American Thought Leaders - Chad Wolf: Is the Federal Government Facilitating Child Trafficking?

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

“We’ve seen about 400,000 individuals being paroled into the United States … This is a historic abuse of the parole system,” says Chad Wolf, former Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and now executive director of the America First Policy Institute.What is the parole system and what is it meant for?What are the root causes of the crisis on the Southern border? How are current policies exacerbating it? And how are cartels exploiting the crisis?“We’re approaching about 500,000 unaccompanied children that have been trafficked across that border,” Mr. Wolf says. They have to pay the cartels or work off the debt when they get to America, he says. And the Biden administration did away with background checks and vetting of sponsors in America for such unaccompanied minors.“It’s almost as though the federal government is the last link in that human smuggling chain. They’re facilitating that child going to a sponsor—and not knowing who that sponsor is. Are we putting that child in harm’s way or not?”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

We're approaching about 500,000 unaccompanied children that have been trafficked across that border. It's almost as though the federal government is the last link in that human smuggling chain. They're facilitating that child going to a sponsor and not knowing who that sponsor is. In this episode, I sit down with Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and now executive director of the America First Policy Institute. In a little over three years we've apprehended about 350 known or suspected terrorists on terror watch lists. What are the root causes of the border crisis? Billions of dollars has flowed from the federal government.

They're now funding these organizations to help shelter, transport, and in many cases provide attorneys. And what is the parole system? And how is it being taken advantage of? We've seen about 400,000 individuals being paroled into the United States. This is a historic abuse of the parole system. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Chad Wolf, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Yeah, it's good to be here. Thanks for the invitation. Well, when we interviewed last, the border situation was very different. And I guess, why don't we start here? What did it look like then? And how does that compare to now at the time of filming? Well, I would actually probably go back all the way to 2019. 2020 was obviously COVID, so it looked a little different for a variety of different reasons. But what we had, if you recall, in the latter part of 2018 and certainly the first part of 2019 was a crisis. We described it as a crisis, nothing that compares to what we see today. But we started seeing illegal apprehension numbers along that southern border

start to rise. So we started doing a variety of different things like remain in mexico where the migrant protection protocols our asylum agreements with guatemala honduras el sábado we started removing more and more individuals that didn't have a legal right to be in the united states and then of course covet hit and everything started to grind to a stop so as the biden administration came in in January of 2021, they inherited a border for a variety of different reasons that was somewhat orderly and secure, probably the most secure border that I've seen in my lifetime. And then, of course, what we saw at the crisis that the Trump administration dealt with with you for a significant part of that how does that crisis compare to this crisis well I'll give you some monthly numbers and so in the heart of our crisis which is really the sort of the summer of 2019 we probably saw 40,000

maybe 50,000 illegal apprehensions over a given month. And you compare that today to 250 to 300,000 in a given month. And so you can see that the order of magnitude is three or four times as much. And so what the Biden administration has done, and specifically along that border, has blown any type of numerical value or metric off the chart. So it's very hard to describe what they've turned that border into as far as those illegal apprehensions, the gotaways, the crime, and everything that follows. Well, I want to touch on that because presumably

if the numbers are that dramatically larger of the apprehensions, then there's also these gotaways. Maybe just kind of remind us what the gotaways are. Yeah. So as people come across that border, they do so in about nine, eight or nine different sectors of Border Patrol. And so as Border Patrol picks those individuals up, what we call apprehensions, they're apprehending these migrants as they come across the border. In many cases, the migrants sit down and wait for Border Patrol because they know, at least under the Biden administration, they're going to be released into the interior of the country but there is a segment of individuals that don't want to be apprehended by border patrol and law enforcement

they want to abscond they want to get away for a variety of different reasons probably some are national security threats some are public safety threats they probably have a criminal record in their home country somewhere and they know that if they are picked up and that background is run, that they'll be removed pretty quickly. And so they don't want to come in contact with law enforcement. And so what we've seen under the Biden administration is anywhere between 1.8 and 2 million. That's the known gotaways, right? Those are the individuals that Border Patrol either has seized them on a radar feed, a camera feed, and they have some other ways to determine if large groups are crossing in areas

where we don't have agents along that border. So 1.8 to two million, those are the known gotaways. And then of course the question is how many unknown gotaways? Individuals that we never see, we never encounter, and we don't know if they cross because we don't have full, what we would say, domain awareness across that border.

So you know and presumably we're talking about people who are trafficking either fentanyl, drugs, human trafficking is a big thing. I know that's something you know very important to you. And then of course there's the terrorists and I know there's been this kind of, I don't know if shocking is really the right word, but a significant number of people on terrorist watch lists that have been apprehended, raising the question of how many have not been apprehended. That's right. Well, to your first point, any individual that comes across that border is being trafficked. It's being trafficked by the cartels.

They have to pay a premium price to get across that border, anywhere from $5,000 to $35,000, depending where in the world you're coming from. Chinese nationals pay more than someone from Guatemala or Honduras. And so they're all being trafficked by the cartels in a variety of different ways. And so when we talk about the humane nature, right, I hear this a lot from the Biden administration, that they have a humane border security policy. I think it's anything but that, right, because they are encouraging more and more individuals, numbers that we have never seen before, to put their lives in the hands of traffickers and smugglers and cartel members that don't care about life.

They don't care about anything but making more and more money. And so that really concerns me. To your second point, obviously, there's the national security implications of what's going on along that border. Border Patrol agents usually sign up for this job. They go to Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, New Mexico for five or six weeks because they want to stop bad people and bad things from coming into this country. They want to be on the line doing that national security mission. And they're not being able to do that over the course of the last three years. They're mainly in Border Patrol facilities just processing migrants.

