Morning Wire XX
[0] The United States has seen an unprecedented number of migrants crossing into the country illegally, with Border Patrol apprehending more than 2 million, plus nearly 600 ,000 additional gotaways.
[1] The influx of migrants has taken a massive toll on residents of border towns and drained massive resources from border states.
[2] On this Sunday episode of Morning Wire, we talk with Virginia Allen, a senior news producer with The Daily Signal, who recently visited multiple border towns and talked with several locals, law enforcement personnel, and migrants to find out what's really going on at the border.
[3] I'm DailyWire editor -in -chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
[4] It's October 9th, and this is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
[5] Hey there, producer Colton here.
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[10] Virginia, thanks for joining us today.
[11] Now, you recently traveled down to the southern border with a production team to hear firsthand from locals, law enforcement, and migrants themselves about this crisis, which has reached historic proportions this year.
[12] So first, tell us about this trip you just took.
[13] So I went down to the southern border.
[14] I was in San Antonio, Del Rio Eagle Pass in Kinney County.
[15] And obviously, San Antonio is a little bit more inland, but for all of those other cities, they are right along the Rio Grande.
[16] And these are communities that are dealing with illegal immigration day in and day out.
[17] And your focus was to see firsthand the impact of illegal immigration on these communities, correct?
[18] Right.
[19] So I went down there with really the purpose to understand what is happening to see it for myself.
[20] And I had the opportunity to talk with local sheriffs, to talk with a local rancher, an attorney for Kinney County.
[21] And even to speak with some of the illegal aliens themselves in San Antonio, I spent about half a day outside of a migrant processing center.
[22] And I just asked folks, you know, why did you decide to come to America?
[23] Why come now?
[24] And so many of them had a very similar answer.
[25] They said, yeah, I've heard about the American dream.
[26] I want the American dream.
[27] I want a better life for myself, from my kids.
[28] But one even told me, he said, I know I came illegally, but he said, you know, I'm really thankful to be here and to have this opportunity to come to America.
[29] But it was fascinating to see how the whole process plays out, because I've heard so many individuals talk about the process of illegal immigration and here on the news, kind of how it works.
[30] But I literally saw firsthand how this system plays out multiple times a day in communities along the border.
[31] So I'll give you an example.
[32] I was in Del Rio and visited with a woman who lives a mile from the border.
[33] Her name's Teresa Esther.
[34] And she said, hey, just drive down the road and kind of look and see what's going on down there because they're often picking up illegal migrants at the end of my street.
[35] So we went down there.
[36] And sure enough, There was a small group of, you know, maybe five or so illegal aliens who just crossed the Rio Grande, and they were being picked up by Border Patrol.
[37] It was just sort of like any other normal Tuesday morning, and they got into the van, and Border Patrol drove them off, presumably, to a processing center for some of their basic information will be taken down.
[38] And then the next step, sort of in the chain of what happens, is increasingly NGOs are giving these illegal.
[39] aliens, bus tickets, and plane flights to go into the interior of the U .S. We know that they're going to New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D .C., in great numbers, and potentially also to several other cities across the U .S. Now, there's been a lot of outrage among Democrats over Republican governors busing migrants, but you're saying that the standard process right now is to let them journey into the interior of the U .S. often to these same cities.
[40] So they're arriving in these cities on a regular basis, just not all at once collectively in groups.
[41] That is the system.
[42] Right.
[43] And we'll see the really large groups of maybe a thousand or something come over at once.
[44] But it is often these small groups of three or five or ten.
[45] And it truly is a well -oiled machine.
[46] Because of the sheer numbers of illegal migrants coming across the border, under these policies of the Biden administration, the border patrol has had to figure out a system to deal with this.
[47] So they have.
[48] And what I essentially saw was, one, we don't have a border.
[49] For all intensive purposes, America has no southern border right now.
[50] And two, this process of illegal immigration under the Biden administration runs very smoothly because it has to in order to support it, in order to have these sheer numbers coming across and have it not be total and complete chaos.
[51] So the policies of the Biden administration are actually empowering and allowing for an illegal system of immigration to be perpetuated across the U .S. And I believe that we're starting, you know, with things like the sentinel crisis and, you know, we're starting to see the repercussions of this.
[52] I don't think we're going to feel the full effects for years to come because there's all sorts of far -reaching effects when you're literally bringing thousands of individuals into the interior of the country.
[53] And, you know, their kids who don't speak English are entering our school systems and they're putting a strain on our health care system.
[54] The far -reaching effects are broad.
[55] They're massive.
[56] And we're going to feel them for years and decades to come.
[57] How do the locals feel about all of this?
[58] Did they feel open to be able to talk to you about this?
[59] Yeah, they were very open.
[60] And I asked several of them, I said, is there a divide in your community between Republicans and Democrats on this issue?
[61] And they said, no, pretty much everyone's of the same mind that we need to secure the border.
[62] And that was kind of my second follow -up question is, well, what do you think needs to happen?
[63] And everyone said, you know what?
[64] Step one is we have to secure the border.
[65] And that's because these individuals who live in these border towns, they don't feel safe.
[66] The woman that I mentioned earlier, Teresa Esther, she described her house as looking like Fort Knox at night.
[67] She's purchased all these lights and put up around the outside of her home.
[68] She's bought a guard dog.
[69] She put a fence in her backyard because she's only a mile from the border, from the Rio Grande.
[70] And regularly, there are illegal aliens running through her property, Border Patrol, trying to catch them.
[71] She told me when I was there that just the night before, there had been a helicopter circling above, presumably, looking for an illegal alien who had crossed and was trying to avoid apprehension.
[72] I spoke with it.
[73] I spoke with that.
[74] another woman, Laura Allen, she and her husband run a ranch along the border in Valverde County.
[75] She said, you know, she doesn't go anywhere on her property without a gun just because you never know.
[76] She's very aware of the fact that illegal aliens are continually crossing through her property.
[77] And you talk to law enforcement as well.
[78] What kinds of responses did you get from them?
[79] It's sobering in many ways what law enforcement is having to deal with.
[80] I met with the sheriff of Kinney County, Sheriff Coe, and that very morning, I think we were meeting around 5 p .m. and that very morning between the hours of 4 a .m. and 8 a .m. in his county, they had apprehended five different human smugglers who were trying to sneak individuals into the county, into the country.
[81] And what often results in those situations of human smuggling is high -speed chases.
[82] So, you know, they'll recruit, often young people are being recruited to drive illegal migrants from the border into America.
[83] And then you have, you know, an officer chasing that vehicle down.
[84] And it's gotten to the point where in Kinney County, they've actually put up a rock barricade around the school because that main drag that the school is on runs right through town and they're fearful that during one of these high -speed chases, a car is going to crash into the school.
[85] So, I mean, this is the sobering reality that these people live with.
[86] I met with the sheriff in Valverde County, Sheriff Martinez.
[87] And, you know, this was one of the most probably heartbreaking things that I saw while I was there.
[88] But he has a binder on his desk just full of photos of dead bodies that had been found of illegal migrants along the border.
[89] Individuals who have drowned in the Rio Grande or who died of heat exhaustion.
[90] I could hardly look at it.
[91] He showed me the photo of one woman who drowned in the Rio Grande who was pregnant with twins.
[92] I mean, at the end of the day, this is a human, total human tragedy that all of these migrants are being sold.
[93] The message come to America and that journey, that trek, is so, so dangerous.
[94] And unfortunately, some of them don't make it.
[95] And you said you talked to some of the migrants, and they just said they wanted a better life in America.
[96] Did anybody talk about fleeing from persecution or violence from their home country?
[97] They all talked about poverty.
[98] They talked about the difficult situations in their communities.
[99] None specifically mentioned, though, the violence that they were specifically, you know, scared because of, you know, political or religious persecution.
[100] And, you know, I was speaking with aliens who are from the nation of Colombia as well as Venezuela.
[101] And, you know, of course we can empathize and say absolutely, you know, it makes sense to want a better life.
[102] There has to be a system in place to do that legally.
[103] There has to be a process in place to do that legally.
[104] I was really fascinated.
[105] One of the gentlemen who I spoke with, he was kind enough to show me the papers that he had been given by customs and border patrol.
[106] That was sort of the steps for what he was supposed to do next.
[107] And it just told him to be in touch within 60 days, to be in touch with a local ICE office and to report to a local ICE office.
[108] It was written in English, which I was fascinated by, because he didn't seem to speak English.
[109] He seemed to only speak Spanish.
[110] And it was interesting to me that it wasn't that he was told, you need to hear in ex -location for your asylum hearing.
[111] By this date, it was just within 60 days, get in touch with us, and we'll schedule your asylum hearing.
[112] So it's really putting a lot of onus on the illegal aliens themselves to be willing to take the steps to schedule those asylum hearings and show up.
[113] And unfortunately, we know that out of fear of deportation, a lot of these individuals don't ever show up for those asylum hearings.
[114] Right.
[115] only a really small percentage ever do show up for those hearings.
[116] Now, you talked about drivers being recruited to smuggle over migrants.
[117] The cartels are behind a lot of this.
[118] What did you see or hear about the cartels when you were visiting these border towns?
[119] Yeah, so there's a lot of concern, both from Border Patrol and locals, about, you know, the role that the cartels are playing in illegal immigration, in the sheer numbers that are coming across.
[120] in the drugs that are being smuggled, and certainly concern for the safety of both the aliens themselves, who are often dependent on those cartels to come to America and Americans themselves.
[121] I, when I was speaking with one of the gentlemen outside the migrant processing center, he was from Venezuela, and he said it cost him about $2 ,500 to come to America.
[122] And, you know, that was kind of paying as he went.
[123] And I have to assume that quite a bit of that money went to cartels.
[124] The cartels, you know, they play such a heavy role, such a big role in this issue of illegal immigration.
[125] And some of them are crossing over themselves.
[126] But, you know, many are just sort of directing things from Mexico or wherever.
[127] And, you know, they're sending people in.
[128] They're sending the drug carriers in.
[129] And meanwhile, they're making tons and tons of money on the backs of individuals who are desperate.
[130] Final question.
[131] Is there anything that particularly stuck out to you that you felt defines the situation on the border?
[132] By the fact that the Biden administration's policies are.
[133] actually facilitating a legal immigration.
[134] And that's both from my words what I gathered and from the words of the Kinney County attorney Brent Smith.
[135] He told me that.
[136] And it was evident.
[137] I think to actually see with your own eyes, oh, this, you know, this isn't just something that's happening in the dark or, you know, that they're trying to hide it.
[138] It's wide out in the open.
[139] And nothing's being done to stop it and to realize, oh, right now I'm living in a country where we really don't, not only do we not have a secure border, like for all intensive purposes, we really don't have a border as far as our southern border was sobering and shocking and the fact that the Biden administration doesn't seem to be concerned by that, that they're not changing anything in their policy is even more sobering because that means that, you know, there's not going to be, there's not going to be a change likely anytime soon.
[140] Well, this issue is increasingly paying a toll on the rest of the country, but in these border towns, as you've highlighted, the price is really steep.
[141] Virginia, thanks for joining us.
[142] Thank you.
[143] I'm pleasure joining today.
[144] That was Virginia Allen, senior news producer for The Daily Signal, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.