It wasn’t long ago when most of those illegally entering the United States were single males from Mexico in search of employment.  Now, with immigrant rights activists funding educational tutorials in Central American countries overpromising DACA expansion, the benefits of traveling as families with children, and applying for asylum, most illegal aliens now arrive as family units, primarily from Central America.

This is not only dangerous for women and children during the several thousand-mile trip, it’s also dangerous upon arrival.  To compound the peril, often the “family unit” is a facade, the children and wives merely for presentation at the border because our laws give families preferential treatment.

A husband might feel a duty to protect his wife and children; a travel partner of convenience might not.  What if the male of the “family unit” is a predator himself -- opportunity abounds.  That’s not even acknowledging the rapists and pedophiles within any particular “caravan” looking for a captive audience.

And then you have the fact that nearly all migrants coming north lack the legal right to be in any of the countries they must pass through to get to the border, including the largest one, Mexico.  Reporting sexual assault in a country that doesn’t want you, and that you have no right to be in, is problematic.  And foolish -- you will be sent back to where they came from -- and that would include instances where the victims are children as well.

These countries are not going to arrest and prosecute any of their countrymen for assaulting a foreigner who doesn’t belong there in the first place.  And if the rapist is a member of the caravan, discretion dictates don’t get involved, “the victim should have known the risk” -- “let Uncle Sam deal with it.” 

The possibility of arrest is near zero for the pedophile and rapist, and should victims make too much of a stink, they can be killed -- by the time local authorities find the paperless, identity-less bodies, the killer will be in an American sanctuary city getting free medical care, housing, and food stamps. 

That little girl or little boy and that woman go from being one of the huddled masses yearning to be free, to being someone who never existed, rotting among others in a mass grave.  It’s not uncommon to find mass graves in Mexico, but when they do it is always accidental.  Imagine how many dead they could find if anyone cared and was looking.

Yet, so willing are the Democrats to trade social benefits for potential illegal alien votes that they remain blind to the tragedies that are happening every day to women and children who cannot protect themselves during their journey to become weapons in the Democrats’ quest for eternal power.  Fixated on creating a more-free and more-just America that they can finally be proud of, they ignore the mounting evidence of the massacre in the making their policies have fostered.  The rapes and murders go unheralded, becoming like their maids and gardeners -- something easy to ignore. 

Most people don’t understand the incentives that open borders create for the sexually and criminally deviant.  They can rape and kill at will during the trip and then be reborn with a clean slate in America while getting clothed, fed, and housed. 

It’s estimated that almost 80% of all illegal alien females are sexually assaulted on the journey to the border.  Exact figures are hard to come by, but some organizations have estimated that the percentage of sexual assaults for men and children are around half that. 

Even if these figures are double the reality, it still means 4 in 10 women and 1 in 5 men and children of either sex will be sexually assaulted on the journey to our border.  Any nation that would allow that is barbarous.  Any rational observer would classify this as an “emergency.”

And it’s not just their fellow travelers, local police, drug gangs, and coyotes that women and children migrants need to fear.  Once they’re across the border, if they escape being trafficked and sold into sexual slavery, are not forced into prostitution to pay for the journey, forced to toil 14 hours a day in a sweatshop to pay for the trip, their nightmare is still not over.

The less savory among us will come in and pick up the slack.  The best vacation destination for rapists and pedophiles today are the border states.  Dark web message boards tell predators where to lie in wait for stray women and children who are stranded with nowhere to go, hungry, frightened, and in a place where they don’t know anybody.  They are ripe for abuse and easy to get. 

As prey, the obstacles remain the same; they are in a country they have no right to be in, where they are not wanted.  They learned from their trek the risks of reporting pedophilia or sexual assault.  Will they even know that they could go to the police? 

No one seems to realize the magnitude of this.  There are plenty of activists telling them how to get “bennies,” but few make an effort to actually protect them. 

When they meet someone who is willing to help them if they are willing to trade, themselves, their children, what choice do they have?  They will do what they must to stay alive or feed their children or just not get sent back. 

Apocryphally, Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”  Evil is triumphing and the unknown and unheralded victims are the women and children least able to protect themselves.

By refusing to put a halt to this sham immigration policy, we are good men doing nothing.  We are, through our inaction, dooming women and children to sexual assault and maybe even death, or should they survive, a lifetime of psychological trauma. 

Is it that “MeToo” only matters when it’s “#OnlyUs” because nobody seems to care about brown people suffering sexual assault -- certainly not enough to consider it an “emergency?”

Mr. President, declare an “Emergency,” not because it is politically expedient, because it truly is an emergency, a humanitarian emergency. 

William L. Gensert can be followed on Twitter @williamlgensert