July 19, 2024 • 38 mins
Under President Joe Biden, the southern border has seen an unprecedented surge in unauthorized entries. In his first year alone, the U.S. Border Patrol encountered over 1.6 million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border—more than four times the previous year's figures and the highest annual total ever recorded.
This immigration catastrophe has sparked fierce debate, with Democrats downplaying the threat and Republicans, particularly those on the fringes, overplaying it. But beyond the staggering numbers, the U.S. faces severe risks from these enormous waves of illegal migrants, including transnational criminals, potential terrorists, and immense strain on resources.
To understand the origins and consequences of Biden's disastrous border policy, I sat down with Todd Bensman, Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.
This is Strategic Wisdom with Andrew Jose. I’m Andrew Jose, a Washington, DC-based security policy analyst and news reporter, bringing you timely analyses and commentary on issues in international relations, war, and security policy.
The views expressed by the podcast guests are their own and do not necessarily represent the official positions of Andrew Jose, Strategic Wisdom with Andrew Jose, and Andrew Jose Media.
Strategic Wisdom with Andrew Jose is an initiative of Andrew Jose Media
This immigration catastrophe has sparked fierce debate, with Democrats downplaying the threat and Republicans, particularly those on the fringes, overplaying it. But beyond the staggering numbers, the U.S. faces severe risks from these enormous waves of illegal migrants, including transnational criminals, potential terrorists, and immense strain on resources.
To understand the origins and consequences of Biden's disastrous border policy, I sat down with Todd Bensman, Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.
This is Strategic Wisdom with Andrew Jose. I’m Andrew Jose, a Washington, DC-based security policy analyst and news reporter, bringing you timely analyses and commentary on issues in international relations, war, and security policy.
The views expressed by the podcast guests are their own and do not necessarily represent the official positions of Andrew Jose, Strategic Wisdom with Andrew Jose, and Andrew Jose Media.
Strategic Wisdom with Andrew Jose is an initiative of Andrew Jose Media
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Under President Joe Biden, the numberof individuals attempting to enter the United States
without authorization via the southern border hasskyrocketed. In the first year of Biden's
presidency, about four years ago,border Patrol reported more than one point six
million encounters with migrants along the borderwith Mexico, more than quadruple the number
of the prior fiscal year and thehighest annual total on record. The immigration
crisis has been a bone of contentionin the nation's politics, with Democrats underplaying
(00:23):
the threat while Republicans, especially thoseon the fringes, overplaying it. Beyond
the numbers, this large influx ofillegal migrants poses several risks to the United
States. Transnational criminals, terrorists,and resource strain are a name a few.
You're listening to Strategic Wisdom with AndrewJose, an international relations and security
policy podcast brought to you by AndrewJose, a Washington, d C.
(00:44):
Based security policy analyst and news reporter. Joining Andrew Jose today is Todd Bensman,
a senior expert at the Center forImmigration Studies in Washington, d C.
In today's episode, Andrew and Toddwill be discussing illegal immigration and its
implications for United States national security.Todd Benzman is a Senior National Security Fellow
(01:36):
at the Washington, DC based Centerfor Immigration Studies. He's the author of
Overrun, How Joe Biden unleashed thegreatest border crisis in US history. Benzman's
academic and journalism work have revolved aroundthe nexus between immigration and national security.
He's a prolific writer, with hisanalyzes appearing in several major publications such as
(02:00):
The New York Post, The DailyMail, Homeland Security Today, Daily Wire,
and The National Interest. Before joiningthe Center for Immigration Studies, Todd
worked for the Texas Department of PublicSafety, Intelligence and counter Terrorism Division,
where he managed teams of intelligence analyststhat worked in concert with the Department of
Homeland Security and the intelligence community toidentify and mitigate terrorism threats. Todd Benzman,
(02:25):
Welcome to the show. Great tobe here, thank you. Starting
off with the issue of mass migration, one thing that a lot of people
have been concerned about is that thesituation in the southern borders with the influx
of a large amount of illegal immigrants, could turn into a situation like Sweden
or France where you have multiple parallelsocieties. How close would you say we
(02:51):
are to that scenario of parallel societiesbeing realized with this mass migration crisis,
or do you think that's not goingto be a problem that's going to affect
the United States. I don't reallysee parallel societies as being the problem with
illegal mass illegal immigration, not inthe United States so much because in the
(03:14):
European States in that context, yes, indeed, I mean, the Swedes
are going to notice that there's anew, very large population of people that
doesn't look like them, with adifferent religion, not assimilating. But in
the United States, the tradition isassimilation. Everybody eventually caves, you know,
(03:38):
to some extent, and so wehave lots of religions and ethnicities from
around the world that are kind ofliving together as one in the United States.
So I don't see the mass migrationcrisis posing that kind of a threat
to the United States. Other peopledo. The issue with illegal immigration,
(04:03):
though it has been a longstanding issue. How do you think that the current
immigration regime has contributed to this issuebecoming an issue of large proportions with these
massive waves we're seeing coming in asearly as twenty eighteen. The regime that
we have in place is an adhoc one put in place on purpose by
(04:27):
the administration of President Joe Biden oninauguration day, very very unusual, very
unique, first time ever set ofpolicies that were implemented immediately after noon on
January twentieth, twenty twenty one,that had the end result of opening the
(04:54):
southern border to illegal entry rewarded byacceptance into the country and more or less
permanent stays. That is something thatno US government has ever done before on
purpose. There have been surges ofa legal immigration over the border in the
(05:18):
past, but almost every president,I think all presidents have thought hard to
wrestle those down to the map toget those under control. In this case,
the administration orchestrated a purposeful super highwayremoving all obstructions for as many people
(05:43):
foreign nationals as they could possibly getinto the country in as short a period
of time as they could by eliminatingborder enforcement and ignoring every law on the
books that require wired detention and deportation, and just simply choosing not to do,
not to do them, not todo those things. And the result
(06:08):
has been, you know, tenmillion, eleven million people crossing the border,
most of them staying in the UnitedStates, being rewarded for their journeys
and the money that they spent toget here. That's very unusual. We've
never seen anything like that in Americanhistory, or in numbers like this.
(06:29):
Millions and millions of people just pouringover the border in a thirty six month
span of time. Nothing like that, not even close. Going back to
the first question, one thing yousaid is, as of now, you
don't see a threat of parallel societies. But as millions under Joe Biden's immigration
policies flood the country, is therea point you think we'd reach where the
(06:53):
rate of immigration exceeds the rate ofassimilation, especially in this century where people
are connected to the home countries,whereas the past there was this geographical divide
that separated immigrant groups from their countriesof origin. Yeah, I hear what
you're saying. We really don't havemuch precedent to predict the future. On
(07:18):
the We've never had anything like thishappened before. So yes, we have
had, you know, the largestnumbers of illegal immigrants into the United States
in the history of the Republic.I mean, it's just we've never had
this happened before. They're coming fromevery nation just about in the world.
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I mean, well, one hundredand seventy different nations are represented, coming
in, all different ethnicities, alldifferent religions, different shapes, colors,
religions. Everybody's coming in. It'sa no longer Mexicans and Central Americans or
(08:03):
Spanish speakers. It's people coming infrom everywhere. Russians, Ukrainians, I
mean really, you name it,and they're represented here. Almost every nation
on the continent of Africa is representedcrossing the border. That also is the
diversity is also a historic first.And so I think that you know,
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that diversity of illegal immigration sort ofprevents too much kind of compartmentalization or tribalism
that you might see in a placelike Sweden or Switzerland or Hungary or something
like that. In this country.This country is very different in that regard
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in my opinion. But you know, we are seeing, you know,
very large congregations of people from Venezuela, you know, and they're spreading out
across the country. Some of themare engaging in organized crime. You know,
you'll have certain gangs entering the countryto take advantage from all over the
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world. Really, but they're justgoing to be another gang here. What
are the policies that constrain law enforcementfrom dealing with the threats that these gangs
and also recently terrorist infiltrators who enterthe country as illegal immigrants posed. Are
(09:37):
there any illegal constraints that are restraininglaw enforcement from dealing with these kinds of
illegal immigrants and illegal immigrants at largein an effective way. Well, it's
really the reason that they're not ableto deal with terrorists crossing the border and
gangs to affect is because the volumesthat they incited to come have overwhelmed all
(10:05):
systems, all infrastructure that was inplace. When you add lower numbers,
you know, regular numbers coming through, you had an infrastructure that could deal
with terrorists filtering out terras or beingable to identify and detect gangs. But
the problem now is that there's nobodyto do it. They're too busy.
(10:30):
There have been a number of DHSOffice of Inspector General Reports investigations into this,
and the most recent one concluded,for example, that border management agencies
are unable to properly vet for securityreally anybody from the Middle East, they're
(10:52):
too busy. The findings are verydamning. In that report, there have
been other OIG reports that laid outsimilar vetting problems. One looked hard at
the accidental release of a FBI watchlisted terrorist suspect who was accidentally released.
(11:18):
We know that because everybody was sobusy down there, and the OIG report
lays out how nobody was checking theiremails or their texts, or they were
just they were just all too swampedto notice that there that the guy had
flagged on the terror watch list.They let him go and didn't catch back
(11:39):
up to him for two full weekeeks. Uh, and then they had to
do this operation to round them up, and it was you know, the
the current infrastructure has allowed at mycount, at least six other terrorst suspects
to be accidentally released into the interiorof the country when they should have all
(12:03):
been detained and investigated and probably deported. So that's the kind of thing we're
dealing with. They unleashed such atorrent of humanity that they are unable to
operate the systems that are in placeto veat for this kind of problem.
(12:26):
From your experience studying the issue ofillegal immigration, especially mass illegal immigration,
how organized do you think is thisprocess from across the border is this an
industry right now? And if so, how big of an industry it is
with people traveling down south and comingup all the way through Mexico. Well,
nowadays the movement of immigrants is guidedmainly, in my experience from my
(12:52):
reporting down there, mainly on socialmedia because the people uptrail send messaging into
those downtrail about where to go andhow to go and who to talk to
and how to where to stay andwhere to sleep and how to get a
bus, and a lot of themovement. The mobility is self propelled.
(13:18):
Now. Now that doesn't mean thatyou don't have to hire smugglers for short
legs of the trip. But theadvent of social media and cell phones,
I don't think I've ever met animmigrant down there who didn't have a modern
cell phone fully connected to all themedia platforms, social media platforms, and
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there are chat rooms and websites andFacebook and telegram and really you know,
an amazing array of places where peoplecan get good information, lifetime intelligence information.
So there are times when people hiresmugglers to get them past certain obstacles,
(14:05):
maybe to get themselves into South Americausing kind of fraudulent documents or paying
somebody off or maybe to get themthrough the Darien Gap from Colombia to Panama
or from Costa Rica to Guatemala orHonduras short short legs and then ultimately to
(14:31):
get over the southern border, whereyou have to pay the Mexican cartels to
essentially give you permission to pass,or they may force you to hire them
to just you know, smuggle in. Again. All pretty short you know,
short leg smuggling situations. But it'sall out there, I mean for
(14:56):
anybody to find and see, andit's good information. It's accurate, up
to date information from the people upstreamto the people downstream and still back at
home, even though lawmakers, evenlaw enforcement in these countries that our transit
countries have access to the information,either to their own monitoring or information given
(15:20):
to them by the United States.Do you think that some of the countries
are deliberately ignoring and refusing to dealwith this issue of mass migration to the
United States through their countries. Doyou think there's a possibility that these countries
that are on the way are usingmass migration as a negotiation ship to get
(15:41):
concessions from the United States. Yesand no, Yes, I do believe
some countries are weaponizing mass migration toget what they want. For example,
Mexico. There's a great recent examplewhere the president of Mexico recently went on
(16:02):
sixty Minutes and said, I wanttwenty billion dollars from the United States to
slow down this immigration flow through mycountry. And the interviewer on sixty Minutes
said, well, that sounds likeblackmail. What if they don't pay you,
and he said, well, thenthe migration will continue through my territory.
(16:25):
So that sort of thing. Ithink also what has has been documented
farewell for Cuba, which opened itsair routes to Managua, Nicaragua, and
half the country flew to Managua asfast as they could possibly get out,
(16:51):
because you know, once you're inNicaragua, then you're on the trails north.
And so somebody in the administration cuta deal with the Cubans and said,
listen, we'll give you all theseconcessions if you shut the air traffic
down, and they did, youknow, and anytime they want concessions then
(17:11):
they can just open the air routeagain, you know. But also I
think that a lot of this isnot run like that. People are coming
to the country on their own decision, by their own decision, because they
know with almost one hundred percent certaintythat the Americans are going to let them
(17:36):
in at the border and let themstay in for years and years and never
deport them. That information is anincredible narcotic It's a narcotic elixir that is
simply irresistible around the world. Whenyou know that the Americans are going to
(17:57):
let you in to a high percentagedegree, you know it. I think
recently, DHS Secretary Alejandro Majorcus saidout loud in a congressional hearing that he
believes north of eighty five percent ofeverybody who reaches the border and crosses it
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gets to stay. So you know, of course they're coming. Nobody really
needs to organize it, but Ido believe that some countries have weaponized it
to their benefit. One last thingon your question is that it's to the
It's in the national interest of transitcountries like Panama and Costa Rica Columbia not
(18:45):
to block the flow, because ifthey block the flow, they're stuck with
the hot potato. Thousands and thousandsof angry, hungry, needy immigrants from
around the world stuck in their countryand so it's in their interest to do
everything that they can to facilitate themovement north out of their country so that
(19:10):
it's not a burden to the publictreasury or anything else, any other kind
of social ills that come with it. As long as they're moving through,
that's good for them. It's intheir national interest to make sure that they're
all moving through, and that's whycountries like Colombia and Costa Rica and Nicaragua
and Honduras, Guatemala, and upuntil very recently Mexico made sure that everybody
(19:37):
kind of kept moving through. Youmentioned a large number of these illegal immigrants
not being deported. Why do youthink that this is the case. Is
it the principle of non refillment oris it just that there's a lot of
them that the government cannot deport allof them, many of them, or
most of them as fast as we'dlike too. The clue to that is
(20:02):
in the campaign literature of the Bidenadministration and the Harris administration, the Harris
campaign before the election, where allof the Democratic nominee are candidates for the
nomination. Rather there were like fourteenor fifteen of them at one point,
(20:25):
we're all vying to to be theadministration that would end deportation and detention.
It's part of an ideology that holdsa far left ideology that views deportation as
inhumane and cruel and sort of youknow, something on the order of Jim
(20:51):
Crow laws or you know, slaverythat need to where those laws that require
deportation are out of date and needto be eliminated because mobility between countries is
viewed by them as a inalienable humanright, and they say this in all
(21:15):
of their literature. Their people willtalk about it and speeches, they testify
to it under oath in front ofCongress that deportation is wrong at all times
except in the case of terrorists,I guess, but in all other cases
it's a net grows wrong. Andso they told us that they were going
(21:41):
to end deportation, and they didit immediately from the interior of the country.
They the Biden administration followed through onits campaign promise to end deportation and
even to do a mass amnesty formillions and millions of people, which they
(22:02):
tried to do. They followed throughon that promise too. So we've had
very, very low deportation since inaugurationday, they put a moratorium on deporportation
right on inauguration day. A courtoverturned it, but they found another way
(22:22):
to do it. And they're justnot into deportation. They hate it.
They think it's cruel and terrible andwrong. They're like deportation abolitionists. With
a lot of information about routes beinggiven to these illegal immigrants. Is there
any role that US based nonprofits andgeos or activists play in trying to get
(22:47):
them into the country, and ifso, has there been any legislative or
law enforcement action that we know offthat as we've taken against such kind of
nonprofits or activists are based in theUS, but are resisting people with coming
in illegally right well, the politicalappointee layers in the Biden administration almost universally
(23:11):
come from the NGOs that work inthis wheelhouse that are migrant advocacy groups,
resettlement groups, groups that get contractsand grants in the millions and millions of
dollars and donations from the public tohelp resettle and move immigrants around the world.
(23:37):
And those are the people who alsohappen to be the architects of these
incredibly strange and historic new policies thatthe world has never seen before. And
one can only conclude that they're featheringtheir own nests, that their former employees.
(24:00):
Employers in the NGO world are becomingincredibly fat with profit on grants from
the State Department, from FEMA,from USAID flowing into their coffers to handle
the crisis that they engineered. I'vetalked about this before. It reminds me
(24:26):
of when Eisenhower. President Eisenhower,at the end of his term warned about
the military industrial complex that we cannever let the military, the people that
make bombs and tanks and lanes,get too much influence over US foreign policy,
lest we be perennially at war sothat they can profit on the bullets
(24:51):
and guns that they make. Andhe warned about that. And what has
happened here is that the NGO industrialcomplex gained control of the southern border and
immigration policy and opened up the gateswide and have been profiting by it ever
(25:12):
since, by the hundreds and hundredsof millions of dollars, the billions of
dollars in federal contracts to manage itand in grant money. And the day
that the spigot closes and the numbersfall is the day that their money stops.
(25:33):
And I think that there's a thatthat's a very very influential and important
driver of this mass migration crisis thatwas engineered by those people in the White
House, in the Domestic Policy Council, at DHS and all of its agencies
that work on the border. Oneof the things that people have argued as
(25:57):
being a source of incentive for alot of illegal immigrants to come are loopholes
for regularization. One of the commonones is a marriage to a US citizen
route. What do you think areloopholes to regularization that illegal immigrants are banking
on? The ones I'm asking aboutare those that are apart from the refusal
(26:19):
to deport on the part of thegovernment. Well, there are a number
of There are a number of problemswith the asylum law as it currently stands,
which which to me amount to aloophole wherein you know, in most
countries, like in Europe, ifyou cross into Hungary or you know,
(26:45):
one of the EU countries on theexternal on the on the external borders of
the EU, uh, you haveto apply for asylum in that country because
it's the first place you came toand you can't apply for asylum elsewhere.
We have a similar agreement only withCanada, where if the Canadians turn you
(27:08):
down for asylum, you can't thengo to the United States to try to
shop an asylum claim there. Butour law does not provide other than that
individual bilateral agreement. Our asylum lawdoes not provide the same kind of principle
(27:32):
and restriction. So people are ableto cross through ten different safe countries and
then apply in the US. That'sa very unusual loophole for the asylum law.
Or they may have asylum in Mexicoa lot of them do, or
es Central America. They applied somewhereelse in Chile or Brazil and they got
(27:55):
it safe haven and residency. Butour law law doesn't recognize that somebody was
already safe in another country and wetake them anyway and let them apply for
asylum here, which has the neteffect of just being here permanently. Because
(28:18):
that loophole has attracted so many millionsthat the backlo backlog to hear any of
the adjudicate any of these cases isfive, six, seven, eight years
and even longer. And when youlose your case, he says most inevitably,
do you just disappear and say comeget me, and you're almost guaranteed
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because so many millions are here doingthe same thing, your odds of actually
being rounded up somewhere and deported arenext to nothing. So the loophole,
the asylum loophole of you know,we don't really recognize or check whether you
had asylum somewhere else or traveled throughmultiple safe countries already, you can still
(29:03):
apply here is crazy for people wholive here, But for the immigrants it's
like the best thing that ever happened. They can't even believe. They're lucky
stars that the Americans are so dumbto be the only country in the world
that does that doesn't care if youhad asylum in two or three other countries
(29:25):
already. We're not going to check. We're going to let you in anyway.
That is a huge incentive loophole,and that's one of many. There
are lots of other ones. Whatare the issues with the legal immigration system
that you think is contributing to theissue we have with illegal immigration. The
(29:48):
big complaint about legal immigration is thatit takes too long, and it's expensive
and time consuming, and people don'twant to do it if they know that
they can get in right away andfast and fairly cheaply by illegally entering.
So the validity of the legal systemdepends entirely on the enforcement against the illegal
(30:23):
entries. Once you allow illegal entriesand masks like this, you really like,
why would anybody bother with your legalsystem? You know, I mean,
I can just cross the border andI'm in. I get the same
benefit that you people who did itthe right way are having to wait five
(30:45):
years for it. I get itright away, same benefit. I get
to live and work here, andeventually I'll get regularized one way or another
through an amnesty or temporary protective statusor whatever it is, or just a
policy of no deportation. I getto just stay forever, have kids here,
(31:07):
and my kids will be American citizens. The legal system is sticky and
time consuming for a reason, becausethe United States is such a desirable place
to live that it will never everbe able to meet the demand worldwide to
live here. And so if youdon't have a sticky, slow legal system,
(31:33):
you would have the entire globe movinginto the country in an instant.
So you have to have sticky longperiods of waiting, and you have to
really want to be here and bedetermined to be here, to be able
to do the legal system, asit is the case in every other Western
(31:57):
country that's prosperous in the worldorld.All of Europe has the same rules because
they just don't want to have everybodybelow the poverty line fled in. In
November, we are going to havethe presidential elections. What is the future
you see for immigration policy and nationalsecurity in the event of a Biden and
(32:21):
in the event of a Trump victory. I think that immigration. The polls
are showing that the border crisis,and I always make a distinction between legal
and illegal immigration. I don't regardillegal immigration as part of immigration. It's
illegal, unauthorized. So that isthe illegal immigration that is the political issue
(32:49):
that divides the two parties and isregarded as as important as inflation, believe
it or not, in this election. So if Biden wins, I think
he'll view that as approval of hismasks. Illegal immigration. Apparently the country's
(33:13):
pretty good with it. They don'treally care that the laws are being flouted
and there's no deportation, and everybodywho hits the border pretty much gets in
or has all these other new legalpathways that were created to come in.
And you know, we saw thisin twenty twenty two at the mid terms
(33:34):
when Republicans did not fare as wellas everybody thought they would on the immigration
issue. And Biden was asked,you know, does the outcome of the
November or the midterm elections make youwant to change policies on the illegal immigration
issue? And he said no.He says, the outcome shows that they
(33:57):
like what we're doing. And Ithink the same would be true if he
wins in the fall. This inNovember, and of course, you know,
Trump is telling you right now whathe's going to do, and so
so I think we would see thespigots open wide and stay open for another
four years. So we'd have anotherten or fifteen million people from around the
(34:17):
world world come in, and you'dhave all together over the eight years,
you know, twenty five thirty millionpeople just pour in over the southern border
with all of the problems that thatthat that pretends. And I think if
Trump wins, he's telling us whathe's going to do. He's going to
close the border, reduce the numberscoming across eliminate all of those ad hoc
(34:45):
legal quote unquote entry programs that havebeen created, and he'll begin a massive
deportation program from the interior to tryto catch up. So that's that's the
difference on that issue between the twocandidates, very stark. The so called
anti communism lobby is a very influentialgroup, and one of the criticisms they
(35:09):
often have of policies that restrict illegalimmigration has been that it could target and
inhibit people from Venezuela, Cuba,China, and other countries suffering from communism
from seeking asylum in the United States. Do you think that these interest groups
(35:30):
are going to have a restraining effecton any Trump plan to deal with illegal
immigration? Well, I mean,one thing about people coming from communist dictatorships,
and I put that in quotes,how communists really are they anymore?
Any of them? Is that theymany of them are already living safely in
(35:55):
other countries, millions of venezul whalens. Last time I heard or read,
there were you know, seven oreight million Venezuelans living in Colombia happily,
and in fifteen other countries that areother than Venezuela. I'm not sure why
(36:15):
they need to all of a suddenbe rescued from perfectly safe and prosperous countries
like Chile. You know, sayinggoes with Cubans who are living all over
the world, in safe countries,all over Europe, all over the Caribbean
(36:38):
and South America, making a livingand not being persecuted by communists. So
why would they absolutely need to berescued all of a sudden by an American
policy of letting millions and millions ofpeople into the country all of a sudden
when they're already safe. I don'tknow if that could such your question.
