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[0] Border experts are expecting a, quote, human title wave at our southern border starting May 11th, when the Biden administration will allow Title 42 to expire.
[1] In this episode, we talk with immigration and national security expert Todd Benzman about which policies have worked, which are failing, and what to expect in the coming weeks.
[2] It's Saturday, April 29th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
[3] Joining us now is Todd Benzman, Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies and author of Overrun, a book that details the policies that have caused this historic border crisis.
[4] Hey, Dodd.
[5] So Title 42 is set to expire on May 11th, and your warning that we're about to experience a human tidal wave at our southern border.
[6] Why do you believe there will be this massive influx of migrants?
[7] Well, I've read the Biden administration's replacement plan for Title 42, and I've studied it.
[8] And what I see in there are new polls galore that should be, able to make sure that every possible demographic of immigrant gets admitted into the country paroled in or just let in pretty much under different kinds of loopholes.
[9] So I think that immigrants are smart people.
[10] I talk to them all the time.
[11] They are social media savvy.
[12] And it probably won't be very long before they figure out what all the loopholes are, what they have to say and what they have to not say.
[13] And I think that there'll be some American lawyers that are there helping them at every step of the way.
[14] And I think we're going to be experiencing kind of a mega surge of people again back at the southern border.
[15] Now, in your recent op -ed for the New York Post, you highlight the different ways that the Trump and Biden administrations have used Title 42.
[16] Can you unpack that for us here?
[17] Well, the Trump administration used it to shut the border down.
[18] He applied these instant returns or rapid returns to about almost 90 % of every immigrant who was apprehended.
[19] The fact that he was doing that spread across the world and people said, well, we're not going to go spend $10 ,000 to have that happen to us.
[20] So they stayed home.
[21] The Biden administration came in and on day one, ratcheted open these huge exemptions in Title 42.
[22] And that's what started the mass migration crisis that we know today.
[23] 42 was in place, but there were so many breaches opened in the dam that they were able to pour through kind of like the levee that flooded New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
[24] And then the Biden administration wanted to get rid of all of it.
[25] And then they realized that they could kind of use it as a cattle prod for this other new policy so that they could pre -legalized hundreds of thousands of people while they were in Mexico and then bring them over the port of entry.
[26] If they tried to come in illegally, they would use 42 on them to push them back in to line.
[27] So that's going away.
[28] They won't have that cattle prod anymore, pushing back into line, but they're going to use this other new cattle prod that, as far as I'm concerned, has no batteries in it.
[29] And people are going to figure that out fast and they'll be coming over.
[30] And what is that policy?
[31] That's called expedited removal.
[32] That's the thing that they're saying they're going to put in place of Title 42.
[33] An expedite removal is the old thing that we've always had that has been abused for years and years and years because there are a couple of really easy workarounds, the asylum law.
[34] You can't expedite removal somebody when they say, I declare asylum.
[35] The law says we got to let you run your adjudication.
[36] That usually means release into the country where you get in line for a five -year backlog.
[37] And if you lose, you just stay in the country.
[38] And if you win, you stay in the country or you can abandon your claim and you stay in the country.
[39] So the administration is saying, well, we're not going to let that happen.
[40] We're going to do all these things, these tough kind of Trumpian -sounding things.
[41] But each one of those things has these big loopholes in them appeals, ways to get around the tough new things.
[42] So how does that work?
[43] If someone comes over and officials begin to use expedited removal, all a migrant has to do is simply claim asylum, and that instantly delays removal.
[44] What happens next?
[45] What are the next steps?
[46] USCIS officers, adjudicators, asylum officers, will be giving what's called credible fear interviews.
[47] This is kind of like a first initial screening.
[48] You know, do I think that you have a credible fear based on what you're telling me and what I know?
[49] and the administration is saying that they're just going to say no to everybody but then they baked into the cake these appeals process they call it rebuttable so they're going to be rebutting any kind of denial and these rebuttals can last for years they can stretch them out into years and we don't have the detention space to keep people in detention for years so we were going to let them go if they get credible fear then they get released in anyway and they can go claim asylum officially and go through the process.
[50] But if they get turned down, they can appeal.
[51] And the other thing is that if they get turned down and we say we're going to do expedited removal on you, all you have to do is say, I fear kidnapping or torture back in Mexico or wherever you're going to send me, and then you get to stay.
[52] So there are all these different ways to kind of defeat what they're talking about.
[53] one of the big ones is going to be unaccompanied minors basically teenagers we've already have this historic number crossed through because the administration opened up this massive exemption on day one for unaccompanied minors and because of that exemption in 42 for them we've had 350 ,000 come in it's like all of them just walked right over the border and were processed in and placed with foster families or reunited with their relatives or somebody here in the United States.
[54] Well, the new Title VIII completely exempt unaccompanied minors says we're letting them all in, no matter what.
[55] Title VIII will not apply to unaccompanied minors, and it's like a simple declarative statement.
[56] So that's going to send a signal to the entire world under the new way unaccompanied minors are still invited and we've got a big red carpet for him.
[57] Another key policy change here is the Biden administration's commitment to abide by the Flores settlement.
[58] What impact will that have?
[59] Biden's plan is very explicit in saying in a declarative sentence, this plan will abide by the Flores settlement.
[60] That's hugely important because was Title 42 under Biden was exempted for family groups.
