Transcripts For CSPAN3 Former 20240702

Up next the former u. S. Customs and Border Protection and if the mobile app that provides surfaces and is joined by Andrew Arthur and from capitol hill this is just over an hour. Welcome and good afternoon. My name is mark krikorian, executive director for the center of Immigration Studies. Thank you for coming. It has been clear from the beginning of this administration that its approach to the illegal immigration issue and the border specifically is to accommodate the flow of inadmissible aliens rather than to stop it and the problem is that that has caused some political headaches as people notice the magnitude of this border crisis and just at the southern border since this administration took office, there has been more than 5 1 2 million socalled encounters at the southern border. So how do you do damage control . One thing they can do is enforce the law and reduce the number of Illegal Immigrants crossing and that is apparently off the table. So to accommodate the flow, they have turned to a strategy, the linchpin of which is cbp one, a Smart Phone App that you can download yourself from google play or the apple store and i have it right here on my phone and i have not used it because i dont have to schedule my illegal immigration but it is there for anybody to see what it looks like. The point of it is, it is a tool to funnel inadmissible aliens from between the ports of entry where they show up as apprehensions by the Border Patrol to go through the lawful ports of entry and call it legal and that is the key point. The goal is to reduce the Border Patrol arrest numbers and declare victory because the legal pathways and i use that in quotations are what people are turning to and it worked for a month, and in june the Border Patrol numbers went down. Of course the numbers using cbp one at the ports of entry wind up. The administration swiped the football but the problem is as there was a new stump friday after close of business which showed the numbers at the border are on their way up and the numbers using cbp one are up. It is not working at least from their perspective but nonetheless this is the linchpin of the administrations border policy. To explore what cbp one is in the central role it plays in the administrations approach the border, we do have two eminently qualified people to talk about this. First is mark morgan, with the Heritage Foundation is a visiting fellow but was acting commissioner of customs and Border Protection under trump and before that was the head of Border Patrol under obama and before that had a long career as an fbi special agent and other experience in Law Enforcement. He has dealt with this directly and in real life and joining him is Andrew Arthur, a resident fellow of law and policy at the center of Immigration Studies and he also has dedicates of decades of experience and was a lawyer for the old immigration and Naturalization Service and was one time thing chief of the National Security law division and has served two hitches on capitol hill and wrote some of the Immigration Law that we all have to deal with now. Also was an immigration judge for many years. I do want to thank them for coming. I do want to ask mark first. You are a recent Border Patrol chief and got a promotion and you are the head of cbp which includes the Border Patrol under it so how does the Border Security at the southwest border change. Not that numbers have gone up but how did it change under President Biden since he took office. You can push the button. Let me be clear. What we are experiencing now is the worst unmitigated self inflicted border crisis that we have experienced in our lifetime and sheriff daniels, who is the sheriff here of the border just a few days ago under oath said the southwest border represents the largest crime scene and i could not have said it better myself and why the focus on illegal immigration . Because that is where the false narratives out there. What is happening there is about Border Security but what drives a significant part for it to be unsecured is illegal immigration, not legal immigration. That is a separate issue. We are talking about illegal immigration. That pulls resources off the line and these go on patrolled and unmonitored and unsecured because they are processing illegal aliens and other administrative tasks along with that in the same happens at the port of entry and we literally have headed operation control with respect to large areas of the border so they can improve their power and control and influence so they can push more drugs and criminals and National Security threats across the border and that is why the numbers matter and that is why focus on illegal immigration is here and i will give you some facts that back up the call that this is the worst Border Security crisis in our lifetime and the comparison should not be for title 42 but it should be from the day that President Biden took over the white house and we should be looking at the last focused year of the Trump Administration and if you look at total enforcement encounters in fy 20, those numbers were 646,000 and some change and keep that in mind because in fy 21 jump to 1. 9 million, a 200 increase and and 22 it jumped 2. 7 million and 327 increase in encounters. Right now we are 2. 5 million on track for 3 million which will be a 360 increase in total nationwide encounters and 30 months under this administration and this is the worst historic high numbers that we have ever seen in our lifetime as well as the highest numbers from year toyear and the total nationwide encounters in the first 30 months of this administration is 7. 7 million. That, ladies and gentlemen is insanity and there are 37 states in the United States whose population is less than the total nationwide encounters that we have experienced in the last 30 months. I know this will be hard to realize, but it does get worse and right now the first 30 months of this administration, we have seen 1. 6 million total known got a ways and last month under oath they said this is underreported by 20 so were actually looking at total nationwide between 1. 