Record-Breaking Apprehensions and the Chris Magnus Hearing

In this episode we talk about the all-time high number of illegal aliens crossing the border and President Biden's nomination of an open borders, sanctuary city advocate to lead Customs and Border Protection.

https://www.immigrationreform.com/2021/10/20/bidens-customs-and-border-protection-pick-admits-that-the-administrations-policies-need-to-change/

Show Notes

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What is FAIR Immigration | Understanding Immigration?

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.

Matthew:
welcome to episode 44 of fair’s understanding immigration podcast this is matthew trageser fair’s press secretary and joining me today is preston huennekens fair’s government relations manager today the two of us will discuss border encounter figures from the 2021 fiscal year they just came out and there's a lot to dissect from them we'll also examine president biden's new asylum rule which is expected to facilitate more asylum fraud and encourage even larger waves of migration at our southern border and finally in the last portion of this episode we'll react to the chris magnus senate confirmation hearing president biden has nominated magnus to serve as the next commissioner of u.s customs and border protection also referred to as cbp which is the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country and oversees much of the southern border so let's begin there's a lot to talk about and we hope you enjoyed today's episode so preston cbp just released final border and counter totals for the 2021 fiscal year more than 1.7 million illegal aliens were encountered at the southern border this fiscal year this is an all-time record all-time high any more than 1 million increase from the previous fiscal year so what is your instant reaction to this I mean this is clearly unsustainable and this is something that we cannot be having in the first year of a new administration

Preston:
yeah I think my first reaction to this is that this is entirely due to the policies that joe biden put in place after he became president he inherited one of you know the border wasn't fantastic obviously but there were at least mechanisms in place that stopped you know this insane number of illegal aliens that we're seeing today you know we had the migrant protection protocols which kept people physically out of the u.s even when they were applying for asylum uh obviously title 42 was in place and still is to a degree because of what was happening with covid 19. and we also had the asylum agreements with guatemala el salvador and honduras which were starting to finally be put in place that were keeping asylum seeking aliens in the northern triangle rather you know that was before they even came up through mexico and got to the border in the first place and when joe biden took all of these away except for title 42 that created a huge incentive for people to rush to the border obviously he had spent the better part of two years campaigning that he was gonna amnesty every illegal alien in the country um so that's really my first reaction is that uh it's and I don't mean to sound partisan on this but it's entirely joe biden's fault that you know the border was under control and as soon as he stepped foot in the oval office he broke it

Matthew:
no you're exactly spot on I mean this is a direct self-inflicted uh border crisis you know something that struck me about these numbers that we haven't really seen in recent years is the change of demographics of the type of people who are crossing unlawfully so in recent years it's generally been family units unaccompanied minors they still represent a large portion of this fiscal year's totals but now the vast majority of people are single adults why the change do you have any estimations as to you know why this is suddenly a different demographic

Preston:
so I actually think that for years I don't suppose there's any data to back this up but I think for years it was seen as the easiest way to get into the us was to be a part of a family unit or to be you know an unaccompanied minor into and to apply for asylum it was very rare for single adults to go through that process and succeed and also mainly because our immigration enforcement laws are really targeted towards single adults a lot of them were put in place in the 90s and in the early 2000s when that was the single greatest share of people coming to the border and so I think a lot of it was that maybe they hadn't even necessarily stopped coming but that the share of family units and children who were coming and claiming asylum just dwarfed their numbers but now I think you see again the incentive to come with biden in office where he was saying regardless of who you are we're going to legalize you we're going to get you into the asylum system we're going to get you in before immigration judges and I think many people said well this might be my best chance so I’m going to take advantage of it and get to the border and so I think maybe the numbers haven't necessarily changed but the share of people of more single adults coming in has

Matthew:
what about the role that covid played in these home countries obviously they've decimated a lot of economies including our own I mean it's not like our economy is strong by any means but do you think that kind of encouraged people to say hey I’m leaving mexico I’m leaving the northern triangle I’m you know the covid situation has made me you know jobless essentially um do you think that's what persuaded them to come up as well I mean we saw this with haiti for instance there are a lot of haitians in chile um argentina brazil who came up for that exact reason covid decimated the economies in those countries and now they're looking for more work and better job wages

Preston:
yes so I think it absolutely has an effect and to his credit I actually think that this began before biden became president because you actually started to see um for instance in the fiscal 2021 data what was it four of the four or three of those months are when trump was in office and when it was still his political appointees he all of those efforts at the border were still in place and we saw that apprehensions were starting to rise and I do think a lot of that is because conditions were starting to worsen in these other countries and they were saying to themselves well it can't get it can't possibly be any worse in you know at the mexican us border than it is in guatemala where the economy essentially was non-existent because of covid and I think at first under covid and we saw this in fiscal 2020 where the apprehensions were so low and I think a lot of that was because people were scared of traveling because traveling in huge groups when covid was really tearing through communities tearing through countries across the globe but after those kind of initial first waves a lot of people had already had it or not maybe not necessarily in central america but in some other countries had access to the vaccines and it was like why wouldn't I make it you know make an effort to get to the u.s um even though we had title 42 in place and under trump we had these other efforts so I I don't see how it couldn't be because of covid that a lot of these people saw an opportunity and took it

Matthew:
sure um you know going back on these the border apprehensions here we saw a lot of migration from extra continental countries including from india china russia even turkey and we're talking about thousands of people not just you know a couple dozen you know do you expect this trend to continue under the obama administration uh you know this has always existed under many administrations people coming from across the world but it seems like and the data speaks for itself that this is becoming a bigger trend now I mean people are hopping on flights from all across the world coming to a place that doesn't have you know strict abuse of requirements and then trekking up to the u.s mexico border hoping that they can be caught and released and never to be seen again I mean do you expect this trend to continue during these uh next three years under biden

Preston:
oh absolutely I think it'll continue and I think it'll get worse the first thing is that this should really show us how broken our asylum system is because if someone is flying in from russia flying in from russia landing in mexico or costa rica or wherever and then trekking up through central america through mexico that and then applying for asylum I mean if that's not a reason for us to limit our asylum to mexico and canada I don't know what is because that is that is completely ridiculous that someone who should count as a refugee at that point but even though you know there's not refugees from russia but it's just so silly I don't see how people can look at this and think that we have a functioning asylum system the other point I would make is why it's going to get worse is that I think as we start seeing the us end its travel bans with other countries regarded to covid so a lot of european countries a lot of countries in asia countries in africa in south america you're going to start seeing people who are going to say well I’m not even going to fly into mexico I’m just going to fly into the u.s and meet up with my relatives there and just never leave and if you can apply for asylum doing that even better because then you have the chance of getting a work permit uh you'll have some sort of quasi-legal status in the u.s for two to three years depending on how long your court case is going to take so I think it's going to get a lot worse once we see these travel bans start to rescind and again it's I think going back to my first point it's a reason for us to rethink our entire asylum laws um the way they are because they really shouldn't apply to any of these people who should be going to other neighboring countries you know we should only have sign laws for mexico and Canada

Matthew:
um so speaking of asylum president biden has a new asylum rule and it's drawing a lot of criticism um his administration just announced a new asylum rule that allows asylum officers again these are the most open borders contingency in the federal government to grant full and immediate asylum at our southern border the administration is essentially proposing to circumvent our immigration courts and direct these asylum officers to get as many people as possible into the country it's a very streamlined process so this rule was expected to facilitate asylum fraud and encourage even more mass migration at a time where you know border encounters are at historic highs cope pandemic is still here so can you touch on what exactly this rule is and does and you know should americans be concerned

Preston:
yes so americans should be very concerned about this new rule uh so to explain the process briefly what happens when you when you if you're an illegal alien you get to the border you apply for asylum you speak with an asylum officer and their job is pretty much to write down the story that you've told them so you know I’m a battered spouse or I am fleeing because the gangs threatened me back in san salvador and I lived you know my cousin was killed by the gangs my brother was tried to was you know they forced him to be a part of the game like so they take all this information down but then their role pretty much ends right there this information is then given to the immigration courts which are part of the justice department and when the illegal alien is fighting removal through asylum this information all comes up in their court hearing and the judge pretty much takes it into account the you know ice will prosecute and say well you know we don't think this person has a claim this is why if the illegal alien has counsel retained they'll argue and produce documentation why that's why they why this is a real claim and why all these claims are real and all that sort of stuff so this proposed change by the biden administration takes the courts out of it entirely and so these asylum officers who many of them come from backgrounds in social work and that kind of thing so they're predisposed to believe everything these people tell them they are the ones who then would decide whether or not you have a credible asylum claim and it would be very difficult under the rule to challenge it and so you're pretty much you're giving people who are inclined to believe everything that these illegal aliens tell them you're giving them the power to say whether or not their claims are real or not so unlike what we currently have where about you know immigration courts in about 90% of cases end up rejecting asylum because they end up finding out you know no surprise that none of these claims are real and that they're extremely fabricated all these people want is to be in the u.s for economic reasons the asylum officers are not going to it's going to be the opposite it's going to be closer to 90% of them are granting asylum and there's no you know they don't have to provide any info they don't have to do anything it's pretty much just the aliens word so this would be a complete disaster and it would make our asylum system even worse than it already is I mean we we've talked on this program number of times about how many how we need changes to asylum and this would be just a disaster frankly

Matthew:
you know I can't imagine these asylum officers have the same credentials or experience as you know these judges have in these immigration courts under doj I mean these are I respect what they're doing we're not obviously doing it we're in dc but I mean you just have to see that there's a big difference and I mean is it clear that there is a big difference in terms of the experience education levels generally speaking between the two groups

Preston:
oh yeah well for one you know at least an immigration judge has one they've gone through law school they've had to pass the bar they've had to retain their bar membership judge you know judges cannot be overtly partisan they legally cannot support candidates they can they can't do these things so in the courtroom they also have they are looking at the case from the perspective of a judge they are judging whether the case is meritorious or not even if some even if some judges are more aggressive in requiring documentation some of them more may be more lenient but at the end of the day they're still immigration judges asylum officers are not that way at all they're people that majored in political science in undergrad and this is you know this is their first job out of school and they're social workers I mean that they do not have the qualifications necessary at all to judge on these cases I’m not saying they don't have the qualifications to intake potential asylees we're not saying that at all and that is their role their role is to intake these people get their information document what the alien has told them and present it and move it along in the court process they are in no way qualified to determine whether this is this is true or whether we should grant this incredible immigration benefit to people right off the bat

Matthew:
and plus you know this is a whole new type of system that they'd have to learn on the spot and it comes at a time where again you're you know processing so many people I mean how are you not stressed how do you keep everything organized I mean just you know if this was during a slow period okay that's one thing but this is a historic border crisis uh obviously bandwidth is shorter but yeah that really is concerning this rule but I think one last element I want to talk about this specific rule is that it allows dhs to parole illegal aliens when quote detention is unavailable or impracticable that seems vague and broad to me I’m sure it seems like that to you um don't you think this could be exploited and be ripe with abuse I mean it this is not clearly defined

Preston:
right and it's I think it's actually kind of nefariously so because they are let's we'll rewind to early um early in the biden administration the biden administration has significantly scaled back the number of immigration detention beds that we have and that process actually started under trump as well because when the democrats controlled the house of representatives they would slash funding for more detention beds so you know we're seeing we saw 1.7 million apprehensions of illegal aliens in this past fiscal year we don't have 1.7 million detention beds no we've got it we don't even we don't have anywhere close to that there's and that's actually why catch and release is such a problem is because the government knows we cannot possibly detain the number of people that are coming through the southern border and that's why when under president trump that's why they were trying their best to keep people in mexico and keep them in the northern triangle while their cases were going through the asylum courts because we have no choice but to release them essentially and that's why they eventually end up just going to wherever their families are and they're never seen from again

