Democrats Don't Actually Care About Immigrants Either

It's been funny watching Democrats like Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz hold news conferences outside child-migrant shelters in Miami-Dade to denounce President Donald Trump's policy of separating families that illegally cross the border.

The Democratic Party loves to put on a dog-and-pony show that it's the righteous party in America. But don't be surprised when nothing is done to solve the nation's immigration mess.

Republican and Democratic politicians feel exactly the same way about people from Central and South America coming to the States. The Democrats don't want Latin American immigrants here either, but they pretend to care because they believe it will help them win the Latino vote in midterm elections.

Nelson and Wasserman Schultz are using the images of children being torn away from their mothers and fathers as a way to attack Trump and make themselves look like humanitarians. It's all bullshit.

Long before Trump was hollering about closing the border along Mexico, Florida was the epicenter of a border war that favored one class of immigrants over another. When he was campaigning against President George W. Bush in 1991, Bill Clinton promised he would end the forced repatriations of thousands of Haitians fleeing a coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

As soon as he took office, Clinton changed his mind and continued the Bush policy of sending Haitians back. Clinton also sent tens of thousands of Haitians to live in a migrant camp at Guantánamo Bay, where roughly 30,000 Cuban refugees were being detained when he temporarily ended the U.S. policy of granting amnesty to those fleeing Fidel Castro.

Under pressure from powerful Cuban-American exile leaders, Clinton cut a deal with the Cuban government in 1995 that gave birth to the "wet foot, dry foot" policy. The move allowed 21,000 Cuban refugees at Guantánamo to be admitted into the United States. And for more than two decades, this country then allowed an average of 20,000 Cuban refugees per year to enter if they reached U.S. soil. That policy came to an end in 2016 when Barack Obama canceled it in one of his last acts as president.

Meanwhile, Clinton could not give a shit about the Haitians at Guantánamo. In 1993, U.S. Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. ordered the release of 158 Haitian refugees with HIV and ordered the camp closed. Johnson wrote that Clinton's policy of detaining refugees at Guantánamo was “outrageous, callous, and reprehensible.” Yet a year later, Clinton was again sending Haitian refugees there.

I witnessed the awful conditions firsthand. I chartered a Boeing 727 and delivered humanitarian goods to the refugees. The Haitians were living in tents just like the ones now being used to house Mexicans, Central Americans, and South Americans in Texas. The Democratic Party stood silent alongside Republicans.

They did nothing to help Haitian refugees remain in the States while scores of Cubans got in through the front door. It's along the same lines as Trump calling Haiti a "shithole" country. The only difference is that Democrats don't have the guts to say so publicly.

Follow Luke on Twitter: @unclelukereal1.