Joaquin Guzman, known as El Chapo, the Mexican drug lord who escaped from prison last month, ordered his wife, Emma Coronel, to give birth to "anchor babies" in California to guarantee U.S. citizenship for his children.
U.S. feds were allegedly aware of the scheme but were unable to stop it due to a lack of valid charges they could bring against her, according to The Daily Mail.
This means that according to Sen. Ted Kennedy's Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, El Chapo's daughters will be able to petition for an unlimited number of relatives to join them in the U.S. due to the law's chain migration. Therefore, it's possible for a clan of drug kingpins to bypass U.S. immigration law to attain legal residence in the country, milking the system for benefits and tax credits in the process.
The relationship between anchor babies and immigration has been a focal point for many Republican Presidential nominees, most notably Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. They note it's possible for criminals south of the border to simply come up to the United States and take advantage of U.S. laws (like the 14th Ammendment) to become fully fleged citizens, a glaring flaw in U.S. immigration policy.
This becomes a problem if El Chapo's children were to commit crimes in the U.S. Instead of their crimes being attributed to immigrants, they would be attributed to native-born citizens, which in turn will be cited by politicians who lobby against strict immigration reform.
While El Chapo is on the run, Coronel, who is the daughter of another drug lord and a U.S. citizen, and her children are free to hop back back forth between Mexico and the United States whenever - and do whatever - they please, without being under the watchful eye of the U.S. government.
While many argue there's no guarantee that the children of undocumented immigrants taking advantage of this flaw will engage in illegal activity, the fact that the flaw exists is a problem that many argue needs to be addressed.