9 to 2 million and 30 months and put that into perspective, there are 12 states in this countrys total population is less than 2 million equivalent to the number of got a ways in 30 months and right now we are on pace with the first full term of this administration if we keep going at this pace and nothing indicated that it will slow down and we are looking at 13 million total nationwide encounters plus those got a ways in the first term making it equivalent to the fifth largest populated state in this country just under new york so the numbers are not going down. There is no one if you are intellectually honest can stand here after seeing the borders and tell us they are secure and it is a lie and you asked what has changed . Lot. The start of the Biden Campaign and how he said he would stop building the wall and open the border. But remember during the Democratic Campaign for president they were elbowing each other out of the way to raise their hands when the question was asked will you give free medical care to illegal aliens and everybody on the stage raged raised their hands including candidate biden. What is a plethora of networks of tools and policies they dismantled . We dont have enough time for me to get into all that but i will hit the highlights and we have agreements with all three normal northern tribal countries and it was designed to get asylumseekers relief in the First Transit country they got to and eliminated that and the biden detection protocol and the remain in Mexico Program acted as they did effective deterrent and it singlehandedly reduced that by 85 within a few months in the biden ministration dismantled it and catch and release we had all but that in no make no mistake the migrants come to the border right now and im not looking for asylum but looking to be part of the asylum process which will release them under this administration and the a Biden Administration reinstated catch and release only leveraged mexico through strength and power in the United States to get them to step up and join us in the global issue it is at one point they had over 25,000 personnel and increased interior enforcement and on day one that leverage one away of the biden ministration ration administration. They had the highest level of that in our patients history and the lowest number of deportations since i. C. E. Was created and restrictions placed on this basically have to be a known or suspected terrorist or convicted criminal but we have illegal aliens that have committed a secondary crime in the United States is being released back into the communities because of this administration and the refusal to reforce the law and the secretary has viewed the laws and has abandoned his oath and advocating his responsibility and refuses to enforce the law, one who said being here illegally is not in itself enough to remove you but i object to that because the loss is otherwise so i could keep going on and those are some of the highlights. So they have destroyed every element of a strong deterrence to deter those illegal aliens in the country and apply consequences to those that do break our law and put integrity back in the system by reducing the number of illegal alien false claims. Given the situation the white house is created, which is in a policy sense terrible, but also is a problem for them, they are using this approach with cbp one as the carrot and if you could explain a little bit how they are using that to try to create a different message for what is going on at the border. Thank you, mark. Lets give the administration the benefit of the doubt and they assume there is a set number of people who seek to enter the United States legally every year and they could have those people go in between the ports of entry and be apprehended by Border Patrol and be released or the biden ministration plan that they rollout in january was to have what is called the circumvention of local pathways final rule which, fortunately, they have printed up the parameters on so if any smuggler out there wants to know how it works, they can explain it and basically it is a long title and they can call it this and under the clapp rule if an alien enters the United States illegally, there is a rebuttal of assumption that that alien is not eligible for asylum and there are exceptions and ways they can read but it and one of those exceptions is if the would be illegal migrant schedules a time and place to enter the United States through a port of entry, they will be processed under the old asylum rules and this is how they do it. You download the app and while in northern mexico or central mexico you can then make an appointment to show up at a port of entry and you will get a date for that appointment. Any time during that 23 hour period of the date of that appointment, you can show up at one of eight ports of entry and five of them are in texas and according to assertions made by the state of texas, they dont ask you whether you want asylum and they really dont ask you anything and they want some background checks and they release you and to the United States and cbs news reported a few weeks back that 131,000 people by the end of june had been paroled into the United States who would use the app and we know from the latest statistics that through the end of july 188,500 people have either come through the ports or are ready to come through using that and again, it is a 23 hour period and a port of entry, one of eight ports of entry along the southwest border which means that one of those aliens could show up at 11 00 at night and mark will tell you that you have a shift change and you have other personnel on duty and they could be screened by that person or they could show up at the time the kids come over to go to school which is a pretty common phenomenon at the southwest border and some overwhelmed cbp officer will then very quickly have to make a determination to let you into the United States and again, the only information that they can base their determination on is what the United States government has and as james comey once famously said, if we dont have information on you and you dont make a ripple in the pond, we wont know anything about you and we wont know whether you are a criminal or whether you have terrorist ties or whether you are a member of a drug cartel and that more or less is the system they have set up under cbp one, and that is how it works. One of the ways the administration is pitching this program, justifying it, is that it reduces the business for the smugglers. In other words, that people wont have to pay smugglers to bring them across the border but they will be able to do it in a supposedly lawful and orderly way and are smugglers still benefiting from this and making money off of it even with this process . They are. This is one of the areas where i get frustrated because i learned a long time ago that intentional omission of a material fact is the same thing as a lie and that is what this administration is purporting to the american statement by doing this and i have heard them do it again and again and for the last 40 years the cartel is the only thing that is happened as they got stronger and more powerful and more influential and their Bank Accounts have grown and they have done this to a large extent but they have done it on the backs of illegal aliens they have pushed through our border especially in the last 30 months but think about that. We have learned over the past 40 years of dealing with the cartels and everybody in this Administration Knows it as well as i do, they have an incredible hierarchy and an incredible ability to change what we call tactics, techniques and procedures and that is exactly what they did and it didnt take them long to adapt and they literally have taken over the app. As you said, now, there is supposed to be in mexico. It is a joke so quickly what the cartels did is they over came the app and they get anybody anywhere to get online now and get their application to come to a port of entry in the United States and it is equivalent to their willy wonka Chocolate Factory ticket and if they have that they transit through 106 countries as long as they have that appointment and they are stepping aside and come their way and think about that for a second. It is no different and it doesnt matter whether you go through this gap or traveling through all three northern tribal countries or going through a few thousand mile trek through mexico and it doesnt matter at the end whether you will enter illegally between the ports of entry or use the app to come to a point of entry. You are still putting your life in the hands of the cartels and still being abused and exploited. I do promise you that you will pay for it every single day. That is a lie and do you really think the cartels will step aside and say you have this and go ahead free of charge and go ahead and go to the point of entry . It is stupid and not real life and it isnt how it works. Every day the cartels and it doesnt matter whether a migrant is illegally entering or they are using this app, i promise you they are paying for it and the other thing i will say is it isnt just those that are trying to claim asylum. As art said there is a secondary purpose of this app as well which is parole. So if you are from nicaragua or venezuela you can get to this app and just from being for those countries you can get on this app and it could be in the United States and that is against the law and that itself is a circumvention and parole has to be used on a caseby case specific purpose. And being just born in a country doesnt satisfy the lawful requirement or the lawful mandate and of course, shocker, is that being abused . Yes. We know people who were born in venezuela for example but they have lived in brazil for the past decade and it doesnt matter. That is not embedded. They are getting all of these apps that i was born in venezuela and they are being paroled in United States and the last thing i will say is, it is important and we are talking about this because this is one of the tricks or part of the shell game they play, not only as art said, they are literally making a deal with the entire world saying, do me a favor. If you refrain from illegally entering between the ports of entry, what we will do is let you fill out this cbp one app and come to the point of entry and we will look at the way while you file fraudulent claims and we know that the overwhelming majority of migrants come to our borders are economic migrants and not the victims because of their involvement in the protected class. They know that but they are diverting the point of entry and filing a false claim and looking the other way and it doesnt matter whether you enter in between are the points of entry but the same process is happening to you and the same incentive and result is there of your being released in the United States is there and we call this a shell game. If i could follow up on some of the points that the chief made with respect to the people coming in and they are using smugglers. This is the latest cbp one Monthly Update and this is from july 2023 and includes this line, effect of august 9, the transition to scheduling appointments for 14 days to 21 days in advance to allow noncitizens additional time to prepare and arrange travel to the requested port of entry. If you are in northern mexico, why do you need an extra week to hang out in mexico before you show up for your appointment . It is exactly what the chief just said. The cartels, the smugglers and the cartels with whom they are in the league more or less they work for, they are trying to funnel those people north to get them to the border and from further and further away and that is what that extra week is for and you can take a bus to mexico and there is that and with respect to the venezuelan nicaraguan and hated in cuba visa program, more than 181,000 people will have entered the United States under that program and again, as mark said, none of them had to show an asylum claim and it doesnt ask you for that before it allows you to enter the United States on that and he did mention that you dont actually, many of these people have not lived in venezuela or nicaragua or haiti or cuba and if you need proof of that, all you have to do is go to the southwest border and go to the shores of the rio grande or people cross into the United States and you will find piles and piles of discarded documents and inevitably what those documents are our drivers licenses for venezuelans from brazil and you have green cards for chile for haitians and the reason they are dumping those documents is they dont want anybody to know and the first thing that mark will tell you they do is they check your pockets for pocket trash as we call it and they dont want anybody to find those documents to show they have been resettled in another country because that will torpedo any asylum claim they have. This really gets me. I did start those Operational Updates. I can tell you that they were legitimate Operational Updates and not politically driven and we were given the data and facts as we got them and we expanded the stats portal that everyone