Newt's WorldLast month set a new U.S.–Mexico border monthly migration record with 225,000 migrants crossing the U.S. southern border. We have seen scenes of the impact of their arrival in Eagle Pass, Texas, in the streets of El Paso, and at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. All locations that are trying to accommodate the huge influx of people coming to the United States illegally. How should Congress act to manage the crisis? Newt’s guest is Lora Ries, Director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation.
On this episode of News World. Last months at a new US Mexico border monthly migration record. Border Patrol has shared monthly data about its apprehensions of migrants at the US Mexico border since October nineteen ninety nine. In December, two hundred and twenty five thousand migrants crossed the southern border. We have seen scenes of the impact of their arrival at Eagle Pass, Texas, in the streets of El Paso, and at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, all locations that are trying to accommodate the huge influx of people coming to the United States illegally. Many are fleeing their home country seeking asylum, with sharp increases of migrants from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, Columbia, and Guatemala here to discuss the migrant crisis. I'm really pleased to welcome my guests, Laura Reese. She is currently the director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation. Actually served as acting Deputy Chief of Staff for the US Department of Homeland Security and council for the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims. Laura, welcome and thank you. For joining me on this world.
Thank you new for having me on Good Morning.
What attracted you to focusing so much on the issue of the border and migration.
I was actually in college and the first time I drove across the US Mexico border, you could see kind of no man's land between the two borders, and I could see on the Mexican side a number of adult males but also teens looking north, and I knew they were trying to figure out how they were going to cross illegally. And I was fascinated by the issue ever since. All my college papers after that I could tie to immigration. And I've been at this now for twenty seven years.
That's wild. That's hard to bleed on. Look like Huban at this for twenty seven years? Tell me when you know. The most recent interesting big thing I thought was Speaker Johnson taking sixty House Republicans to Eagle Pass on January third, and it was interesting how apparently President Biden and the administration manipulated what they saw. Can you describe that trip?
Yes, you know, good on Speaker Johnson for taking members down to the border. Too few members have been down there really at all. Any members should have to explain why they haven't been to the border when we're facing this historic crisis. But administrations, particularly this one, react to bad optics. And so when we had seen hundreds of people waiting at eagle paths to enter illegally leading up to this trip, and then suddenly they had all disappeared when the trip occurred, it's pretty clear that the Biden administration and instructed agents to have the flogo elsewhere. You can think of other examples where this administration has reacted to bad optics. The Del Rio Bridge in twenty twenty one, where fifteen thousand, mostly Haitians were gathered under that bridge and the videos were getting out drone videos, and then suddenly the buses came in and removed them all. And they also that's when they came up with that fake border agent horse whipping story, which was just terrible and Secretary of my ARCA still hasn't admitted was a lie. Anyway, these are just some examples of how this administration tries to avoid video of these bad optics.
Why do you think they are so passionately committed to mass ave illegal immigration.
I think it's a few things. In a word, it's about power. Some Democrats view these populations as future Democrat voters. But also it's about the headcount. Currently under the US Census, there is no question on US citizenship. President Trump tried to put that question on the US Census, and the Left suit against it, and the Supreme Court through a procedural out rule that know that question didn't need to be put on the census. The result of that is everybody is counted, no matter if you're a US citizen, a Green card holder, a temporary visitor, or an illegal alien. And that entire headcount is used in congressional apportionment to draw congressional districts, and so we have congressional districts in California, for example, that should not exist because they are including the high numbers of immigrants, both legal and illegal. And then other red states, for example, don't have the congressional district numbers that they should have, and so that translates to power. This also affects the electoral college and the number of electoral votes each state gets towards a presidential election.
Have you at parentage looked at what the difference would be if we had only say, legal citizens and legal immigrants counted, and did not count people who are not legally here. How big a difference would it make?
I know, my colleague cons Von Spakowski has looked at that and has named a handful of states that would get a few more districts than other states like California and New York, which would have fewer.
