Extra-continental Illegal Immigration

FAIR's Preston Huennekens, Spencer Raley, and Matthew Tragesser discuss how more and more migrants entering through the open Southwest border are coming from all over the world, including from countries that the U.S. considers state sponsors of terrorism.

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.

Preston:
welcome back to another episode of FAIR’s understanding immigration podcast this is Preston Huennekens with FAIR's lobbying department and I am joined by our press secretary Matthew Tragesser and our research director Spencer Raley today we're going to discuss one interesting aspect of the current border crisis and evaluate how it reveals greater issues with our immigration system as a whole the Biden and border crisis continues unabated with no real change on the ground most of the people coming in are still some of the usual suspects people from central and South America traveling overland to the southern border but increasingly our law enforcement agencies are apprehending aliens from all over the globe including many from countries that the U.S. considers state sponsors of terrorism so Spencer I just want to go ahead and start with you and just ask you know how is this possible how are our policies set up that this is something that can occur?

Spencer:
yeah thanks Preston and first of all when we talk about extra continental illegal immigration we're talking about illegal immigration from essentially outside of our continent you know most illegal immigrants even now still come from Mexico or Central America so we talk about extra-continental illegal immigration that could mean those from South America but more often we're talking about individuals from Europe from Africa the Middle East Asia somewhere other than where the usual suspects come from and honestly right now the reason this has become such an issue is pretty simple it's hard to get legal visas or even travel permits to the United States right now due to the covet pandemic but even if it were easy why should you considering there are almost no legal ramifications for illegal entry so with the combination of those two issues you have more and more people just opting to fly to Mexico or Central America areas where you often don't even need a tourist visa to visit and then make the simple trek north cross the border can either be detained in many cases released into the interior of the country without even a notice to appear or just cross the border and not be detected at all so because of that we're seeing more and more people just try to bypass the bureaucracy or you know everything else and just try to come to the United States illegally.

Preston:
right and it also particularly makes sense when we think about the issue that our country has with asylum abuse where you know if your goal is to come in and just stay in the country indefinitely right before it would make the most sense to just fly into LAX and just never leave but when if you think that you have a you know you have a claim to asylum and the current administration has pretty much said that they are open to any and all claims you know yeah why wouldn't you fly to Mexico City and then just you know join a caravan join you know there it's not difficult to get to the you know our southern border when you're there and then just you know go through the asylum process like everyone else knowing that you're going to be released into the interior of the country knowing that you're going to get a work permit and knowing that ultimately you'll be here even if your claim is ultimately dismissed you'll be here for about two years.

Spencer:
yeah and we're seeing in addition to that individuals who have asylum claims that are not approved under the new deportation priority system most likely aren't going to be removed anyway so best case scenario you come to the United States as an illegal alien you don't have to wait through the entire process of trying to come here illegally and then you get approved for asylum worst case scenario your asylum case isn't approved but you still don't have to leave and you know there's essentially a zero percent chance that the federal government's going to come looking for you or prosecute you for working in the United States so again it kind of comes down to the situation why bother go about this the right way when there are essentially no ramifications for doing otherwise.

Matthew:
it's pretty interesting how we talk about you know where these mines are actually coming from outside of Central America and Mexico you know there's one story I was reading about from the in the New York Times literally this past month talking about a migrant from India who had flown to Dubai from Mumbai and then had flown to Paris all the way to Mexico City took a two-day bus trip to the U.S.-Mexico border and I assume applied for asylum and then as you mentioned Spencer you know these asylum claims the whole process for this could take years at a time to you know get your court hearing date and many times more often than not these asylum seekers won't show up for their court hearing day and they just you know kind of disappear into the interior but my thought about this is you know these migrants really being persecuted if they're flying pretty much all across the world into Mexico city bypassing all these countries to qualify for U.S. political asylum you have to be persecuted by your government based on your race religion nationality political opinion or membership to a particular social group but if you're bypassing all these countries and you're just kind of like you know asylum shopping it doesn't really seem like you're being persecuted and you know it's highly recommended if not even you know mandated that you apply for asylum in the first safe country you arrive in and that's not what's happening at all right now it's people are bypassing all these countries.

Spencer:
well I think the numbers prove you're right Matthew I mean if you look at how far down the asylum fraud rate was and even the asylum application rate was the United States after MPP was implemented it shows that the situations aren't quite as dire for the vast majority of these applicants as they should be to meet the criteria for an asylum application individuals opted instead just to stay in their home country instead of trying to come to the United States putting in an application and staying in a safe third country because that wasn't their ultimate objective it wasn't to reach a safe country it was to come to the United States and ultimately find work meaning that these are economic migrants not asylum seekers and yeah it might suck if you are looking for a better economic life but you have to follow the correct channels to go through that and not just exploit whatever loophole you can find in the country that you want to go to.

Preston:
and I think especially in that example Matthew you're talking about someone who's spending hundreds of dollars just in airfare alone not even to talk about you know food how you know hotel accommodations like I mean that's not a trip that you make in just an afternoon right that takes significant planning a significant number of stops along the way someone who is fleeing for their life or you know you're you know you don't necessarily know if that's the kind of person doing that right you know especially and I'm not saying that India doesn't have its own problems obviously it does for certain populations there but you know was France not safe enough I mean it's like again it just goes back to there are obvious examples of asylum shopping and it's entirely because of the way that our system is set up and yet we still have politicians who just ignore the problem pretend that these incentives do not exist and I think it's just very it's indicative of everything that's kind of come from the U.S. not recognizing safe third country status for a number of different countries.
Matthew:
right and then also if you think about it these types of asylum seekers you know they're basically creating kind of or they're adding more to this backlog that we already have so now people that actually have legitimate asylum claims and are actually facing persecution now they're being kind of pushed to the sidelines by these people that may not even be persecuted they may not even qualify for asylum you know again seeking better wages or finding a better job or reuniting with family doesn't qualify for U.S. political asylum so you know we already have more than a million cases in our backlog right now with just a few hundred immigration judges to adjudicate them so I mean it just it adds on to this backlog and you know it's it hurts those that are actually needing it whether it's from Central America or wherever around the world.

Spencer:
yeah and that's I think the really tragic thing here and to your point the current backlog for asylum cases is tens of thousands long and the current backlog of immigration cases in total is over a million long so you're talking potentially two three four years before you even get your first real hearing and for someone who may have a legitimate asylum claim in the works that's a long period of instability in their lives of not knowing what's going to happen are my am I going to be able to stay in a safe country or am I going to have to go back and that's all because people are using this as a loophole to resettle in the United States and I think something that we're starting to potentially see that's going to make this an even bigger problem especially with extra continental migrants coming to the United States and applying for asylum is that there is an additional security element to those cases that has to take place as well you know we're seeing a rate of rise of more than a hundred percent more than 200% in some cases of individuals coming to the United States from terror-prone countries such as you know Yemen other countries in the Middle East Egypt etc where when someone applies for some from one of those countries we have to go take additional steps to ensure that they are not placing our national security at risk and with the current administration essentially saying hey you can just come on into the United States resettle and then we'll go through this entire process it makes it even more troubling especially when we can't do initial security checks on these individuals that was one thing that was very great about MPP is for individuals who might pose some sort of national security threat we could require that they not remain in the United States until that case is heard and it just made citizens a lot safer.
Matthew:
you know you mentioned individuals from Yemen and I think that it's important for our listeners to know that actually just in January two individuals who were on the tear watch list were apprehended at their at the southern border and so you know again I know it's not as large of a number as you know people may think it is but it still does present national security concerns and that doesn't even account for those who are you know known as gottaways that the Border Patrol you know they don't have the bandwidth to even apprehend these people and they're just kind of they know that they have crossed the border unlawfully but they don't they can't apprehend them they don't have the resources or bandwidth so yeah it is still some a threat that should be considered seriously and you know think about 9-11 there are 19 actors involved in that and that is one of the you know most deadliest events ever in us history so it really doesn't take that many harmful actors to inflict you know the damage catastrophic damage like we saw with 9-11.

