SCOTUS Decisions and Texas' Response

In this episode, we discuss the Supreme Court's decision to give the Biden Administration the greenlight to end the Trump-era "Remain In Mexico" policy and Governor Abbott's executive order which authorizes the Texas National Guard and Department of Public Safety to bring illegal aliens to the ports of entry at the southern border.

Show Notes

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The Federation for American Immigration Reform's podcast bringing you the most important updates about U.S. immigration. Featuring special guests including members of Congress, journalists, and experts in the field.

Preston:
hello and welcome back to another episode of FAIR's understanding immigration podcast this is Preston Huennekens FAIR's government relations manager and I'm joined today by FAIR's director of research Spencer Raley since our last episode the landscape surrounding immigration policy has changed drastically the Supreme Court recently ended the migrant protection protocols also known as the Remain in Mexico policy which was put in place under President Trump and a week after that decision Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared that there was an invasion at Texas southern border by signing an executive order that allows the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety to apprehend and return illegal immigrants who have crossed between the ports of entry at the southern border these are different stances between SCOTUS and the State of Texas and they certainly have created some fireworks in the way of discussing the national responsibility of handling immigration and what the states are able to do when they disagree with those decisions so let's jump right into it Spencer with these kind of competing pieces of news what changes do you see in the way of migration enforcement and let's talk first about enforcement in light of the SCOTUS ruling

Spencer:
right yeah so as we all know for the last year and a half now the Biden Administration has been attempting to end the migrant protection protocols which were implemented by Trump in 2019 and effectively ended the 2019 border surge we were seeing with illegal crossings because what that did is of course is essentially stopped asylum fraud in its tracks individuals had to for the most part remain in a safe third country if they could do so while their asylum claims were processed so of course if their asylum claim was denied than it took away all the incentive to fraudulently file a fraudulent asylum claim so just like almost everything else Trump did that worked at the border the Biden Administration decided to rescind that and reverse it and of course it ended up going through a long legal process and got to the Supreme Court now it's kind of interesting the Supreme Court decision can be taken many different ways it was largely kind of was the procedure followed correctly some of the justices did want to focus more on the government's role in stopping illegal immigration which it would have been great if that was the entire premise of the case however the bottom line still is that now the administration has the green light to end MPP which is one of the most effective tools that could be used to combat illegal immigration at the southern border to stop this just ever increasing crisis that we're seeing but they have been given a green light to end it and by all indication Alejandro Mayorkas plans still to end it so I think it just really highlights again the need by Congress to take away this immigration authority from the administration take it back into their own hands and get this under control

Preston:
yeah that's right I and I know that at the time we FAIR released in our press release noted that we didn't disagree with the ruling of the court because the administration has the ability to act within its own right and it's just a shame that they in our perspective are making a catastrophic decision by ending this program because it was so successful at ending the 2019 crisis and as you said if it was fully implemented and was and fully implemented at the border it would remove the incentive to use asylum as a way to get to the United States because if you are using asylum only as a way to get your feet in into the country if you're then being removed back to Mexico and having to wait there for two years through the duration of your asylum hearing that has taken away the entire reason that you came in the first place which was to abuse asylum as a way to just get into the U.S. get a job and disappear into the interior of the country

Spencer:
right and I think it's important again to highlight with this Supreme Court case one of the one of the tactics that the left that Democrats used when Trump was in office to stop so many of his reversals of immigration policies disastrous immigration policies put in place by former President Obama and even earlier presidents was to use this kind of phrase in the administrative process take it out of context it's known as the arbitrary and capricious clause to essentially stop the administration from using their authority to end policies enacted by previous administrations so of course that was why so many of the Trump policies were caught up in court and then of course then republicans once Biden took over was like well we're gonna use your own precedent against you to try to stop you from enacting disastrous policy so again it's I think it's important for listeners to understand that why there's some procedural things here the bottom line still remains that MPP really shouldn't have the administration if they cared about getting this under control they wouldn't have ended it in the first place no matter what procedure they followed they would have kept it in place because it was effective and it was working but we see the Biden administration wants asylum fraud they want as many people coming into the country as possible and that just is just exemplified again and again either by them flying people into the country or giving taking away authority from the judicial process and immigration judges to properly prosecute and remove those that are committing asylum fraud straight up to the Biden administration recently firing quite of quite a few immigration judges that had high decision volumes that removed individuals that committed asylum fraud so essentially this is on par with the administration they kind of see this as a victory more people coming into the country filing fraudulent asylum claims and of course then being released into the country

Preston:
right and the dichotomy couldn't be starker between what the Trump administration did when they were facing a border crisis in 2019 and the Biden administration when they're facing the current crisis the Trump administration they did everything they could to try and stop it some of the policies were great some of them were ended up failing in court they ended them but they tried something and what you're seeing now with the Biden administration is they know what tools are available to them to reduce the volume that we're seeing at the southern border in terms of apprehensions and the MPP program was one of them right MPP really was the catalyst that ended the 2019 crisis and so for them to be fighting as hard as they are to end it even as we saw over 230,000 apprehensions in may the highest in recorded U.S. history I think just speaks volumes to where their priorities lie as an administration it's certainly not reducing apprehensions if anything it's sitting on their hands and at worst maybe even encouraging it

Spencer:
right and if you look at the 2019 crisis now of course a lot of individuals mass migrant apologists in the mainstream media like say well of course in 2020 apprehensions were low it was COVID but if you look at the 2019 crisis after MPP was implemented apprehensions at the southern border decreased by half before you got to February of 2020. those were highly effective programs that really made the duration of that border crisis three months six months and now you're almost at year two of the Biden immigration crisis at the border and the issue is just getting worse every month now it seems like we're setting new all-time records for apprehensions at the southern border for a number of releases into the country criminals apprehended at the border terrorists people with terrorist ties the border got aways and complimenting that with record low numbers of individuals being prosecuted record low in the number of individuals being removed from the country so no one can anymore argue that this isn't a product of design

Preston:
that's absolutely right and I think that ties in nicely to our other topic today which is on some of the actions that the states have taken states that really are at the epicenter of the crisis particularly Arizona and Texas these are both republican-led states at the at the state level who have done a variety of things to try their best to resolve what's happening or to dampen it and Governor Greg Abbott in Texas particularly has been at the forefront of this a few weeks ago he spearheaded this effort to bus migrants to D.C. which looked great on media but again you're ineffective but it was a statement a statement yeah it was a statement and now you're seeing a similar action from his executive order that he issued in not necessarily in response to the Supreme Court decision but certainly in light of it and it reinforces it and what this does is it empowers the Texas National Guard the tech and the officers within DPS in the state to take migrants and release them farther south in Texas I think it's important to note that this does not DPS officials and Texas National Guard officials are not releasing illegal aliens back into Mexico right they're releasing them just farther south and they're probably going to come back north so I mean Spencer could we talk about this a little bit and what this what impact this policy might have

Spencer:
well again it's sort of like the scheme when he was bussing illegal aliens up to D.C. this is mostly a statement by the administration showing their disapproval showing that they're going to try to do something but like you mentioned it's not a deportation effort essentially what it's doing is it's taking state taxpayer dollars and just bringing illegal aliens from the interior of Texas places like San Antonio Houston Dallas Fort Worth anywhere north of that border area and then returning them back to the border return and turning them over to CBP officials which as we know are not doing anything right now at direction of the Biden Administration and DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas so all it's going to happen is they're just going to be released right back into the country and as we're shown a light on here at FAIR recently in many cases the Biden Administration if they're these individuals are unable to get into the country effectively like oh we'll just fly you somewhere like on federal taxpayer dime so this is not going to be extremely effective I guess we could argue that maybe it'll have something of a deterrent effect for Texas itself because these migrants don't know well if I get caught I'm not going to be able to settle anywhere but it really again just shines the spotlight back on just what the federal government needs to be doing this is their domain they should be taking it seriously they have been given a mandate by Congress to defend our borders to secure them and to ensure that individuals are not able to just come into the country whenever they want illegally and so again it just shows that the administration is failing in their mandated duty and that Congress needs to step in and strip them of that power if they're not going to take it seriously

Preston:
yeah that's right and it does show really the frustration that's building at the state level and for our listeners at home immigration is by the Constitution a federal responsibility that is some that states cannot there's a reason states can't have their own visa programs for instance because that's not the responsibility of the constituent states in the union it's up to the federal government to regulate that but when you have an administration like the Biden administration that is refusing to enforce for the most part immigration laws when they are handcuffing ICE when they're ending programs that we're trying to reduce illegal crossings at the southern border you're going to have this kind of reaction from states where they're going to try everything in their power to remedy the situation even if those state-level policies aren't going to have necessarily a big impact and we've talked about this before with the deployment of the National Guard in Texas Operation Lone Star these are efforts that on their own are not going to have a big impact but it shows how seriously the states are taking this problem because they're the ones that have to deal with it

Spencer:
right and again they can't just pass a law in Texas that's a federal immigration law they're very limited in what they can ultimately do although of course there has been some interesting discussion about if you declare an invasion the failure of the federal government does the state have a right to then actually deport individuals who in under that premise would be invading their state which if they decide to go that route you're talking another two three four year legal battle but some would argue whether or not that needs to take place but again I think it does show that these states are taking the issue seriously they're really throwing the ball back into the federal government's court and saying we've done everything we know to do now take this seriously and it contrasts them from states like California who just expanded the amount of health care they give to illegal aliens despite so many tragedies occurring on their street record homelessness veterans not being able to get their own health care that sort of thing but their focus is on illegal aliens and helping the federal government and bringing as many of these individuals into the country as possible so I do think it shows that the governments in these states are taking the issue seriously but ultimately it's just something they don't have a lot of ability to combat and I think it also highlights just the issue of safety at the border as well because again if you look at just the just the sheer number of state resources that are that have to be redirected to the border again if you look at Texas state troopers which are like the state law enforcement agency there they're having to continually redeploy individuals down to the area along the border just to enforce state law down there because you have so many issues going on and just recently the UN actually declared the United States southern border as the most dangerous border crossing in the world which is kind of ridiculous if you think about so many crisis hot spots like it's not the border wall they're standing in Afghanistan there's Syria Ukraine and Russia right and no this is it's more dangerous to live along the southern border right now and so again it shows that the Biden administration doesn't even have the best interests of these migrants at heart either it's all about using them for political gain because we're seeing individuals dying at the southern border and when the Biden administration is asked about he literally turns his back on reporters and walks away he does not care

Preston:
there's nothing humane about encouraging desperate people to pick up everything they have and try to come to the United States try to go through that process almost certainly they'll be using criminal elements to get there whether that's human smugglers whether that's cartels who have now really entered the human trafficking smuggling market as a compliment to their to their drug trafficking operations by and large it's the cartels that are moving in the majority of people

Spencer:
and in many cases they're forcing these individuals to actually turn into drug mules as well and if you need an example of how much the Biden administration has empowered these cartels along the southern border in these gangs you literally looking at the tragedy that occurred with the tractor trailer where more than 50 people died this cartel literally had a PR spokesman like the media was able to contact a PR spokesman to get a statement from them this is how much they've been empowered like the Biden administration has given them so much business has encouraged some people to come here illegally to the point that they have PR departments

Preston:
right and they I mean they operate like multinational corporations right in some cases their profits probably rival that of some yeah some corporations

Spencer:
billions of dollars yeah

Preston:
and this these are organizations that are entirely detrimental their entire business model is detrimental to the United States whether it's drug trafficking whether it's human smuggling human trafficking and this is something that the Biden administration is not addressing because they seemingly feel like well we are trying to put in place a humane policy by letting people apply for asylum x y and z but there's nothing humane about encouraging those people to come here given what it takes to get here in the first place given the people that they're coming in contact with and the what they're having to do to just to get into the United States to apply for asylum and I think the example you brought up of that horrific incident in San Antonio with the tractor trailer where 53 people died because there was there was stuff on the back of a tractor trailer no ac no ventilation and this is something that we've seen before we've seen this not quite at 53 in one instance this is something that happens regularly and it's because we incentivize people to come to this country and especially this administration incentivizes people to come to this country

Spencer:
and again it's not just dangerous for those migrants that are trying to come here there have been more border patrol agents who have been killed in the line of duty since Biden took office then the time period from 2014 to the end of 2019 combined like it's dangerous for everyone involved and like we had mentioned briefly these gang organizations these human traffickers are kind of using this as an opportunity to increase their drug smuggling in the United States while the border is porous and because of that we see the now massive fentanyl issue in the United States more and more people dying of fentanyl overdoses so it really is all a lot of this just comes back to inaction at the border and the argument we hear so many times from open border proponents is like well they're only doing this because we don't let them in legally which is a weak argument in of itself but we here at FAIR have been calling for reforms to the legal immigration system for many decades now one of the main reasons we can't invest more time and opportunity into humanitarian visas is because we have this broken chain migration system that kind of overwhelms our immigration process because right now if we told everyone oh you can come the legal way well it would still be years before we could even process everything because our system is so broken it's so overwhelmed and they're just it seems like in every facet of immigration now there is so much room for improvement and so many changes that need to be made but instead of actually having a serious conversation about making those changes the administration is content with just ignoring all law and letting people choose to come here however they want

Preston:
yeah and I think you bring up a good point with changes that need to be made and I think that can segue us into our final topic today which given everything that's happened there's only one group of people in this country that can really do anything that will make lasting change to our immigration law and that's congress the current congress as it's constituted right now I do not think is going to make those changes happen that could change after these midterms in November you never want to say almost certainly but it looks like there will be a change in at least the house of representatives if not both the house and the senate what can congress do even with a President Biden for working with him for two years until the 2024 presidential election what could either a divided congress or a unified republican congress do to put pressure on President Biden to take this crisis seriously and to either allocate resources I mean what options are available to that

Spencer:
well there are there are several good options and you can probably expound on some of these even better than I can but first of all especially if republicans take over the house they can they can pass legislation there whether it's something like e-verify or changes to the current system mandating some form of border security and send it over to the senate now of course it's unlikely that there will be 60 votes in the senate so it's unlikely that something will be get sent to the president's desk but again that is putting people on the record the administration right now has their approval ratings on immigration is in the low 30s high 20s I don't even know who in that cohort truly supports them but very few people in the United States support this administration when it comes to immigration so it is important to give them solutions and force them to reject them put them on the record hold them accountable the other thing that can be done is you can try to find some way to tie this to budget bills that would bypass the 60 votes in the senate bring it down to 50 and again would require the Biden Administration to reject a lot of a lot of their preferred policies and to really even risk a shutdown just to say no I want this crisis at the border to continue so I mean there are a number of different things they can do republicans if they do take back the house and if they take back both the house and senate they have no excuse to ignore this topic

Preston:
no that's right I think you hit the nail on the head first with forcing either senate democrats or President Biden himself to reject what are probably going to be popular reforms right especially if you tie to border security leaving aside the issues that we have with legal immigration which we can obviously get into but just talking about what's happening at the border if you pass bills in the house move them to the senate and either force democratic senators to like you said vote on continuing the chaos at the border right or even if somehow like you said it passes the senate force Joe Biden to veto legislation that has passed the house and senate that would fix this crisis force him to own the crisis that he and his political appointees have created I think that's a great that's a great way to do it and I think on the more practical level things that could really have an impact are in the house is oversight where if republicans control the house of representatives bring Alejandro Mayorkas to the house of representatives to committees right force him to answer questions about what he's doing right make him testify under oath yeah most of what most of their exposure to him right now has been through the appropriations process but that's not really an adversarial conversation if you bring him in for a hearing specifically on policies he's put in place make him defend them under oath make him defend them to the American people I think that you would really start turning up the heat on DHS on the Biden administration in general and then finally like you said the appropriations process is really where it gets done and the way appropriations work in 2022 it's all omnibus bills and so if you're able to force through some meaningful changes appropriate money to building the wall appropriate money to building more detention facilities

Spencer:
and tie that to it actually being used for that purpose and not what the Biden administration is doing now with like clogging it up and then reallocating that money somewhere else congress has the ability to actually tie these funds to specific purposes

Preston:
exactly and because it would be an omnibus bill it's not as if he's rejecting one funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security while the rest of the government works he would have to kill the whole thing over unpopular positions that he holds right or is he going to like you said force a government shutdown across multiple agencies affecting millions and millions of people affecting federal workers all because he doesn't want to re-implement MPP or because he doesn't want to spend two billion dollars on building the wall we just sent four billion dollars to Ukraine for crying out loud

Spencer:
right it would force him to publicly be willing to literally take money away from millions of American citizens and lawful migrants who work for the federal government to serve their country in order to represent the interests of illegal aliens like you would make him do something radical in order to put Americans last

Preston:
and Spencer I think that is probably the best point we could possibly end on today so again for our listeners at home I hope that you've enjoyed today's episode of Understanding Immigration and that you will subscribe to it on your preferred listening platform whether that is Spotify Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts you name it you can find Understanding Immigration to learn more about any of these topics that we've talked about we encourage you to visit our website fairus.org and to visit our social media platforms especially Facebook and Twitter and that is going to wrap it up for today I am Preston Huennekens he's Spencer Raley and this has been FAIR’s Understanding Immigration Podcast