can get online because i do truly believe that transparency was one of the most significant responsibilities we have as American People to get the facts out there and regardless of where they stand or how they look in the monthly Operational Updates now are a joke and they have totally been overcome by political appointees and all they are talking about now in the first three quarters was the southwest border numbers and they are only focusing on the southwest border encounters by the United States Border Patrol and that is the only area where, as mark said, there was a slight downtick and a slight downtick in between the ports and their already up to 6000 a day and remember when jake johnson said under the Obama Administration that 1000 was a bad day and we are back to 6000 a day and the numbers arent going down back to the Operational Update. There only focusing on the southwest border and intentionally misleading the American People. What they should be talking about our total nationwide encounters which tells you the full picture of the magnitude of what is going on which represents the shell game going on because what you have as we both talked about, they are literally diverting as many as they can from in between the points of entry to the ports of entry. In fy 20, the entire year, there were 241,000 inadmissible aliens that came to our ports of entry, 20,000 a month and in fy 21 jump to 294,000 and in fy 22 when they started their shell game, jump to 551,000 and in fy 23, we are on track for 1 million total inadmissible encounters. And that is another record set and we have never had that number in the history since we have been keeping data since 1924 come to our points of entry and that is a 313 increase in 30 months. The numbers are not going down and simply shifting and diverting it and it is a shell game and the last thing i will say is that what is frustrating is even in between those ports of entry, the numbers are still not going down and they want to use that arbitrary date since title 42 in which we saw the numbers skyrocket and thats not the date. The date is from fy 20 the last full year of the Trump Administration and even in between the ports of entry right now the first 30 months there has been a 393 increase in illegal aliens. So dont believe when they say the numbers are going down because it isnt true. Just to clarify on the issue of that extra week now, people have the schedule appointments three weeks out, if i understand correctly, what they did, the smugglers now use a vpn and they tell the vpn they are in mexico even though there somewhere else and when they get the appointment, instead of the person flying in and cooling his heels in mexico, he stays somewhere else and then gets into the plane and heads to mexico. In a sense, the cbp one app is facilitating the work of the smugglers in that sense. That is absolutely correct. We are now active participants in the Worlds Largest smuggling operations and this cbp one app hasnt deterred anything or stemmed the flow of illegal immigration but it has helped the cartels through their smuggling operations making it easier and before the cartels had to have a robust operation in the United States and now what they have to do is drop it off at the front door and we take over from there and we make it easier for the migrants for the cartels and smuggling operations to get them to the front door and they absolutely make it easy. This is probably what you will bring up what this is the point and part of the appoint the administration is making and one of the reasons they are selling this is taking business away from cartels but these are legal pathways in quotation marks and in other words and inadmissible alien a person has no right to be here or any visa but comes through a port of entry and gets let go and somehow is less illegal than somebody who jumps the border and then let go and is that the case but isnt the person still an illegal alien . For that we have to go back in time to part of 1996 and as i look around the room i dont see many people who were actively reading the news in 1996, prior to 1996, we had to follow what was called the entry doctrine or the flutie doctrine and it was the number name of the case that did this and if an alien enter the United States and was stopped at a port of entry, that alien was deemed excludable and put into a proceeding that offered them very few rights and basically only the rights included in the immigration and nationality act. If, however, that alien managed to elude apprehension and make it into the United States and be free from official restraint for any period of time, that person was deportable and got more rights and it was absolutely ridiculous and very difficult to use. And to give you a really quick example, there was a ship called the Golden Venture that ran aground in queens and i think it was rockaway and it was a smuggling ship full of chinese nationals. Some of them jumped into the water and were picked up in the water and some of them touched dry land. Hundreds of cases hinged on whether that person touched dry land without anybody seeing them are picked up in the water because if they were picked up in the water, they had to enter the United States and they were excludable and if they touched dry land, enter the United States and got more Constitutional Rights and it was actually a pretty key point and it wasnt mentioned in a 2020 case called dhs versus a guy who said i deserve to have an appeal of mine credible fear denial but in any event in 1996 congress stepped in and said we are not doing this anymore because it is ridiculous and there is no reason to do that and they created a system called removal and there are now removal hearings. If you show up illegally at a port or show up at a port of entry and are inadmissible or get apprehended between the ports of entry, the losses we will treat you exactly the same and you will have the same inspection protocol and the same rights and you will be removable on the same grounds and me showing up at a port of entry without a visa and somehow pretending that i am seeking to enter the United States lawfully is like me going to Dulles Airport running through the airport and running through the tsa check point and getting through the gate and showing up without a ticket and saying i am seeking to enter this lawfully and it is just not and yet, this is one of those things and i actually heard this on fox news is that people coming through the ports of entry are doing it the right way and this is to go through a consulate abroad and get a visa and come to the United States which is not what is going on. To even put it more simplistic week, i just say there is a lot of people as you said who think that if you walk up to a port of entry, therefore everything you do is lawful. And you are not an is miscible and you have no legal status to be in the United States and it is no different as he said whether you came in between the points of entry with a port of entry without any documentation or any legal status that you are inadmissible meaning you should be denied entry and that should be the starting point and just because you walk up to a point of entry doesnt make what you are doing legal and that is a false narrative and misinformation, not accurate. What happens is they will claim asylum and then what happens under this administration is they are then unlawfully not enforcing the law or detaining individuals who should be detained and they are releasing them in the United States just like they are doing if you entered in between the points of entry and it is no different. They are not trying to stem the flow of illegal immigration or d incentivize it but playing a shell game to avoid the optics of more coming in between the points of entry jeopardy nations National Security and it is a joke and the numbers dont lie and they continued to go up to stork level so it is very important that just because somebody walks up to a port of entry it doesnt make the process lawful and i will and with this. Again, the overwhelming majority of migrants coming into our border claiming asylum are false claims and the data proves that and they are economic migrants what this administration is doing knowingly and with intent is allowing our laws to be exploited and letting them come through the front door as they look the other way and calling it an unlawful pathway and it is a perversion in violation of the law. There is a difference in the sense that somebody jumping the border is committing a federal crime of entry without expection inspection. Whereas somebody coming to a point of entry is not breaking the law but it is the administration breaking the law by letting them go rather than detaining them. I did write a piece about dont break the law we will do it for you because that is what they allow to happen. That is right. But the only thing i would add to that is filing that claim is also that way. Mark throws out stuff at such a high rate and it is like drinking from a fire hose and it is truly like that but with respect to those people and they will file asylum claims, the important thing to note with respect to parole is under the biden ministration including the Obama Administration has ever done this but if we do release you on parole, every Prior Administration puts you and immigration proceedings and then they release you on parole and the biden ministration has decided that when it releases people on parole, you are on parole until we put you into proceedings. If that were 60 days, which is what it was originally and it actually dropped down to 30 days when you had to report to an i. C. E. Office but at this point they are so overwhelmed and there are 6500 i. C. E. Officers in the United States and they are so overwhelmed that at the end of march, the New York Post reported that aliens were waiting until 2032 in order to even show up at an i. C. E. Office to get the charging document that will then put you into proceedings. That is not waiting for asylum but just waiting. Right. We need to get to court and the quantify this number further. Nbc news reported in february that there were 588,000 people who had been paroled into the United States who were part of that gigantic q of people who would simply get the sheet of paper that would put them into removal proceedings and one of the things you hear a lot of in the biden ministration is the Trump Administration baroque the immigration system and broke the asylum system and, honestly, mark and mike, we served under obama and he served under obama and trump and trump didnt really do anything that obama didnt do first and there are a few things i can think of but not many. They certainly didnt do this. This is literally breaking the asylum system and if you believe in asylum or believe in the statue of Liberty Holding the torch of the nations, this is the exact opposite in their 1. 642 million pending asylum applications in the United States right now and fewer than 1000 asylum officers to hear them and 650 Immigration Judges and there is no way they are ever going to be able to get to these cases. This is important, an important point that many miss. There are valid asylum claims and we know that about 17 of all people that show up at the border get granted asylum in those legitimate asylum claimants wont be able to get their day in court because of all of these cases that the Biden Administration has flooded the courts with and that means they wont be able to resettle in the United States and their lives will be tenuous and its just like any other court case where you wait for the day were you can finally adopt a child, get divorced or when your lawsuit or whatever. More importantly, many people who have valid asylum claims have loved ones back home in danger of the same reason or because they are related to this person whom the government really is out to get and those people abroad are living in until that person can get granted asylum and yet the biden ministration has decided to screws people abroad and they would rather simply provide safe and orderly and legal pathways for anybody and everybody who wants to show up at the southwest border. Which is neither safe nor legal. This question sort of relates to this and maybe art as well but the cbp one app was developed before it was branded this way and actually while you were a commissioner but it was a totally different thing for buses and lawful Trading Travel and my question is, the administration could conceivably use it in this way if they detained everybody who showed up in a port of entry and is not correct . Yes. Or they could do some vetting before they make this dangerous track because part of the problem is if we wait for them to get to the United States border have already put their lives in the hands of the cartels and smuggling operation so that is what we want to try to prevent and we want to try to prevent and deter migrants from making this track because we know the overwhelming majority wont qualify for asylum. And information and data supports that. This is why we are here and everything that mark said and everything i talked about, that is why we have had 7. 7 million total nationwide encounters in 30 months and that wasnt by happen chance and it wasnt driven by Climate Change and it was intentionally done by this administrations full and complete dismantlement of every effective tool in authority and policy we had in place and i rattled him off and the remain in Mexico Program, the wall, and i. C. E. Restriction and that goes on and on and that is something they got rid of and they reinstated catch and release and this wasnt by incompetence or accident but this was intentional and by design and no way we wouldve had 7. 7 million total encounters and now this cbp one app has made that easier. That is what we are here to talk about and it is frustrating because i dont know if you will ask of this, mark, but you mentioned a safe and orderly pathway and if i do hear that one more time coming out of the secretarys mouth, how do we know he is mine and his lips are moving. Right . I am so frustrated. And that is one of the biggest lies of all, safe and orderly. And there are 1900 dead migrants recovered by cbp along the border and that is 1900, the most ever recovered since we have been keeping record and that doesnt include the dead migrants found by Law Enforcement or those who died in mexico along their journey or who died in the gap in harsh terrains in the western hemisphere and bad person you can make about and up to 30 of women and children and they are assaulted and that is on the journey up here. And after they talk to a 12 yearold and i talked to a sheriffs deputy and they found a bag of pills in her back pack and asked what are those and said my mom gave me the morning after pill because she just expected to be raped or what about those who have been thrust into sex trafficking after they have been here. This is not safe and orderly and humane. That is a lie. They are lying to the American People and you dont have to be a Border Security expert. And when you do this by 360 because that is where we are at . Think about the increased number of dead migrants and think about those that have been thrust into the life of trafficking and things we cant even fathom how bad it is. So, no, secretary, dont look into the camera or swear the border is a cruel secure because you know it is a lie and stop lying to the American People. If i could follow up on three points the chief made that we did discuss or alluded to before, again, you could have a few guys from think tanks who say this is the way i see the world, but with respect to the impact that this release policy has had on the number of migrants that mark had talked about who came to the United States illegally, and opinion in florida versus United States, a judge literally said undoubtedly geopolitical factors are part of the reason why a large number of migrants come to the United States but the reason that so many people are coming right now is because they know under the Biden Administrations policies they will be released into the United States and this was a determination made after reading thousands of pages of evidence and after hearing a year of testimony and argument and discussion on this topic. This is the law. The administration as the 11th circuit stated and they refuse to and with respect to the effect that the cbp one app is having his mark discussed, on the people coming here and the increase, i do believe his name is henrique but he is the migration minister in tijuana and literally said the cbp one app is encouraging people to come to this country, and i do know that because after the cbp one app went live, the number of migrants in tijuana increase by 188 . This is not a couple of guys from think tanks spit falling ideas. There were actually people out there dealing with this dayto day the way that mark used to and finally with respect to the dangers. Part of the reason and the main reason why dhs are what the biden ministration did away with those protocols is because mexico was such a dangerous place. We cant send people back to mexico and it is dangerous down there the initial master calendar hearing on average was held within a few months in time the migrant was sent back to mexico. And the Monthly Update that they were waiting for three months before their Interview Dates for cbp one and they were making people wait in mexico as long as they had. And after i brought up this weird contradiction and theys stopped printing that number of how long they had waited mexico for their cbp one dates and if you are a congressional staffer, you will read through these things and you will have ideas galore. But it truly is a shell game and they allowed people to have their asylum claims heard and most were denied. And it is just the way they go. And i will even add to that as well. So mexico is so dangerous. Then why is the biden ministration, the few they removed, going back to mexico and it is a joke and big lies so they say mexico is dangerous and they are still moving people back to mexico and having them wait longer for that appointment than we did. It is stupid and full of hypocrisy and they continue to lie to the American People but i do think it is important that if i could leave you with one thing again because you did bring up the Operational Updates again, it isnt about the southwest border and especially now they are playing the shell game it is about nationwide encounters and its about those they are diverting to the southwest border points of entry and you have to look at the interior as well because those individuals that they are pulling in from those countries are not coming to the border but being flown into jfk but the Operational Update has no mention of that and they dont talk about that and, again, the last three months or 90 days, ports of entry have been getting close to or exceeding 100,000 per month and that number is climbing in the last 90 days it continues to climb and last month i think it was 110,000 at ports of entry but it wasnt just at the southwest border but meant 40,000 and 50,000 flying into airports like jfk but no mention of that and again a sleightofhand and look over here while i do Something Else over here and they only want you to look at the border in between the ports of entry with total encounters telling the story including the magnitude of the problem but also it clearly illustrates the shell game and all you do is type in those stats and the first thing that comes up is total encounters and thats all you need to look at. We do have a few questions from listeners and one of them addresses and you mentioned this in other words that some share of the people who make these appointments arent walking across the bridge in el paso but getting on a plane in caracas and flying to kansas city or whatever it is. So i am pretty sure we have this request but do we know the numbers that are going into the interior points of entry and we do have that and it is convoluted but those stats it is there. And use of tract those the borders. But you have to do some math. In their defense which i cant believe i am defending reporters but it is a little bit difficult to navigate or do there but one way what you said when you look at the ports of entry one way to do that is if you combine ports of entry or encounters that the northern border and southern border points of entry and you compare that against total nationwide encounters, that will get you pretty close to the numbers. Most of this people are cbp one, right . Most of them are. Let me follow up on that because it does bring up an important point and i dont think we mentioned but you are a force of nature, mark. It is hard to remember everything. Part of the problem is this huge influx of Illegal Migrants has degraded the Border Patrols ability to actually secure the border and there are 17,000 Border Patrol agents who work 50 hour weeks which means that any other time there are 5550 more or less agents on the southwest border in the border is 1954 miles long and it is huge with a handful of people were keeping an eye on it and when these massive numbers of migrants show up at the border, agents get pulled off and that creates gaps in security and the cartels exploit this and our friend rodney scott wrote a letter with the senate that explained that the cartels exploit this and will send over kids and families so a bunch of Border Patrol agents get pulled off and they could use those gaps to run drugs and other aliens into the United States and part of the reason why we have a fentanyl epidemic is that it can run as much as they want but the biden ministration for the cbp one app is sharing that burden and the officers at the port of entry. The officers there are not used to dealing with people who dont have documents and you show up and present those documents. You hand it to the officer and they asked questions and they put you through but with somebody with one of these app appointments, at any point during a 23 hour period shows up that officer is off the line for as long as it takes to process that person which means it is a whole lot easier to run drugs and other contraband and potential terrorists and bad people in through the ports because nobody watching the store when that agent was off the line and as mark had mentioned, they come through but indianapolis is an International Point of entry at the airport and there are not that many cbp officers there. When somebody shows up with one of these things, they are basically taken off the line and if you have ever stood at a long line at dulles or jfk or la waiting with everybody else in line, you can imagine that they slide that thing that said it is closed and everybody has to go find another line and this simply puts more burden on that system. Let me remind you. Actually 20 hijackers who were trained for september 11 and the 20th hijackers whose name escapes me was stopped by an inspector at Miami International airport who was trained and had enough time to say i dont really think youre coming into the United States to go to disney world and that person was excluded from the United States and lionized in real time for their ability and we are degrading their ability to stop all of those other people when we overwhelm the system with problems. That is the crux of the issue right here and for those who dont know but as a commissioner, i work with the officers who work at the points of entry and not just those 2000 miles southwest but we have other borders we are responsible to try to protect and trying to step bad people from entering the country and that is a hell of a job to do and i want to talk about this. Lets take the southwest border and look at Border Patrol and we do know because of the millions of illegal aliens coming in every day as was said agents are pulled off the front line away from the National Security mission and in some areas 85 to 90 and i will say it again, 85 to 90 of agents are pulled off and away from their National Security mission in facilities relegated to facilities connected to processing and releasing millions of illegal aliens and that is insanity and literally there are large strategic spots on patrolled and unmanned and we are every day expanding the cartels operational control over the southwest border so they can increase their ability and capacity to push drugs and criminals and threats across the southern border which is a fact and you can ask any Border Patrol agents that has spent five minutes on the southwest border. They will tell you what i tell you that that is reality and again i will go back to the first 30 months with 1. 6 million known got a ways. And borders matter and why do we have that . If the majority of aliens come across and turn themselves in because they will be processed and released in the United States, why do we have that . You dont have to be an expert to get that because that is where the criminals live and pedophiles and felons, smugglers, traffickers, gang members, that is where they live among the 2 million got aways that call the United States homes and that is the impact that they have in between the ports of entry and that same exact impact has at adapt and happens at the port of entry. Wait times in closing lanes and secondary and you have these in secondary and somebody has referred to the second toy because his derogatory or as many officers there and i went down there and set saw those southbound operations where they seized an untold number of weapons and currency and this is actually more valuable than you is currency and how many proactive preventative southbound operations are being conducted right now when you have an officer