For alcoholics, the first step to recovery is to admit they have a problem.

The New York Times is trying to get Democrats to admit they have a problem on the U.S.'s southern border and is now calling for funds to be appropriated for detention beds.

It wrote this unusual editorial to that end:

President Trump is right: There is a crisis at the southern border. Just not the one he rants about.

There is no pressing national security threat — no invasion of murderers, drug cartels or terrorists. No matter how often Mr. Trump delivers such warnings, they bear little resemblance to the truth.

But as record numbers of Central American families flee violence and poverty in their homelands, they are overwhelming United States border systems, fueling a humanitarian crisis of overcrowding, disease and chaos. The Border Patrol is now averaging 1,200 daily arrests, with many migrants arriving exhausted and sick. Last week, a teenage boy from Guatemala died in government custody, the third death of a minor since December. As resources are strained and the system buckles, the misery grows.

Something needs to be done. Soon. Unfortunately, political gamesmanship once again threatens to hold up desperately needed resources.

Needs, indeed.  After all, about a third of Guatemala would like to come here and are planning accordingly.  The paper of record likes to be a little ahead of the news.

And what's more, as a de facto partisan arm of the Democratic Party most of the time, it probably sees the proverbial writing on the 2020 wall, given that there's no real wall right now.

I'm a bit less willing to praise the paper for the particulars of its stance.  The authors are calling for cash for better detention facilities to accommodate all the illegal border-crossers, which sounds like a downwind patch-up solution to the far more effective ones that House Democrats could do without appropriating any money — such as by reducing the incentives to emigrate illegally by reforming loopholes in U.S. asylum law.  How about: 'If you can't be bothered to apply legally to enter the U.S., then back you go.'  Or: 'If you refuse to apply for asylum at a U.S. port of entry because you want instant customer service, then back of the line, pal.'  Exceptions can be carved out for nationals seeking asylum from places that do not permit free travel, such as North Korea, the nationals of whom our current asylum laws were written for.  The Times' call for more comfortable accommodations for foreigners crossing into the U.S. without authorization sounds like yet another incentive to come here illegally, though it could give border agents some time to sort out who's a professional criminal, or who's renting a kid to get let out of detention early, and who isn't.

Even a wall would be a better solution than the weak tea of better detention cells for migrants the Times calls for.

And as Laura Ingraham notes here — the Times is wrong about the unvetted migration headed to the U.S. containing few or no criminals.

I’m at border with 竅ｦ@CBP竅ｩ agents now—they just said @nytimes竅ｩ 100 percent wrong that there’s “There is no pressing nat’l security threat — no invasion of murderers, drug cartels or terrorists.“  https://t.co/Tr4tD5alQ2

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) May 6, 2019

Border Patrol agents say they're seeing the crooks all over — criminals, of course, don't do things legally.

That said, the Times editorial is still pretty revolutionary.  Democrats have been denying for years that there's any crisis at the border, growing ever more shrill and irrational the more the evidence piles up — from crime wages by illegal aliens to welfare and other state costs to the specter of illegal immigrants openly ballot-harvesting in California to flip the House to the Democrats and their champions on the Left fighting in courts an innocuous census question about citizenship.

Illegals are a source of power for Democrats.  They have a political interest in denying a crisis.  For them, it's a party, and nobody had better take away that punch bowl...

But there really is a crisis — and the Times has noticed.  And its reporters on the ground probably also notice that the issue could cost Democrats the entire election in 2020.  With the Times serving as the Democratic Party's narrative-master, this looks like an intervention.  Now maybe the Democratic drunks at the illegals table will be forced to take the first step toward sobriety — by admitting a problem.

Image credit: AFP via shareable YouTube video screen shot.