We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emil Jasinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and subscribe to the
premium version of our website at the Federalist dot com as well. Today we're
joined by Robert law. He is the director of the Center for Homeland Security
and Immigration over at AFPI, that's the America First Policy Institute. He worked
for four years in the Trump administration on a whole lot of the same issues
that we're going to talk about here today. Robert, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me here. I'm excited to be on the program.
You go by Rob or Robert generally a little by Rob, you know,
Robert is a little more formal, just for written written products pretty much.
I tell people, were just not a Bob. Okay, we'll go.
We'll go with Rob. Then I wanted to ask about the ticking timeline on
the Southern border, which is the title forty two situation unfolding right now.
Um, we've we've seen actually as recently as as yesterday. We're recording this
on Monday, the first of May. Um May work us on the Sunday
shows trying to spin what the Biden administration is doing to secure the border secure
is their definition of that is a little bit more broad, I think than
most people's um But could you just rob give us a kind of overview of
where things could be going with Title forty two in mid May, as that's
set to finally expire in mid May um on our border in the coming weeks
under the Biden administration. Sure, so, thus far the two years of
the Biden administration, you've had the worst humanitarian and security crisis in the Southern
border nations ever witnessed. And as bad as it has been, if you
can believe it, it is about to get even worse come May eleventh,
when Title forty two goes away. And so what you're seeing right now is
more than four thousand illegal aliens a day apprehended at the Southern border, and
apprehension is a term of art in DHS Lingo. So they're not being arrested
and detained under this administration. Most of them are being processed out of DHS
custody and released into American communities. So this is not as a turrent policy.
When you see these large numbers every single month, that doesn't mean that
the Biden administration is doing a really good job. They're capturing people, people
are essentially turning themselves in because it's never been easier to be released. And
so we're going from an unacceptable level to new submits from the Biden administration themselves
eight to fifteen thousand illegal aliens a day once the title forty two Public Health
Authority goes away. It is just astronomical. It is so far beyond what
was ever viewed as even possible. And just to show how disconnected this is
from reality, during the Obama administration, DHS Secretary J. Johnason said that
one thousand illegal aliens a day at the southern border was a bad day in
his mind. And we're already four times worth that on average for two years,
and it's about to explode. So that's just a sort of frame it
for how much of the disaster and failure these policies have been. No,
that's really helpful because I was going to ask if you could sort of put
the monthly apprehension numbers in contexts. You know, the left will sometimes claim
there are multiple people being apprehended, so this isn't reflective of people, it's
just reflective of encounters, etc. Etc. There are all kinds of numbers,
and the Biden administration, as Todd Bensman has pointed out, is very
sneaky or very strategic with the way that it uses some of these categories.
And yeah, I know you understand the kind of processing situation, the parole
situation, but it's really convoluted and intentionally so by people who support essentially the
facto open borders. Can you explain some of that to us? You know,
what is happening when people come to the border and get apprehended. What
does all of this look like? Sure, so there's basically about three different
pipelines, largely speaking right now, so there's a very small population that is
being subject to Title forty two. Now, it's important to remember Title forty
two is not an immigration authority. Title forty two is a public health authority
that the Trump administration first utilized at the beginning of COVID as a means of
stopping the introduction of COVID to the United States. It has since been used
by the Biden administration really as the one border enforcement tool, which is really
an inappropriate use for it, but that's what they're doing as they dismantled every
other successful border security policy of the Trump administration. So you've got some people
that are being subject to Title forty two, which means they are immediately turned
away. The percentage that has been has been applied to has shrunk over the
last two years. And then you have a large portion that are basically being
subjects are immigration laws, which is known as Title eight. That's where we
say that they're being apprehended, but then they're just being released out of out
of DHS custody, released into American communities. They're particularly overwhelming all of the
small towns along the southern border. They don't have the infrastructure to handle this
number of people, and that's where you see the governors of Texas, you
had Ron Santus in Florida and the previous governor in Arizona started busting and flying
some of these migrants into sanctuary cities across the country. So so sort of
these blue states and blue cities could really feel the pain of the policies that
are being inflicted upon the border communities. So that's really what it means to
have Title eight being applied, and then sort of an ever growing theme under
Secretary Mayorcus's rule is an unlawful use of parole. This is supposed to be
a very narrow authority only on a case by case basis and for only an
urgent humanitarian reason or a significant public benefit. Instead, the Biden administration has
created wholesale categorical programs largely based off of nationality. So they had a program
for Ukraines, they had a program for Afghans. Now they have a program
for two ventations, Venezuelans and Nicaragua, and they're continuing to stand upon that.
They call that a lawful pathway. That is gaslighting the American people.
To be blunt, it is an unlawful use of the authority. But the
use of parole avoids the optics of ten thousand illegal aliens camping out under the
Del Rio Bridge and coming across the border. They still have no right to
be in the country. They don't qualify for any visas. They are what's
called inadmissible, but they're being allowed in any ways, and the use of
parole hides this population from those border numbers so as bad as they are every
single month ever since January of this year when the parole Authority went on steroids,
the numbers are just not even believable. They don't paint the full picture.
So what happens to them after parole? That's probably, I mean,
that's obviously a hugely important part of this equation, and it's still I mean,
it's one of the sad things is that we don't totally know because things
shift with adminstrations and policies, and people may be untraceable after a certain amount
of time anyway, But in general, you know, how should people think
about what happens after these thousands and thousands of people every single month are getting
parole from our government being released into the country. You know, how often
do we get contact with them after that? How often do they end up
getting deported after a number of years? What does it look like after they
cross the border and get out of detention. Sure, that's a great question.
So once parolled into the country, you're you're allowed in your cut loose,
you get to go anywhere you want. It's minderstanding that DHS is not
really tracking where people are going. So governors don't even know how many of
the border search population is inhabiting their states these days, which puts a necessary
drain on schools, hospitals, local law enforcement, all sorts of public services.
When you increase the population, not really increasing the tax base. Role
does come with a work permit. A lot of people don't know that,
so you have this bizarre situation where you don't have a visa, you don't
have really permission to be here, but you're allowed in. However, you
do have the ability to work. And so what that looks like Under the
Biden administration, nobody's being supported. I mean, they are even refusing to
deport convicted criminals, the worst of the worst. Those numbers are plumbting.
They claim that they're prioritizing limited resources on those bad actors. The Trump administration
in twenty twenty, with all of the COVID restrictions and travel issues and everything
else, supported more criminal aliens than the Biden administration is doing. Year over
year. The numbers are dropping, and that seems to be what the objective
is for the people that are falling. The policy shots in the Bid administration
just let as many of these people into the country as you can because you
know that when you have a future president in an administration that actually cares about
the rule of law and the American people, it is going to be extremely
difficult to remove everybody because you're going to have to track them all down,
you're going to have to put them into immigration court proceedings, You're going to
have to go through that process, and then eventually the removal. So they've
completely blown up the system we've got. I believe it's around five million illegal
aliens have been introduced into the country in just the last two years. And
so again even the most dedicated pro enforcement administration is going to struggle to just
find a bandwidth and the resources to start removing all these people in the future.
Well, and that leads us to the next question, unfortunately, which
is what happens in the humanitarian on a humanitarian basis to so many of these
people in the interim. Within New York Times, as I know you,
followed released a absolutely tragic and heart wrenching series of reports on child trafficking.
Because of our open border. To factor open border where people end up,
you know that they're the government loosest track of where they are, which makes
them very exploitable and easy to abuse by people with business interests and people with
criminal interests across the country. Um So what are the dangers for them,
let alone to the American people. You know, we've talked about deportation of
obviously known criminals people. You know, what was it like eighty seven people
last year from the terrorist watch list across the border. Um obviously that's of
paramount concern as well. But then you know, these these migrants, especially
children, um can end up in some incredibly difficult situations and actually appear to
be ending up in those situations on a fairly wide scale. Um So,
so what do we know about the dangers to people when they when they are
sent out by our government on this basis, Well, you've really gone in
on the cruelty of open borders policies because every single illegal alien, regardless of
your age, gender, etc. You are paying the cartels to be smuggled
or in some cases trafficked across the southern border. It is well known and
documented that there's a lot of physical, emotional and sexual abuse that occurs along
the journey to the Southern border, and it doesn't stop once they get here.
Particularly the most vulnerable which is the unaccompanied the alien children. There are
some terrible loopholes in the law that the House of Representatives is hopefully attempting to
close. They've got a great bill that should be coming to the floor for
a vote there it will be their HR two and that will be that vote
will occur right around the expiration of Title forty two. So it creates a
great contrast between the Biden administration policies. But once these unaccompanied alien children are
here, they are quickly put into HHS facilities and then released to sponsors.
And what we know is that the Biden administration has cut all of the vetting
standards for the sponsors. They've cut the vetting standards for the volunteers at these
shelters. So you're exposing vulnerable migrant children who are in a foreign land,
they likely don't speak our language, and you're possibly reconnecting them with their abusers.
And like I said, they've dialed back all of the policies that the
Trump administration put in place. For example, if a sponsor claimed to be
a parent during the Trump administration, we used to require DNA test to confirm
that currential relationship. Now they're just taking your word for it, and they're
cutting these kids loose, and as even now the New York Times is exposing,
many of them are being subjected to forced labor because they have to pay
off their debts. I mean, we're talking five thousand dollars and up depending
on what country you're from and other factors that the cartels are charging for your
way. Most people in those countries don't have that money just lying around,
so they've got to pay off their debts. So it's it is indentured servitude,
and some of them are subjected to basically sex, sex, slavery,
other forms of just indebted service. It's heinous, it's cruel, and it's
the exact predictable outcome that these policies by administration of intentionally put in place have
created. And can you talk to us, just as somebody who actually has
worked in dahs and overseen a lot of this, how important sanctuary cities are
creating these dangers or how influential they are and creating this dangerous atmosphere. They're
basically like magnets for people they know that they can live a life in the
shadows of American society. So from your perspective, how much do you think
those designations, the sanctuary city designations, play a role in drawing people to
the United States? Are they in significant? Are they very significant? How
important are they here? Sure? So, sanctuary cities, which for those
unfamiliar with that terminology, are basically jurisdictions. It could be a locality,
could be a city, or in some cases like California, it's the entire
state. They have policies that basically impede federal immigration enforcements ability to do their
jobs. And it's a huge problem. Of course, if you send out
the big welcome sign that you come here, will give your driver's license,
will give you in state tuition, we'll give you free healthcare at the state
level, that encourages illegal aliens to go to those sanctuary jurisdictions. Not to
veer off too far, but the way the census counts, vote counts people
for congressional seat alignment, they include illegal aliens. So there's almost this perverse
insensive that Blue states are exploiting the policies which are in direct violation of federal
immigration law to pad their numbers to get more congressional representation. But beyond that,
so in this administration, like I said, they're not removing anybody.
Sanctuary jurisdictions were a huge thorn in the side of the Trump administration. We
tried repeatedly to remove aliens, get local law enforcement to give Immigration and Customs
enforcement ice heads up when somebody was being released from a state jail so we
could pick them up and deport them, and sanctuary jurisdictions would not cooperate.
And so while there was a lot of effort to remove people and the numbers
were very impressive, they could have been so much more. There was a
desire and an ability to remove more illegal aliens during the Trump administration, but
it was sanctuary jurisdiction that got in the way. They didn't cooperate, and
they cut people loose instead of whole them for us. Sometimes the states would
downgrade the charges so there wouldn't be an immigration consequence to go along with it.
I mean, it was literally the most anti rule of law and anti
American people views. And that is what the reality of sanctuary cities are.
Yeah, it's amazing to imagine what the border would look like if you could
wave a magic one and get rid of every sanctuary jurisdiction in the United States.
You know, that's kind of a thought experiment that's maybe worth our elected
officials pondering on that note. Now there is a bill, I think it's
how Judiciary, and you've actually weighed in on it, I think already that
would reform our asylum system. It's likely you know that this is not something
that would get get to the Senate and get to the President and go into
law. But as a framework, it seems like at least a decent place
to start, and at least you have conservative policies being given, you know,
some putting some meat onto the bones. What do you make of how
they try to reform asylum and what do you think needs to happen to our
asylum system? Yes, a great question. So the Judiciary bill, along
with a separate bill that the householdmand Security Committee passed and a third bill that
the House Foreign Affairs Committee just recently passed, are all being bundled up together
and should be introduced, I believe, on May second as HR two.
So this is this is the House Republican majority saying to the American people,
we are upholding our commitment to America to offer a serious solution to secure the
border. And I really believe that this bill is the strongest border security measure
ever introduced. When it officially gets introduced as HR two. The asylum system
is being exploited. That is the ticket into this country. You know,
you have the Biden administration and the liberal legacy media who falsely describe these illegal
aliands as asylum seekers. That's not a real term, it doesn't mean anything
in the immigration law. Instead, what they're doing is they are economic migrants
or others who are just being trafficked or have other desires to come to the
United States without qualifying for a visa. They make a asylum claim at the
border. The first part of that test is called a credible fear screening.
It's very very low. The most bogus, dubious claims are good enough to
pass that, and then they're being released into American communities. And really what
that does is it deprives real victims of persecution the ability to have their cases
heard in a more timely fashion. So what this bill does is it will
enshrine in law a lot of what the Trump administration did through its regulatory authority.
So, like I said, they're going to increase the credible fear standard,
which will make it harder to get that first cut into the process if
you what we called in the trouble administration of asylum forum shopping. Essentially,
if you traveled through multiple countries to get to the United States, which is
unsurprisingly almost everybody, and you didn't seek asylum there first. That's not the
behavior of someone fleeing persecution. You don't go to the most prosperous nation.
You go to the first safest country. So those folks would be ineligible for
asylum. They closed those loopholes that I was talking about that facilitate the trafficking
of the unccompanied alien children, to allow all of them to be quickly returned
home, and it allows for extended family detention to prevent children being recycled in
these fake families. Again, there was a very terrible judicial agreement that limited
the amount of time that you could keep a family unit in custody, and
so all that did was caused the creation of real and many times fake family
units. So the judiciary portion touches on all of that. The House of
Homeland portion of it orders the immediate resumption of the border wall system that the
Trump administration was plugging away at, developing It mandates a minimum of nine hundred
miles of additional border wall and the surrounding technology that goes along with it.
It cuts off the abuse of parole, and it calls for more border patrol
agents and expressly and explicitly prohibits them from being converted into mignrant processors, which
is exactly what has happened under the Biden administration. New York has taken away
everybody from doing law enforcement activities and instead is helping. They're all being ordered
to process migrants out of facilities as quickly as they possibly can. So I'm
very optimistic about this. This is very impressive with the House Republicans have put
forward. It should be the type of thing that if you are against human
trafficking, if you are against the cartels, and you are for national sovereignty,
you should be for this bill. We'll see if we actually get anybody
across the Aisle to vote for it. I am doubtful that that will occur,
but what I would say is R two will provide a very clear signal
to the American people leading into twenty twenty four about what the Republicans stand for
on border security versus the chaos in carnage that the current administration seems to be
fond of. Yeah, I mean, if you're concerned about our asylum system,
it's being just bogged down with fraudulent cases right now, and people who
have real claims are getting harder and harder. I imagine you saw this up
front. It's very difficult to help the people who are legitimately in need of
help when you're you're sifting through so many, i mean, just a truly
incredible amount of claims on daily basis. Yeah, the numbers are unsustainable.
They were they were already way too high before the Trump administration took over.
We put in place a number of these policies, and what happened for the
first time during the Trump administration was that the backlog stopped growing and so we
were actually starting to cut into it and adjudicate cases more quickly. And importantly,
those that did not qualify, which was over eighty five percent of them,
so only fifteen percent maximum actually qualified for asylum. When they were denied,
they were removed. And that's the difference here is if the aliens are
even filing the actual asylum claim, they're not being returned once they are denied
and this administration doesn't dispute those numbers that very few qualified. They are content
with allowing them to come here and clogged the asylum system. And can you
tell us about the credible fear interviews? I mean, that's a really specific
aspect of all of this, but I feel like there's a obviously there's there's
something about how we've been handling that that specifically that really is problematic and has
created a lot of headaches and a lot of problems that we'll be dealing with
for years to come. So what is the credible fear interview? How is
it operating under the Biden administration? And what should it look like in a
kind of healthier system. Sure, so for an alien at the border who
claims asylum, that the credible fear standard is screening excuse me? Is the
first part in the asylum process. This is conducted by US Citizenship and Immigration
Services to SCIS asylum officers. And like I said, this is a preliminary
screening. You know, some very generic questions are asked, and the threshold
to passage is known as a significant possibility. They the significant possibility that your
story could result in a positive asylum plane and the way significant possibility has been
interpreted by the courts is that it is a very very low threshold, to
such a degree that over eighty percent of people who make a claim at the
border pass this test. But then when they actually have their asylum claim heard,
which requires that you are being persecuted by the government on the basis of
one of five protected grounds, you see fewer than fifteen percent who subsequently qualified,
So that delta is enormous, and that shouldn't happen. Instead, what
needs to happen is you need to raise that credible fear screening so that very
few people are passing it. But then nearly one hundred percent of those who
have established the credible fear turnaround and actually meet the definition of asylum. Yeah,
you know, it's it's unthinkable, how it's so anti democratic, the
way that you can tweak these different bureaucratic mechanisms largely under the cover of darkness.
Some of the stuff we don't even know is happening because it's hard for
reporters to know about and confirm, and also they're just not curious. But
again, like from your vantage point as somebody who's who's been in government doing
this work, it is just completely bureaucratized in a way that makes it wide
open for exploitation by democratic presidents or even you know, centrist Republican president who
who might want to flood the borders. Basically, that's what we've seen is
that the American people have had a very difficult time, either as a citizen
or through their elected officials at the state level, having standing to sue an
administration that refuses to enforce immigration laws. In the last year or so,
we've seen some successes with Texas and Florida leading the way, and that's that's
been very hopeful at delaying some of this. But at the end of the
day, an administration that refuses to uphold the law will continue to be the
greatest magnet for more elite immigration, and that's going to mean more human trafficking.
That's going to mean more migrant deaths at the southern border. That's going
to mean more fent and All coming across in devastating communities across the nation.
You know, it has kind of become a routine expression to say that every
state is a border state because of these policies and how the fent and All
in particular is you know as the leading cause of death of young Americans age
eighteen to forty five. We are literally losing a generation of Americans and American
thought leaders because of the failure to secure the southern border. Yeah yeah,
I actually watched just this weekend, sort of in the somewhere in the middle
of the country, a man overdosing on unfentanel just outside a restaurant. And
man, it's just so commonplace now that people were barely batting an eyelet in
this particular part of the country and just getting into that. I've actually seen
you comment on this before. The way cartels are able to exploit fintech social
media platforms to sell their stuff on the black market essentially, but it makes
it a lot easier. That also, though, means some of these companies
can play a role in helping crack down on all of that black black market
selling. What should that look like? What could that look like? I
mean, that is definitely a difficult aspect of this. You know, bad
actors will always find creative ways to have their illicit business happened. I just
believe that, particularly our own fintech companies and social media have almost a moral
obligation if not a legal obligation to try to get this stuff off of their
platforms. Make it as difficult as possible for these transactions to occur, and
right now it is far too easy for people to be targeted through Snapchat.
I know it is a very popular mechanism that the cartels are reaching people,
the use of coded emojis for different types of street drugs, many of which
are being wasted with f and all by the cartels. It's too simple.
So from my perspective, the best and the easiest thing to do is that
these platforms they need to take the accountability of themselves and make sure that the
appropriate, appropriate safe protocols are there, the barriers are there to root it
out. If they fail to do that, then it's going to be incumbent
upon the Federal Congress to look at ways of raining them in and holding them
accountable. You know. Just by way of example, I know that the
social media platforms have been very accessful at removing terrorist propaganda from their platforms,
and that included videos of beheadings as well as other other propaganda videos used to
try to generate support for them. If they are capable of doing it,
to target foreign terrorists, they should be just as capable of doing it to
take down the cartels and the illicit drug and frankly sex trade that is occurring
in this country. And social media and fintech companies are they're they're looped into
it. I'm not saying that they're intentionally involved, but just the way that
their platforms operate, that's become part of that mechanism of that illicit business.
And so that's how I think it needs to be rooted out. On that
note, there are some, you know, ideas that may might be seen
as like escalations by some people, but are definitely kind of outside the framework
of how we think about solutions to these problems over the last couple of decades.
And I think that's not good. And I'm sure you would agree with
that, because I think you've actually you've written about it. Are I think
this is a quote from so you've written recently where you say, at the
same time, we have prioritized our ability to gather intelligence inside Mexico, and
US military leaders have been reluctant to engage this clear threat. We need a
different mindset and strategy if we expect to succeed a lot of people on the
right have started floating the idea of the foreign terrorist organization designation for cartels.
Can you talk to us a little bit about what that would bring to the
table and how that could benefit the struggle to protect our borders and to protect,
as you say, every state which is essentially now a border state.
Sure, so, the way that the US has historically treated the cartels,
it's been through the lens of it being a law enforcement problem, and that
means that it would be a law enforcement solution, and that just has not
worked, and it's certainly not working the way the cartels have reached new heights
of both financial and literally gunpower, manpower strength thanks to the by administration policies.
And so, what you know AFDI advocates for and what we saw work
in the Trump administration was that you need to have an all the above approach
to defeating the cartels, and that means you need to get tough with Mexico.
You know, we have had a historically unique relationship with them because of
our shared border and the facilitation of trade and the light the current Mexican regime
seems to be compromised and you have to get taught with them. And so
that means you need to use leverage. This is a transactional relationship. This
is not a friendly relationship, and so you need to be willing to explore
everything. And that means possibly the foreign terrorist organization designation, possibly the use
of military force in the country, similar to what we did in Colombia to
take down Pablo Escobar back in the day. The FCO issue is complicated.
I'm not going to suggest that it's easy. I know President Trump considered it
and ultimately decline, but we had other successful policies in place. There is
the chance that an FTO designation could jeopardize the remain in Mexico policy that was,
from my perspective, the most successful border security policy ever created. So
there's a chance that you could lose that if the cartels are designated as an
FTO. I don't think that is a foregone conclusion, but it is definitely
a consideration that needs to be accounted for. But if you do designate them
as foreign terrorist organizations, opens up new authorities. I was actually very surprised.
Usually not surprised at the White House spokesperson, who pedals disinformation all the
time, but when she was asked a question about the FTO designation and said,
oh, that gives us no new authorities. That was just a mind
boggling because that's not true. It opens up all sorts of new financial sanctions
that can be imposed, asset seizures, enhanced criminal penalties, the ability for
the United States as the government to get convictions for people that aren't even physically
in the United States, and that is a very uncommon thing in our criminal
justice system. Like if you're not here, you know, you're you're kind
of that's your way to sort of makes yourself immune from it. That's why
you have you know, you know, international law enforcement who cooperate, and
then they have you know, transfers and and things of that nature. But
the FEO designation does unlock additional authorities that would help defeat the cartels fruits,
freeze up their money, deprive them of their assets, and lock away nearly
everybody involved in the entire operation. Right now, under what's called the Kingpin
Act, it's really only the top guys that you're able to take down with
this authority, But the FTO designation would open it up to the highest guide
involved in the trafficking of drugs and people all the way down to your low
level street dealer as well. So those are robust authorities. And that's where
I just think you have to have that balancing act of what you might lose
might lose in exchange for what you definitively would get from the enforcement side of
things. Yeah, and Biden, well, President Biden himself had a joint
press conference with Amlow not long ago during his really staged to visit the Mexico
and then to El Paso, which was absolutely a joke. But how has
his administration handled and how should his administration have handled the relationship with Amlow,
who has his like little hugs not Bullets policy, has ceded a lot of
territory to cartel control UM. You know, there's a lot of concern that,
you know, the United States needs to partner with Mexico. They need
to be peaceful allies. So any talk of military intervention UM or foreign terrist
designations to the cartels would would blow up that relationship. But at the same
time, enabling Amlow and enabling whoever is the president of Mexico to have a
hugs not Bullets policy and to continue seeding territory to CARTELSUM is not not in
the best interests of the United States, to say the least. So what
should our approach to Amlo, What what should our approach be to all?
And what has Biden done wrong? So really, I think if you look
at how President Trump handled Amlow, that, like I said earlier, it's
a transactional relationship and that is how Amlow responds to things. I think it's
it's pretty well known that the way are. Part of the way that the
Remain in Mexico policy sort of began was that President Trump went to Amlow and
said, I'm gonna impose tariffs on all these different things come Monday if you
won't do this. And this is after months and months of the Mexican government
officials refusing to cooperate with Romaine in Mexico. And once he said that,
and it was believable, and we were, as the Trump administration, prepared
to impose those sanctions, all of a sudden, the phone call came in
to the White House and they said, oh, we'd be happy to be
your partner in Romain in Mexico. So again, you've got to talk tough
and you've got to act tough, and that means you got to be able
to impose tariffs, threaten it. It needs to be believable. You need
to hold them accountable to actually being a partner. What you've seen the weakness
of the Biden administration has led Amlo to do what anybody would do in AMLO's
footsteps, which is, it is not worth it for me, as Amlow,
to try to do anything with the cartels when the United States is basically
encouraging their business model. So during the Trump administration, we got the Mexican
government to put the equivalent of their National Guard down at their southern border to
prevent that pipeline, largely from the Northern Triangle countries, from even passing through
Mexico. Amlo has just abandoned all of that, and frankly is of the
view, as long as you quickly moved your way out of Mexico and go
across the US border, I'm okay with that. And it's not worth it
from his perspective to try to do anything to up the cartels because the countervailing
pull from the open borders policies are impeding that. So again, it is
the policies of the Biden administration that have encouraged am Low to turn a blind
eye at minimum, or as some Mexican policy experts are starting to believe.
You know, he may in some degree be compromised or partnered with them to
some degree, but you saw how to handle this relationship very positively with what
President Trump did, and you couldn't have a more polar opposite reaction than how
the Biden administration has handled the relationship. Yeah, and just as we wrap
up here, you've worked on immigration issues for a really long time, and
you know you can go back to, gosh, the side of the early
twenty tens that maybe even been before that, when the Associated Press decided it
was no longer okay to refer to a aliens or illegal immigrants. I think
in the style guide, I don't know that you can actually use either.
I don't think you can say illegal aliens or illegal immigrants. And being compliance
with the Associated Press style Guide, which obviously dictates how most news outlets use
language around the country, local outlets, national outlets. And it's been going
on for a long time. So the sort of the terms of this debate
have been stacked against not just conservatives, but anybody who supports a more reasonable
policy towards the southern border security at the border, humanitarian rights at the border,
humanitarian the situation in general at the border. As somebody who who's been
in the space a long time, who's actually worked in the government, I
imagine you have seen the corruption of media, the failures of media up close.
Is there anything you can tell us? There's sort of like insight you
have from having worked on this and then seen, you know, the media
cover what you know happened because you actually were there, or you have the
numbers in front of you. Whatever it is, um you know, what
should people know about maybe what they're reading in the media and how the average
journalist is conveying what's actually happening versus what is actually happening. It's a great
question, and it's rather an unfortunate one that it has to be asked.
We don't have a curious media anymore, and in fact, I'd say that
they're very complicit in these policies. I'm a real stickler for language, particularly
statutory language. That's the lawyer in the words and precise words are important in
a matter. This notion that the term alien is offensive or in humane is
just absurd. It literally means an alien who is is a person who is
not a US citizen or US national. That's it. But what you see
through this, this creation of new terms, is an attempt to deceive the
public. Something else is going on. So for example, using undocumented instead
of illegal, well, undocumented clearly is designed to hide the fact that immigration
laws are being broken. Undocumented is both factually and legally inaccurate. But it
sounds kinder to just delay, reader, and that's exactly what it's done for.
Like I mentioned earlier, asylum seeker, that is not a term in
our immigration laws. It doesn't mean anything. I mean, I could be
an asylum seeker, that doesn't mean it's very different from being in a side
lead, which is someone who actually qualifies for a psylum and you see the
repress. You know, they will describe, you know, these tales of
people who come from whatever country. They'll call them an asylum seeker. But
then they'll relay their story about how, you know, they lost their job
or their crops dried up, they're looking for work. Now a single one
of those reasons is the grounds for asylum in the United States. But you're
not going to see anybody in the legacy media say here's why they say they're
coming. However, under US immigration law, this is not a valid claim
for asylum. They leave that part out, and so they allow you to
feel sympathy for the plight of these people, which I sympathize with them as
well. However, I sympathize with the American people who are struggling mightily under
the failed policies of the Biden administration, and you can sympathize with them,
but also recognize that we have laws, we have eligibility criteria, and if
you don't qualify, it's really inappropriate and it is literally unlawful for you to
just take things in your own hands and come to this country. So that
the press does not describe things accurately, you know, they encounters is the
new word that this administration uses and is peddled by the media instead of apprehensions.
Apprehensions, of course, has a certain connotations. Encounter. You know,
oh, I encounter that It's like you just happen to bump into somebody
at the grocery store, as opposed to here's somebody who try to get across
the border and get past the board of patrol agents, or somebody who showed
up at a board of entry and didn't have a desa. Those are very
different things that and that's what you see being done with this terminology, and
it's clearly designed to influence the perceptions of the embarking people about what is going
on. And again, just as a final example herely every article that you
see or photos that are published show women and children that somehow everybody that is
cleaning and coming to the United States are vulnerable women and children. And there
are a lot of those, but there's a lot of military aged men who
are coming across the border. And these are the ones that are not turning
themselves in. They're often in camouflage, many of them are all so helping
marine the drugs across. And you have to ask yourself if it's never been
easier to turn yourself in and be released. This god away population and we're
talking well over a million who have gotten past border patrol agents and have just
disappeared, and we have no idea who they are. Those are your national
security threats, those are your public safety concerns, and that population is almost
never discussed in any of the articles around the border crisis. Rob law is
the director for the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration over at the America First
Policy Institute, Rob, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you,
I have a great one. Of course you too. You've been listening
to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emilijaschinski, culture editor here
at the Federalist. Will be back soon with more. Until then, be
lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray erm