Matthew:
actually this 1.7 million figures even larger when you consider the gottaways which especially to be 400,000 for the fiscal year so that's almost 2 million people I mean that's again unprecedented we've never seen that before um but yeah this asylum rule is just it's dangerous it's not going to help with anything to help regain control for southern border to deter legal immigration uh to you know keep our keep the integrity in our asylum system intact I mean it's clearly broken like we talked about before we talked about it's broken

Preston:
well and something too and we'll just finish on this is like this is also a complete response to this rule is made in response to the backlogs that we have in the immigration courts so it's addressing a symptom of the problem without addressing the cause so they're saying oh we have too many cases there's not enough immigration judges so let's give these particular cases to these completely unqualified people that's that's crazy that we're that our government is essentially throwing their hands in the air and giving up because they don't have the bandwidth or they don't want to give you know eoir the immigration court system they don't want to give them the bandwidth to properly prosecute these cases it's it's ridiculous that this is even being proposed

Matthew:
so this rule as I’m sure you know was submitted by the department of homeland security as well as the department of justice but let's focus on dhs now one person who could be leading a large agency within dhs is named chris magnus he is currently the police chief of tucson arizona and has an extensive law enforcement background president biden has nominated him to serve as the next customs and border protection commissioner and cbp like I said is the largest federal law enforcement agency in the nation and oversees mainly our border security but also deals with trade customs and immigration so preston magnus just had his uh senate confirmation hearing uh last week and they didn't take a vote here but senators asked him a number of questions that quite frankly provoked some strange responses from him um what are your thoughts on this hearing some of the comments he made um and how he handled these questions

Preston:
yes so I actually thought that uh magnus was a little bit out of his elements during this hearing for instance we've seen uh dhs secretary alejandro Mayorkas a slick operator when he's in front of congress he is very articulate very direct he knows how to deflect when he needs to you know to and we've criticized him on that but he's very good at it he's very good at not committing to any kind of comment that's going to bite him in the ass later chris magnus you could tell this guy was not prepared to be in front of a congressional hearing um he said multiple things that I think the biden administration would be kind of upset about he at one point he remarked that he thinks the border wall is appropriate in some areas which I’m sure Mayorkas was I would say tearing out his hair but he doesn't have it uh but um he was probably very disappointed to hear that at one point he didn't quite deflect on whether or not there was a crisis but he did say he was like he did the classic hands in the air oh we can call it a big problem a big challenge and so I wanted to kind of have you maybe respond because I know that you wrote a piece on our blog site for this yes about some of his crazy responses um so he almost oscillated from responses that would piss off the administration and then back to responses that pissed off people like us who want to see more enforcement want to see it the law dutifully enforced on the books so tell us a little bit about that

Matthew:
I mean you mentioned two big ones you know support for continued uh border wall construction he also talked about he admitted conceded that sanctuary jurisdictions which he fully supports openly supports um that they're they are serving as pool factors for illegal migration to the country uh he showed support in that hearing for title 42 again that public health order that can quickly expel illegal aliens during disease outbreaks uh he showed support for it even though mayorkas and uh biden do not you know what else did he talk about oh talking about how illegal aliens should be immunized before being released into the country (oh that's right I forgot about that) there's right now the biden administration is releasing code positive illegal aliens in the country they're not they're in some sectors administering covid tests but in many portions large portions they're not and so yeah that was very interesting for him to say that too but yeah just kind of again none of these things that he were that he was saying aligned with the biden administration's platform their vision or what they've implemented so far I mean it was the antithesis of that which was strange because this guy is going to be you know working for the administration overseeing the border mainly and yeah it just seemed like now here's the other element to this too is does he really mean any these comments that he said probably not you know he's getting grilled by senators there's large media presence he feels uncomfortable he's just trying to say anything to get out of the situation so I think that's important to note that yeah he said these things but you know in a couple months who's gonna remember what he said and call him out for hey you said you showed support for the border wall and now you're halting it again so I take it with a grain of salt but it was interesting to see like wow he was everything he was saying was not in line with what the administration was or has been advocating for

