Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott

We speak with former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, who is now a distinguished senior fellow for border security at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, about the declining morale of his former agency and the continuing border crisis.

Show Notes

★ Support this podcast ★

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 49 of fair’s understanding immigration podcast I’m matthew tragesser from fair’s communications team and our co-host today is preston huennekens from fair’s government relations team today we are bringing in a very special guest to discuss a video that is making rounds all over social media this week there's a lot to discuss here and so we thought it would be best to bring in former u.s. border patrol chief rodney scott to analyze this video with us and to discuss the current state of the border patrol chief scott joined the border patrol in 1992 and has held a number of high-profile leadership positions within the agency he served as the chief of the border patrol under both president trump and president biden today he is a distinguished senior fellow for border security at the texas public policy foundation in austin texas this is a very special opportunity for us so let's get right into it you know obviously what we saw this past week was a video circulating across social media showing an altercation between border patrol agents and dhs leadership in laredo texas this was seen as an unprecedented situation and altercation you know while serving as border patrol chief under president trump and president biden or even any other leadership positions within the border patrol have you seen any interaction like this before

Chief Scott:
it's not unusual for agents to voice their concerns a little bit of frustration in in a setting like that that's why his leadership you go out to the field is to is to hear that I have not seen quite an interaction like that in the past I think what you're seeing though is just the frustrations boiling over the agents are infuriated that they can't do their job and this is really the first time at least in my experience you know 30-year career that the administration isn't doing anything to try to solve the problem I think that's really the underlying issue it's not that you know there's challenges border patrol has always had ebbs and flowed on the flow itself and had some serious challenges with manpower and staffing but they've always felt like we were working towards a common goal of border security what I’m hearing from all the agents now is they just do not feel like or they don't see any evidence that this administration is trying to slow down the flow and get them back out on the border they've been relegated to processing and babysitting

Matthew:
sure you know this doesn't this doesn't really seem like a an isolated incident you know especially during the bite administration unless you saw reports out of the yuma sector where a border patrol agent turned his back to secretary mayorkas when he was visiting and then there was like leaked footage at the westchester county airport in new york that showed dhs contractors complaining about president biden's secret migrant night flights and these incidents were just within the past month and so do you think that this tension between those working on the front lines and dhs leadership right now is a recurring problem it's widespread or do you think it's you know kind of just an anomaly right now

Chief Scott:
no I actually it concerns me greatly for several reasons it is growing it's spreading I think it's becoming the norm I hear outside of those you know the public channels I hear a lot of cries for help from border patrol agents from senior leadership within the organization it's not all the frontline agents that they just don't see this administration empowering them in any way to try to solve this problem and then they've basically been silenced so none of the leadership is allowed to speak out you don't see any of the chiefs or anybody doing interviews anymore in the last administration the commissioner of custom support protection and myself or a delegate would stand up at the end of every month in front of reporters and take questions as we ruled out the end of the month numbers you don't see any of that anymore and I think that silence is screaming loud to the agents out in the field that no one has their back

Preston:
chief scott I want to ask you a question regarding leadership something you just brought up we saw in a recent press conference that president joe biden made a remark indicating that his team was investigating the cause of the border crisis and he was saying you know oh we're trying to get down to the bottom of why they're coming here do you think that that is just a deflection on the part of the president or does his team not fully understand the pull factors that our mainly asylum laws are creating for potential asylum seeking aliens coming to our border

Chief Scott:
so I try to really speculate too much what's in somebody else's mind so I’ll just talk from my experience and really the answer to kind of the bigger question you're asking is all of the above I’ve dealt with people in this administration during the transition time and then during my time as chief up until august that really have a utopian mindset and no matter what you tell them or what facts and evidence you give them they really think that we can go fix the world and make all these other countries so great that we won't have this mass migration people won't be coming into america and then you have people that completely and totally understand that our asylum laws are creating not the laws per se but the policies we put in place shutting down the remain in mexico the migrant protection protocols was going to create this massive wave and for whatever reason they don't care I put the secretary into that second box just to be completely clear he's got a lot of experience in border security he was in dhs before I had several conversations with him where it went way way beyond any doubt in my mind that he knows exactly the consequences of the decisions we're making and he continues to make them so I don't want to calculate why he's doing that but it's not because he's naive or has that utopian mindset so both of those dynamics exist in this administration and then some people are just flat clueless they don't get it

Matthew:
so clearly border patrol morale is low confidence and dhs leadership is nearly non-existent what can the biden administration do to improve this situation to regain that trust the confidence even respect from these agents are there a couple pieces of pieces of advice that you'd give the administration right now

Chief Scott:
yeah first and foremost you know don't argue with them when they're calling out legitimate evidence-based concerns but then really the biden administration was handed the most secure border that this country's ever seen and more importantly or just as importantly a plan that was in place and all you had to do was let it ride out and it was getting better every single day we talked a lot about the border wall it became very political it shouldn't have been it wasn't in the past that was actually a wall system that included a bunch of new technology basically considered like a smart wall all that got shut off and it got shut off right in the middle of the construction so agents that were patrolling let's just call it a dumb wall the old landing mat fence before they don't even get to do that now because they're guarding gaps and holes in the new barrier because the construction was stopped in the middle and the technology was never turned on so that that that actually created a situation where even less agents were in the field the only thing the agents are being told to do today is process faster when they have and they know and they saw that the remain in mexico program the migrant protection protocols worked and all that did for anybody that doesn't really understand it is that made sure that any alien coming to the u.s. and claiming asylum claiming a figure from going back to their home country got their due process before they got the prize before they got released into the united states which is how it should be it's common sense but in the past and under the biden administration what they would put back in place is all they have to do is meet a very very low standard and then they get released into the united states for five to six years as long as they get released the flow is going to keep coming but long-winded way of saying we showed them what would work and it really wasn't trump's initiatives those were career government employees coming up with programs that the trump administration supported and was willing to test out and then working with the other countries one thing that the trump administration did do was they didn't just smile and ask mexico and guatemala and honduras to play along they said hey safety and security this entire region is critical let's do it together and if you don't do it together I’m going to stop paying you so we basically threatened tariffs and threatened to cut off support and they stepped up to the plate and a lot of this problem dissipated only because they enforced their own laws that we didn't ask them to do anything crazy just enforce their own laws that's a three-step process right there that would completely fundamentally change what's going on the border and why is that important beyond immigration I think every one of your listeners needs to understand the immigration right now is covered for the cartels it's not the immigration that's its problem itself it is a challenge but the cartels learned to script the crossings of all these people to control the crossings create huge gaps in border security and then just bring the fentanyl the criminals the terrorists cocaine whatever commodity they want across through those giant holes with way less risk that is a huge national security threat to this country we keep talking about immigration but we kind of miss that piece of it as well and the biden administration can fix all this with policy decisions

Preston:
and so kind of piggybacking on that point where the bite administration could fix it with some of the proposals that you discussed some of the things that the former administration did you know if we assume that they're not going to do that that they haven't showed any initiative in this past year that they've been in office you know could you explain to our listeners like how much worse can it possibly get at the border have we have we reached a point where it is that's kind of the level set with the policies that are in place now we can expect to see about two million apprehensions a year or can it can it get worse are there factors that we haven't even thought of that can contribute to even larger flows through the border than we're seeing currently I don't know how much worse it can get it obviously can get a little worse but again it's not really the flow per se here's what really what I’m afraid of to be quite honest this administration one thing they've done very very well is they've kind of normalized chaos so they've normalized the mainstream media the massive flows the high-speed pursuits the texas dps is getting in not border patrol because they're not there right they they've normalized this this massive numbers and the chaos coming across the border they've somehow effectively gotten america to not look at the fentanyl deaths in their neighborhood and realize that came across the border that kind of stuff it does scare me but we really need to get america basically to realize and then this is overly simplistic I apologize for that in advance but to just realize that border security is just like their home the united states is our big home right so when someone comes to your home where do you expect them to go the front door they announce their entry you do a quick threat assessment people don't think about it in that context but that's exactly what you're doing and you decide who and what is going to come into your home based on the risk that you want to put your family in our nation is the same thing the front doors are those 328 ports of entry where congress said you can legally come and go whether a u.s. citizen or somebody else but the other side of this the open border side makes it sound like it's mean and evil to ask people to use our front door I don't think it is so I think we can get people back to that basic context said if anybody was pouring into your house in the middle of the night through the windows you know cutting holes in your wall would that be a problem well it should be the same at the border but we lose the whole conversation I think when we talk about you know the landscape or the person running from gang violence in honduras which by the way have you ever been to chicago san francisco LA I mean we need to put it back into context but I am worried that it can get worse and this is why the drugs are pouring across right now record at record levels but we've never dealt with fentanyl before they could literally it's poison it's not the normal drug where people get high this is a drug people don't even know they're taking it because it's laced into what looks like legitimate pharmaceuticals and or and or other fake pills you know but the price of that is going to continue to drop and that's going to be more and more available basically to any high school or junior high kid and I’m afraid we're going to be behind the curve if we don't get a grip on this before I retired we identified 14 individuals crossing the southwest border in between the ports of entry that were on the national terrorist watch list the terrorist training database that's a problem we hadn't seen that before how many got away though every look at texas for example every single person that the texas highway patrol texas dps or the national guard that the governor's deployed to the border every single person they put hands on that was a got away the only reason the texas dps has them in custody is because they got past border patrol or there were no border patrol agents there that's continuing to get worse and worse because this administration is not putting any effort whatsoever on to securing the border they fly down to honduras guatemala shake a few hands and talk about you know how to fix the entire world but they're not looking at our own house are you looking at the security in your house or are you gonna go around the entire neighborhood first you know and fix everybody else's social problems sounds good it feels good it's just not real it's not reality I think it can get worse but I don't know how much worse