See said, part of the reason they do this is power. They just literally want numbers that can count on their side.
That's correct.
Yeah, there seems to be almost a passion about crowding the United States and people who are here illegally and keeping the border as open as possible.
Well, another tactic can be to make it stronger. And they believe in for an argument for mass amnesty. You know, pre Biden, many would say, oh, well you can't deport the number that was always cited eleven million illegal aliens who are here, and so therefore we should do a mass amnesty, as if there was no other choice in between those very polar opposites. It wasn't true then and it's not true now. And so I believe that they think if they just flood the country with millions more illegal aliens, it makes it all the more difficult to deport many and therefore they think easier to get some mass amnesty and give them green cards.
Is there a way by having some kind of e verify that's really enforced to basically end up with self deportation because they can't get jobs.
Yes, I like to say, illegal aliens want five things. They want to enter the US, they want to stay here, they want to work here, they want to send money home, and they want to bring family here or have children here. And if you take those away, then they will one stop coming and two not stay here. And if they cannot work, then that is the number one incentive for illegal immigration, and yes, they will go elsewhere.
I'm very concerned that the center Republicans are getting sucked into some agreement which will actually be a disaster, which makes no sense at all if you're concerned about illegal immigration. I can't understand how they talk themselves into deals that are this dump.
I totally agree. And there's two levels to that. The base of that is the White House supplemental funding, where they are seeking billions more thirteen point six more billion dollars just for quote unquote border security. But what that would be is a continuation of funding these open border operations, A lot of it would go to non governmental organizations throughout the Western hemisphere that we're paying for as well as in the US, and these NGOs receive the illegal aliens, trans port them, shelter them, provide social services, legal services, and many of that thirteen point six billion dollars would continue to fund that. I mean that alone, Congress should be saying no deal. On top of that, then we're dealing with these policy negotiations that you're talking about, where I think basically Leader McConnell has said, you know, try and get a deal, and now he's saying take the deal. And it is also a bad deal because one thing would be to give work permits even faster, and as we just spoke about, that's the biggest draw there is. It would also codify an acceptable quote unquote level of five thousand illegal aliens per day before they would allow a general expulsion authority to turn them back across the border. Recall that Jay Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama, said one thousand a day was a bad day, and so there's no way we should be accepting five thousand illegal aliens in a day.
That's like a million nine hundred thousand people a year. Right, are the Republican senators who are negotiating this incapable of understanding the real world?
I think one they lose that reality, but also they fall to what's so common on the hill of do something is them. So when Senator Schumer and Senator McConnell say do something, come up with a deal, they just make a tunnel vision and see what they can get agreement on, and don't pull up and look at the big picture and say would this even solve the problem? Not only would this not solve the problem, it would codify the very open border tools that Biden and Secretary of may Orchis are using to carry this open border agenda out.
I was really astonished. I was pleased. Speaker Johnson had set out an email saying that this is a hill he's prepared to die on, that he is going to oppose US. I hope that he will absolutely stick to his guns.
I hope so too, because I mean, the crisis is so bad, We're at catastrophic levels, and if Congress doesn't have the courage to fix this now, they never will. So we shouldn't be funding our country's demise. We shouldn't be allowing this administration to get away with the tactics they're using to carry it out.
Part of the congressional response has been after the trip to Eagle Pass, Representative Fallon from Texas introduced on January ninth a resolution to impeach MAJORCAS the Sectary of Homeland Security and argues that the Executive brand, which is required to faithfully execute the law, that it's very clear that MAJORCAS is consistently violating the law and failing to implement the law. This is not the first proposal to impeach. Representative Andy Biggs introduce to resolution back in August of twenty twenty one. What is your sense of the impeachment against mayorcus Well?
