FAIR's Joey Chester discusses the current state of U.S. Border Crisis

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm John Mounts. I'm filling in for JT. He's off today.
Has nothing to do with the fact that Super Bowl
was last night, or so he told me. Anyway, as
we do every Monday, we're talking with We're going to
I said, we're going to the border where I'm sure
you're actually in Washington. This is Joey Chester from the
Federation for American Immigration Reform. Joey, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hey John, it's great to be with you.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
I'm glad to be with you. And the first one
I wanted to spring on you that I didn't send
you this story, but you probably can fill in the
details without even having The story was about a man
arrested in Cholera, which is just south of the Birmingham area.
He was reported as a suspicious person in somebody's backyard
where a quote, highly intoxicated man was found and police

(00:43):
said they found many stolen items on him, including a
lot of mail, which they're working with Postal inspectors on.
And of course the man was from Honduras, was previously
arrested and then released. So this is a story we
hear all too often, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
John, This is like the most common story that we
see where an illegal alien commits some sort of crime,
goes to jail, and in the right world, you would
see that illegal alien before getting released in jail, a
nice transfer of custody from jail to Immigrations and Customs
enforcement where they'd put into deportation proceedings and sent out

(01:20):
of the country. But what we've seen happen across America
and is still happening right now, is you have these
illegal aliens who are just released from custody and they're
put back out on the streets, and then oftentimes they
end up committing another crime. I mean, if you remember,
that's what happened in lakeln Riley's case, where her killer
had been arrested multiple times and was put back out

(01:41):
on the streets and that's the final crime that he
ended up committing. So this is an all too familiar
story that you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
And at the same time, we are seeing that even
though the people in this country continue to do bad things,
we are seeing a drop in the number of people
trying to cross the border. Is that because of the
policies of this new administration or is it just because
of the fear of the coming policies from the new administration.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, you know, I think it's a little bit of both.
The policies of the Trump admin certainly have had an effect.
The fact that catch from releases over the parole abuse
is over, so you don't have those fifteen hundred a
day coming in through the CBP one app. You don't
have illegal aliens flying into the country courtesy of our
government like you did before. The Trump admin Is clamping

(02:25):
down on asylum abuse. So certainly the border is locked down,
but also that serves as a deterrent. We've now seen
stories of people coming up through Mexico and places like
the Darien Gap who are now turning around because they
can see the policies, They're hearing about the policies from
other migrants. And also these people are rational actors. They

(02:47):
can read the news and they can see what's happening.
But one thing I do want to caution people, this
could be temporary, because again these are rational actors. The
cartels are very smart. They are not going to be
happy with the amount of money that they're losing, and
they will try to find other ways and places to
cross our border.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
And Joey, we are already seeing some people being sent
to Guantanamo Bay. Not people from the Middle East necessarily,
but illegal people who are being deported to Guantanamo Bay.
I'm curious how much the capacity of Guantanamo Bay can
it hold the tens of thousands of people. Are we
more looking at one off because I don't think it's

(03:27):
that big of a place.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Is it. It's not, And that's the big issue right now.
But one of the problems we're facing in America is
we only have about forty thousand detention beds john and
most of those are filled already, and so people like
Tom Holman understandably want to ramp up arrests and deportations,
but we just don't have the capacity for it right now.

(03:49):
That's our major issue, and so Guantanmo Bay is a
place where theoretically we can try to how some of
these really dangerous people like Trinda Ragua members, and so,
as I understand it, right now, these trende I Ragua
members are being housed in some of the jail cells
that we have down there right now, and Secretary Nome
was down there over the weekend. Secretary Pete Hegseth has

(04:10):
talked about this and it sounds like the goal is
to start building I guess, tent structures where they can
try to start housing tens of thousands of illegal aliens
while they're in these deportation proceedings. But the thing that
I want to know is, if you're talking hard in
criminals like Trende Arragua, I wonder the practicality of keeping
them contained in intents of the base down there. But

(04:34):
there are people down there already, and they are the
worst of the worst criminals that we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Well, at least as in another country and not in
this country, so already they'd have to break back in
in order to return it. At least they are not
already on our soil. So I guess that's that's a
good thing. At least we're getting we're getting them out
of here and putting them in Cuba.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's the whole point of
it is these people, the worst, the worst murderers, child rapists,
they're out of the country and are on the way
to being deported to their home country.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
And I imagine, even though okay, it's a island paradise
because it's Cuba, it's probably not the nicest conditions down
there because well it is still.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Cuba, Yeah, exactly. I don't think it's an island paradise
for these people. You know, this is an older facility too,
It's been used to How's terraces. So no, I don't
think these guys are in for any sort of vacation
down there.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
They won't be sent to the Maragaza that we're the
big beautiful resort we're building there. Choey Chester, thank you
so much for joining us today on Alabama's Morning News