Washington Wednesday: The border crisis ahead of the midterms

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 19th of October, 2022.

Thanks for joining us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Washington Wednesday.

Yesterday we talked a bit about Title 42 and the Biden administration using that rule to turn away a massive surge of Venezuelan migrants at the southern border.

But invoking Title 42 is a band-aid on a far bigger problem. Increasingly, migrants are crossing the US-Mexico border from all corners of the world. And the numbers are staggering. In the last fiscal year, border officials reported more than 2 million migrant encounters for the first time ever.

EICHER: So, what can the government do to truly address the border crisis, and how will this issue factor into the midterm elections next month?

Joining us now is Simon Hankinson. He’s worked as a foreign service officer at the State Department since 1999. He is now a researcher and an expert on border security and immigration.

REICHARD: Simon, good morning!

SIMON HANKINSON, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: Put the border surge in perspective for us. How does what we’ve seen over the past year or two differ from border traffic in years past?

HANKINSON: Mostly in volume and in the way that we deal with it. There has always been historically legal and illegal immigration over the southern border. But what's really changed in the past couple of years is the volume has gone up and the administration has decided to let it. So, under the Trump administration we saw a massive decrease in the number of illegal crossers. I think by the end, it was down about 85%. And under Biden, we've seen it go to, as you said, historic numbers, I think, over 170,000 people. So, unprecedented numbers a month. Many months over 200,000 and over over 2 million in the last fiscal year and almost that many of the year before.

REICHARD: Now, we have seen in recent months Texas Gov. Greg Abbot and some other red state governors busing or flying migrants to Democrat-led sanctuary cities and states. Democrats have derided that as a political stunt. What difference has that made, do you think?

HANKINSON: Well, I think it’s a brilliant political move. I wouldn't call it a stunt. I think what they're trying to do is demonstrate to the rest of the country that this is a huge problem and it's a national problem, and that you can't just write endless blank checks and hope that they never come home to roost, that no one ever catches them. It's all very well to declare yourself a sanctuary city as New York and Washington D.C. and others have, but it means that you have to accept the consequences of your generosity. For example, New York City is now looking at something like 17,000, I mean, the numbers go up every week, so I lose track, but there are well over 4,000 new kids going into their public schools, which are I think the second most expensive in the country at about $30,000 per pupil per year. Their homeless shelters are full. The mayor has rented a hotel. He's looking to rent I think a total of 41 other hotels, and even at a cruise ship parked in the harbor. And he's tried to declare a state of emergency. So you're seeing that there are consequences. And I think one of the reasons for that is these governors— Governor Ducey and Governor Abbott—were bussing fairly small numbers of people, honestly. The one that got the biggest fuss was, of course, the Martha's Vineyard flight which was only 50.

REICHARD: Are there specific events or policies that you would point to that’s led to the greater numbers of people pouring across the southern border?

HANKINSON: Well, yes. The main one, it’s what I call the Mayorkas Migration Machine. They've gone from … the sort of traditional model is you have to deter people from coming in. If they get across the border illegally, you have to detain them until whatever legal process is completed, and then you have to deport them. You've got to send them back home. And that was fairly effective. There's always going to be some illegal migration over a border the size of ours with Mexico, but historically, there have been surges, but nothing like what we've been seeing lately. The Biden administration, I think, in a massive ideological overcorrection to what they perceived as evil Trump policies, they overturned everything that worked, everything that was being done, from building barriers and surveillance and adequately staffing the border, to Title 42, to the migrant protection protocols, where people who are trying to claim asylum had to wait for their cases to be heard in Mexico. And since nine out of 10 of them won't get asylum in the long run, that means that they're not waiting in the U.S. and that they're going to disappear somewhere through the process. So under the Mayorkas Machine, they are allowing people into the country, they process them. So maybe they take down their biometric details, their photo, their fingerprints, they'll take down their name, if they have any kind of documentation, their birthday, and any other information they can get. Then they parole them, and then they punt them into the interior. I think there's an 8.5 million case backlog with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and almost a 2 million case backlog with the Department of Justice immigration courts. And parole authority, it does exist in the Immigration and Nationality Act. But it was conceived as an exception, a very rare exception by the Secretary of Homeland Security or Secretary of State to let someone in for some kind of medical emergency where they couldn't get a visa for some reason. But the Biden administration is using it wholesale for hundreds of thousands of people.

REICHARD: And more broadly, as we look ahead to midterm elections, Democrats have long believed that immigration would be an issue that would help them to increasingly win over Hispanic voters. But a Quinnipiac poll last fall showed that around 7 out of 10 Hispanics disapproved of President Biden’s handling of the border through his immigration policies. Other polls have similar findings. How do you see immigration factoring into the midterm elections next month?

HANKINSON: You know, it’s really hard to tell. I’m skeptical of polls these days because the traditional methods for gathering information just no longer apply. I mean, people don't have landlines, but then not all older people have cell phones or want to use them. And older people vote more than younger people. So I'm a little skeptical about polls. But polls do show that the economy is always number one. If there's a bad economy as there is now with high inflation and people are worried about the price of gas and heating their houses that's going to take the most of their attention. But immigration is up there. High crime is up there. And those two things are not entirely unconnected. So I do think it is an issue that voters are thinking about, particularly in border states. And I'll say something else with regard to the Hispanic vote. We've seen Myra Flores get elected. So a Mexican-American Congresswoman in a border region. I was just down on the border in Texas where the population is, I wouldn't tell you exactly, you know, 80% Hispanic. I mean, these are people who've been there for generations, but they share some kind of heritage with people on the other side of the border. They're really unhappy at the state of things. I mean, these are not people motivated by hatred of migrants or racism. They're just people who want to be able to live in their houses without seeing people illegally crossing their land every single day. There are ranchers who have their fences cut, so they can't keep animals safely. I spoke to a woman who had to install expensive security lighting and she has to lock her doors every night and buy a dog which she'd never had to do over the past 20 years because she lives a mile from the border. So I think this issue is no longer a slam dunk win for Democrats if they think that all Hispanics are automatically going to vote for leniency on the border, amnesties, and higher numbers of immigration.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about who is responsible for what. Suppose Republicans recapture control of one or both chambers of Congress next month. Is there anything they can do to affect border policy specifically, or does that have to come from the White House?

HANKINSON: Well, I think that's really that's the answer. And leadership does have to come from the White House, from the Secretary of Homeland Security. But there are things that they can do. I've heard talk of impeaching Secretary Mayorkas for completely failing to do his duty. He swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and to uphold the laws of the United States and he's not doing that. Congress can exercise its oversight authority, as you know, when the party that's in power has a lot more ability to ask the questions and to and to run the meetings in these oversight hearings. And they can ask, what are you doing? Where's the money going? How much money are you spending on non-governmental organizations in order to give people tickets, cell phones, move them into the interior of the country? How many of those people are disappearing? How many of those people can you keep tabs on? How many terrorists have gotten in? How many criminals? How satisfied is the Department of Homeland Security that they have even the identities of these people? And so on. So Congress can ask a lot of tough questions. They can hold administration officials accountable. And I suppose ultimately, they can control the funding, although that's the most complicated way.

REICHARD: Do you see common ground on Capitol Hill to actually fix the immigration and border problems? What’s it going to take?

HANKINSON: No, I don’t. I hate to be a pessimist, but I’ve been following this issue since I was in college. I wrote my first paper on immigration in, I think, 1989. And the last big immigration reform was 1986. There was another little one in 1991. Ever since then, people keep talking about immigration reform and on the left, that means let more people in, make it easier for them, have an amnesty. On the right, it means enforce our immigration law and sometimes reduce the numbers of legal immigrants. And I just don't think at the moment that there's room and there's appetite for compromise on almost any issue between left and right, unfortunately. And immigration is probably one of the hardest issues to solve. So I'm not particularly optimistic that we're going to see common ground and any kind of comprehensive package anytime soon.

REICHARD: Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation. Simon, thanks so much!

HANKINSON: It was a pleasure talking with you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 19th of October, 2022.

Thanks for joining us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Washington Wednesday.

Yesterday we talked a bit about Title 42 and the Biden administration using that rule to turn away a massive surge of Venezuelan migrants at the southern border.

But invoking Title 42 is a band-aid on a far bigger problem. Increasingly, migrants are crossing the US-Mexico border from all corners of the world. And the numbers are staggering. In the last fiscal year, border officials reported more than 2 million migrant encounters for the first time ever.

EICHER: So, what can the government do to truly address the border crisis, and how will this issue factor into the midterm elections next month?

Joining us now is Simon Hankinson. He’s worked as a foreign service officer at the State Department since 1999. He is now a researcher and an expert on border security and immigration.

REICHARD: Simon, good morning!

SIMON HANKINSON, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: Put the border surge in perspective for us. How does what we’ve seen over the past year or two differ from border traffic in years past?

HANKINSON: Mostly in volume and in the way that we deal with it. There has always been historically legal and illegal immigration over the southern border. But what's really changed in the past couple of years is the volume has gone up and the administration has decided to let it. So, under the Trump administration we saw a massive decrease in the number of illegal crossers. I think by the end, it was down about 85%. And under Biden, we've seen it go to, as you said, historic numbers, I think, over 170,000 people. So, unprecedented numbers a month. Many months over 200,000 and over over 2 million in the last fiscal year and almost that many of the year before.

REICHARD: Now, we have seen in recent months Texas Gov. Greg Abbot and some other red state governors busing or flying migrants to Democrat-led sanctuary cities and states. Democrats have derided that as a political stunt. What difference has that made, do you think?

HANKINSON: Well, I think it’s a brilliant political move. I wouldn't call it a stunt. I think what they're trying to do is demonstrate to the rest of the country that this is a huge problem and it's a national problem, and that you can't just write endless blank checks and hope that they never come home to roost, that no one ever catches them. It's all very well to declare yourself a sanctuary city as New York and Washington D.C. and others have, but it means that you have to accept the consequences of your generosity. For example, New York City is now looking at something like 17,000, I mean, the numbers go up every week, so I lose track, but there are well over 4,000 new kids going into their public schools, which are I think the second most expensive in the country at about $30,000 per pupil per year. Their homeless shelters are full. The mayor has rented a hotel. He's looking to rent I think a total of 41 other hotels, and even at a cruise ship parked in the harbor. And he's tried to declare a state of emergency. So you're seeing that there are consequences. And I think one of the reasons for that is these governors— Governor Ducey and Governor Abbott—were bussing fairly small numbers of people, honestly. The one that got the biggest fuss was, of course, the Martha's Vineyard flight which was only 50.

REICHARD: Are there specific events or policies that you would point to that’s led to the greater numbers of people pouring across the southern border?

HANKINSON: Well, yes. The main one, it’s what I call the Mayorkas Migration Machine. They've gone from … the sort of traditional model is you have to deter people from coming in. If they get across the border illegally, you have to detain them until whatever legal process is completed, and then you have to deport them. You've got to send them back home. And that was fairly effective. There's always going to be some illegal migration over a border the size of ours with Mexico, but historically, there have been surges, but nothing like what we've been seeing lately. The Biden administration, I think, in a massive ideological overcorrection to what they perceived as evil Trump policies, they overturned everything that worked, everything that was being done, from building barriers and surveillance and adequately staffing the border, to Title 42, to the migrant protection protocols, where people who are trying to claim asylum had to wait for their cases to be heard in Mexico. And since nine out of 10 of them won't get asylum in the long run, that means that they're not waiting in the U.S. and that they're going to disappear somewhere through the process. So under the Mayorkas Machine, they are allowing people into the country, they process them. So maybe they take down their biometric details, their photo, their fingerprints, they'll take down their name, if they have any kind of documentation, their birthday, and any other information they can get. Then they parole them, and then they punt them into the interior. I think there's an 8.5 million case backlog with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and almost a 2 million case backlog with the Department of Justice immigration courts. And parole authority, it does exist in the Immigration and Nationality Act. But it was conceived as an exception, a very rare exception by the Secretary of Homeland Security or Secretary of State to let someone in for some kind of medical emergency where they couldn't get a visa for some reason. But the Biden administration is using it wholesale for hundreds of thousands of people.

REICHARD: And more broadly, as we look ahead to midterm elections, Democrats have long believed that immigration would be an issue that would help them to increasingly win over Hispanic voters. But a Quinnipiac poll last fall showed that around 7 out of 10 Hispanics disapproved of President Biden’s handling of the border through his immigration policies. Other polls have similar findings. How do you see immigration factoring into the midterm elections next month?

HANKINSON: You know, it’s really hard to tell. I’m skeptical of polls these days because the traditional methods for gathering information just no longer apply. I mean, people don't have landlines, but then not all older people have cell phones or want to use them. And older people vote more than younger people. So I'm a little skeptical about polls. But polls do show that the economy is always number one. If there's a bad economy as there is now with high inflation and people are worried about the price of gas and heating their houses that's going to take the most of their attention. But immigration is up there. High crime is up there. And those two things are not entirely unconnected. So I do think it is an issue that voters are thinking about, particularly in border states. And I'll say something else with regard to the Hispanic vote. We've seen Myra Flores get elected. So a Mexican-American Congresswoman in a border region. I was just down on the border in Texas where the population is, I wouldn't tell you exactly, you know, 80% Hispanic. I mean, these are people who've been there for generations, but they share some kind of heritage with people on the other side of the border. They're really unhappy at the state of things. I mean, these are not people motivated by hatred of migrants or racism. They're just people who want to be able to live in their houses without seeing people illegally crossing their land every single day. There are ranchers who have their fences cut, so they can't keep animals safely. I spoke to a woman who had to install expensive security lighting and she has to lock her doors every night and buy a dog which she'd never had to do over the past 20 years because she lives a mile from the border. So I think this issue is no longer a slam dunk win for Democrats if they think that all Hispanics are automatically going to vote for leniency on the border, amnesties, and higher numbers of immigration.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about who is responsible for what. Suppose Republicans recapture control of one or both chambers of Congress next month. Is there anything they can do to affect border policy specifically, or does that have to come from the White House?

HANKINSON: Well, I think that's really that's the answer. And leadership does have to come from the White House, from the Secretary of Homeland Security. But there are things that they can do. I've heard talk of impeaching Secretary Mayorkas for completely failing to do his duty. He swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and to uphold the laws of the United States and he's not doing that. Congress can exercise its oversight authority, as you know, when the party that's in power has a lot more ability to ask the questions and to and to run the meetings in these oversight hearings. And they can ask, what are you doing? Where's the money going? How much money are you spending on non-governmental organizations in order to give people tickets, cell phones, move them into the interior of the country? How many of those people are disappearing? How many of those people can you keep tabs on? How many terrorists have gotten in? How many criminals? How satisfied is the Department of Homeland Security that they have even the identities of these people? And so on. So Congress can ask a lot of tough questions. They can hold administration officials accountable. And I suppose ultimately, they can control the funding, although that's the most complicated way.

REICHARD: Do you see common ground on Capitol Hill to actually fix the immigration and border problems? What’s it going to take?

HANKINSON: No, I don’t. I hate to be a pessimist, but I’ve been following this issue since I was in college. I wrote my first paper on immigration in, I think, 1989. And the last big immigration reform was 1986. There was another little one in 1991. Ever since then, people keep talking about immigration reform and on the left, that means let more people in, make it easier for them, have an amnesty. On the right, it means enforce our immigration law and sometimes reduce the numbers of legal immigrants. And I just don't think at the moment that there's room and there's appetite for compromise on almost any issue between left and right, unfortunately. And immigration is probably one of the hardest issues to solve. So I'm not particularly optimistic that we're going to see common ground and any kind of comprehensive package anytime soon.

REICHARD: Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation. Simon, thanks so much!

HANKINSON: It was a pleasure talking with you.

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