[61] So that's why the vast majority, hundreds and hundreds of thousands, I think it's millions now of the people that were let in around Title 42 were family groups.
[62] Trump was pushing them all back.
[63] Biden let them all in.
[64] Hundreds upon thousands and millions.
[65] And so the new Title Eight plan says we are going to respect the full.
[66] settlement, which means that they all know they will not be detained.
[67] They can walk in, claim asylum, rebut any denials, and we can't detain them.
[68] So they all get in.
[69] And so I expect to see an unmitigated blood of family groups again.
[70] Only recently have we even seen a decline in that kind of a demographic coming in over the border.
[71] But I think you're going to really see that.
[72] I'm already seeing, and I just came back to Juarez, and they were just pouring over into El Paso and being allowed in, being allowed on buffers and being processed to New Jersey, New York, and everywhere else, already right now in the El Paso sector.
[73] It's already happening, even though they deny it.
[74] What did you see there in your last visit?
[75] What is the situation now at the border?
[76] The lines just became really long, you know, weeks and even months to get.
[77] an appointment to get your free pass over the border and the people that are in that line were sick of waiting in it and they just said never mind we're peeling off the back of this and we're heading in anyway go ahead and use your title 42 on us or go do whatever you want but we're coming in and i was in the middle of that i was among them all as they were crossing i crossed with them And the reason that they said they were crossing is because the Biden administration was receiving them through a gate.
[78] It was called Gate 36, putting along buses and processing a lot of them in, especially the family groups, were being processed into the country, meaning that their whole scheme over there is collapse.
[79] So very few of them can be expected to continue waiting in line.
[80] They're unwilling to do it.
[81] And I think we're just going to see an escalation of that going forward.
[82] People just not bothering with StevieT1, with the appointments, with the online app.
[83] Some people will keep doing it probably, but I think a huge number or not, it's already collapsing.
[84] In that sector, what I saw was a collapse of the system.
[85] And they, they aided and abetted it because they wouldn't use 42 on these people.
[86] They just let them in.
[87] Are all these detention facilities on the border at capacity?
[88] Are they all maxed out?
[89] They are not.
[90] They don't use them.
[91] Or they use them to only to a minimum amount, like just for processing a day or two.
[92] They move them through.
[93] The whole policy is geared to accommodating huge numbers of people fast so that there's no buildup in the facilities.
[94] So they get them on buses as fast as they possibly can.
[95] They might move them down to another border area to fly them to different places, but ultimately what they want is no buildup like Del Rio Migrant Camp.
[96] Remember the Del Rio Migrant Camp?
[97] And also El Paso in November and December of this past year, just a few months ago, was a horror show of international media attention.
[98] So everything is designed to prevent that where you can't see them, where there's no camps or people sleeping in the streets, is what the Majoricus people call border security.
[99] Wow.
[100] Final question.
[101] What does the administration need to do if it wants to actually mitigate the situation at the border?
[102] Well, I'm not a huge optimist about this.
[103] I think that the administration knows what it wants to do.
[104] It wants to accommodate as giant a flow, as big a flow of humanity.
[105] as they possibly can into the country with the least visibility and the least political damage.
[106] And I don't think that there's any serious consideration about deterrence.
[107] You never hear them say, we're going to stop this, we're going to block this, we're going to make people go home, we're going to deport people.
[108] You never, ever hear them say that.
[109] You only hear them say, we're looking for safe, orderly pathways.
[110] We're looking for legal pathways to create new legal pathways and to make sure that it is as orderly and controlled as we can make it.
[111] And that is their definition of border security.
[112] I think they're going to keep doing this for another two years, or close to two years at least until the end of the administration.
[113] And I think we've got about almost 5 million new people living in the country who came in over the border in the last two years and a few months.
[114] And that includes runners and gotaways, people that they did not admit, but just running in.
[115] I just came from New Mexico on the Arizona, New Mexico border and watched this.
[116] There's this whole other element that people won't see of immigrants running and backpacking through the wilderness and long line, getting into the national interstate system.
[117] But I think that we could be looking at, you know, 8 million or 10 million people inside the country.
[118] and that is just simply transformative.
[119] The impacts of that are already being seen in our school districts, in the squealing of mayors of New York and Denver and Chicago and D .C., you know, we didn't budget for this.
[120] This is costing us hundreds of millions of dollars.
[121] And I think we're going to be feeling this inside the country in health care costs and terrible crime and budget bond elections.
[122] for schools, the pressure on housing prices, and on the lower spectrum of the labor market.
[123] So this is going to be with us for a long time and it's just going to get worse until somebody figures out that we need deterrent policies again so that people stay home.
[124] And I'll just add one more thing.
[125] I spend a lot of time with immigrants for two and a half years I've been with them.
[126] and I'm going to tell you that the only thing that matters in their lives as to whether or not they're going to pull the trigger on a trip over the border is whether they know for sure that they're going to get in and stay in.
[127] And then they'll drop 10 grand.
[128] They'll drop whatever amount of money they have to.
[129] When you make it so that they know they're not going to get in and they're not going to stay even if they do get in, then they will not spend that money.
[130] They will stay home.
[131] Well, Todd, thank you so much for talking with us.
[132] That was Todd Bensman's Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies and author of Overrun, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.