries range from about $200 to $300 month, it takes a Herculean effort to raise the funds to migrate north. The money is commonly cobbled together from relatives, remittances from family members living abroad and loans from criminal syndicates, Payan said.
"The coyotes are preying on the poorest of the poorest, the people who have the least," he said.

The tactical shift by the cartels is witnessed nearly each day on the U.S. shore of the Rio Grande near McAllen, as large groups of mostly women and children paddle across the river, said Chris Cabrera, a McAllen-based Border Patrol agent and vice president of the local chapter of the National Border Patrol Council.
The groups' guides don't bother getting out of the boats and instruct the immigrants to turn themselves in to the nearest Border Patrol unit, he said. It's a tactic they've seen once before, in 2005 and 2006, when a similar, though much smaller, influx of children and families streamed across the border, he said.

"Previously, the smugglers had to work for it," Cabrera said. "Now, the smuggler doesn't even get out of the raft. It's easier and safer for them. There's no chance of him getting apprehended."

In shelters across South Texas, the children and their families tell a variety of stories of what motivated them to come, from TV newscasts touting successful immigration stories to increased gang recruitment.