Trump racks up wins in battle to contain surge at border

 Stephen Dinan

...With his border wall, where the Supreme Court has cleared the way to begin construction under his emergency declaration, and negotiations with Latin American neighbors, Mr. Trump in the past weeks has finally begun to make headway on a number of major items on his immigration checklist. The court and foreign policy victories were coupled with some policy moves within the administration that could further constrain the surge of migrants, including guidance issued Friday telling asylum officers to make sure migrants are fleeing state-sanctioned violence before they are granted asylum. “The Trump administration is trying to throw everything it can at this problem,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies. The big moves last week included an agreement signed with Guatemala that will allow the U.S. to send any asylum-seekers who cross that country’s territory en route to the U.S. back to Guatemala to ask for asylum there instead. Given Guatemala’s strategic geographic location — it lies on Mexico’s southern border, and land travelers must cross it during their journey north — the agreement could allow the U.S. to deny tens of thousands of asylum-seekers the chance to ask for status before they reach the border...Hours later, the president received news of another win: The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, had cleared the way for him to use his emergency border declaration to use Pentagon money to build more of his wall. The Republican-appointed justices ended a lower-court blockade of his budgeting moves, limits that a federal district judge in California and later an appeals court had imposed while the case was being argued on the merits...The two victories for Mr. Trump last week follow on his success in June, when he used the threat of tariffs to force Mexico to the bargaining table. Mexico agreed to do more to head off migrants crossing its territory and to take back more Central American asylum-seekers, making them wait in Mexico while their cases proceed through the U.S. immigration courts...MORE