(37:01):
Ladies and gentlemen, you just listenedto Todd Benzman off the Center for Emigracious
Studies. Todd Benzman, thank youfor your time. Strategic Wisdom with Andrew
Jose is an initiative of Andrew JoseMedia. The views expressed by guests on
this show do not necessarily represent theofficial positions and opinions of Andrew Jose,
(37:22):
Andrew Jose Media and Strategic Wisdom.Thank you for listening to Strategic Wisdom.
Be sure to follow and subscribe tous on whatever podcast platform you are using
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(37:42):
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(38:07):
you so much, Gabby, andthank you so much Ian ladies and gentlemen.
This is your host, Andrew Josesigning off
Under President Joe Biden, the numberof individuals attempting to enter the United States
without authorization via the southern border hasskyrocketed. In the first year of Biden's
presidency, about four years ago,border Patrol reported more than one point six
million encounters with migrants along the borderwith Mexico, more than quadruple the number
of the prior fiscal year and thehighest annual total on record. The immigration
crisis has been a bone of contentionin the nation's politics, with Democrats underplaying
(00:23):
the threat while Republicans, especially thoseon the fringes, overplaying it. Beyond
the numbers, this large influx ofillegal migrants poses several risks to the United
States. Transnational criminals, terrorists,and resource strain are a name a few.
You're listening to Strategic Wisdom with AndrewJose, an international relations and security
policy podcast brought to you by AndrewJose, a Washington, d C.
(00:44):
Based security policy analyst and news reporter. Joining Andrew Jose today is Todd Bensman,
a senior expert at the Center forImmigration Studies in Washington, d C.
In today's episode, Andrew and Toddwill be discussing illegal immigration and its
implications for United States national security.Todd Benzman is a Senior National Security Fellow
(01:36):
at the Washington, DC based Centerfor Immigration Studies. He's the author of
Overrun, How Joe Biden unleashed thegreatest border crisis in US history. Benzman's
academic and journalism work have revolved aroundthe nexus between immigration and national security.
He's a prolific writer, with hisanalyzes appearing in several major publications such as
(02:00):
The New York Post, The DailyMail, Homeland Security Today, Daily Wire,
and The National Interest. Before joiningthe Center for Immigration Studies, Todd
worked for the Texas Department of PublicSafety, Intelligence and counter Terrorism Division,
where he managed teams of intelligence analyststhat worked in concert with the Department of
Homeland Security and the intelligence community toidentify and mitigate terrorism threats. Todd Benzman,
(02:25):
Welcome to the show. Great tobe here, thank you. Starting
off with the issue of mass migration, one thing that a lot of people
have been concerned about is that thesituation in the southern borders with the influx
of a large amount of illegal immigrants, could turn into a situation like Sweden
or France where you have multiple parallelsocieties. How close would you say we
(02:51):
are to that scenario of parallel societiesbeing realized with this mass migration crisis,
or do you think that's not goingto be a problem that's going to affect
the United States. I don't reallysee parallel societies as being the problem with
illegal mass illegal immigration, not inthe United States so much because in the
(03:14):
European States in that context, yes, indeed, I mean, the Swedes
are going to notice that there's anew, very large population of people that
doesn't look like them, with adifferent religion, not assimilating. But in
the United States, the tradition isassimilation. Everybody eventually caves, you know,
(03:38):
to some extent, and so wehave lots of religions and ethnicities from
around the world that are kind ofliving together as one in the United States.
So I don't see the mass migrationcrisis posing that kind of a threat
to the United States. Other peopledo. The issue with illegal immigration,
(04:03):
though it has been a longstanding issue. How do you think that the current
immigration regime has contributed to this issuebecoming an issue of large proportions with these
massive waves we're seeing coming in asearly as twenty eighteen. The regime that
we have in place is an adhoc one put in place on purpose by
(04:27):
the administration of President Joe Biden oninauguration day, very very unusual, very
unique, first time ever set ofpolicies that were implemented immediately after noon on
January twentieth, twenty twenty one,that had the end result of opening the
(04:54):
southern border to illegal entry rewarded byacceptance into the country and more or less
permanent stays. That is something thatno US government has ever done before on
purpose. There have been surges ofa legal immigration over the border in the
(05:18):
past, but almost every president,I think all presidents have thought hard to
wrestle those down to the map toget those under control. In this case,
the administration orchestrated a purposeful super highwayremoving all obstructions for as many people
(05:43):
foreign nationals as they could possibly getinto the country in as short a period
of time as they could by eliminatingborder enforcement and ignoring every law on the
books that require wired detention and deportation, and just simply choosing not to do,
not to do them, not todo those things. And the result
(06:08):
has been, you know, tenmillion, eleven million people crossing the border,
most of them staying in the UnitedStates, being rewarded for their journeys
and the money that they spent toget here. That's very unusual. We've
never seen anything like that in Americanhistory, or in numbers like this.
(06:29):
Millions and millions of people just pouringover the border in a thirty six month
span of time. Nothing like that, not even close. Going back to
the first question, one thing yousaid is, as of now, you
don't see a threat of parallel societies. But as millions under Joe Biden's immigration
policies flood the country, is therea point you think we'd reach where the
(06:53):
rate of immigration exceeds the rate ofassimilation, especially in this century where people
are connected to the home countries,whereas the past there was this geographical divide
that separated immigrant groups from their countriesof origin. Yeah, I hear what
you're saying. We really don't havemuch precedent to predict the future. On
(07:18):
the We've never had anything like thishappened before. So yes, we have
had, you know, the largestnumbers of illegal immigrants into the United States
in the history of the Republic.I mean, it's just we've never had
this happened before. They're coming fromevery nation just about in the world.
(07:43):
I mean, well, one hundredand seventy different nations are represented, coming
in, all different ethnicities, alldifferent religions, different shapes, colors,
religions. Everybody's coming in. It'sa no longer Mexicans and Central Americans or
(08:03):
Spanish speakers. It's people coming infrom everywhere. Russians, Ukrainians, I
mean really, you name it,and they're represented here. Almost every nation
on the continent of Africa is representedcrossing the border. That also is the
diversity is also a historic first.And so I think that you know,
(08:28):
that diversity of illegal immigration sort ofprevents too much kind of compartmentalization or tribalism
that you might see in a placelike Sweden or Switzerland or Hungary or something
like that. In this country.This country is very different in that regard
(08:52):
in my opinion. But you know, we are seeing, you know,
very large congregations of people from Venezuela, you know, and they're spreading out
across the country. Some of themare engaging in organized crime. You know,
you'll have certain gangs entering the countryto take advantage from all over the
(09:16):
world. Really, but they're justgoing to be another gang here. What
are the policies that constrain law enforcementfrom dealing with the threats that these gangs
and also recently terrorist infiltrators who enterthe country as illegal immigrants posed. Are
(09:37):
there any illegal constraints that are restraininglaw enforcement from dealing with these kinds of
illegal immigrants and illegal immigrants at largein an effective way. Well, it's
really the reason that they're not ableto deal with terrorists crossing the border and
gangs to affect is because the volumesthat they incited to come have overwhelmed all
(10:05):
systems, all infrastructure that was inplace. When you add lower numbers,
you know, regular numbers coming through, you had an infrastructure that could deal
with terrorists filtering out terras or beingable to identify and detect gangs. But
the problem now is that there's nobodyto do it. They're too busy.
(10:30):
There have been a number of DHSOffice of Inspector General Reports investigations into this,
and the most recent one concluded,for example, that border management agencies
are unable to properly vet for securityreally anybody from the Middle East, they're
(10:52):
too busy. The findings are verydamning. In that report, there have
been other OIG reports that laid outsimilar vetting problems. One looked hard at
the accidental release of a FBI watchlisted terrorist suspect who was accidentally released.
(11:18):
We know that because everybody was sobusy down there, and the OIG report
lays out how nobody was checking theiremails or their texts, or they were
just they were just all too swampedto notice that there that the guy had
flagged on the terror watch list.They let him go and didn't catch back
(11:39):
up to him for two full weekeeks. Uh, and then they had to
do this operation to round them up, and it was you know, the
the current infrastructure has allowed at mycount, at least six other terrorst suspects
to be accidentally released into the interiorof the country when they should have all
(12:03):
been detained and investigated and probably deported. So that's the kind of thing we're
dealing with. They unleashed such atorrent of humanity that they are unable to
operate the systems that are in placeto veat for this kind of problem.
(12:26):
From your experience studying the issue ofillegal immigration, especially mass illegal immigration,
how organized do you think is thisprocess from across the border is this an
industry right now? And if so, how big of an industry it is
with people traveling down south and comingup all the way through Mexico. Well,
nowadays the movement of immigrants is guidedmainly, in my experience from my
(12:52):
reporting down there, mainly on socialmedia because the people uptrail send messaging into
those downtrail about where to go andhow to go and who to talk to
and how to where to stay andwhere to sleep and how to get a
bus, and a lot of themovement. The mobility is self propelled.
(13:18):
Now. Now that doesn't mean thatyou don't have to hire smugglers for short
legs of the trip. But theadvent of social media and cell phones,
I don't think I've ever met animmigrant down there who didn't have a modern
cell phone fully connected to all themedia platforms, social media platforms, and
(13:43):
there are chat rooms and websites andFacebook and telegram and really you know,
an amazing array of places where peoplecan get good information, lifetime intelligence information.
So there are times when people hiresmugglers to get them past certain obstacles,
(14:05):
maybe to get themselves into South Americausing kind of fraudulent documents or paying
somebody off or maybe to get themthrough the Darien Gap from Colombia to Panama
or from Costa Rica to Guatemala orHonduras short short legs and then ultimately to
(14:31):
get over the southern border, whereyou have to pay the Mexican cartels to
essentially give you permission to pass,or they may force you to hire them
to just you know, smuggle in. Again. All pretty short you know,
short leg smuggling situations. But it'sall out there, I mean for
(14:56):
anybody to find and see, andit's good information. It's accurate, up
to date information from the people upstreamto the people downstream and still back at
home, even though lawmakers, evenlaw enforcement in these countries that our transit
countries have access to the information,either to their own monitoring or information given
(15:20):
to them by the United States.Do you think that some of the countries
are deliberately ignoring and refusing to dealwith this issue of mass migration to the
United States through their countries. Doyou think there's a possibility that these countries
that are on the way are usingmass migration as a negotiation ship to get
(15:41):
concessions from the United States. Yesand no, Yes, I do believe
some countries are weaponizing mass migration toget what they want. For example,
Mexico. There's a great recent examplewhere the president of Mexico recently went on
(16:02):
sixty Minutes and said, I wanttwenty billion dollars from the United States to
slow down this immigration flow through mycountry. And the interviewer on sixty Minutes
said, well, that sounds likeblackmail. What if they don't pay you,
and he said, well, thenthe migration will continue through my territory.
(16:25):
So that sort of thing. Ithink also what has has been documented
farewell for Cuba, which opened itsair routes to Managua, Nicaragua, and
half the country flew to Managua asfast as they could possibly get out,
(16:51):
because you know, once you're inNicaragua, then you're on the trails north.
And so somebody in the administration cuta deal with the Cubans and said,
listen, we'll give you all theseconcessions if you shut the air traffic
down, and they did, youknow, and anytime they want concessions then
(17:11):
they can just open the air routeagain, you know. But also I
think that a lot of this isnot run like that. People are coming
to the country on their own decision, by their own decision, because they
know with almost one hundred percent certaintythat the Americans are going to let them
(17:36):
in at the border and let themstay in for years and years and never
deport them. That information is anincredible narcotic It's a narcotic elixir that is
simply irresistible around the world. Whenyou know that the Americans are going to
(17:57):
let you in to a high percentagedegree, you know it. I think
recently, DHS Secretary Alejandro Majorcus saidout loud in a congressional hearing that he
believes north of eighty five percent ofeverybody who reaches the border and crosses it
(18:18):
gets to stay. So you know, of course they're coming. Nobody really
needs to organize it, but Ido believe that some countries have weaponized it
to their benefit. One last thingon your question is that it's to the
It's in the national interest of transitcountries like Panama and Costa Rica Columbia not
(18:45):
to block the flow, because ifthey block the flow, they're stuck with
the hot potato. Thousands and thousandsof angry, hungry, needy immigrants from
around the world stuck in their countryand so it's in their interest to do
everything that they can to facilitate themovement north out of their country so that
(19:10):
it's not a burden to the publictreasury or anything else, any other kind
of social ills that come with it. As long as they're moving through,
that's good for them. It's intheir national interest to make sure that they're
all moving through, and that's whycountries like Colombia and Costa Rica and Nicaragua
and Honduras, Guatemala, and upuntil very recently Mexico made sure that everybody
(19:37):
kind of kept moving through. Youmentioned a large number of these illegal immigrants
not being deported. Why do youthink that this is the case. Is
it the principle of non refillment oris it just that there's a lot of
them that the government cannot deport allof them, many of them, or
most of them as fast as we'dlike too. The clue to that is
(20:02):
in the campaign literature of the Bidenadministration and the Harris administration, the Harris
campaign before the election, where allof the Democratic nominee are candidates for the
nomination. Rather there were like fourteenor fifteen of them at one point,
(20:25):
we're all vying to to be theadministration that would end deportation and detention.
It's part of an ideology that holdsa far left ideology that views deportation as
inhumane and cruel and sort of youknow, something on the order of Jim
(20:51):
Crow laws or you know, slaverythat need to where those laws that require
deportation are out of date and needto be eliminated because mobility between countries is
viewed by them as a inalienable humanright, and they say this in all
(21:15):
of their literature. Their people willtalk about it and speeches, they testify
to it under oath in front ofCongress that deportation is wrong at all times
except in the case of terrorists,I guess, but in all other cases
it's a net grows wrong. Andso they told us that they were going
(21:41):
to end deportation, and they didit immediately from the interior of the country.
They the Biden administration followed through onits campaign promise to end deportation and
even to do a mass amnesty formillions and millions of people, which they
(22:02):
tried to do. They followed throughon that promise too. So we've had
very, very low deportation since inaugurationday, they put a moratorium on deporportation
right on inauguration day. A courtoverturned it, but they found another way
(22:22):
to do it. And they're justnot into deportation. They hate it.
They think it's cruel and terrible andwrong. They're like deportation abolitionists. With
a lot of information about routes beinggiven to these illegal immigrants. Is there
any role that US based nonprofits andgeos or activists play in trying to get
(22:47):
them into the country, and ifso, has there been any legislative or
law enforcement action that we know offthat as we've taken against such kind of
nonprofits or activists are based in theUS, but are resisting people with coming
in illegally right well, the politicalappointee layers in the Biden administration almost universally
(23:11):
come from the NGOs that work inthis wheelhouse that are migrant advocacy groups,
resettlement groups, groups that get contractsand grants in the millions and millions of
dollars and donations from the public tohelp resettle and move immigrants around the world.
(23:37):
And those are the people who alsohappen to be the architects of these
incredibly strange and historic new policies thatthe world has never seen before. And
one can only conclude that they're featheringtheir own nests, that their former employees.
(24:00):
Employers in the NGO world are becomingincredibly fat with profit on grants from
the State Department, from FEMA,from USAID flowing into their coffers to handle
the crisis that they engineered. I'vetalked about this before. It reminds me
(24:26):
of when Eisenhower. President Eisenhower,at the end of his term warned about
the military industrial complex that we cannever let the military, the people that
make bombs and tanks and lanes,get too much influence over US foreign policy,
lest we be perennially at war sothat they can profit on the bullets
(24:51):
and guns that they make. Andhe warned about that. And what has
happened here is that the NGO industrialcomplex gained control of the southern border and
immigration policy and opened up the gateswide and have been profiting by it ever
(25:12):
since, by the hundreds and hundredsof millions of dollars, the billions of
dollars in federal contracts to manage itand in grant money. And the day
that the spigot closes and the numbersfall is the day that their money stops.
(25:33):
And I think that there's a thatthat's a very very influential and important
driver of this mass migration crisis thatwas engineered by those people in the White
House, in the Domestic Policy Council, at DHS and all of its agencies
that work on the border. Oneof the things that people have argued as
(25:57):
being a source of incentive for alot of illegal immigrants to come are loopholes
for regularization. One of the commonones is a marriage to a US citizen
route. What do you think areloopholes to regularization that illegal immigrants are banking
on? The ones I'm asking aboutare those that are apart from the refusal
(26:19):
to deport on the part of thegovernment. Well, there are a number
of There are a number of problemswith the asylum law as it currently stands,
which which to me amount to aloophole wherein you know, in most
countries, like in Europe, ifyou cross into Hungary or you know,
(26:45):
one of the EU countries on theexternal on the on the external borders of
the EU, uh, you haveto apply for asylum in that country because
it's the first place you came toand you can't apply for asylum elsewhere.
We have a similar agreement only withCanada, where if the Canadians turn you
(27:08):
down for asylum, you can't thengo to the United States to try to
shop an asylum claim there. Butour law does not provide other than that
individual bilateral agreement. Our asylum lawdoes not provide the same kind of principle
(27:32):
and restriction. So people are ableto cross through ten different safe countries and
then apply in the US. That'sa very unusual loophole for the asylum law.
Or they may have asylum in Mexicoa lot of them do, or
es Central America. They applied somewhereelse in Chile or Brazil and they got
(27:55):
it safe haven and residency. Butour law law doesn't recognize that somebody was
already safe in another country and wetake them anyway and let them apply for
asylum here, which has the neteffect of just being here permanently. Because
(28:18):
that loophole has attracted so many millionsthat the backlo backlog to hear any of
the adjudicate any of these cases isfive, six, seven, eight years
and even longer. And when youlose your case, he says most inevitably,
do you just disappear and say comeget me, and you're almost guaranteed
(28:40):
because so many millions are here doingthe same thing, your odds of actually
being rounded up somewhere and deported arenext to nothing. So the loophole,
the asylum loophole of you know,we don't really recognize or check whether you
had asylum somewhere else or traveled throughmultiple safe countries already, you can still
(29:03):
apply here is crazy for people wholive here, But for the immigrants it's
like the best thing that ever happened. They can't even believe. They're lucky
stars that the Americans are so dumbto be the only country in the world
that does that doesn't care if youhad asylum in two or three other countries
(29:25):
already. We're not going to check. We're going to let you in anyway.
That is a huge incentive loophole,and that's one of many. There
are lots of other ones. Whatare the issues with the legal immigration system
that you think is contributing to theissue we have with illegal immigration. The
(29:48):
big complaint about legal immigration is thatit takes too long, and it's expensive
and time consuming, and people don'twant to do it if they know that
they can get in right away andfast and fairly cheaply by illegally entering.
So the validity of the legal systemdepends entirely on the enforcement against the illegal
(30:23):
entries. Once you allow illegal entriesand masks like this, you really like,
why would anybody bother with your legalsystem? You know, I mean,
I can just cross the border andI'm in. I get the same
benefit that you people who did itthe right way are having to wait five
(30:45):
years for it. I get itright away, same benefit. I get
to live and work here, andeventually I'll get regularized one way or another
through an amnesty or temporary protective statusor whatever it is, or just a
policy of no deportation. I getto just stay forever, have kids here,
(31:07):
and my kids will be American citizens. The legal system is sticky and
time consuming for a reason, becausethe United States is such a desirable place
to live that it will never everbe able to meet the demand worldwide to
live here. And so if youdon't have a sticky, slow legal system,
(31:33):
you would have the entire globe movinginto the country in an instant.
So you have to have sticky longperiods of waiting, and you have to
really want to be here and bedetermined to be here, to be able
to do the legal system, asit is the case in every other Western
(31:57):
country that's prosperous in the worldorld.All of Europe has the same rules because
they just don't want to have everybodybelow the poverty line fled in. In
November, we are going to havethe presidential elections. What is the future
you see for immigration policy and nationalsecurity in the event of a Biden and
(32:21):
in the event of a Trump victory. I think that immigration. The polls
are showing that the border crisis,and I always make a distinction between legal
and illegal immigration. I don't regardillegal immigration as part of immigration. It's
illegal, unauthorized. So that isthe illegal immigration that is the political issue
(32:49):
that divides the two parties and isregarded as as important as inflation, believe
it or not, in this election. So if Biden wins, I think
he'll view that as approval of hismasks. Illegal immigration. Apparently the country's
(33:13):
pretty good with it. They don'treally care that the laws are being flouted
and there's no deportation, and everybodywho hits the border pretty much gets in
or has all these other new legalpathways that were created to come in.
And you know, we saw thisin twenty twenty two at the mid terms
(33:34):
when Republicans did not fare as wellas everybody thought they would on the immigration
issue. And Biden was asked,you know, does the outcome of the
November or the midterm elections make youwant to change policies on the illegal immigration
issue? And he said no.He says, the outcome shows that they
(33:57):
like what we're doing. And Ithink the same would be true if he
wins in the fall. This inNovember, and of course, you know,
Trump is telling you right now whathe's going to do, and so
so I think we would see thespigots open wide and stay open for another
four years. So we'd have anotherten or fifteen million people from around the
(34:17):
world world come in, and you'dhave all together over the eight years,
you know, twenty five thirty millionpeople just pour in over the southern border
with all of the problems that thatthat that pretends. And I think if
Trump wins, he's telling us whathe's going to do. He's going to
close the border, reduce the numberscoming across eliminate all of those ad hoc
(34:45):
legal quote unquote entry programs that havebeen created, and he'll begin a massive
deportation program from the interior to tryto catch up. So that's that's the
difference on that issue between the twocandidates, very stark. The so called
anti communism lobby is a very influentialgroup, and one of the criticisms they
(35:09):
often have of policies that restrict illegalimmigration has been that it could target and
inhibit people from Venezuela, Cuba,China, and other countries suffering from communism
from seeking asylum in the United States. Do you think that these interest groups
(35:30):
are going to have a restraining effecton any Trump plan to deal with illegal
immigration? Well, I mean,one thing about people coming from communist dictatorships,
and I put that in quotes,how communists really are they anymore?
Any of them? Is that theymany of them are already living safely in
(35:55):
other countries, millions of venezul whalens. Last time I heard or read,
there were you know, seven oreight million Venezuelans living in Colombia happily,
and in fifteen other countries that areother than Venezuela. I'm not sure why
(36:15):
they need to all of a suddenbe rescued from perfectly safe and prosperous countries
like Chile. You know, sayinggoes with Cubans who are living all over
the world, in safe countries,all over Europe, all over the Caribbean
(36:38):
and South America, making a livingand not being persecuted by communists. So
why would they absolutely need to berescued all of a sudden by an American
policy of letting millions and millions ofpeople into the country all of a sudden
when they're already safe. I don'tknow if that could such your question.
(37:01):
Ladies and gentlemen, you just listenedto Todd Benzman off the Center for Emigracious
Studies. Todd Benzman, thank youfor your time. Strategic Wisdom with Andrew
Jose is an initiative of Andrew JoseMedia. The views expressed by guests on
this show do not necessarily represent theofficial positions and opinions of Andrew Jose,
(37:22):
Andrew Jose Media and Strategic Wisdom.Thank you for listening to Strategic Wisdom.
Be sure to follow and subscribe tous on whatever podcast platform you are using
to listen to this show in orderto not miss out any future interviews and
conversations that Andrew Jose will bring toyou on this podcast. We're streaming on
(37:42):
YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts,Yandex, Geosovin, Amazon Music, and
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(38:07):
you so much, Gabby, andthank you so much Ian ladies and gentlemen.
This is your host, Andrew Josesigning off
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