Matthew:
chief scott you bring a very interesting background because you served as the chief of the border patrol under president trump and president biden clearly very different individuals leadership styles just views on how to secure our border but from your perspective what were the main differences that you saw directly between president trump and president biden in terms of the leadership styles I guess you know you were working we're working more with the dhs secretaries at the time but under both administrations you know what was the biggest difference that you saw directly

Chief Scott:
that's an easy one but let me back up just a tiny bit if we have time to give you some context if you look at my career I spent a significant amount of time in california so I was very used to dealing with and talking to people that when they walked in the room didn't really support border security or understand it and I had a lot of success in that environment so I went into the biden administration assuming the same thing would happen that we would sit down we would talk we would show people hey this is what we really do versus what you hear on tv and there would be some level some amount of level setting and we would move forward maybe not exactly the same as before but they would see that these are just rational policies just like every other administration had said no matter what they did in the election that didn't happen so the biggest difference I would say between the trump administration and the biden administration if you if you if you get to the you know bottom line is who listens so the trump administration came in and they said hey what do we need to do to secure the border and they literally and you can go back to documents they pulled in subject matter experts from every single one of the components locked them in a room put the problem sets on the table and we would have brainstorming sessions until 10-11 o'clock at night when they came out to the field they really wanted to hear solutions no matter how crazy they were and then we would decide risk-based should we try it should we not this administration on january 21st sent in basically a chief of staff to customs and border protection to lock down all communication the individuals never even came to work they tried to claim covid but everybody else was showing up to work and then slowly well not even really that slowly pretty quickly but then I just heard this week there was another big shift they shut down all those subject matter experts they all got sent home literally bunch of them got transferred others just got you know kind of put in a corner and then political appointees are making all the decisions behind a curtain and then just giving orders without ever asking anybody's opinion I was told this week that they just shut down what's called dhs operations and the joint interagency action group which was detailed personnel to dhs to be there to provide guidance and expertise on any matter within their subject area and they don't value the government employees opinions at all so they sent all those people home shut it down that's the difference one listened tried to figure out how to solve the problem based on experts and one said we don't need your opinion we already know what we're going to do how we're going to do it and we don't really care what the repercussions are we're going to do it anyway

Preston:
so this is kind of a different kind of out of bounds question you know we a lot of our listeners are clearly pretty concerned about what's going on at the border and I think for a lot of the reasons that you brought up earlier I think particularly people are worried about drugs they're worried about rising crime and you know these kinds of things but you know is there is there anything that the average american as an individual can do to some you know to help or you know are we collectively just you know kind of at the mercy of dhs and of the decisions of secretary mayorkas it's kind of an odd question but I’d like to hear your thoughts on that

Chief Scott:
I think there's always something that's america right there's always something that you can do but the problem is people aren't paying attention to not getting engaged over my lifetime I wouldn't even say my career but I saw it even more when I was in in dc of course the only thing congress really responds to is public pressure they want to stay in office so if people actually start speaking up look at south texas people are speaking up and the political dynamics down there are changing because some of the people they thought protected them proved that they were not same thing on the national level but we've got to get people into chicago and kansas city and missouri to understand they are border towns nothing stays at the border everything it just transits and it's going to a town a city a state near you if there's been narcotics deaths if there's been sex trafficking anything in your neighborhood that probably came from mexico or has ties across that border but people don't really realize that the more that that we can take the far far right every single person that crosses the border is a criminal dialogue and kind of tone it back a little bit so you can talk to people in the middle and explain to them this is not racist it's not xenophobic I think having those conversations and then taking them to the polls actually writing letters to your congressmen your senators it does make an impact but just not enough people are doing it right now all right

Matthew:
well that seems like a great place to stop today I know you're very busy chief scott and we really appreciate you joining us today we thank you for your service and joining us this is a big help to us and we really appreciate you coming on today

Chief Scott:
hey thank you for having me I’ll be glad to come back anytime I don't think anything's more important right now than getting the message out to people that are still willing to listen

Preston:
yeah absolutely and again thank you I want to echo what matthew said we appreciate you coming on and I’m sure we'll have you back on in the future this obviously isn't an issue that's going away anytime soon

Matthew:
again that was former u.s. border patrol chief rodney scott joining us today he is now a distinguished senior fellow for border security at the texas public policy foundation we hope everyone enjoyed today's episode and our special guest if you like this podcast be sure to subscribe leave us a review and share it with your friends and family we'll be releasing these episodes every other monday for more information on fair and its mission please visit fairus.org or find us on twitter @FAIRImmigration we're also on facebook until next time this has been the understanding immigration podcast presented by fair