He absolutely warrants it. He has been violating multiple laws that Congress has passed, and it's his duty to faithfully execute the laws that Congress has passed. One of the most glaring ones is what's called Humanitarian Parole and Immigration Statute. That is an extremely limited benefit that the executive branch can give to an alien who doesn't have time to get a visa before coming here, and it's supposed to be urgent humanitarian circumstances such as emergency surgery, or a signal and public benefit such as they're about to testify in a criminal case and they don't have time to get a visa. Well, the millions that Secretary of Mayoritis is parolling in certainly have time to go get a visa, and this is an urgent humanitarian situations or significant public benefit. Nor is this on a case by case basis, As he keeps repeating, and as the statute requires, we're talking mass parole here. Multiple judges have admonished him for this, and he continues to mass parole people in He is not detaining aliens, which is mandatory in many of the circumstances per the statute. He refuses to remove aliens who are here illegally. In fact, he has boasted that he has transformed the immigration system. No longer just being here illegally makes you deportable. That's in clear violation of the law, let alone own endangering Americans, endangering migrants, lying to Congress under oath, and lying to the public.
Mark Green, the Chairman on Homeland Security, said that under majorcas the Department currently is blocking one hundred and seventy requests for documents that alone would be sufficient to decide that he clearly is in contempt of Congress and is failing to do his job.
Yes, he has been in contempt of Congress, not just for refusing to respond to document requests, but for the lying he's done under oath to Congress, continuing to say the border secure, the border's not open, being extremely deceitful about this mass parole he's doing, and calling that a quote unquote lawful pathway. He does not have the constitutional authority to give what are in effect visas to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens every month. Only Congress can give such immigration benefits. So yes, again he merits.
Impeachment is the problem ultimately, Biden.
The problem is the left right now, the radical left that has captured the White House and the Executive branch. Biden years ago used to be more for the border wall and to enforce immigration laws. I don't hear that from him anymore. The radical left is committed to this open border agenda, and I've never seen an administration fight so hard to not just open the border, but to keep it open. When they sue Texas for placing Booie's in the river to prevent illegal crossings and drownings, when they sue Arizona for putting up shipping containers in gaps along the border, when they cut razor wire, when they threaten Texas for taking over city property to prevent more legal crossings. The administration would be more honest if they would just come out and say we want an open border and try to explain to the American public why that's a good thing.
In the Texas case, I don't fully understand it, but apparently they're heading towards a genuine confrontation between the Texas government's decision to seal off part of the border and the American government's decision that that's illegal and that they're not going to let them do it. I mean, I don't know how it's going to work out. Yet it struck me that Texas was actually reinforcing its activities, not backing down.
Yes, and good on Texas. States should not be left helpless when the federal government says immigration's our job but refuses to do its job. This comes down to the word of invasion, which is in the Constitution, and this hasn't been tested before. I don't believe our framers had illegal immigration let alone mass illegal immigration in mind when they wrote that text in the Constitution about invasion. And yet this is the issue that we're facing. And if this has to go to court and go to the Supreme Court to rule that states cannot be left helpless when the federal government won't do its job, then so be it. This is an issue worth testing.
Even Mallorcos has admitted that in the last two months more fentanyl has crossed the border than in all of twenty nineteen under President Trump. Since ventanyl is killing people, isn't this sort of an astonishing acceptance of death being brought into the United States.
It's the most poisonous, deadly form of drug that we have faced, and this administration knows it's happening. It will occasionally give lip service to say, oh, we're taking it to the cartels or fighting fentanyl, and yet they leave the border open, and they see the number. He says he's got the data, and after three years they haven't changed course. So there are two areas where the left knows they are particularly vulnerable on the open border issue. Fentanyl is one of them. The other one is unaccompanied children that have gone missing at least eighty five thousand unaccompanied children that Health and Human Services can account for, and then that end up in sex trafficking and in child labor violations. And so back to that White House supplemental we were talking about earlier for so called border security funding. They throw a bone to both these issues. They say, oh, we're going to investigate and protect children from child labor violations, and we're going to research fentanyl. But it's too late. I mean, they need to go upstream and prevent this. In the first place.
The Biden administration doesn't seem to see any linkage between open borders, massive inflow of drugs, and the fact that we have the highest overdose rate in American history. I mean, all these things are.
Connected absolutely, and this is really accelerated. It was not even a year ago where narakan was being recommended in high schools due to the fentanyl, and now it's already gotten down to the elementary school. These dots connect themselves. But again the administration refuses to do anything on the border. And so we frankly need more leaders state and localities to say this fentanyl is here because of the open border, and this administration needs to close the border.
When the House did move with HR two, the Secure the Border Act, which passed the House in May by two nineteen to two thirteen, and it seemed to me that that was a pretty definitive, genuine effort at changing the rules to cut off illegal immigration in a decisive way. What was your reaction to HR two.
It was a fantastic bill because it would close the loopholes that multiple administrations have requested be closed, including the Obama It closes the loophole of credible fear, for example, that so anyone can come to the border, say a few words of fear, they're coached and clear a very low credible fear threshold, but then when they go on to the next step to apply for asylum, that has a higher standard, and really only twelve percent are granted asylum because they're just not found eligible. So that disparity between those two standards need to be closed. That's one thing that HR two would do. It also gets rid of a lot of the asylum fraud. It requires people to apply for asylum in the first safe country in which they enter, rather than country shop just to come to the US and then suddenly apply for asylum. And if you do that, returning you back to that first safe country in which you entered. It closes the loophole of unaccompanied alien children right now under the law, if you're from Mexico or Canada and an unaccompanied child, you are returned there. But if you're from anywhere else in the world, we bring you into the US and shower you with all types of immigration benefits because you came as an unaccompanied child. Well, of course that entices more unaccompanied children across the border, have their parents send them that way, and so HR two closes all of that. It mandates the Remain in Mexico program, It completes the funding of the wall that the agents asked for, and it would fund the NGOs that are facilitating the illegal immigration. And it also makes it verifying mandatory. So it's just a fantastic bill that we've needed for a very long time.
Do you think that's plausible for Speaker Johnson to hang tough and simply insists that if they're going to get aid for Ukraine, that the price is going to be HR two.
Well, there's been opportunities. I mean, the last Continuing Resolution a couple of months ago, there was an opportunity to attach HR two to the continuing resolution that failed. They had an opportunity this week to do it again, and that failed even faster. Frankly, all because these quote unquote negotiations are going on in the Senate side, where unfortunately, you know, Republicans are giving away Biden's tools to carry this all out. So people keep repeating that HR two won't pass, can't pass in the Senate. In fact, they voted on it as an amendment back in June and it nearly passed. Every present Republican except one voted yes for it. Democrats behind closed doors will say the border is a mess, that the Biden administration has really created this crisis, that majorcas should have been fired long ago, and that yet they don't have the courage to vote that way.
And is that because they're afraid of their left Yes. Scott Rosmussen recently found that seventy three percent of Americans believe I legal immigration is bad for America, and interestingly, seventy one percent think that legal immigration is good. The Trifogo group that all poll wire only fourteen percent favor amnesty for illegal immigrants. That's an amazing number, and it's surprising to me that the Senate Republicans can't figure out how big the gap is between where they are right now and where the American people are. It's an enormous lost opportunity to connect the American people back to Washington, and instead Washington's walking off in exactly the opposite direction for the American people. Don't you find that kind of mind boggling.
It is the last opportunity, and yes, it's mind boggling, and Americans are frustrated. Unfortunately, the Senate is acting like we're still in the nineteen nineties. Every one of them should go down to that border unannounced, so the Bide administration doesn't sanitize it ahead of time, and go talk to those agents down there, talk to the landowners and the hospital workers and the teachers down there, and get a dose of reality, and then act accordingly. Stop funding the operations the NGOs that are carrying this out, the arm of this administration that is implementing and facilitating all of this.
