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On how Biden's proposed budget for the Department of Homeland Security streamlines mass migration
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.
Jason:
it's no secret that Biden has diminished nearly every facet of our border security and immigration enforcement apparatus since taking over right it should come as no surprise that DHS his DHS proposal for fiscal year 2023 is doubling down on his latest antics at the border hello my name is jason peña I’m one of FAIR’s researchers and today I’m joined by the director of research spencer raley spencer let's take this over to you is there anything in president Biden's DHS proposal that even comes close to putting an end to the border crisis
Spencer:
no there's not I mean what we're seeing in fiscal 2023 the plan going forward by the Biden administration is not to even acknowledge any of the damage that's been done so far they're doubling down what they're essentially trying to do and what they're showing in this proposal is that they're going to completely rebrand DHS it is no longer a law enforcement agency it is essentially as we've said many times here at FAIR it's a welcoming committee right you know we're seeing so we're seeing millions and billions of dollars here being put into processes to expedite illegal aliens and other migrants into the country faster not to identify them process them and remove them if they've broken our laws you know one thing we're seeing here is more than 750 million dollars being put into efforts to reduce the immigration backlog in our court system which on the surface sounds great you know that's a major issue it needs to be addressed it needs to be you know that backlog needs to be reduced but what we're seeing is not you know efforts to conclude these cases quicker see if individuals are supposed to be in the United States are supposed to be removed it's more just like hey we're going to cancel cases we're going to let people just come into the country you know one of the things we're seeing the Biden administration entertain that I think is very concerning and quite frankly illegal is allowing asylum officers to essentially rule on whether or not someone receives asylum instead of that having to go through the proper process of going before a judge who determines whether or not they have a valid case in fact you know if that happens sure you're going to have fewer people going before an immigration judge who's going to make the backlog shrink a little bit but you're also just going to have all these asylum cases just rubber-stamped and these individuals being just ushered into the country as fast as possible so I mean really what you're seeing here is you know no money for additional border security of course there's this kind of uh new narrative they're having about we're gonna put a technological wall at the border they're not even calling it that anymore they're saying we're going to have more cameras we're going to have more drones etc but again that's not going to be to deter illegal immigration that's not going to be to find where people are entering the country then secure those areas or to apprehend those individuals and send them home as more experts say oh here's where everyone's coming across let's go get them process them and release them into the country and I would like to say that will help reduce crime you know catch criminals return them back to wherever they came from but what we just saw from the ICE fiscal 21 report where tens of thousands of criminal illegal aliens are being released into the country the same being true with those being apprehended at the southern border it's quite likely we're going to catch those drug dealers individuals with previous convictions and they're just going to be processed and released into the country as well
Jason:
no you're absolutely right about that spencer you know even one of the better facets of this DHS proposal even falls short for example so one of the initiatives that they want to fund is hiring an additional 300 border patrol agents along the southwest border which it sounds great on paper however based on what we've seen this past year and change it doesn't even come that num those 300 agents won't be enough to handle what's going on I mean if you remember last since last year they had to the then acting CBP commissioner troy miller he had to pull border agents from the coastal and northern borders so he had to take him from the from their important assignments in their respective sectors down to help on this a southern border and even then that was temporary so even then while we're happy to have more border agents on the front lines it's still not enough it and also something to think about as you said we border DHS and border patrol have essentially become a catering age agencies they're essentially welcoming illegal aliens into the country just taking the information that they're provided by uh foreign nationals and hoping that it's correct and then streamlining them into the United States also I noticed in the budget proposal there was no mention of hiring additional ICE agents now I’m honestly not surprised at this because the DHS secretary alejandro mayorkas he has taken a he's essentially gutted immigration enforcement so even the current agencies that many of them have been reassigned to the border you would think that there'd be an initiative to hire more ICE agents to at least supplement whatever agents are out towards the border this entire budget is a complete joke it doesn't come close to solving the issues that are currently occurring on the southern border nor in the interior enforcement I mean there's nothing that I saw that would say like hey let's charter more flights to repatriate more criminal aliens back to their countries of origin nothing of the sort if anything we saw we see evidence that they try to cut back on detention space for illegal aliens in that country so touching on those points spencer where will these taxpayers uh taxpayer dollars be allocated instead if it's not going to more ICE agents it's not going to hire more border patrol agents which we desperately need it's not going to ha to it's not going to more detention space where's it all going
Spencer:
well like I mentioned a little bit ago this is all about completely rebranding DHS ICE is no longer about apprehending criminal aliens it's no longer about apprehending immigration lawbreakers in general in the country and removing them from the country CBP is no longer about deterring illegal immigration all the Biden administration wants is for the pictures of you know kids in cages this whole you know slogan which is largely incorrect to go away they don't want those headlines but they want to have their cake and eat it too you could say they don't want to do that by deterring illegal immigration into the country they're hoping to do that by speeding up the process in other words make the process so quick that there's no opportunity for someone who entered this country illegally to be behind bars you enter the country illegally who cares here's some paperwork here's a flight funded by taxpayer dollars into somewhere in the country wherever we want you to go and so that's what you're starting that's what you're seeing with some of these some of these line items in the budget as well for example you know they're some of the new hires to CBP they're not even what to call border agents now they're calling him I believe it was uh processing coordinators which is at this point not even trying to pretend that they want to enforce law they're basically outright admitting we have no intention of removing those that violate our immigration laws we have no intention of deterring illegal immigration our main goal is to bring as many people into the country as possible so of course you're seeing that you're seeing a renewed focus on refugee resettlement and you know that's to you know somewhat of a valid point of course with what's going on in Ukraine right now and the United States desire to try to help that situation as much as we can but I don't think we should be fooled in that respect either because the Biden administration fully intended to drastically increase the refugee cap well before these conflicts you know were you know even on anybody's radar so this is more like par you know kind of a shift of what they were planning to do which would bring be to bring more individuals in from the middle east and to allow more people from central and south America to fraudulently claim asylum and refugee status and come into the country that way and of course there's a lot of money in these in this budget that is essentially being required to go towards USCIS and trying to expedite the process for a lot of for these hundreds of thousands of individuals that are going to end up being resettled in the United States because of our failed withdrawal from the Afghanistan conflict last year so some of it's playing catch-up and some of it is just this further transformation of these agencies into something that appeases the left which is essentially to just flood the country with as many migrants as possible not caring who they are not caring what you know skills and values they bring to this country not even caring what their criminal record might be it's just a matter of you know bringing as many people into the country as possible and we're already seeing the you know we're already seeing the negative impacts of that whether it's you know you know the economy uh just more and more reports of crimes being committed by illegal aliens inside the country and I don't know why anyone is acting surprised by that I mean what else did you expect quite honestly and so the American people should just expect this to become worse become more and more of a problem
Jason:
no you're absolutely right spencer I you know it's interesting President Biden literally hired the right person for the job alejandro mayorkas I mean even when you…
Spencer:
the right person being the wrong person
Jason:
yeah I know that no quite literally he mayorkas has essentially taken a wrecking ball to every facet of like even when it comes to criminal aliens or national security threats I mean mayorkas says he has even shown minimal interest even in that I mean that's I mean even during the Obama years we had we at least with that administration they prioritized serious dangerous criminals people had ties to extremist groups parsing through a little bit more of this I’ve noticed that there's no mention of uh trying to fund um remain in Mexico with migrant protection protocols I mean if you remember there was a federal court order hadn't had instructed the Biden administration to follow through with that but even they're doing the bare minimum makes sense why they wouldn't want any more money to funnel to MPP um one thing that I that I do want to bring up that's not related to the budget proposal is Title 42 now right this is something that we we've been monitoring pretty closely here at FAIR for our audience who's unfamiliar with Title 42 it is essentially a protocol from the from the CDC allowing border authorities to repatriate migrants back to their home country if they are believed to be carrying covid 19 or other communicable diseases before they enter the United States there's been a lot of talks that the administration is contemplating ending this pretty soon actually um as soon as April which is actually just a few days away I want to touch on that saying that this is one of the last if not the last mechanism that is holding everything together barely at our border I mean this when we look at last month's uh or as they say encounters now since they're changing the language uh when we look at last month's apprehensions more than 50 percent of encountered aliens were uh were repatriated thanks to Title 42. spencer I can only imagine how that's gonna turn out once they revoke Title 42
Spencer:
well honestly if you look at this budget that's being passed part of this whole process is preparing for yeah essentially the number of individuals being brought into the country not just encountered but brought into the country to at least double because like you mentioned most these individuals are being removed via Title 42 and the administration has no intention of removing individuals via other lawful means of course covid 19 is still a very real threat so I think it's too early to even discuss removing Title 42 if you're wanting to look at this from a reasonable perspective which the administration does not um but ideally in normal circumstances you wouldn't need to be exercising Title 42 authority because you are following the law in other ways one you're deterring illegal immigration whether that's from a physical border wall things like e-verify being mandatory just really taking away the magnets that bring illegal that draws illegal immigrant immigrants into this country and then of course removing those law breakers that do violate our immigration laws neither of those things two things seem to be on the table going forward and so what you're seeing is just this whole new process of we're upping funding essentially for DHS so that we can bring you know these additional people into the country faster and I think if you even just look at the language of some of these points it points to that for example one of their one of their headers was they went to ensure a fair and efficient immigration system which again on the surface we would say a fair and efficient immigration system is one that prioritizes merit over necessarily just family ties one that uh you know prioritizes individuals that actually have valid claims of asylum or refugee status instead of allowing individuals to use loopholes and to you know rubber stamp fraudulent claims and you know things like that but if you look at what the bite administration says and a fair and efficient system is one that approves absolutely as many people as possible uh which is alarming the same is true when you see like supports America’s promise to refugees which is essentially in Biden's terms bring as many people in as possible don't vet them don't ensure that those that are coming here actually need to come here and aren't trying to game the system another header was to improve border processing and management which again sounds great to any you know law-abiding individual that cares about the rule of law because you would think that means more border agents more enforcement of our laws of the southern war but no if you look at what you're seeing is you know just again all of these you know hundreds of millions of dollars for example 494 million dollars for quote non-citizen processing and care costs again that's just code if you dig into the specifics that's code for how quickly can we release these individuals into the country and again finally they have the comment here about improving immigration courts again this is more than a billion dollars nearly a billion and a half and again what this covers is just if you look at the line by line allowing individuals into the country faster they talk about you know choosing the right cases which again comes down to yes you came to the you know country illegally but you don't fit our guidelines for removal therefore we're just going to dismiss your case and of course if you've been following the news and everything that mayorkas has been doing in regards to deportation and apprehension guidelines for ICE it protects essentially everyone including pardoned felons right you know under the newest guidelines many hardened felons cannot be apprehended and removed by eyes so they get a passion that's what you're seeing with this is a preparation for the complete dismantling of our immigration system we will if we continue down this path and I’m not talking 10 20 30 years from now I’m talking a year or two down the road we will be at a point where there is essentially no immigration law in this country if you can get here you can stay here we're almost there now you know we've already seen under Biden deportations go down to almost record low numbers you know if you cut out the first few months that trump was president there were only about 28,000 deportations over the rest of fiscal year 21 under Biden and again that's despite you know rough almost 2 million encounters at the southern and northern border so I mean you just do the math and you subtract that 28,000 from the 2 million and then you count in everyone that has made it into the country without detection you're talking about massive growth of the illegal immigration population you're also seeing huge numbers of individuals coming in you know via lawful means you know we're seeing those expanded dramatically so I mean it's really just a uh we've gone from this whole concept from early in the Biden administration which was kind of the orange man bad philosophy as I call it uh which was if trump did it we're gonna do the opposite now to taking the next step which is not only is just you know not only is just more immigration better than less immigration it's this idea that we need to literally bring in as many people as possible not just bringing as many people as possible we need to start reallocating resources so we can bring in even more people than we're capable of bringing in right now and the impact on the American people is just going to be catastrophic
Jason:
even when given an opportunity to fix the self-inflicted border crisis through DHS's budget for the upcoming first fiscal year the byte administration doubles down on bringing in as many migrants as possible it's this should truly concern every American illegal immigrant who cares about the rule of law having a secure border and making sure that our enforcement mechanisms are functioning properly let's hope the administration has a change of heart and decides to resin on their initial budget proposal and set forth one that actually has the uh the American people in mind going forward well that's a great point to end on today for those of you listening we hope you enjoyed today's podcast we encourage you to share the podcast with your friends and family and we hope that you leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcast to learn more about FAIR please visit our website at fairus.org we're also available on facebook and twitter @FAIRImmigration this has been Understanding Immigration brought to you by FAIR