But the ones that they are able to apprehend, you indicated, in a little over three years, we've apprehended about 350 known or suspected terrorists on terror watch list identified by the U.S. government. And that's a startling number. So three years, 350, you contrast that with all four years of the Trump administration, and there were about 16. And so the question is, well, why have we seen the increase in number of those types of individuals? And I believe it's because they know what the rest of the world knows, which is if you want to try to come into the country illegally and remain in the country, now is your time to do that, given the policies that have been set up by the Biden administration. So let's look at those policies. You know, there's a lot of dimensions to how this actually happens. There's the incentive structures that are associated with

these various policies. And there's also various organizations that believe it's the right thing to do for whatever reason, or funded to do, to facilitate the process and the combination of that. That's at least how I view it. I'm wondering if you could kind of speak to that and just sort of paint a picture of how this whole complex works. I think one of the primary reasons,

and there's not just one reason, there's a variety of different reasons that we see the increase in the numbers along that border. But I think, you know, one that you can trace this back to is this catch and release policy. I think you've heard this term a lot. And that implies that Border Patrol will catch them, but then they get released into the interior of the country. And so if you're a migrant and you're coming to the United States for any number of reasons, but maybe you're an economic migrant, want a better job you want a better life for your your family if you can get into the United States by claiming asylum knowing

that that's probably a fraudulent claim because economic reasons is not a you know a primary reason to claim asylum but yet you're released into the United States only hours later maybe a day later that's your end goal and everything else we can talk about asylum, we can talk about parole, which I hope we do. We can talk about all these things. But for the migrants, all they know is they came in, they came in illegally, they were apprehended by law enforcement and released. And as long as you have that incentive structure in place, which we currently have had for three years now, you're going to see more and more individuals because that's the end goal is to

be released into American communities and then be able to work. And if you're going to see more and more individuals because that's the end goal is to be released into American communities and then be able to work. And if you're claiming asylum, you get a work permit five months later. If you get parole, you get a work permit almost immediately. And so they're here, they're able to work, they're able to send money back, and they're able to do a variety of different things. So until you disrupt that, until you start enforcing the law, both immigration enforcement and border security, you're going to see that continuum continue to occur. And that's why we've seen these numbers kind of remain at really historically high levels, right? Last month in February, it was over 256 nationwide encounters of illegal aliens, 256,000. That is an astronomically high number.

Let's talk about this, you know, the distinction between parole and asylum. It's actually quite significant. It is. But I think in general for most people, we kind of conflate them. Yeah. So you can come across and claim asylum.

And so let me back up. Lots of countries do this. They call them refugees. We are one of the only countries in the world that actually separate refugees from asylees. And there is no difference. It's only one is overseas and another one shows up at our southern border mainly. We get some from our northern border, but mainly our southern border. Their refugees are now asylees. But they have found, through the cartels and others,

that the biggest loophole to get into the country and to remain here is to claim asylum. And there are some very specific requirements that need to be met under U.S. law to actually have a valid asylum claim. And it's very difficult, very difficult to prove in court, which is why you see many of these individuals never make it to court, and they abscond into the U.S. and never to be seen again. But they know that. And so people

will come in across the border, claim asylum. And what we see now is they don't get a court date until five or six years later because there's so many people overwhelming the system. And I might just comment because I'm actually quite familiar with the asylum system here, having focused on China-related issues, especially religious persecution, prisoner of conscience. It's a very important system. And even though it's very onerous and difficult, there's still quite a few people that come in through the asylum system. It's very valuable. But this is an abuse of that system.

Yeah. I mean, there are individuals around the world that need asylum protections that the U.S. offers. And so the whole idea, certainly during the Trump administration, I think really should be the basis is how do you identify those people that have legitimate asylum claims and get them those protections as soon as you can so they don't have to wait five or six years and be in this limbo state? And then how do you remove the fraudulent asylum claims so you're not overwhelming the system? And so I think that's the issue that we tried to address during the Trump administration. The Biden administration has these numbers, they know these statistics, and yet they're not really doing much about it. So you see this abuse of the asylum system occurring at the same time. You have something historically happening under the Biden administration, and that's the abuse of the parole system. Okay. And so what they have found is that to claim asylum, you actually

have to be on the southern border, right? You have to have a foot inside the United States, for lack of a better phrase. And what the Biden administration said is, look, I've got individuals coming from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, and others that are trying to make it to the southern border and claim asylum. Why don't we just give them parole? Why don't we give them parole in their home countries and fly them into the United States? And so now we see this parole authority, which is a case-by-case basis. This is in U.S. law, case-by-case basis. And it's got to be for either national security reasons or significant public benefit for the United States. And yet we've seen about 400,000 individuals being paroled into the United States.

And I believe that's an abuse of the parole authority. I think others, certainly the Republicans in the House, believe that, which is one of the primary reasons they impeached Secretary Mayorkas. And so you see this abuse of the primary reasons they impeached Secretary Mayorkas. And so you see this abuse of the parole system happening. And I think what a lot of maybe viewers won't understand is that as soon as you place someone in the parole system, you're essentially acknowledging they have no asylum claim. They have no legitimate reason to be here in the United States other than you paroling them in. And yet we've done this for, like I said, 380, almost 400,000 individuals, primarily from four countries. And we were told by the Biden administration that if we paroled these folks in, we would see fewer and fewer of them. It's kind of take the burden

off the southern border, when in fact, we've seen the opposite. We've actually seen more and more of these individuals trying to make it here. And just, you know, just to be clear, so parole basically means that the U.S. has some interest in having these people in the country. That's how I've always understood. I think you said that was one. What's the other? Yeah, so it's either a significant public benefit or it's, you know, there's a national security reason. So lots of times people get paroled in if they have to testify at a major trial, or they need perhaps a healthcare procedure done at the Mayo Clinic or another, you know,

where they don't have that in their home country. So you're paroled in and then you leave. This idea of paroling individuals in because you're from Venezuela, or you're from Cuba, or you're from Nicaragua, just because, again, those are all very poor countries, and I understand that. But that's not a legitimate reason to come to the United States. There's a lot of poor countries in the world, and there's a lot of individuals that would like to pursue a better life here in the United States. But there are legal avenues and legal pathways to do that, and I don't believe that parole is one of them. And historically, Republican and Democrat administrations alike have never done this. This is a historic abuse of the parole system. You know, one of the things I've been hearing a lot about is just that a lot

of people involved in the various organizations that are participating in this whole process, some of the people involved just deeply believe that borders are sort of a thing of the past and shouldn't be there in the first place. So they're very, very serious about kind of making this happen because they feel like, I guess, over time, this border won't mean anything anymore, I guess. Yeah, I think it goes back to, you know, what are the foundational principles that you're basing your immigration policy on? And I think what we've to, you know, what are the foundational principles that you're basing your immigration policy on? And I think what we've seen out of the Biden administration is those foundational principles line up so closely with the far left of their party that anyone should be able to come to a country for any reason.

Right. If they're seeking a better life or their home country is dangerous or, you know, they don't like their next door neighbor, whatever their reason is, that the United States is the shining city on the hill and they should be allowed to come into the United States. And that's just not US law, but that's the policy foundation from which a lot of these nonprofits, non-governmental organizations operate on.

And so when you devise a system that way, and for the first three years of this administration, I would say it's still ongoing into the fourth year, your main concern was how do I process more and more individuals across that border quicker? It wasn't how do I stop the illegal traffic? It wasn't how do I deter this type of behavior? How do I make sure that people aren't being raped and murdered and others by the cartels and the smugglers? It was just how do I keep the flow going as quickly as possible? So I think there's some foundational so that's one. The second one is that no one should be removed from the country and

that the US is the only place that you can seek asylum in the entire world which is crazy right? There are other safe countries both in Central America and South America and others that that can claim asylum on. And so what you see a lot of is people venue shopping, claiming that only in the United States can they claim asylum and be safe in this world. And that's just simply not the case. But if you believe all of those things and you devise a system that way, which the Biden administration has done, well, then that plays into the goal of a lot of these nongovernmental organizations that we see both south of the border that help move migrants to the border, I would say in loose contact with the cartels,

but also what we see on the U.S. side of the border, once they're released from federal government custody, then the NGOs take over there as well. Well, so let's talk about them. I mean, there's a whole variety of agencies, some of them actually government agencies that are involved, some are multinational, transnational agencies like UN agencies. And then there's also nonprofits, and they're all kind of part of this system, right? And maybe you can kind of lay out how all that works. JOHN MCCUTCHAN- Well, all the NGOs are not the same. We need to be careful it's not just one grouping. They all have different roles.

And some have been around for years and decades and have been helping individuals take care of them, shelter them, and things of that nature. Some are in it for the right reasons. And I that nature. Some are in it for the right reasons, and I'm guessing some are not in it for the right reasons, because you've seen the amount of money that have gone to them and flowed to them over the last three years increase dramatically.

And where do those flows come from? Yeah, so they come from, obviously, private donations they get, but at least in the last three years, a tremendous amount of money, in the billions of dollars, has flowed from the federal government. So that's American taxpayers. They're now funding these organizations to help shelter, transport, and in many cases, provide attorneys so that migrants can then either sue or contest

what the U.S. government is trying to do to them. So just imagine that. You've got U.S. tax, you know, the government saying you've got no legal right to be here, but yet the U.S. taxpayers funding their attorney to say, well, no, no, no, I think they do have a right to be here and fulfilling that. And that's for the ones that don't just get released into the country? Well, it's for any and, yeah, and every. It just depends on where they are in their asylum proceedings. It depends on which non-governmental organizations they're working with and the like. A lot of them are being used by the Biden administration to provide shelter and housing, right? And so because border patrol facilities are overwhelmed, DHS facilities are overwhelmed. And so as soon as they release these individuals in Brownsville, in Del Rio, in El

Paso, they're out of federal government custody custody and then the NGOs take over and say, okay, well, where do you wanna go? Do you wanna go to New York? We'll buy your ticket, which is reimbursed by the American taxpayer, to New York, to Chicago, wherever you might be, and then when they get there, there's facilities there and shelters there that they can go to.

Again, it's like, it's just a self, it's a prophecy. The more that you fund this, the more that you build these facilities, the more that you encourage this, guess what, the more and more individuals that are going to use this. And what about the UN agencies, or how do they fit in? Yeah, I mean, so overall, UN agencies, for the most part, are more closely aligned, I should say, with a lot of the goals of these NGOs than they are with an enforcement regime that we certainly saw during the Trump administration. They also believe that anyone, you know, should be able to claim asylum anywhere they want

should remain in the United States while that occurs, despite U.S. law saying something very different than that. And so there was always a challenge, certainly when I was at DHS and working with these groups and these individuals. They didn't like enforcement action. They didn't like holding individuals accountable for their actions and their decisions. They take a very, very different approach to that. And so sometimes it's difficult to work with them. And is there, you mentioned how the funding works, right? There's private donors. Presumably those can go to any of these entities. And you mentioned there's a lot of federal money, billions. I heard the number 20 billion at some point. I think we had a piece on that a while.

I mean, really. It's not only DHS funding, but it's also HHS funding and other parts of the federal government. So it could certainly be up to that level. And are there these international money flows to supporting this, I guess, that you're aware of? From a governmental perspective, I'm not that aware, other than the U.N. Obviously, we'll provide them funding. But you're definitely going to have some other wealthy individuals that are probably overseas that are contributing to this as well right and so the the network of how they are funded has always been a challenge to really uncover a lot of

them are very upfront about it others are not upfront about it and so it's it's hard to see that but you know if they're vying for US dollars for the most part they have to do that in an open competition like any other company who wants to sell to the government does. But the way in which, you know, DHS writes what they need, it's very specific. There's only so many of these groups that can actually fulfill that mission. So that money continues to go to them. And if you go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, out of DHS, which all of this grant money is flowing through, there's a long list of all of these different NGOs or charities that have gotten money over the last three years.

So the other thing that we've covered a bit is, let's call it systems being overwhelmed. So we have cities that are being, are saying, the mayors are saying, and these are mayors of sanctuary cities, actually, they're saying that this is too much, like this is, something has to be done, right? And then we also have, I mean, we've done some reporting on this of hospitals unable to deal with the overwhelming costs that don't have insurance associated with them. There's multiple examples, but there's this whole influx that's creating this kind of system overload. It makes me think of this idea that, you know, you can, I've heard this and I'm curious what you think about it. You can have an open border or you can have a social welfare state, but you can't have both. It's such an interesting point because when we talk about overloading the system,

and certainly when you see these numbers, and these numbers really started in 2021, so we're sitting here in 2024, but we've had several years of this. And what you heard initially from the governor of Texas and the Republican governor of Arizona at the time in 2021, after a short period of time, it was only six or seven months, that their border towns were being overwhelmed. And I think people were just kind of like, oh, yeah, well, you know, that's what happens, and didn't pay it any time, you know, any real attention, and they kept saying no, like our towns are being overwhelmed. Boy, we've got a population of 20,000, but yet I've got 10,000 migrants in town. Like, we can't sustain this, but you only started seeing national outrage when it started moving to cities, as you mentioned, to New York City, to Chicago, to Denver, to all these other areas,

and I think in large part, as you indicated, they're sanctuary cities, as you mentioned, to New York City, to Chicago, to Denver, to all these other areas. And I think in large part, as you indicated, they're sanctuary cities, but you had mayors, blue city mayors, Democratic mayors saying, whoa, what's going on here? And why is my city having an influx of illegal migrants? We can't take care of them all. We have a hard time sheltering them. We have a hard time taking care of them. What is going on is only then, I think, in the public conscience, people started saying, oh, wait a minute. What happens along that southern border doesn't stay there. You know, the end game for a lot of these migrants is not Brownsville, Texas. It's not even Houston, Texas. It's Chicago. It's New York. It's other cities and it's other places throughout the country. And I think only until we started seeing large numbers of that, particularly in blue cities, sanctuary cities, that people started to wake up and say, well, maybe this is a bigger issue than perhaps we acknowledged.

Governor of Texas and others along that border were telling you from the very start, this is going to be a problem because we're already overwhelmed. It's seven, eight months into 2021, and we're overwhelmed. And I think you've only seen that increase. So I think it's, and what it shows you, it's a bipartisan issue. It's not just a Republican issue that says the border's out of control. You have Democratic mayors, you have Democratic governors saying the border's out of control. Please do something about this because we can't sustain this over the long run.

Well, and obviously, you know, the health care is, you know, very significant. Yeah, it's a good question because people often say, hey, well, you know, what's wrong with all the illegal immigration that we see here? Aren't we better for it as a country? And the way I answer that is obviously, yes, we're a country of immigrants, but you need to come the right way. You plan for it. You need to be vetted. We need to understand who you are. And so when you see this influx of folks coming across that border, it's not only the illegal activity and the fact that they're breaking laws coming across that border, but it's the downstream effects, which

you certainly mentioned. The health care systems get overwhelmed, public education systems, all these children coming into public schools where English is not their first language, it's their second language. Are the school systems resourced to address that? Public health or public safety systems, you know, law enforcement is asked to do more and more, particularly along that border, and yet their resources have remained the same. So there's a lot of downstream effects here that I think we're only starting to recognize as a real problem.

Well, and I just, I don't know actually the situation of wages, for example, but the sort of the assumption is that the aliens, to use your term, will make less than Americans, right? Or green card holders, right? Is that, I don't know if you've looked at the numbers and seen that that's true. Is it actually taking jobs away

or is there just such a huge job market right now that doesn't matter? I mean, how does that work? So there's a lot of inconsistent data on this front. I would say that there is certainly a concern that the more and more individuals that you're allowing to come in, obviously illegally, that qualify for work permits are now competing,

for the most part, with low-skilled jobs that they could be taking away from Americans. I would say very few of these individuals are coming over with advanced degrees. Sure. Right, and so there's a whole different visa program that we have that deals with that. But there is certainly an argument to be made.

It's not just 30,000 are coming over, but in one month, what we saw in last December was 300,000. And so if you continue this month after month and year after year after year, it is going to have some effect on U.S. jobs, U.S. wages and the like. I don't know that I've seen enough data to say

what is that, how is that affecting it at the moment, but undoubtedly it's going to affect it in the long run. We just may not have seen it yet. Now, saying all that, there is certainly some low-skilled jobs here in the United States that are usually taken by migrants. We call them seasonal workers or H-2A workers, which allows you to come in to do a seasonal job and then you leave and you go back. We know that that visa system is badly abused. We talked about that during the Trump administration. So there's a number of things that you can do on the legal immigration side,

right? We have about 75 different visa programs that allow individuals to come in, either to visit, to work, or to be a tourist of some kind. And so the question is, does some of that need to be reformed and looked at? Probably the answer is yes. But until you get that border under control, there's really no reason to do all that. But until you get that border under control, there's really no reason to do all that if an individual can come across the border, be released, or get parole, and get a work permit the day after.

I want to jump to a different topic. We talked about trafficking a little bit, and just how effectively all of this that's basically coming illegally through the border is trafficking. Now, I want to talk about some specific trafficking, child trafficking. We could say vulnerable persons, but also trafficking

of drugs and fentanyl. Maybe these would be the big context that I'm interested in. So how has that changed as a result of these kind of, these kind of numbers? Sure, let me just say, you know, anyone trafficked anywhere is terrible. But you're exactly right. When we think about trafficking,

obviously the most vulnerable populations are ones that we need to try to understand and see what is occurring. And so, when I think about that, I think about obviously tender age children that are being trafficked across that border. And there's a term that we use, we call them UACs, unaccompanied alien children.

And what we've seen is that number explode during the last three years because as you see more and more individuals coming, you're basically gonna see every population, whether it's single adult males, whether it's families, or whether it's these unaccompanied children, all of these numbers are exploding because of just the overall numbers increasing as well.

And so over the course of the Biden administration, we're approaching about 500,000 unaccompanied children that have been trafficked across that border. These are children that don't come across with any parent or any guardian, any family member at all. They are trafficked by the cartels. They are either having to pay a fee or they're having to work off a fee once they get here. And so all of these children are unfortunately probably being abused of some kind or worse, particularly if you're a female. And so they're coming in. And so to know this and to know these numbers and to know that they're being abused that way but you're not by administration hasn't

really been doing anything about it hasn't been putting safeguards in place right during the Trump administration we tried to do a number of things because all these individuals are released to sponsors here in the United States right right they go to HHS Health and Human Services and they're released to sponsors and so we increase the vetting of those sponsors. We wanted to know who was coming to pick that child up. But we also wanted to know all the other adults in that household where that child's going, who are they? So we wanted to do background checks and vetting on all of that.

Well, the Biden administration canceled all of that because what they found is that that takes time, and their facilities were backing up with more and more children and so they said the easiest way to get the children out of the facilities is to loosen the the vetting requirements which i think is extremely dangerous well in a case in point i had a whistleblower tara rodas come on the show a while back and she just you know had this kind of mind where she could you know identify patterns and ended up you know finding all sorts of examples of these sponsors in some cases obviously being you know people of ill intent cartel related and it's really this is this is one thing we haven't mentioned that a lot of this is driven by specific cartels that are monetizing, I guess, people, human misery,

and drugs. JOHN MCCUTCHAN- Oh, yeah. I mean, again, the cartels only care about one thing, and that's money. And how do they make more of it? The human misery, the human toll, the death, the destruction of these individuals, they care nothing about.

But if you go back to the children aspect there and sort of how that works, a child is trafficked across that border. U.S. government picks it up, Border Patrol agent, then transfers it to HHS, who then hands it off to a sponsor. It's almost as though the federal government is the last link in that human smuggling chain. They're facilitating that child going to a sponsor

and not knowing who that sponsor is. Are we putting that child going to a sponsor and not knowing who that sponsor is. Are we putting that child in harm's way or not? We should be doing everything that we can to first discourage families and parents of putting their children in the hands of cartel members to come here. But if they do get here, then we should be understanding who are we releasing these individuals to. And then, of course, the family units that come across. Some are fraudulent, right? Some are being trafficked. And during the Trump administration, we did rapid DNA testing along that border to say, is that child coming over with a parent who's actually a parent, or are they lying to us? And trying to understand, because we want to make sure we take that child out of that dangerous

situation. Again, the Biden administration has done away with that as well. And what about the other side of trafficking, which is the drug trafficking? Oh, sure. Yeah. Obviously, fentanyl is a big issue. Today, it kills about 100,000 Americans on average, and there's no other place in the world or anything else that is killing that many number of Americans every year. And the majority of this, the precursors, a lot of them come from China. They come into Mexico, repackaged, and then across that southern border. I may add through ports, which are run by the Chinese Communist Party, in effect. So there's a kind of symbiotic relationship that's developed here.

Oh, there's a connection, 100%. Yeah. And they're flowing through that southern border and obviously coming into American communities everywhere. And so, you know, I believe public enemy number one for the United States should be the Mexican cartels. We know where they operate. We know what they do. We've admired the problem. We keep saying it's a problem. It's a problem. We've admired the problem for long enough. It's time either Mexican government does something about it, and they have their limitations for a variety of different reasons, or the U.S. government needs to do something about it and say, you killing hundreds of thousands of Americans over the course of one year or two years is not acceptable any longer. Give me an example of something that would actually be effective, because I guess things

have been attempted. Yeah. Well, I would say for the longest time, we've looked at this issue as a law enforcement issue. So agencies like ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or the DEA, Drug Enforcement Agency, they've all done sort of law enforcement operations. And even elements of DHS would do this from time to time. You have some success there. You were able to bring down, you were able to bring certain people to justice here in the United States and bring them to a court of law,

and that's all great. But what we see is as soon as you pick up one as soon as you take the head off of the cartel someone else pops up and someone else pops up and so how do you get at to I don't know that you'll ever be able to eradicate them but how do you diminish their power to an extent that you're not seeing the impact that you see on the trafficking and obviously the illegal narcotics and so there's a variety of ways you can push the Mexican government to do more. Again, some would say that they're actually compromised, that the current president of Mexico is actually very closely tied to some of these cartels. What you need to do is you need to use leverage. President Biden needs to use his

leverage to say, I'm tired of seeing this happen day after day, year after year. I'm looking at designating these individuals and these groups as foreign terrorist organizations. The use of military force. I'm not saying he should do this, but he should use it as leverage to get the Mexican government to do more.

There are things that you can do on the offensive cyber operations. There are things that you can do in the intelligence community. You've just got to have the will to do it and you've got to make it a priority. It's never been a priority, I would say, in the history of our country

to do this to such a close neighbor. But the fact that they are so close and there are ungoverned elements of that country that are impacting Americans every day, I'd say it should be issue number one. Well, and I just might add that drug warfare, you know, is an kind of official form of unconventional or unrestricted warfare that the Chinese Communist Party employs, right? Yeah. It's a great point.

And, I mean, it's a disaster. Yeah. You know, some people say, look, does the Chinese government know about this? Well, the answer is, it's a disaster. Yeah. You know, some people say, look, does the Chinese government know about this? Well, the answer is, of course they do. And, you know, they're indirectly killing 100,000 Americans every year. And are we at war with China? Some would argue.

Well, China says that they're in a people's war with America. Yeah. So, you know, we need to understand and recognize the reality of what's going on there. And there's a lot of other Chinese threats to the homeland, a variety of different ways. This is just one that's very important for people to understand, that this is not just happening because the cartels are powerful. Yes, they are powerful, but they're getting a lot of, again, these precursors and others from mainland China. So I want to talk about China a little bit more because one of

the things I'm just reminded, right, that a lot of the people coming across the border are actually single or at least coming across as single military-aged males, which, you know, obviously is a kind of concern. I don't know how many families, what proportion would be actual families, but certainly there's quite a number of Chinese as well. In our assessment, it's actually a mix of people. Some of the people are people that actually do have some credible asylum claim, and they see that as just

as an opportunity to get in, right? And then others don't have that credible claim and are seeing these military aged males. And so how do you view that? Yeah, I think that's right. And it goes back to an earlier point, right? Which is the system is so overwhelmed at the moment that it's hard to identify those perhaps Chinese nationals that are fleeing persecution from the Communist Party for a variety of different reasons. But it's not in totality of all the individuals coming over, not all of them are.

And so, again, it's hard to identify who is and who isn't when they don't be able to get their court date for six years from now. And who knows what's going to happen to them in six years. But I think the rise of Chinese nationals coming across that border, as you indicated, most are single adults. I'd say overall, if you look at the entire population coming across that border, the majority are single adults. There's a lot of families. There's a lot of children. overall, if you look at the entire population coming across that border, the majority are single adults. There's a lot of families, there's a lot of children, but the majority continue to be single adults. Particularly during that, what we call military age,

you know, somewhere between 18 and 35 that we see coming across that border. And the numbers of Chinese nationals have spiked over the last three years so significantly that something is going on. I can't put my finger on it, but there seems to be an effort underway to push more and more Chinese nationals. Now, that could also coincide

with a very lax border security policy of the Biden administration. So the two could be working hand in hand, but we've never seen the numbers that we've seen of Chinese nationals coming across that border illegally. What do you make of this argument? I've heard that, you know, the census is conducted based on total numbers of people in various states versus the number of people who can actually vote. And that this is kind of being used as a strategy possibly to, you know, increase the number of electoral seats?

Obviously, the Democratic Party in this case, we'd be saying that. So what do you make of that? Yeah, it's an interesting, right? The census is used for a variety of different things for funding for social services, and things of that nature. But I think what you've heard from a number of Democratic politicians, frankly, lately is that, oh, no, they need to be counted because for redistricting purposes or for other things. But so this idea that certain districts are going to have an influx of illegal aliens that somehow maybe gets them more representation in Congress doesn't feel right to a lot of Americans. That's not the way the system was designed to work. But what we see, again, under the Biden administration is that that's exactly how they designed the system over the last three years. And I think many Americans are kind of shaking their heads saying this doesn't make any sense. So you're not sure, you're basically, you're not sure if it's intentional.

Well, I think it is on some. I mean, I think you've had some Democratic politicians actually say this, that we actually want to see more in because of redistricting purposes. So they've said the quiet part out loud, frankly. Now, these individuals at least cannot vote in federal elections, but laws can change. And we've seen certainly at the state level, allowing these individuals to vote in state elections. That's a slippery slope, obviously, to then how do they vote in state elections. That's a slippery slope, obviously, to then how do they vote in federal elections. And then you've got the Democratic Party saying, well, there's no voter ID should be needed

to vote in federal elections. So you see where the concern comes in from most Americans saying, we've got an influx of individuals coming over. They've said they want them for redistricting purposes. There's no voter ID to vote in federal elections. So how do we know individuals who are voting are, in fact, U.S. citizens? And so I think a lot of, again, a lot of Americans are saying this doesn't feel right. Right. Well, I think,

and certainly in municipal elections, I think there's been all sorts of laws that have been passed that kind of facilitate that particularly in Arizona? Arizona has a few of those at the state level So here we are. Yeah, okay if you were to you know, get the mantle again, you know, what would you What would you do? Yeah, well, it's a big undertaking. Yeah, it's a big undertaking. You're not going to be able to turn this around overnight, but there are certain things that you can do starting on day one that signal not only to the American people,

because I think that's important, but also to the cartels, the smugglers, the traffickers, and everyone that's involved that we've talked about, everyone that's involved in this chain of events. You send a signal that it's not going to be business as usual involved that we've talked about, everyone that's involved in this chain of events, you send a signal that it's not going to be business as usual as it has been the last four years. We're actually going to go back to enforcing border security law. You can restart border wall construction in priority locations that we know have been stopped essentially for

the last three and a half years. That is a force multiplier for Border Patrol. It's not the only solution out there. There's other things that you've got to do. The Remain in Mexico program is very effective, and it can be approved upon. There are things that can be done that start to slow that flow, the whole catch-and-release policy. You've got to turn that around. So you're talking about changing the incentive structures here. Yeah, changing the incentives, changing the policies.

The Biden administration, which we haven't talked about, they came in and said, well, anyone coming across that border illegally is not is that alone is not a priority for removal. Well, that's crazy. They've broken the law. You know, if they if they don't qualify for asylum, they should be a priority for removal. They shouldn't be here. They have no legal right to be here. So let's remove them. So you've got to let ICE law enforcement officers do their job and start to remove

individuals. This idea that removing or repatriating individuals is somehow a dirty term or phrase, it's an integral part of immigration law anywhere in any country. You have to be able to pick people up that don't have a legal right to be here and to remove them. That is the deterrence in the system. And the Biden administration has taken that deterrent away for the most part. Now they're turning people back around under Title 42, and they're removing some, but the overall percentage is very, very low considering the number of folks coming into the country. I mean, how many people are in the country? Very legally? Yeah.

What are the estimates? Yeah, it's a tough question. I recall at the beginning, actually in the Obama administration, the figure was around 11 million. Well, that was several years ago. And then of course, we have what we have. So my guess is it's north of 20 million, would be my guess. And so the question is,

what do you do with those individuals? That's, you know, if you're talking about some level of removal, it's to say it's a large operation. It's a tough job. It's a gross understatement. Yeah, it's a tough job. But as I like to say, just because it's tough doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.

You gotta get at it on day one, and you gotta continue to build on it as the days and the months and the years go by. And you put priorities in place. You get force multipliers in. You incentivize folks to leave early, what we call VD, voluntary departure. Individuals that are here illegally, but if they voluntarily depart, then they can come back into the country legally. If they if they voluntarily depart, then they can come back into the country legally. If they don't voluntarily depart and you have to remove them, then they're barred from coming back into the country illegally for either five or ten years. It depends on the circumstances. Was there an incentive structure that we can

put in place that says, look, if you came here illegally, you need to leave, and then you need to apply to come here illegally and come into the country the right way. There's a variety of different things that should be tried and can be done. They're all hard. They're not easy. Otherwise, they would have been done already. But we should get to work at it.

DANNY HERMESYER- Well, and then sorting through the actual asylum cases, because those exist. And the US has always been kind of a leader in taking people who need asylum, right? I mean, this is... Well, yeah, this idea, you know, and I certainly, you know, was on the receiving end of this during the Trump administration where we were called all sorts of names and said, you know, we hated migrants. And that's just, that's not true. There were, you know, a million green cards on average that the U.S US government gives out every single year

under the Trump administration, under the Biden administration. We are a very welcoming country, more so than any other country in the world. We just ask, or my view is, just ask to come the right way, come the legal way. It's the illegal immigration that I have the most concerns with, the most problems with,

because of not only the effect on U.S. communities and obviously the illegal narcotics, but I think most Americans just have a basic sense of fairness. And they say, look, I'm playing by the rules, I'm paying my bills. People, if they want to come to the country, should do it the right way. And they see this influx of folks coming illegally. And again, the people that are coming today are very different than what we saw maybe a decade ago or two decades ago. They feel very entitled. They're asking where their plane ticket is. They're asking where their hotel is. All these different things. So I think we're getting a different type of migrant here in the U.S. And I think that's impacting. I think that's it will impact what we see in the years to come.

I think that sort of epitomized. I'm sure this is not the norm, but there was this, you know, I guess someone who was had beat up some New York police officers and then was released very quickly under the different kind of parole laws. Yeah. And then, you know, proceeded to, you know, treat everybody with contempt, basically. Yeah. I mean, you know, you see these unfortunate incidents of what we saw with Lincoln Riley in Georgia, migrants coming in, committing crimes, particularly in sanctuary cities,

and they get released very quickly, only to commit crimes elsewhere in the country. And that's unfortunate, but that's what we're seeing today. And as we like to say, every crime committed by an illegal alien is preventable because, in theory, they shouldn't be here. The law says if you're coming across that border and you claim asylum, then either you need to be detained during the pendency of your court proceedings or you need to wait in another country, what we did with Remain in Mexico. All of what we did is based in U.S. law. And so there's a different way to

accomplish the end goal, which is making sure that people have access to the asylum system and are getting their protections that they need. This idea of just releasing everyone into the country, not understanding who they are, and figuring it out on the back end is not the way that the, I don't believe is the way our immigration enforcement policy should be run. We've been getting kind of more anecdotal reports of just sort of increases in transnational gang activity. Are you familiar with this? Well, I'm certainly seeing and hearing that as well. And again, when you are paroling upwards to 380,000 folks from four countries, Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, these are countries that are obviously poor, that have a lot of crime. Is it true, let me just jump

in, is it true that Venezuela actually was sending prisoners? Well, again, I don't have any specific information that says that, but undoubtedly they are. Undoubtedly some of these individuals are in that parole population that are coming into the United States and I think that's why you see the increase in certain cells that are popping up in New York and elsewhere. You know it was MS-13 which is more of an El Salvadorian origin, right, but you're seeing these other gangs that are more Venezuelan based. Well, it's not because it just happens to be,

it's because we've paroled probably over 100,000 Venezuelans or more into the country. And so just as you parole that much more individuals, you're gonna get bad actors and bad elements into the country as well. Not to mention this, like we were saying, the gotaways. Yeah, the folks you don't even know who came through. Right.

Absolutely. The other piece, I guess, that I also wanted to mention is Texas has been trying to deal with the border using its own resources, I guess. And that's actually created, I understand, that's had an effect where basically a lot, the movement across the border has shifted west, right? Yeah, yeah, so I mean the governor of Texas is in a very difficult spot.

When the federal government is not doing its job, and is not deterring individuals and holding them accountable, and what we saw in 21 and 22, and really is just an influx of individuals and in South Texas and along that river he has a duty a constitutional duty under the state of Texas Constitution to protect Texans and Texas communities and he is faced with the situation that the federal government's not going to do that right well they're fighting they're fighting him.

Their goal is to process more and more migrants in. And so he said, fine, if you're not going to do it, I'm going to do it. So it's maritime buoys. It's razor wire, Constantino wire. It's SB4. It's laws passed by the legislature there in Texas. And what the Biden administration says, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't do anything, right?

Federal preemptive law says that immigration law is the federal government. Only we can do this. So they're suing him to say, you can't do this because that's our job. But yet they're not doing the job. And that's his point, which is, that's fine. If I also, you know, we can stipulate that it is the federal government's job to do this. He would likely disagree if they would just do it. But when you don't do it, then he has a duty to protect his constituents there in the state of Texas. And I think that's what he's doing. And I think a lot of governors around the country that are sending resources, National Guardsmen and others, to help them protect the state of Texas because of the, you know, obviously

an outsized number of border miles are in the state. Well, and one of these cases made its way up to the Supreme Court, and recently, for the time being, they're allowed to apply this new law that they have, right, as I understand. Yeah, SB4, actually, it's on the Fifth Circuit actually stopped it again. It's back on its way to the Supreme Court, I'm guessing very soon, where they'll eventually rule on the merits of the case. And so they're back at square one, not being able to implement that law, which was just to hold individuals accountable and to remove them back into Mexico.

And again, they shouldn't have to do this. I agree. A lot of people say, well, this is unprecedented. No one's ever done this before. I would agree with that. But we've never seen the federal government not do its job. Whether we look at Clinton or Bush or Bush 1 or Obama, everyone has taken steps to increase border security, some more than others. Trump administration, I'd say, did a lot more than others Trump Trump administration I'd say did a lot more than others the Biden administration is the first administration this continues to take steps backwards to to not secure that border and the American people are suffering because of a

result of that and what's the role of Congress here because I think a lot of you know I've certainly seen in the comments on our articles related to the border is like, what is Congress doing? I'm glad you brought it up, right? It's such a, it's, there is a role for Congress. Absolutely. There are things that could be reformed in Congress. But here's what I would say. In 2021, Congress didn't pass a single law regarding immigration, right? They didn't pass a single law during the Trump administration either. But in 2021, they didn't do anything. But yet the crisis arose in 2021. Well, why is that?

Well, because of certain policy decisions of the Biden administration. They took 94 executive actions on immigration in the first 100 days. Well, guess what? Not a lot of those were good ones. And it caused the crisis. And so Congress didn't create this crisis in 2021, but yet the Biden administration is saying they're the only ones that can fix it. Well, that's just simply not the case. The president and the secretary of DHS has a lot of inherent authority given to him by Congress over the years. They could put a number

of policies in place today that would bring this crisis, that would get it under control. They just, they choose not to do it. They choose not to implement some of these things. And instead, they just are passing the buck to Congress saying, you guys make the hard decisions. You do what you can do. And then I'll just I'll implement that instead of actually using the authority that they have, because we used it during the Trump administration. Again, we didn't get new authorities during the Trump administration. We looked at Congress and said, they're not gonna pass anything. What can we do with our own authority that we have here?

That's where we came up with Remain in Mexico and other things. So they need to do their job. They need to do the hard work, use the authorities that they have to bring the crisis to a conclusion and stop blaming Congress and everyone else. They've been on this blame game for a while now.

If you followed it since 2021, at the beginning of 2021, it was the Trump administration's fault that more and more people were coming to the border. Then it was seasonal. Then it was cyclical. Then it was the root causes of migration. It was the government of Mexico's problem. It's everyone and anyone's fault but their own, but their own policies. And I think, again, the majority of Americans are kind of seeing right through that.

So a final thought as we finish? Well, I think what you've seen with this crisis is a humanitarian crisis. And, you know, the number of migrants that are coming to that border that are being trafficked, that are being abused, that are being raped, and in some cases losing their life, are on a magnitude that we have never seen before. And so I think it's important to keep in mind that the policies that we've seen over the last three years of the Biden administration are perhaps the most inhumane policies from an immigration standpoint that we have ever seen. Well, Chad Wolf, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Great. Thanks. Appreciate

being here. Thank you all for joining Chad Wolf and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kelek.