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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm John Bickley.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I'm Georgia Howe. Today, we're discussing President Biden's executive order and its impact on the border crisis.
--:-- John Bickley: Joining us is Todd Bensman, Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and author of "Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History". Todd, thanks for coming on.
--:-- Todd Bensman: Thanks for having me.
--:-- John Bickley: So, on Tuesday, President Biden announced an executive order that he says would secure the border. What are the details of this order?
--:-- Todd Bensman: Well, it codifies that 2,500 illegal aliens a day will be allowed to cross and be accepted into the country and released quickly to apply for asylum. And then it says that if it goes above that, they can implement these sort of draconian expulsion policies where they'll push everybody back into Mexico to go through a port of entry, probably using the CBP1 app to get parole.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That sounds like a lot of loopholes.
--:-- Todd Bensman: The problem is that there are exceptions to the rule that swallow the whole rule. One of which is that when we're about to expel you, we're going to ask you a question. Are you afraid to return to Mexico? And if the answer is yes, boom, you're in. So, of course, everybody's going to say yes to that and they'll all be in.
--:-- John Bickley: That's a big problem. The White House is trying to blame Republicans for Biden's limited actions here, pointing out that Republicans twice voted down this bipartisan immigration bill. Why did Republicans reject it?
--:-- Todd Bensman: Well, the first reason is that it would have normalized 5,000 illegal entries every single day. It codified that as legislation, which essentially reverses the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which says zero are allowed to come in illegally. So, that's the first nonstarter that it would allow millions of people a year to illegally cross the border, supplanting the current number, which is zero, at least as a goal.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And what about the other reasons?
--:-- Todd Bensman: Number two is it also promised draconian pushback and expulsion measures, fast-tracking asylum, trying to clear backlogs, adding border patrol agents, et cetera. But it was riven with the same kind of exceptions that swallow the whole rule. For example, if you say you're afraid to return to Mexico, we let you in. We're going to fast track the asylum process from years to 180 days, but there's no detention involved. So, everybody that comes in for the shorter 180 days is free to disappear and they will and do all of them just disappear.
--:-- John Bickley: That's a huge problem. Now, you mentioned deportation. What are the numbers? Do we know how many illegal border crossers the Biden administration has actually deported?
--:-- Todd Bensman: I don't have it in front of me, but they do provide a number, which is in the hundreds of thousands. But the numbers that they provide are deceptive because a huge number of the people that are being removed are Mexicans. Probably the majority are Mexicans, and they're counting the ones that are turned around at the border. And then the Mexicans just come right back in an hour later somewhere else.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's a big issue. What kind of risk does this opening up of the border pose to the American people?
--:-- Todd Bensman: According to FBI Director Chris Wray, a very significant risk of terror attack from the border. And according to the Department of Homeland Security's 2024 threat assessment, the border situation right now has created elevated vulnerability to terror attack.
--:-- John Bickley: That's a serious concern. Now, the ACLU and other leftist groups immediately threatened to file lawsuits against the order. Does it even have a chance of actually being implemented by the Biden administration?
--:-- Todd Bensman: I don't believe that there was ever any intention to implement this thing. I think it's a device that was probably engineered by the Biden administration with its allies who are suing right now to actually lawsuit it to death immediately so that they can then turn around and blame the Republicans for killing that bill that they needed so badly in time for the televised debate coming up.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's a pretty cynical view.
--:-- Todd Bensman: I believe that they put this thing up to be able to say, "God, look, the Republicans are forcing us into these impossible places that we were trying our best. We're doing everything we can to close this border. And the Republicans just keep blocking us because they want a festering wound that hurts America so that they can gain power in the November election."
--:-- John Bickley: That's a pretty effective narrative. Final question. We've seen record illegal immigration under Biden. It's not even close to anything we've seen in recent decades. Did this just happen to happen on his watch because of a confluence of events globally, or does he own this crisis?
--:-- Todd Bensman: I've written a whole book about this that documents painstakingly how his campaign promises in 2019 galvanized and incited the entire world to start marching on the U.S. border, and that they were all right there on the border on Inauguration Day when the policies implemented, and that on that very day, they began rushing through by the hundreds of thousands. So, I don't believe that there was some big sudden climate change move that happened on Inauguration Day or a big hurricane struck that day in Central America or that everything just went to hell in a handbasket in 150 different countries around the world on Inauguration Day.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's a pretty clear conclusion.
--:-- Todd Bensman: They were policies. And I buttress my thesis on that with hundreds and hundreds of interviews with immigrants while I was in Mexico and Central America who told me point blank over and over again, the reason I'm coming and I'm coming now is because they're letting us in. Now they're letting us in, whereas the day before they were not letting us in.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, Todd, thank you so much for talking with us.
--:-- Todd Bensman: Thanks for having me.
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--:-- John Bickley: That's all for today's episode of Morning Wire. Thanks for listening.
