This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast Warm what You Hear weekday
afternoons on the Drive. That's why I'm talking to Senator James Langford about this
controversy that's seemingly bubbled up overnight over really nothing when it comes to immigration.
Senator Langford, thanks for joining me. You beg glad to be able to
do it. So how did this all start? I know you've been working
on an immigration deal. I don't want to call it a bill, Senator,
because I don't even know if it's written down yet, because everybody keep
saying, oh, no, we haven't seen anything. Well, I didn't
think there was anything to see at this point. Keep there's not. There's
not a bill text that's been released yet. We're probably a few days away
from it, but getting really close at this point, actually getting bill text
out. But that has not stopped people from opposing something they've never ever seen,
and so that's been interesting. You know, I grew up in a
nation that talks about your innocent until proven guilty. Now I'm guilty until I
can prove myself this on at this point, on the border patrol or the
border security bill, let me just talk to you real quickly what it is,
sure, and then we talk about what some of the noise on the
internet is saying about it. But what it is is it's a complete change
in how we do many of the processes that we have complained about for years
and the cartels have exploited. For instance, when President Trump was president,
we had several months there where we had four thousand plus that were illegally crossing
the border and President Trump was throwing everything he could at it, and he
was complaining that he needed stronger laws on asylum, that the law was too
weak in that area. Well, this bill fixes that, where we get
very strong laws on asylum, so we never have those months like he had
in twenty nineteen with four thousand plus people illegally crossing the border during that time
period. So it strengthens the asylum laws. It adds a bunch of new
eligibility bars to people coming through the process that want to request it, so
they can't game the system. It ends catch and release by increasing the number
of folks that can actually be detained, and then it speeds up to hearings
by taking away a bunch of the appeals on this because right now you can
appeal forever. If you come across the border right now, you get released
for ten years into a backlog, and you can just stay in the country
for ten years while you await for your hearing. It does away with that.
Instead of being a decade before you get your hearing, you get it
done in days, weeks, or at the longest months, and then you
are deported. It also increases the number of deportation flights. It's just a
dramatic shift in what's actually happening at the border. And if folks would have
said we could get this a year ago, they would have never believed it
because Biden's president. But it is a dramatic change in increasing the strength of
our border laws. I will get to what Biden wants versus what is actually
in the agreement. And again I'm not going to call it a bill,
because that's the thing that I've been looking for, is some kind of written
text. And I know this is how this starts. You start with an
idea, then you start negotiating, then you come up with some text for
a bill, then you write the bill, then you debate the bill,
and hopefully it goes on from there. But this it all died down around
the eleventh of January. It got kicked up again, I want to say,
by Mitch McConnell, and then it died on Martin Luther King Day,
and then we didn't hear about it again until a group called Immigration and Accountability
Project leaked it to real American voices. I think Fox picked it up with
some numbers that you didn't even you didn't even quote. No, Nope,
sure didn't. And what was interesting is they make lots of accusations. One
of the accusations they make is this allows five thousand people a day, every
day to just come into the country. They and have even had some folks
that have said on radio even today on it on some of the national programs,
this is somebody standing at the border with a clicker like you're coming into
a concert, just counting off five thousand people every day releasing them the border.
Well, that's ridiculous. That is apps not what it is. And
I think everybody knows that, and anyone who doesn't has never even asked the
most basic question about the bill. Let me just give you context on this.
Every day but seven in the last four months, we've had more than
five thousand people crossing the border. We've just got these epic numbers. That's
more than our folks can handle. So what does the Biden administration do when
they are overwhelmed and they can't process the people. They just release them into
the country and say we'll process you later. So their default is release.
This switch is that where the default is deport. That if you get overwhelmed
and you can't handle that number of people to be able to process and deport,
then everyone gets deported in that process. So they're all turned around back
to Mexico, kind of like title forty two. So we change it from
five thousand people crossing the border, overwhelming the system, so release them all
to five thousand people crossing the border. We can't process them, so deport
them all. To give you just a side by side, we've had almost
a million people that have come across the border in the last four months that
have been released in the country. If this law, if this bill would
have passed four months ago, all million of those would have been deported instead.
There's also some things going on behind the scenes in your own party,
Senator, I know the Biden administration wants bragging rights here in the election year
and it seems like a lot of other people want bragging rights, including Donald
Trump in this election year. Sure, sure, yep. And note,
by the way, I don't know anyone that believes that Joe Biden is the
pro border security president. Everybody sees what he has done to the border.
We've had more illegal crossings in the last three years in the previous twelve years
combined. So there is this fear among some Republicans we can't pass anything on
border security now Joe Biden will get credit for it and everyone will think he's
the border security guy. I think that's impossible. Quite frankly, everyone's going
to see that this is a problem of his own creation. Biden has lots
of tools in his disposal he chose not to use. In fact, he
invited the world to be able to come across our border in an open border
policy, and they've come. So he created this completely. What's really happening
is Republicans have forced his hand. We actually held up funding four months ago
and said we will not do that funding until we get a change in law.
But now that we're getting right to the edge of actually dropping the bill
and working to be able to pass it, there are a group of Republicans
that are like, oh, wait, I hadn't thought about that this may
actually fix the border issues and Biden would get credit for it. And my
response to that has been, Okay, he's not going to get credit for
what we made him do. Number one. Number two on this, you
have an oath to the United States in the United States Constitution to protect this
nation. We have a massive national security risk of thousands of people acrossing our
border that are unvetted. We have people in the Tarror watch list. We
literally have people now coming across that have Hesbelot connections and ISIS connections right in
the middle of the terminal in the Middle East. If we don't take seriously
our national security and do whatever we can to be able to protect our border,
that is our own mistake. I will never put politics above our national
security. And for folks that are saying I don't want to have this vote
because it may affect a presidential election, I don't agree it will, by
the way, but I also cannot put an election ahead of national security the
American people. Well, let's also back up a little bit Senator James Langford
talking about this immigration controversy because it's not really a bill yet, it's not
an agreement yet. But you've been working on this since what did you why?
October? Okay, October. And so the stipulation that the Democrats are
putting on it for funding for Israel and Ukraine, that only creeped up lately,
right, Actually, that was actually from the very beginning. Okay,
what Biden had asked. What Biden had asked for at the beginning in October
was funding for Israel, Ukraine, for the Indo Pacific, for Taiwan,
and then also money for the border. And we said, I understand money
in the other areas, money doesn't fix the border issue. If we give
Biden more money, he'll just use it to bring more people across the border.
We're not going to do that. And so we actually dug in as
Senate Republicans and blocked that bill in October and said we will not do national
security funding without changes in border law. We've got to have a change in
law instead. And for two months Biden administration refused to be able to talk
to us about that, and then they finally came to the table right before
Christmas and said, okay, we'll actually start talking about changes in law on
this. But yeah, that's the process that we've actually gone through on this,
that we forced their hand to do it. So what is your hope
about the House. Let's say you get this whole tip wrapped up and passed
in the Senate. I heard Mike Johnson was grumbling about it. It's been
very mixed on this. So I'll tell you that the House a year ago
passed the border security law they call House Resolution to HR two is the term
of here a lot. It's a great bill. They unfortunately didn't even get
all Republicans on the bill. They were able to pass it. They had
more people at that time. They'd got no Democrats and most every Republican that
was on it. They passed the bill. It's a very good bill.
It's one I would support. We brought to the Senate. We didn't get
a single Democrat on that one either on it. So here's the challenge we
have now. It's the House says we want our bill, it's perfect,
but in the Senate that's never going to pass. We're not going to be
able to make law. So we're trying to figure out what can we do
to make law. So interestingly enough, in the House. I've had a
lot of House members that have said, we know the Senate it has to
be bipartisan to come out of the Senate. That's the nature of this.
It has to be bipartisan. So get just the best bill you can send
us, will work to amend it on the House side and see if we
can't make it better and send it back. That said, great with me.
Then let's actually just keep moving on it from here. But the goal
is what can we do to be able to secure our border rather than just
leaving it open like it is. So is that where things are now now
that the fire drill seems to be dying down. The hope is now that
we can actually bring it up. People can read it, review it.
They'll like parts of it, they won't like parts of it. They'll have
some sections say I wish that part wasn't there, and they'll have other sections
going, man, I wish that was a long long time ago. And
we'll have all that back and forth and people can evaluate it. Understanding this
is a bipartisan proposal that we've got to figure out how we can actually move.
If we can move it in the Senate, we'll send it into the
House. And the House will do their work and you'll give everybody plenty of
time to read the bell. That's correct, yep, yep. The House
rule of seventy two hours. We've had at least that in the Senate as
well to be able to go through that. Sometimes we have longer, but
yeah, they'll have time to be able to go through. And it won't
be a matter of dropping it at three o'clock in the afternoon and voting on
it at five. People need time to be able to look at it.
I don't remember who it was who said, if you can keep your head
when all about you are losing theirs, you'll be a man. My son
was that Kipling? I don't remember. But that's what you have to do,
Senator. This is what This has been a hair on fire moment for
absolutely no reason. Yep, it has been. And it's one of those
things that I look at and think everyone knows there's a problem on the border.
Now we got to figure out if we're going to solve it or if
we're going to just ignore it. And to me, it's we have an
obligation to be able to solve it. And if we don't get every single
element that we wanted. Can we get the big items? Can we make
a difference in asylum? Can we make a difference in deportations? Can we
get rid of all these appeals that actually take years and years and years and
or just dilatory, just slowing everything down on it. Can we do those
things? If we can, great, let's solve those and then let's keep
moving. And quite frankly, when we have a Republican president, they'll enforce
the border a whole lot better than the Democrat president will, but they'll have
a lot more tools in their hands to do it, no matter if it's
Trump or not. Senator James Langford, thank you for clearing the air and
for calling us today and stating your case. I'm glad to be able to
do it and look forward to everything, a chance to be able to read
and review the bill. We'll put it out on our website and get it
available all over the place. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons
from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation