Freddy is joined by Todd Bensman, fellow at the Centre for Immigration Studies and author of Overrun: how Joe Biden unleashed the greatest border crisis in US history. They discuss how to solve what is perhaps the issue of our time, why meaningful reform doesn’t seem to happen on immigration, and the extent of Biden’s physical and mental frailty after a week of public gaffes.
Also hear Bensman’s January 2023 interview on the Americano
Excerpts
Freddy Gray: Could you just first of all, since this is a subject of your expertise, give us an overview of how bad the illegal crossings are on the southern border?
Bensman:
Former DHS Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson a few years ago said that when he was in office that when he woke up and saw that there were about a thousand illegal immigrant apprehensions in a day that he was going to have a very bad day, that this was a crisis level, that a thousand a day swamped all systems. That was just a few years ago so the systems haven’t been that much expanded and we have seen for the last three years running 7,000 a day, 8,000 a day, 10,000 days, 12,000 days and 14,000 days at this border. Literally millions and millions of people have crossed that border and have been allowed into the country. The reason that they’re coming is because the administration lets 80-90 percent of them in, that we know of, and that they even admit to. That is the definition of an open border. We believe at the Center for Immigration Studies that somewhere on the order of five to five and a half million people have been allowed into the country in 36 months, including gotaways. Maybe 10 million have tried. A lot of this was during Title 42, the pandemic rule where there were a lot of pushbacks. But now Title 42 is gone and I dare say that it’s about a hundred chance of entry if you can get to a U.S. Border Patrol agent that you’ll be allowed into the country and released, promptly. That is an order of magnitude that is beyond anything in the American experience. It is so far above and beyond anything that we have ever seen in this country that it ranks as a historic moment in American history, like Ellis Island. I believe that we will be teaching this to future generations in secondary school history classes. That’s how big this thing is.
One other thing. The first couple of years of the crisis, I don’t think people could really feel and see it as much. It took a while for the pipeline to back up and start overflowing. And now that’s been happening for at least a year and a half in American cities, with just tens of thousands pouring in, getting on the local public welfare rolls, being sheltered in police stations and airports and schools and anywhere that there some free bit of space. The American people see this now. No matter what the spin is, they see it and they feel it in their daily lives. And in their pocketbooks.
Freddy: Quite a few Republicans, quite bitterly perhaps, say, the reason this is only now being taken as seriously as it appears to be – and there’s an immigration bill in the senate, which we’ll get on to – is because the migrants are now in blue cities and that this is partly because of this tactic that some Republican governors have used of sending them to Democrat cities of affluence and that suddenly, lo and behold, Democrats realize that there’s a problem. Whereas if it’s someone else’s problem, they’re quite happy to ignore it. Do you think that’s a fair point or do you think that’s been exaggerated?
Bensman: I think there’s no truth whatsoever to this notion that governors are sending anybody anywhere. It’s just simply not true. What they’re doing is offering free fare to people who were going there anyway. A governor can’t make somebody get on a bus, or round them up with batons forcing them onto buses and drive them to some place they don’t want to go. So just the foundational premise of the question doesn’t work because these are all people who would go to New York or Chicago anyway. They’d just pay the hundred bucks for bus fare. It’s a little bit of political theater on the part of the Republican governors that have done this. It looks kind of funny that they’re ‘sending.’ But they can’t send anybody. All of them have to sign a waiver that they’re getting on the bus voluntarily. And in any case, the vast majority of people in those cities did pay their own bus fare – or air fare – or managed to get themselves to these cities on their own anyway. The percentage of people who got free bus fare from a state like Texas is miniscule compared to the total in those cities. So the whole thing, on every possible count, is bogus.
Freddy: Let’s talk a little bit about the politics again because there is this immigration bill that’s been kicked back and forth between the Republicans and the Democrats. They are disagreeing with each other and blaming each other for it. President Biden is now suggesting that Donald Trump is to blame because he wants immigration to be a problem because it helps him politically. What do you make of all that?
Bensman: The Republicans in the Senate allowed the Biden administration to get away with the lie that they don’t already have the power to end this in a day. The Biden administration could shut down that border right now and return 100 percent of everybody that’s caught to Mexico. And with no chance at asylum. That’s in INA section 212 (f). You can Google it and go look it up. But he [Biden] was saying, ‘you have to give me the legislative authority to do that.’ So they were snookered in a really big obvious way, that they somehow found themselves negotiating to give him [Biden] authority that he already completely has. The other snookering that I think happened was that the Republicans were unaware, perhaps unaware – I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt – that when the administration talks about putting people in deportation proceedings. that that does not mean any of them are actually going to be deported. Because the policy of the administration is yeah put everyone in removal proceedings, but we don’t actually remove anybody. We just release them and we’ll let the next administration worry about trying to round them up or find them somewhere to remove them. So there was never any actual deportation or detention requirement in the deal. And remember what I said earlier in this conversation: If you’re not deporting and detaining, you are in a mass migration situation. It’s either that or mass migration. And so they [Republicans] were negotiating for a mass migration, more of a mass migration. Some of the other things they were going to give away would powerfully incentivize. It would codify incentives for the whole world to get in here as fast as possible before another deal comes up after they [Republicans] realized that they’d been snookered. They were going to let every family member in right away, 100 percent guaranteed, family groups with children, everybody gets in. And you wouldn’t be able to turn them back, say, under a Trump administration because it would be codified in legislation. So this was a great deal for the Democrats. They were building a bulwark against a possible Trump win. It’s a great thing that it died. The Republican negotiators, you know, um, I don’t know them very well but I am very embarrassed on their behalf. ‘Fardoe,’ as they say.