America's Talking - Episode 54: Texas Governor authorizes returning illegal immigrants to border

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

Join The Center Square's Executive Editor Dan McCaleb & D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss: Gov. Abbott authorizes returning illegal immigrants to border, but doesn’t declare invasion, New Jobs Report Out, & Most Americans expect higher gas prices this year as they struggle to make ends meet, polls shows. 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.

Texas, this really become ground zero for the political fight over illegal immigration. Welcome to America in Focus. I'm Cole McNeely General Manager of America's Talking Network. If you have not already, we ask you hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast so you don't miss any new episodes of American Focus. Now here's your host, Dan McAleb. Thank you, Cole, and welcome to the America in Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAilip, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. America in Focus is a production of America's Talking Network.

You can find all of the Center Square's great podcasts at Americastalking.com. Joining me again today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. We're recording this on Friday, July 8th. Casey, a lot's been going on at the southern border this week. Several border judges in Texas issued declarations of an invasion at the border. And Governor Greg Abbott later in the week authorized the Texas National Guard. and the Texas Department of Public Safety to apprehend foreign nationals

who illegally cross the Mexican border into the U.S. and return them to the border. Tell us a little bit more about it. Yeah, my home state of Texas, a lot is going on. It's really become ground zero for the political fight over illegal immigration due in large part to Texas' Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

Of course, other border states have been somewhat involved and Ron DeSantis has managed to really jump in this fight. But Texas has really become the primary place where this political battle is playing out on a very real issue that's impacting people, which is migration across the southern border. And I'm just a little bit of context. Illegal immigration has absolutely soared since Biden took office.

So Biden almost immediately on taking office changed some, you know, some of the policies around how they could catch people what they could do to stop them. One that wasn't reported on very much, though it was at the center square.com, is that Biden changed the rules for ICE officials, immigration and customs enforcement. So ICE officers cannot, you know, they can only really go after the illegal immigrants who have a bad criminal record,

a violent criminal record or something, not just you kind of run of the mill illegal immigrants. And I think words got out about that. that's a small agency level change. It's actually, I think, had a big impact on this. There's just also the changes to Title 42, which we've covered extensively. During COVID, Trump was really able to crack down more when he was in office on who was able to come into the country across the southern border in the name of COVID. Some said he just used COVID as an excuse to crack down on the border.

That may or may not be true. but regardless, the numbers under the Trump administration did were much lower than what we've seen in what we've seen since Biden took office. And even in May, you know, U.S. border arrest hit a record high in May, according to data. This is like this publicly available data. We're seeing, you know, millions of people coming across the border. We're seeing record high arrest. You know, we saw that very noteworthy, very tragic, the death of all the people on the vehicle that was tied to him. immigration. And so, you know, you're seeing a lot of things happen. It's only gotten worse since Bina took office. And it's, it's, it's brought, that's the context on which all of this,

you know, talk about invasions. If you don't live in Texas, if you don't follow this issue, this may feel out of coming, like it's coming out of nowhere to you, but actually, this has been brewing for a long time. And in, and in these border communities in Texas, and it's not just the border communities, it's several hundred miles north. And it's a national issue, because, Because under President Biden, Border Patrol has been releasing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in their community with a notice to appear in immigration cork. Of course, a lot of them don't show up. Most of them, like over 90% don't show up. Yeah.

And then these folks disappear in the communities. Not all, certainly not all. Some have criminal backgrounds. Texas sheriffs and county governments have said crime has increased, particularly in border counties. Now, border security and illegal immigration is generally, it's a federal issue. But as you mentioned, Governor Abbott has felt because of Biden's open border policies that the state of Texas has had to do more.

the Texas legislature has appropriated billions of dollars to borders the security efforts. Last year, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in an attempt to have state officials aid border patrol and securing the border and apprehending illegal immigrants. But many, particularly conservatives in Texas, feel that despite all of his efforts that Abbott is not doing enough. And that's where this invasion declaration comes from. If enough state officers declare an invasion, they feel that the Constitution gives them the authority to do even more from a state standpoint, as opposed to the federal standpoint, to secure the southern border. And that's where this invasion declaration comes from. Six county judges this week have declared an evasion, urged Governor Abbott to do so as well. Governor Abbott has not gotten that far, has not taken that step to declare an invasion at the southern border.

But many of his, many of conservatives in Texas want him to do so. But what he did this week is authorized Texas National Guardsmen, Texas State Police, to apprehend immigrants and return them to the border. Previously, they've been turning them over to border patrol agents. And under President Biden, as we've said, border patrol agents processed. them, but then in many cases, release them into Texas communities. So this is a brewing battle, essentially between the state of Texas. There's a battle within Texas between Governor Abbott and his more conservative critics, but between the state of Texas and the federal government. So it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

It is, it is indeed. And this, you know, we try to always bring things back. to the average person, the average taxpayer. This may be an easier issue to ignore if you live in, you know, Seattle, far away from the border or New York State or something. But, you know, this has very real impacts on those who live in these border states, especially the border communities who can have, you know, just, I mean, you may have seen the stories in of people who live on the border who just have thousands of people walking through their yard.

I mean, you know, they're, or ranchers who just, they're, ranches aren't really safe because there's so many people coming across. And, you know, I've written recently about how this has also tried to really, you know, drug epidemic in the U.S. and how, you know, we've seen a rise in immigration at the same illegal immigration at the same time that we've seen a rise in overdose deaths. And can I talk to some experts? Particularly from fentanyl. Fentanyl, yes. And fentanyl is coming across the southern border in droves. And that's documented. That's any law enforcement expert to tell you that. And, you know, I talked to a former head of Border Patrol for a story recently.

And he said that their strategy at the border, the cartels, what they do is they'll send across a flood of just regular people across the border. And then those, you know, people who go across at a certain point, like they will, all the Border Patrol agents will catch them, whatever, take them back to processing for hours. And that first wave, just of regular people, distracts and dilute. the resources of Border Patrol. And once that section is, you know, very thinly defended by Border Patrol because they're all back processing the people they caught, then the cartels will send the drug meals across. And this is what the Head of Border Patrol, former Head of Border Patrol told me that the first wave is just regular people to distract Border Patrol. And the second wave is all the drug, drug meals who are, you know, carrying fentanyl into the U.S. So they're, you know, the cartels are being very strategic. Yeah. And then fentanyl just doesn't impact border communities. communities. That gets delivered across the country. You were seeing fentanyl-related overdose deaths

pretty much in every state in America. So that's why this is a very national problem and national concern. Yeah, absolutely. And overdoses are higher and higher. It's hitting, going back to everyday people. I mean, so many people, and I'm sure many of our listeners either have a family member or a family friend, someone they know who's been either addicted to fentanyl or overdose. You know, we see it in the news all the time. It's a real issue. And so all this is kind of swirling together to make this perfect storm where more and more governors are coming together and saying, you know, hey, it's the federal government's responsibility to secure the border and they're not doing it. Whatever we're doing now is not working. And so

you're seeing growing consensus, you know, states like Texas are leading the way. But, you know, It's not just Texas. A lot of other states have voiced their support for a lot of what Texas is doing to kind of address this and get the federal government to do more to solve this problem. All right. We'll keep paying attention to what's going on at the border, Casey. But let's move on. As I said, we're recording this on Friday morning, July 8th. Just less than an hour ago, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its second quarter of jobs report.

And more jobs were added than expected. That's right. The Bureau Labor Statistics released its jobs report this morning, as you said. And of course, it's quickly up on the center square.com. Dan, just want to point that up. Nice job carrying that around there. Casey actually. It's work this morning.

