America's Talking - Changing Course, Homeland Security to Construct Border Wall in Rio Grande Valley

Episode Date: October 7, 2023

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is waiving 26 federal laws to finish completing a wall in the Rio Grande Valley in an area where it halted construction over two years ago. It announced the change in the Federal Register on Thursday after receiving pressure from Democratic elected officials. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America and Focus powered by the Center Square. I am Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is Casey Harper, the center square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are things, Casey? Things are good, Dan. How about you? Things are good, but it's been another crazy week in Washington, D.C. I guess that's somewhat redundant. I think I say that every single week on America in Focus. But listen, in what I consider it a stunning move, just my personal opinion, the Biden administration, pulled a complete about face this week and decided to resume building parts of the border wall in South Texas after an increasing course of elected Democrats in the states put pressure on the White House to do something, anything about the escalating war of crisis. When President Biden first took

office in January 2021, one of the first things he did was to halt the border wall construction initiated by former President Donald Trump, saying it was an ineffective waste of taxpayer dollars and inhumane. Now, more than two years. four and a half years later, he's changing course, your thought. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a sign of the, as you said, the pressure that Biden is getting even from his own party. And I'll bring it back to something that was highly controversial, but I think can really get a lot of credit for this. And it is the busing of migrants to some of these big Democrat cities, Dan. You know, Rod DeSantis, Florida governor and Greg Abbott, Texas governor, they took a lot of heat for this.

They were called, you know, not compassionate and really even. for taking these migrants, putting them on a bus, sending them to cities like New York, right? But that was kind of a controversial move at the time. But I think what it did was it forced a lot of these Democrats to address this issue that so far, mostly just, you know, border states have really had to deal with. And I mean, Dan, I'm sure you've seen that Eric Adams, the New York mayor, these migrants started coming in. And his city is, you know, like eight million people.

Biggest city in the U.S. Barnum. Right. And he just starts getting a few thousand. migrants, and he's immediately saying they're overwhelmed. They can't afford them. They don't know what to do. Meanwhile, much smaller cities like El Paso have been getting far more migrants for years and years. So, I mean, it didn't take long for some of these Democrat mayors to save this migrant crisis is out of control. And so I think that, you know, Abbott and DeSantis do deserve some credit for doing that.

But the numbers now are just so large. We're talking millions of people. I think you might have this stat memorized, Dan, but it's a, The number of people have come into the country illegally just in, I think, the last year is more than the population of several U.S. states. Yeah, since President Biden first took office, the number of border encounters and gotaways detected, Godaways is the official border patrol term for those who enter the country illegally before ports of entry, they're either caught on camera or they're found later, but they're not apprehended at the borders. That's more than $8 million, which is more than something like 30-some states across the country. Don't have it memorized.

I'm sorry to our listeners. But I do want to clarify something that you said earlier, Casey. Yes, Governor Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, has been the main person. Well, he's the one that started the busing strategy. busing migrants from the southern border to these so-called sanctuary cities and sanctuary states, New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., being just a few of them. But we, the Center Square even talked and asked Arizona's Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, this week. She's also has a busing strategy in place to bus migrants out of Arizona. El Paso's Democratic mayor has also been doing it

for a couple of years now. So it is not just Republicans who have this busing strategy. Democrats do as well. Yeah, it's definitely true that it's becoming bipartisan. That's why there's finally been movement on it. And it's just, I think the reason that building the border wall was kind of Biden's choice of policy changes on here. Because he doesn't want to deport anyone, of course. He doesn't want to really keep anyone from coming in or being seen as non-compassionate. So restarting a government construction project that could be kind of never ending is a way to say, hey, I'm doing something to address this crisis without there being any real short-term change, I think. So he wins some political points with those who are really upset about this. And he says,

hey, we are working on the wall. I think he just wants to put this issue to rest. This issue is plagued Biden. From the beginning, if you remember, Kamala Harris's vice president was sort of the border czar at first, but then she didn't want to be and she kind of just sidestepped it. Because I mean, I think really think National Democrats don't want to touch this issue because it's not really a win for them. And the status quo is just fine.

You know, there's more and more migrants coming in. I think that's really is what they want. They want it to be pretty open. and doing anything about it is expensive and it is not some of their base is interested in. So they just want to change the conversation. I don't think Biden. I do want to challenge you. I'm sorry, to interrupt Casey.

I do want to challenge you all one thing. You said doing something about it is expensive. Doing nothing about it, I would argue, is even more expensive. New York City and New York State. They've said that they're going to be spending. billions and billions of taxpayer funds caring for the migrants over the next few years. In Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker, Democratic Governor, finally got involved in the pressure on the White House this week, sent a letter to Joe Biden on Monday saying, hey, we've got to do

something about this. This is unmanageable. It's unsustainable. It's untenable. Chicago has been dealing with an influx of migrants, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on things like health care, housing, schools, education, et cetera, for this thing. So there is a huge expense because of these open boards. You're absolutely right about that. And it's not just, you know, it's, I think states are the ones who are bearing the biggest brunt of this day. I don't know if you'd agree with that.

But it's not so much this federal government program. So that is part of it. It's these local schools that are dealing with, you know, a huge influx of people. It's state programs. it's, you know, Medicaid, different things like that. So it's going to be interesting to watch. I don't think that this is part of a big push from Biden to take on the border issue. I think this is Biden just trying to silence the critics so he can move on to other issues.

But we'll just have to keep an eye on it to see. Yeah, so I agree with everything you said there. It is the states and the municipalities, the counties, that are stuck dealing with this problem because the federal government up until now has pretty much had a hands-off approach to it, not a crisis. The border is closed. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said constantly, even though the evidence is the exact opposite. But Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, Republican Governor of Texas, launched Operation Loan Star, just to give another example of the expenses. Texas's legislature has approved.

budget items of more than billions and billions of dollars to deal with what's going on at the border in Texas. So the states, border security is constitutionally and statutorily a federal government issue, but the states are the ones that are having to step up and pay for either border security measures or, as we said, migrant care, housing, health care, etc, things like that. So it has been the states, and I do want to, we're almost out of time, Casey, but I do want to point one thing. Essentially what the Biden administration did this week was say they're going to take already appropriated money that Congress agreed to spend under the Trump administration to use it to build 20 miles of border wall in the Rio Grande Valley, which is the

sector that's seeing the most number of migrants illegally crossed the border. So 20 miles of border wall is not going to fix this problem. No, it's not. And it just showed what it does is really it reveals the true heart of the Biden administration on this issue because the natural response to that should be, wait a minute, this money was already appropriated, but you were purposely not spending it. You know, that's what it exposes that and then that's true of a lot of how the executive branch under Biden and other Democrats has handled the immigration issue. Congress has passed things to deal with it or set money aside to deal with it, but they purposely don't enforce it. you know,

Biden, under Biden, ICE, immigration and customs enforcement, just really doesn't deport nearly as many people unless they have a pretty bad criminal record. They, you know, even though there is funding for ICE, they didn't build a border wall, even though there was funding for it. So it's not like Biden is sitting there begging for resources to do something about it. He's intentionally not spent the resources he has for political reasons. Another government shutdown coming, another CR. And with this Congress, I don't think we'll see any real immigration reform coming.

through. Well, thank you for your insights into this very important story, Casey, but we are out of time. Listeners can keep up with this ongoing story and more at thecentersquare.com for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McKeel. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.