pulled off and that is just when they are processing with this app and you can still come to the port of entry and they are still processing it. So illegal immigration has an impact on her capability and readiness and ability to secure borders. I do want to follow up on that because mark brings up an important point. When i was in cochise county a few weeks ago i was told and not officially because Border Patrol wasnt talking but it was just a congressional hearing but i was told that 90 of the agents were off of line and that is the biggest sector by this in the country so this is the 262 miles and more than 3000 agents and because of that the coach east county sheriffs have to step in this is a Sheriffs Department and an underpopulated county and they have to step in to fill that void to stop the traffickers from bringing drugs into the United States because they are cops and that is what they do. The other reason is there are so many highspeed chases through cochise county where most of them are 16 or 17 years old and recruited on tiktok but they are driving through high rates of speed that the locals are terrified and they want to cut that down but when you hear about operation lone star and the floating barrier in the Rio Grande River and the Texas Department of public safety, the reason they have to be down there is because there are no Border Patrol agents to patrol that border and you are pulling state troopers out of abilene, which is nowhere near the border. You are sending them for five weeks away from their families to the southwest border to run through the brush and tried to do that. When you hear about, Governor Abbott is such a mean person and hates people, no. They dont want the drugs and crime that comes with it in the state of texas just like the coach east county sheriff doesnt. We have one more quick question but i also wanted to make a point that even if, magically, every one of these people were fully vetted and even if we could read their minds and there was no fentanyl or all that, congress has passed a limit. There are only supposed to be at so many people here moving here and all of that. My point is that even if, in some alternate universe, all of the promises about vetting and control and everything were still kept, were real, it still would be subverting Immigration Law because theres a reason we have numerical limits on immigration. Can i take the first part and go ahead. Because you mentioned it mark. So i feel a need to talk about the vetting real quick. So since i mentioned it. Quickly though. Were running out theyre not vetting. Its a lie right . Think about this. In the last 30 months we have found migrants from 171 Different Countries from countries you cant imagine. Uzbekistan and russia and china. Goes on and on and on. Cuba. Do you really think that a cuban male or venezuelan male, you really think that were getting the equivalent of the ncic check or the criminal history from crew be a or nicaragua before releasing them . No. We are releasing people every day into this country that we have no idea about their criminal background. And who they really are. Thats happening every single day. Its impossible to vet somebody and everybody from 171 Different Countries within 24 hours of them being released. Not to mention again the 2 million we have no idea who they are that they call the United States home. No, were not vetting anybody, not even close. One last point. Art. I wanted you to just briefly touch on. Theres a hearing tomorrow right . On one of the many lawsuits that relate to cbp1. And sort of just in a very kind of monarch notes way, cliff notes way, whats the story with the legal challenges to cbp1 thats a case called texas versus texas versus dhs. Before judge drew tipton down in texas and thats a challenge bit the state of texas to the haiti and cuba Parole Program and congress changed the law back in 1996 in order to curb parole abuses like the ones that the Biden Administration is engaging in. So judge tipton is almost going to found for the states and vacate that program. Probably the Biden Administration will go to the fifth circuit and ask for a stay of that order. I mean im just telling how its going to go. Theyre going to ask for stay of the order and thats going to be denied and the Biden Administration is a going to the Supreme Court for a stay in probably deny the stay but probably grant before judgment. Basically jump over the fifth circuit and send this to the justices. The recent decision in texas versus the United States why it stuck in my mind, the Supreme Court said states dont have the ability to challenge arrest and detention of aliens but if the Biden Administration were to give benefits to aliens that they didnt deserve which gets to marks original point, then you know, well consider that. Congress makes the rules relating to alien admissions you know. It comes from the naturalization clause of the constitution. Its been black letter law for 140 years. All of these things at the Biden Administration is doing is undercutting the peoples representatives in congress and doing it in runaround that so it can make the law in its mind. So the administration can basically create its own Immigration Law. Exactly. Rather than actually comply with it. Well, thank you all for coming, thank you for those who were watching on cspan. This will be on our website, cis. Org for people who want to see it there. We have a were on twitter as well at cis underscore or i believe thats our handle. cis underscore. Org and we hope you come to our next event. Thank you. [ applause ] [indiscernible conversations] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2022] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2023] cspans student cam documentary competition is back. Celebrating 20 years with this years theme looking forward while considering the past. Were asking middle and High School Students to create a five to six minute video addressing one of those questions. In the next 20 years, what is the most important change youd like to see in america . Or, over the past 20 years, what has been the most important change in america . As we do each year, were giving away 100,000 no total prizes with a grand prize of 5,000. Students participate in this years competitihas the opportunity to share a portion of an additional 50,000. The competition deadline is friday, january 19th, 2024. 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