Preston:
right and I think this all comes back to the fact that he is he is a fish out of water he has no federal law enforcement experience he has no experience running an organization of this size and I think he is going to be in for just a huge culture shock when he gets to if he's confirmed like we assume he will be given the makeup of the senate but assuming that he'll be confirmed he's going from leading the tucson arizona police department (yeah I think there's a thousand people) yeah it was it was I think it's like two thousand okay and small right but it's yeah it is nowhere close to the size of running customs and border protection yeah I think there's sixty thousand people and even just handling the budgets and everything I think he is and it shows that again we opposed his nomination mainly because of that because his real lack of experience some of the things that he said about defending sanctuary policies uh in the two jurisdictions that he led in the past tucson and then in richmond california yeah and so I think he is going to be just a fish out of water when he when he gets to cbp because that is a really big reach for him having been the police chief of a mid-sized city to now running one of the largest law enforcement organizations in the country

Matthew:
no I want to uh touch on you know a little bit more in his background more aside from this hearing um you know our legal arm early the immigration reform law institute did a great investigation on him you know we talked about this but they found him supporting uh sanctuary jurisdictions and private emails also in a 2017 op-ed in the new york times uh not supporting ice enforcement missions and this is also interesting but you know it's still important to highlight is that you know he's been a political activist especially with or involved with black lives matter movement and which as we all know looks to defund law enforcement something he would be in charge of so you know that is a problem you know do you really want someone with those values or to be leading a large federal law enforcement agency like that probably not um but what are some things from his past we kind of talked about this that are concerning to you the most and that should concern americans I mean again it seems like the sanctuary jurisdiction support is the biggest problem you know also ice enforcement missions not supporting them uh is there anything that from his past

Preston:
yeah I think really the biggest thing is his support for sanctuary policies and he gave out the classic line which is that oh if you don't have sanctuary policies in place then uh immigrants would be afraid to call the police and that is complete nonsense there's a new study from the center for immigration studies that came out actually that discussed this and they found that even in cities where there were not sanctuary policies believe it or not the foreign-born population is more likely to report crimes to the police than the native born and so the foreign born includes er it includes foreign-born people that became citizens it includes legal immigrants and it includes illegal immigrants and that is I think it's just shocking that the left really still clings on to this idea that you know sanctuary we need sanctuary policies because otherwise these community you know you know aliens immigrants legal permanent residents aren't going to call the police and it's just nonsense the data shows that so I think that is really the biggest issue with his background and then I think again what we touched on is the fact that he's a small fry he really hasn't he's done well where he's been at you know in his small city kind of environment um I think and to give him credit I do think that I know for a fact in richmond crime went down and police shootings went down which is great um I’m not sure about tucson I don't have those numbers in front of me but that does not necessarily translate success for yeah a federal immigration enforcement agency and so I think he is just going to be out of his element I don't think he's prepared to lead cbp in any capacity

Matthew:
so how do we prevent him from becoming the next cbp commissioner what can our listeners do this guy is clearly unfit for this role

Preston:
so really it's up to you those of you listening to contact your senators uh particularly those if any of you are listening in arizona and west virginia contact christian sinema contact joe manchin they are the they might be the ones that could stall his nomination and even if you live in an area with republican senator we need to make sure that all republicans are on board opposing him and we need to make sure that the few remaining uh moderate democrats that are that are willing to listen to reason if for no other reason than the fact that chris magnus is not qualified to lead not even anything on his policies but I’m sorry we need someone who is who is familiar with federal immigration enforcement who has worked in an organization of cbp's size to lead that organization chris magnus is not that guy and for our listeners at home contact your senator tell them you do you want them to vote no on chris magnus's confirmation