One of the major explanations for the rise of Trump is this enormous gap between elected Republicans in Washington and the people who elect them. In this sense that people are just so frustrated they want somebody tough enough and strong enough. They're willing to put up with the occasional tweet or whatever, just because they're sick of being ignored by their political leadership. You know, I served twenty years in Congress, in four years a speaker, and I'm frankly appalled at the number of Republicans who act as though their voters don't matter, their voters' opinions don't matter. That they're surrounded by staff and lobbyists and Washington bureaucrats, and that's their real world.
Yes, there's a stark difference between Washington, DC and the rest of the country, and hopefully the voters will vote accordingly. Makes you wonder about term limits for some of these members, so that they're not spending their lives in DC and their bubble and not representing the American people.
They just study, go home and go to coffee shops and local bars and hang out with folks and just listen. I mean, they will be stunned at how disgusted the American people are that their government just can't get anything done. And of course, on the left, there's a perfect rationale. The mayor's solution is send us a whole lot more money and give us work permits. We'll be glad to integrate all these people who are here illegally. Even the mayors who say it's a crisis don't say so control of the border. They just say, send me money, right.
Nor did they reverse their sanctuary policies. They just say where are you federal government, give us more money, and then they'll ship them out to the suburbs too. It's put quite the spotlight on the inconsistency of sanctuary policies. It is, you know, virtue signal running smack into the wall of reality.
That's why I love it when Governor Desanis sent a one planeload to Massachusetts and suddenly all of these wonderful liberals who totally believe in sharing everything, said, well, how quick can we get them off the island because suddenly they didn't want their island to be a sanctuary, because their island is a really nice place. That's a sanctuary for them, not for anybody who's illegal. I thought it was an amazing moment, right, rules.
For the but not for me. Yeah, another bad optics moment. And so those folks were quickly removed because the mainstream media was actually showing up and recording that on video, and so when that happens, then the Biden administration reacted. But you know, elitis, this is how many examples of this. They wouldn't live like this. They wouldn't have their kids be in overcrowded schools, they wouldn't house illegal aliens in their own mansions. They wouldn't have to wait in the hospital emergency room to see a doctor as other illegal aliens are going to the hospital for their primary care. And so Americans shouldn't have to live like this either.
Or it seems to me that we're really at sort of a crisis moment in that there is the leverage point of the president's desperate desire to send even more money to Ukraine, and at the same time, the House has hr to a real bill that would really change things. How would you define the crisis of the next week or two, and what do you think the average American should be demanding beverage?
Americans should be demanding that this border crisis end and that illegal immigration be prevented. The way to do that is to take away the tools the Biden administration is using to carry out this open border agenda, and so taking away the asylum fraud, taking away the enticement of unaccompanied children, taking away the funding of the NGOs, stop catch and release, and do mandatory detention, finish building the border wall, require everify and force the laws detain and deport. It's not complicated, it just requires political will. So the House has already passed HR two. Now the Senate should.
Is this a time when the decision point is real enough that Americans should actually get on the phone and call their house instead of members.
Most definitely, when Congress has to face funding issues funding the government. That is Congress's most powerful action, the power of the purse, and they need to exercise it. They need to say no to funding the open border operations and to make the policy changes that are needed to prevent the illegal flow in the first place. So yes, Americans should be contacting their members of Congress via phone, via email, in person and say solve this problem and don't give another dollar to this administration to keep these operations ongoing.
I couldn't agree with you more, Laura. I really want to thank you for dedicating so much of your life to what I think is one of the two or three most central issues that's going to define America's future. I do want our listeners to know that they can find out more about the Heritage Foundation and the work you're doing at the Border Security and Immigration Center at Heritage dot org. I really appreciate you spending this time with us, educating us.
Well my pleasure in thank you for having me on.
Thank you to my guest Laura Reese. You can learn more about the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Ginglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Gingrishtree sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three free weekly columns at Ginglishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld
