FAIR's Border Trip with Mark Morgan

FAIR's Spencer Raley, Matthew Tragesser, and Senior Fellow Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, discuss a recent trip to the border in McAllen, Texas that FAIR took where we saw the border crisis firsthand.

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.

Spencer:
All right welcome back to another episode of the Understanding Immigration podcast. I’m Spencer Raley FAIR’s director of research and today we've got a little bit of a different episode for you. As many of you probably know FAIR recently took a trip to the southern border to see firsthand not just how bad the immigration crisis really is but also to see how it's impacting Americans and migrants alike that are in that area so we want to share some of what we witnessed down there on this trip. Preston Huennekens is out today but I am joined as always by Matthew Tragesser from our media shop and we also have a very special guest, Mark Morgan. Now Mark has a resume a mile long and knows more about the American immigration system than almost anyone currently he's a senior fellow for FAIR and formerly he was the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement are probably better known by most of you as ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection or CBP. So, Mark I want to thank you for taking the time to jump on our podcast today and I want to direct the first question to you. First of all, can you describe what you and Matthew witnessed at the southern border and how does it compare or can you even compare it to the 2019 surge at the southern border during the Trump administration?

Mark:
Yes that's a good question look we got down there and the first night we had dinner and then right after dinner a couple hours later we went to the border and within literally a couple of minutes, I really believe it was like three or four minutes we started seeing a steady stream of unaccompanied minors and families coming to this one area within the Rio Grande valley sector in the McAllen area. And we were there for about an hour and it was just a steady stream. By the time we left there was well over a couple hundred unaccompanied minors and family members there so it did hearken back to the 2019 crisis but this is the first time I’ve seen illegal migrants crossing our border, but here's a stark difference though in 2019 first of all we were honest with American people that 2019 we had a crisis we were experiencing a crisis and we were trying to do everything we could to prevent and stop it. I think what was new to me this last week when I saw it was is that we were seeing a crisis unfold before our eyes that was preventable, we warned the Biden administration prior to the election after election we warned them with exhausted briefings that if they did what they said they were going to do it would result in the crisis that we were seeing in front of our eyes that week when we were in McAllen, Texas.
Mathew:
I’ll also add to when we were down there with Mark and of course Tom Homan who's a senior fellow at IRLI now I think the most striking thing was a lot of these unaccompanied minors and family units they were not trying to resist border patrol agents they were not trying to evade them they were voluntarily surrendering themselves and they know full well that under the Biden administration right now with their immigration policies especially not fully utilizing Title 42 they have virtually no chance of being removed from the country I mean it's really a one-way ticket in and I thought that was very surprising I thought I’d see a kind of a different situation but no it was a very cool calm collected situation they knew exactly what they were doing or rather the cartels were instructing them exactly what to do.

Spencer:
Now I find that kind of interesting because in 2019 I’m sure it's happening to some extent now you had organizations of the United States that were going south of the border and instructing these migrants what to say what they need to do to be released into the country here's how you take advantage of the loopholes in American asylum law and Matthew you noted that essentially cartels know what to tell them to say now so what are these migrants saying to border patrol when they come to the United States? are they claiming asylum? do they just know that the system's overwhelmed and they'll be released? because everything we're seeing in videos and pictures they're just coming across the border and in some cases just being welcomed or immediately apprehended by border patrol. it doesn't seem like they're making any attempt to sneak across right now.

Mark:
Yeah so look that that's exactly what we saw in 2019 as well and that's really what drove the crisis because a series of broken elements in our immigration system and one of them is what we refer to as the FSA the Flores Settlement Agreement which says that we could not hold families more than 20 days and we all know we can't get through the entire immigration proceeding within 20 days so that's in essence what led to what we all know is catch and release by 2019 that's what was really driving the crisis so we saw that same phenomenon in 2019 where families would just walk up and actually sit down, just sit down and wait for a man or woman in the green border patrol to walk up and process them but again the difference was though is look we saw that as a loophole we knew that was an incredible incentive right that if you came to the borders as a family you're going to be released into the interior United States never to be heard from again so we worked really hard to close that loophole down and that's where the Migrant Protection Protocol, the Remain in Mexico came into play under the Trump administration look that policy single-handedly removed that incentive and it removed that ability for families to just be released into the interior United States and that policy alone helped dramatically reduce the flow and now the Biden administration with a stroke of a pen took MPP away and so that's just part of what's happening right now that is re-incentivizing and encouraging and facilitating the same phenomena that we saw in 2019 it's even worse now than it was before.

Spencer:
Wow, now Matthew you're from our media shop so you keep tabs on this obviously a lot of the individuals crossing the border right now are unaccompanied minors you have single men looking for work but I just saw a report that there were a couple of individuals that were apprehended by CBP that are on the terror watch list first of all is that the case what's the real story behind that and then Mark I’d like you to follow up and just let us know what kind of national security implications does this border crisis have on the United States right now.

Matthew:
Yeah this is absolutely a phenomenon that's occurring just recently this past week there were reports that two foreign nationals from Yemen where on the terror watch list that were apprehended and then actually the Biden administration kind of scrapped this press release away and there was a lot of uproar as to what happened to the transparency why can’t I access this information? and they kind of had like a weak excuse as to why they took the press release on these two apprehensions down. Axios had a report about a month ago saying that border patrol apprehended four individuals who were on the terror watch list so again it is definitely a threat the vast majority of people coming here are not going to be on the terror watch list obviously but it is a threat I think many people understand fully understand that the border is wide open right now these detention facilities are at full capacity, border patrol is strained and I think it is a perfect opportunity for someone from that terror watch list to come to our southern border because it's not very secure right now.

Mark:
Yeah what I could add this is why we've been saying for a very long time why borders matter and why we've been saying specifically it's a national security issue and threat what happens a lot of times is we're spending a lot of bandwidth a lot of time on the illegal immigrant just coming here looking for a better life a better job better home better vehicle etc and I understand that but look the threats that we face along really all our borders but specifically our southwest border are vast and complex and what we saw just this past week with the two individuals that were on the terror watch list is just one example of many with respect to the complex overlapping threats we face on the southwest border now look I don't want to over hype it but there's a lot we don't know about these two individuals because as Matt said that it was taken down and this administration hasn't talked to the American people about that what we do know is they were they were on the terrorist screening base, database which means at a minimum we have reasonable suspicion that they had ties to criminal terrorist organizations or terrorists themselves we don't know if in fact they are known terrorists so we have to keep that perspective but regardless that's still a tremendous threat and what that represents is again it's not just about migrants coming to our borders illegally looking for a better way of life and as I said before right now with the numbers that are skyrocketing March was 171,000 that's about 6,000 a day you have a tremendous amount of border patrol resources that are pulled off the line to provide that humanitarian assistance to the unaccompanied minors and families leaving large areas of the border wide open and unsecure look we saw this tactic in 2019 and it's happening now we saw it in living color when we were down there the cartels are going to shove families and unaccompanied minors in one location so that they can get criminal aliens and drugs to another area that's unsecured that's what we saw that's what's happening right now look what should be what we should be talking more about is not just those that we’re apprehending again 171,000 in March but we should also be talking about those we’re not apprehending because of this, because of the spike because of the surge the crisis level numbers of families and unaccompanied minors, they're looking at about a thousand gottaways a day that's a thousand individuals that are getting past border patrol agents and going into towns and cities throughout this country and mark my words they're not all upstanding citizens that's where you're getting criminal aliens, rapists, murders, pedophiles that are coming across and two individuals like we just discussed.

Spencer:
Yeah I think that's a that's a really good point because with the Biden administration scaling back so much of not just border security but also interior enforcement we know that a lot of individuals are just… most individuals are just giving up at the border knowing that they're going to be released in the interior but we're still hearing that a thousand a day maybe even more than a thousand a day individuals day are escaping into the country undetected by border patrol and we don't know anything about them and if they're still trying to get away into the country what does that say about their intentions and of course there's very little spotlight being shown on the drug smuggling into the United States, human trafficking, that sort of thing right now because everyone's just paying attention to the border crisis and those that are being detained and put into put into all these facilities so I think it is very important that we continue to keep that in mind and remind the American people that that's a problem as well and the cartels are taking advantage of it.

Mark:
Yes, Spencer I’ll tell you what you're absolutely right we talked a lot about what I call the front end, on the border, as we should right that's where the crisis is and begins but we should continue to talk about what I refer to as the back end what you're talking about so this administration has not just dismantled and encouraged and facilitated illegal entry at our borders and basically created reception centers but also they've dismantled the interior enforcement they've reduced nine percent of ICE’s interior enforcement authorities and so they basically created a sanctuary country on the back end so look let's just stay on the gottaways for a moment because as the numbers continue to skyrocket we're going to be looking anywhere between 1.4 to 2 million apprehensions this fiscal year it's unbelievable but as those numbers go up so do the gottaways so it's very easily we're looking we could be looking at 200,000 gottaways 200,000 individuals that are coming to this country with no documentation we know nothing about them and right now though under the current administration guidelines those individuals will not be a priority for ICE to lawfully remove it's just unconscionable it's reckless irresponsible and it jeopardizes our national security.

Spencer:
That’s really alarming to me FAIR recently put out an estimate of how many illegal aliens live in the United States right now and we found that the population didn't grow by as much in 2020 due to the pandemic as previous years but it still grew by a little more than a hundred thousand now we're talking 200,000 individuals escaping into the country and most likely most of them are going to stay here and again like you mentioned since the deportation priorities have been largely reduced to only those who have multiple serious crimes committed maybe not even all of them you can assume that most those individuals are going to remain in the country and that doesn't even cover those who overstay visas here in the United States so we're going to see the illegal alien population increase tremendously over the next year or two and I think that's really problematic especially in the middle of the ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and millions and millions of Americans are without work so maybe this is a question for either of you, why is this not a bigger priority for the Biden administration especially with the economy in the state that it's in right now?

Matthew:
Yeah think about it just last month when President Biden went on that press conference saying that these surges and increases that we're seeing at our southern border are just part of this usual seasonal influx that we usually see but I mean you just look at the numbers that officially came out today the March apprehension figures and as mark said 170,000 for the month of March that is the largest total for a month since 2006 a 15-year time period on unaccompanied minors some 18,000 for March that is the largest on record so if you think about it I mean this is well beyond just any type of usual seasonal increase that we see this is something that I don't know if the Biden administration is too embarrassed to admit fault that they've created a system where they've dismantled our border security and immigration enforcement apparatus so much that the numbers are just hitting historic records I don't know but it's being ignorant or just in complete denial about what's really happening and it's really a shame to the American people and people that work in the front lines at the border.

Mark:
Yeah so I have a little kind of a different spin because we talked about kind of what their strategy is quite frankly I think they're executing their strategy look right now and I think it's very important the individuals that are coming to our border right now… how this administration defines getting a hold of it or managing it look it's very different than it was under the Trump administration under the Trump administration our strategy was to prevent, apprehend, detain, and lawfully remove that's hard to do, that takes a concentrated United States government of effort to be able to do across multiple departments, multiple components and agencies within departments but we were doing a pretty darn good job we were getting better every single day. This administration… be careful… when they say they're going to manage this crisis what they mean by manage is they're going to get really good at establishing effective reception centers at our borders and releasing people as fast as humanly possible that's what they mean and then on the back end not removing them lawfully, removing ICE’s authority that's very very important and that's what we're facing right now and so we need to be careful. They're going to get good pretty quick at releasing people and it not feeling like the overwhelming catastrophic crisis it is and that's what should be alarming. Everybody coming in today, everybody that's being apprehended today, right, other than single adults because of Title 42, they're being released into the United States never to be heard from again. Look so from a from a national sovereignty perspective, from a rule of law perspective, from a national security perspective we talk about as well as economic perspective it makes no sense I’ve been doing this for 35 years so the only conclusion that I have come to is no they're executing their strategy because they see a perceived political benefit through illegal immigration either through the Census, through increasing seats in the House, or they believe every illegal alien they can give a pathway to citizenship they believe that's going to equate to a Democratic vote, so I think what we're seeing is power and politics at its worst it's disgusting it's jeopardizing this country every single day.

Spencer:
That’s a great point it's really alarming you've already seen a number of Democrats and open border advocates in Congress suggest oh maybe what we need to do right now is give CBP a couple of billion dollars more which to everyone sounds great they need the help but when you look at the fine print they're essentially saying yes to build more detention facilities to create more processing not to fund the border wall, to put more border patrol on the southern border, to keep people from coming United States or to boost deportation efforts these are all efforts to bring these migrants into the country and as we're still seeing talks of amnesty come up very likely eventually give them some form of amnesty.

Mark:
Spencer, I tell you what, so let me jump here and I apologize but you're spot on, let's take a look at this right now so there's HHS right now is building a temporary facility for minors 14, 15, 16, 17 years old that cost is going to be around 800 million dollars all that is, is designed to be a more effective reception center to get better at receiving and releasing look you can take that same money let's give it to Mexico so they could shore up their facilities, reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocol to remain in Mexico right so they're not releasing the country they've got to remain in Mexico take that money and build hearing facilities like we did under the Trump administration, you do that, I guarantee you, I promise you the numbers would drastically go down just like they did under the Trump administration.

Spencer:
Yeah absolutely and on that topic just the immense pressure on border patrol agents especially right now they're without formal leadership at the moment so as the former leader of CBP, how is how is this impacting the morale of our law enforcement at the border, of border patrol agents and who's really running the show at the moment?

Mark:
Yeah so look, there’s an acting CBP commissioner, quite frankly I was an acting CBP commissioner when I was there. The adjective in front of commissioner to the men and women out there on front lines, they don't care about it, all they want are the tools the policies and authorities to do their job to safeguard our borders effectively and safely. They had that under the Trump administration but that's what they want they don't care what your title is they really don't care today who's in charge they just want leaders to step up there give them those authorities give them those tools like the Trump administration did and more importantly they want them out there to be honest with them as well as the American people and support them and that's what they're not getting they've seen it for their own eyes the current DHS Secretary Ale Mayorkas has got out there he's gone well beyond political spin or misdirection, he's actually got out there and blatantly lied to the American people. In his congressional testimony he said a couple of things one he said our borders are secure that's laughable it's a joke and it's a blatant lie he said our borders aren't closed again it's absurd and it's laughable and at that moment is when he lost all 63,000 employees of CBP because they know darn well our borders aren't secure they know darn well that if you're an unaccompanied minor or you're a family unit right now our borders are wide open to you and our borders are getting less secure every day as the numbers are skyrocketing our resources are pulled off to provide that humanitarian assistance as I provided and gottaways are skyrocketing to over a thousand a day, so no Mr. Secretary, our borders aren't secure and they are wide open if you fall into a certain demographic.

Matthew:
The other thing I’ll add Spencer is President Biden has yet to go down to the southern border, Vice President Kamala Harris who's this border position manager of some sort hasn't gone down to the border at all and it's there were reports of the administration putting a gag order on media members to access the facilities and interview agents down there and it's like what kind of message are you sending out to not only the people that are working there but to the rest of the country? what are they hiding that they don't want the American public or the rest of the world to see? Mark and I we were just a few miles from the Donna facility near McAllen, that place is way over capacity there's been limited media access and again the Biden administration is orchestrating this they want to make sure as few people as possible see what's going on in there.

Mark:
Yeah so I tell you what Matt's absolutely right on that and the listeners here need… look they make a difference I think they already are, I think FAIR is making a difference, I think this podcast makes a difference because what we're trying to do is push people to become aware and become educated and I think because of that they have, they've just begun to open up very limited people allowed in the facilities they just started to open up to allow some limited uniform personnel to talk now look I think with most of us seeing that viral video where a political appointee was standing in front of an elected Senator of the United States refusing to let him do his job to video what's happening there so the American people know the truth instead just spinning the lies that are being told so we're making a difference it's starting to open up but it's still not where it needs to be look when I was the acting commissioner of CBP look I mandated, I encourage local leadership to get out there to engage the media I encouraged them to get a Twitter account to get up there and talk to the American people, let them into facilities, we provided more congressional delegations in 2019 than I think in the history before this president, he made it very clear that the mandate was for us to get out there and engage the media, I held formal press conferences every single month we gave every single stat and statistic that was out there we took questions from the right from the left hard, softball the whole nine yards everything was fair game because that is what the American people deserve and we were honest with them that has all gone away and this administration and like Matt said I mean where is the president? we're absolutely in the middle of a crisis and the president has yet to be found and the vice president, the border czar, when she's asked if she's going to go to the border, she actually laughs, she actually laughs and then just this past week she was in California, not far from the border. She goes and she'll get cake in Chicago and she'll go to other places but she won't go to the border but I’ve got a little different spin on that remember because the Vice President is the same person as the Senator who referred to ICE as the KKK and called the men and women racist when she was an A.G. in California she bragged about how she forbid law enforcement there to work with federal authorities to remove criminal aliens from their cities, she said we should decriminalize illegal immigration and that we should totally dismantle ICE and start from scratch, I mean that's literally the worst person that you could pick to be the border czar, is our current Vice President. I mean that's like putting that coyote in charge of the hen house and I gotta tell you quite frankly I’m actually glad she's not going anywhere near the border she's just gonna make a crisis that much more worse.

Spencer:
Sometimes with bad leadership absence is better than actually being involved that's one thing as being in charge of the research shop here at FAIR that we really appreciated during your tenure and during the time of the Trump administration is I had more statistics and access than I could work with. I could be writing 50 blogs a day with the information I’m seeing out now but now it's we're scrambling just to get basic information to get anything about what's going on during what is now historically possibly the worst border crisis we've ever seen. So, on that note I want to just direct this final question to both of you and it's… we've talked a lot about solutions already but what changes does the Biden administration have to make to finally end the border crisis?

Mark:
Yeah so it's a great question, so it's twofold though what should they do and really what are they gonna do? Right, that's the issue and so I clearly, I think they've shown their hand and again especially appointing somebody like the Vice President to be czar, they're clearly sending a message where they're at and where they're headed. Look they need to restore some key Trump-era policies again the Remain in Mexico, the Asylum Cooperative Agreements that we had with the northern triangle countries those are just two key elements, Title 42 for unaccompanied minors as we're still going through a global pandemic and they also need to do what we've been asking Congress to do actually quite frankly for decades. They need to take a look at the TBPRA right that treats children and minors differently from Mexico than countries outside of Mexico, we need to address the Flores Settlement Agreement which mandates we cannot hold families more than 20 days which means that they have to be released unless we have something like the Remain in Mexico program and we need to address the credible fear standard. Look unfortunately though I don't think any of those are going to happen right and they're clearly that they've indicated that so this is where the states come in this is where the viewers and listeners in this podcast come in you need to contact your state's AG's, your governors your state legislatures and get them involved and tell them that they need to step up like the A.G. of Texas did where he sued of the Biden administration for their 100 day deportation of limitations and they won and they haven't joined for the entire country we need more states to do that and step up because this administration, we know where they're headed.

Matthew:
Yes Spencer I’ll also add just from my observations down at the border there were large sections of the border that had absolutely no border wall, in fact we'll be releasing footage here of what we saw in the next couple of days but I mean literally you would have President Trump's border wall and then it stopped abruptly and you'd see the construction vehicles the materials there all ready to go and President Biden as soon as he entered the oval office he stopped and halted this construction so again this is a region the Rio Grande valley that doesn't have a lot of border wall compared to other sectors they could absolutely use it down there there's a lot of earmarked money already for it funded by taxpayers being all wasted now jeopardizing our national security, but I think everything that Mark said is spot on I think that those are the perfect things that could ideally help and work but I don't see the Biden administration really trying to do any of those things or trying to implement any of those things.

Spencer:
Yeah absolutely and finally I’ll just add some things that may not seem directly related to border security would be very useful and important as well such as making e-verify mandatory because if you cut off the jobs magnet if you cut off all these incentives fewer people are going to want to come to the United States in the first place and like you mentioned Mark I think it's very important that each of you, our listeners and everyone else all the American people, put pressure on their lawmakers, put pressure on the Biden administration. We've already seen after the first round of polling came out and showed that the vast majority of Americans think this is a crisis and think that the Biden administration is doing the wrong thing at least the Biden administration finally acknowledged this was a crisis and started changing their tune, if we let up pressure now they're just going to continue with the status quo and like we've already covered just bring all these individuals into the United States I think it's very important that everyone stays involved and continues to put pressure on their elected officials if we're gonna see any kind of change here. All right I think that's about all the time we have for today again Mark I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today this has been a great discussion and we hope that you our listeners enjoyed today's episode and perhaps learned something new. As a reminder we'll be releasing a new episode every other Monday and this entire podcast is available on most streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple podcasts, and Google podcasts you can also visit our website fairus.org and our twitter page @FAIRimmigration to access episodes as well so please continue to spread the word for us we hope that each and every one of you are continuing to stay safe and sound and until next time this has been Understanding Immigration presented by FAIR.