Spencer:
that's a really good point and honestly it's the gottaways that are often more notorious individuals we actually see in many cases where human smugglers attempt to get the attention of Border Patrol over to you know the individuals that are hoping to the economic migrants hoping to come to the United States and work and while that goes on the more criminal element to illegal border crossing is occurring somewhere else where there aren't any Border Patrol and we're seeing that reflected even in apprehension numbers even in the customs duties that you see ice take place in obviously the number one offender is going to be the drug trade you know most of that still comes from Central and South America but not all of it you know there are a number of drugs that are on the rise in the United States that are produced overseas fentanyl exactly another concerning thing that we often don't see mentioned in the media is counterfeit goods that are coming in from China from India from you know other countries that are either counterfeit which of course hurts American companies or perhaps produced up to standards that wouldn't be allowed as United States commerce such as produced with slave labor or you know using dangerous materials buying a you know a toy car or something with lead paint you know these are things that often come across the border as well and find their ways into various shops or thrift stores or whatever in the United States and we're starting to see more and more goods like that being seized because our border is so porous you know individuals from you know other countries across the ocean are seeing that as you know an economic opportunity hey you know the entire custom system is essentially down because this the border the United States is not secure therefore we can start pumping other goods and making money that way which you know hurt Americans it hurts our safety it hurts our economy as well.

Preston:
yeah and that I think that's such a great point to bring up about the gottaways because you know in the particularly in the 90s in the early 2000s everyone that came illegally tried to avoid Border Patrol because the goal was really just to kind of get in work under the table that has now changed because of our asylum loopholes and so everyone who wants to pursue that same goal of just getting into the U.S. so that they can work they want to run into Border Patrol and they go in many cases they go out of their way to encounter a Border Patrol agent because that's how the asylum process begins for them whereas you're correct Spencer to bring up the point that for the smuggling organizations it makes a lot of sense to shield their activities by bringing in you know these you know these migrants even though that's not their primary business and so Border Patrol is now having to identify house and address the people while you know a different element of that same group that brought them over can drive the drugs into the interior of the desert or you know smuggle people that are going to be sold for into sex slavery into the interior.

Spencer:
it's really a front for their true business you know in some ways this is a lot like what you'd see occur in the 1920s prohibition era in the United States you might have a legitimate looking business something that you know criminal organizations would use as a front in order to hide the more primary business the more notorious or nefarious goings-on that they have and that's what you're seeing here bringing individuals to the United States intentionally putting them in contact with Border Patrol while that's going on they smuggle drugs across the border where those Border Patrol agents should be patrolling it's a front for what really makes them most of their money.

Matthew:
now here's some interesting figures based off of that so in April Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 33,000 illegal aliens from countries outside of Mexico and the Northern Triangle so think about tens of thousands of people just a month but here's even more of a startling figure this is a 35% increase from March and it's the largest total for a month in at least three fiscal years so you know this is not okay people can make the argument okay well this has always existed you know at the Southwest border people are always coming from you know regions in Europe Africa Asia wherever but not at these rates that we're seeing and how early it is in the Biden administration in recent months since the beginning of the fiscal year in October Border Patrol agents have apprehended individuals from more than 160 countries so virtually every country in the entire world and you know that should cause some concern I mean think about it it's we're typically seeing people from the Northern Triangle from Mexico but to see this how expansive it's gotten I mean these migrants know full well that again as we as we've said the border’s wide open and if you enter unlawfully and are in the country unlawfully you have virtually no chance of being removed from the country so it's I mean it's easy.

Preston:
and I and I think too this might be almost the starting point for a new type of illegal migration to the U.S. where we start seeing more and more people from outside of the Americas you know from Asia Africa Europe who are deciding that it makes sense to try and come and abuse the asylum system this way because this is their best chance of getting to the U.S. you know if you can't get family sponsorship if you can't if you have no chance of getting employer sponsorship you're you know you're not from a country that's engaged in the visa lottery you know there's very limited ways to come to the U.S. and so if someone is really that hell-bent on coming it if all that's stopping you is a thousand dollars in plane tickets you know why wouldn't you why wouldn't you try there's certainly nothing no laws on the books now that are stopping people from attempting this.

Matthew:
and to go along with that I mean to provide some more context with the interior immigration enforcement there was a report recently saying that each ICE agent in ICE’s 6,000 person unit is only averaging one arrest of an illegal alien every two months the deportation totals for April the latest data available were the lowest for a month on record so again if you come here illegally doesn't matter where you're coming from any part of the world you virtually have no chance of being removed so it's this huge pull factor that it's telling everybody to come now and it's you know clear as day.

Spencer:
and this is deliberate you know we saw the Biden administration attempt to put in an entire freeze on deportations for a hundred days now that was you know a hold was put on that in court but that didn't stop his administration from getting as close to freezing deportations as they could we're now seeing the idea being entertained of flying some deported illegal aliens back to the United States it's very clear that the Biden administration isn't just letting things get out of control a lot of this is intentional you know they're trying to increase the numbers of individuals coming into the United States you know legally or illegally we're seeing that with increases in legal methods as well with temporary visas etc so I guess my question is why is this a priority and should the Biden administration be actually interested in representing the interests of the American people again what could they do to stop this crisis in its tracks.

Preston:
I think this all comes back to the way that our asylum system is currently set up because right now we have before 2014 before 2013 we didn't have these waves of people coming and applying for asylum and then getting relief for you know two to three years at a time and then disappearing when they're when their court decision went against what they wanted and so I think you have to look at the way that we are letting people clear the credible threshold barrier we're you know we are very I think Matthew like you said if you can get to the border there there's a great chance that you're going to be able to stay for at least even if you have the worst asylum case in the world you're going to be here for at least three years the way that the current backlogs are the way the immigration court system works and so until we're willing to address that and acknowledge that not all of these people have legitimate asylum claims we're just speeding around the bush and I think the Trump administration tried to do this outside of Congress you know the MPPs they did work they prevented some people from beginning their journey to the U.S. for solely economic reasons the asylum agreements that we put in place with the Northern Triangle countries those worked because the people who did need help were able to get it whereas it at the same time disincentivized coming to the U.S. for solely economic reasons and again as long as you're allowing people to claim asylum because they're afraid of crime rates in their home countries which is not as sad as it is and as disappointing as it is that is not an appropriate claim for asylum in the United States the way that our current laws are written maybe not how they're interpreted but how they're written that is not what asylum is for and we need to come back to that understanding of asylum and you know I don't even necessarily know if you need legislation to change that I think the Trump administration showed that just through the interpretation of certain laws at the executive level that is something the Biden administration could do tomorrow if it wanted to and I think it would help not only stop some of the migration flows that we're seeing from Central and South America but would also stop this extra continental migration where you're not encouraging people to come from Romania or to come from India or to you know to come from countries in Africa just because they they're seeing what's going on at the border and they realize this is an opportunity for them to migrate to the United States outside of the regular legal order.

Matthew:
you know it's interesting the Department of Homeland Security actually provided the Biden transition team with kind of a threat assessment of this whole phenomenon and they write quote although the majority of migrants do not pose a national security or public safety threat pathways used by migrants to travel to the U.S. have been exploited by threat actors as a result surges of migrants could undermine our ability to effectively secure the border I mean it's clear as day they just toss that out didn't take that into any consideration in what they're doing now but that's a great question Spencer you know I don't know what their any goal with this is you know there has to be certain limitations it can't just be okay anyone who wants to come should be able to come and you know again it's a mockery of our asylum system you know these are protected statuses for people who are genuinely being persecuted and now it's basically kind of just being handed out and it's a disservice.

Spencer:
yeah I think so much of this is a rejection of any and everything that had to do with Trump in fact sometimes with some of the good immigration policies I sometimes wish right before Trump left office if he would have just reversed everything that way whenever the administration came into office they would went oh we need to do the exact opposite of whatever trump did therefore we're going to implement MPP we're going to secure the border because you know while that may be ridiculous and probably is a ridiculous assessment sometimes it seems like all they're doing is just what did Trump do we'll do the opposite at least for now even on things that yeah where we saw previous administration officials say this was working you know when we saw money already being contracted to building the wall and the Biden administration had to literally pay people to do nothing not to do not to complete their contract some of these literally had no sensical reasoning behind them and I don't know if the Biden administration just thinks that the general American public is too stupid to see these negative ramifications or if they don't care but I mean we're already seeing that Americans see it we see that Biden’s polling numbers on immigration are pretty much lower than any recent president that I could find in their first hundred days.

Preston:
and it's even it's his worst issue certainly

Spencer:
by far and it's not getting better it's getting worse in fact you know most and most Americans give a president you know a little bit of time to make good on their promises you know we call that the honeymoon period you know even on something that is not necessarily considered their strong point you might see approval ratings at least in the 40s or 50s with immigration a lot of Biden’s numbers are down in the low 20s I mean even his own party doesn't agree with him you have to get to like the radical of the radicals before he finds any level of support so so much of what's going on right now makes very little sense to anyone.

Matthew:
right and I also think another kind of side topic that should be mentioned quickly here is you know maintaining these security kind of cooperation agreements with the Northern Triangle countries so Todd Bensman he works for Centr for Immigration Studies great guy who does work on this issue he had a recent report talking about in Honduras that authorities there recently apprehended 187 nationals from Somalia 182 from Syria and 63 from Tunisia I mean that you know there's some questions to be asked you know how do they arrive in Honduras how you know what are their ultimate motives but you know it's important that we facilitate openness and transparency and kind of have these security partnerships with Northern Triangle because these are pretty much the first stops that people from these you know terror prone countries are going to arrive in before they go to the U.S.-Mexico border so again the threat is all over Central America even South America again countries with lax visa requirements so it's easy to you know fly into but again I think it's important that we maintain those partnerships because if we go if they go in the dark with us you know we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.

Spencer:
yeah absolutely and you know to kind of build on that point you're making we see commonly there's traffic on the border of Colombia and Peru that is ultimately tracked to be individuals who flew to a South American country or who originate in South America but are making the trek to the border traffic along that border is higher than it has ever been right now to the point that it's damaging sensitive ecological areas in both those countries and recently Peru has started taking steps to try to completely close off that border partially because they want to protect sensitive ecosystems but also because there's a very real threat with a lot of these individuals crossing violence is up they don't have a good security profile on any of these individuals coming across the border and it's not the usual suspects anymore it's people from overseas and you're seeing other countries such as Mexico stepping up their efforts at their southern border to try to stop migration northward I think it's really embarrassing that the United States a westernized you know first world country is doing less to stop illegal immigration into our country than Central and South American countries you know it's our problem it’s not it shouldn't be a situation where Mexico Peru other countries have to try to necessarily solve the problem for us it's very important that we have that open line of communication that we require that they do their parts but right now we're not doing our part and we're making it difficult on the citizens of those countries as well because we aren't taking border security seriously.

Preston:
and a lot of that too is because of just the whiplash of they entered into agreements with the last administration that now this administration doesn't want to honor so it's just confusing all across the board in that respect but I think that's a great point to end on that's all the time that we have for today but for those listening we hope that you enjoyed today's episode about the continued crisis at the southern border and its ongoing effects on the country as a reminder we'll be releasing a new episode every other week our episodes are available on most platforms including Spotify Apple podcasts and Google podcasts you can also visit our website fairus.org and our twitter handle @FAIRImmigration to access episodes until next time this has been understanding immigration presented by FAIR.