The border crisis is Obama's Mariel boatlift

At the height of summer, children are streaming across vast deserts populated by dangerous cartels and human traffickers. The lucky ones who survive the journey have been tossed into overcrowded detention centers teeming with sickness and disease.

While many are calling the crisis Obama’s Katrina, a more apt political parallel is the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. In that fateful election year, President Jimmy Carter had pointed to his “reset” of relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuban government. The Democrat had softened America’s stance to the rogue regime, establishing an Interest Section in Havana and relaxing travel arrangements for Cuban Americans.

Castro repaid this kindness with an announcement that anyone who wanted to leave his island prison could do so. Hundreds of thousands of desperate Cubans boarded rickety rafts to make the dangerous trip to Florida. But the crafty dictator had also quietly opened the gates to his prisons and mental health facilities, encouraging the recently released to join the exodus.