Oh, actually. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So the U.S. economy added 372,000 jobs last month, which was more than expected. The unemployment rate's about 3.6%. That's like the fourth month. in a row. It's been there. You know, big job gains were in like business services, leisure, hospitality. Some of that is probably attributable to just the summer months. But health care also

saw big gains. And so, you know, another thing, though, that we're in about this week is there's this really interesting gap between the number of Americans who are seeking work and the number of available jobs. So we're actually near a record, near a record gap where there's almost two available jobs for every one American who's seeking work. So there's currently 5.9 million unemployed Americans. And just as an aside, there's many more Americans who aren't working, but unemployed is a more narrow definition of people who want to work, who are in the workforce who are actively looking for jobs.

You know, a stay-at-home mom who's not looking for a job is not considered unemployed. So there's 5.9 million unemployed Americans seeking work, and there's 11.3 million available jobs. So this gap is really interesting. You know, we've talked a lot about people who have quit their jobs. They're not returning to work. We've talked about some of the government incentives in the first year of the Biden administration, how people were actually practically paid not to work because the COVID-era unemployment benefits were so generous

that many people could actually make more money not working and taking the benefits than getting a minimum wage job. So that kicked in. And where I also, you know, I'm seeing anecdotally that a lot of people were just eating into their savings right now. You know, they coasted that, you know, through the COVID benefits and not eating into their savings. Maybe they're doing a little gig work. Maybe they're trying to start a little side business. But for whatever reason, we have a lot of available jobs and not as many Americans who are filling them. And, of course, we're still at 40-year high inflation, gas prices, which we'll talk about here in a minute, have trickled down.

but they're still heavily inflated, which is causing, you know, Americans to cut back on other spending. So the economy is far from in good shape. Of course, the GDP decreased. There was negative growth in the U.S. economy in the first quarter. We'll be getting second quarter of GDP information in the coming days, I would expect. if GDP shows negative growth again in the second quarter, that's really the definition of a recession. And who knows what that could mean for the U.S. time. Yeah, actually, the initial estimates, I think it was from the New York Federal Reserve.

It was one of the regional federal reserves already predicted GDP decrease in the second quarter. That's an official source already predicting, which, as you said, would be the technical definition of a recession. So I think it's very fair to expect, I think it was like a 1% decrease somewhere in that neighborhood in GDP, which would be a recession. The economy actually shrinking for what would be six months, six consecutive months, which is pretty incredible given just the trillions and trillions of dollars that were poured into the economy in the last couple of years to prop it up to so quickly see recession is not good. We do see some conflicting factors. I mean, there's, you know, more jobs who are out of this month than expected. There are some good signs, but some of the top-level big indicators like inflation, like the national debt and like the GDP, are definitely worrisome. You point out the GDP numbers.

I'll say, you know, we also wrote about 46 out of 50 states saw a decrease in GDP in the first three months of this year. So nearly every state saw a decrease in their GPs. There are a few exceptions in those states, which did see growth, like, you know, like Michigan, it was very, very small growth. I mean, you know, often less than 1%. So this is not, you know, just a few states having a bad time. This is nationwide. And it's impacting everyone. Well, we'll be following your reporting on that when the second quarter GDP data is released.

But again, let's move on more to talk about Casey. Republicans battle with the Biden administration over issues such as equity and this creation of a new position that Republicans are calling a woke czar. They've been heating up again. Tell us about this. Yeah, this is part of, you know, we've reporting a lot about this ongoing battle of federal funding for more socially liberal policies. I had some big stories about federal funding via grants for teachers to teach, you know, to learn critical race theory, K through 12 teachers, you know. You know, we've written about different ways that agencies and, you know, our listeners, taxpayer dollars are being used to fund things, which I would consider kind of social policies. They're beyond the scope of what we would normally think an agency would do. And so I do think this, you know, this is a really interesting story.

In this case, it's the state department. you may think that the State Department is about building relationships with other countries and doing things. And of course, that's the primary focus. But the House Oversight Committee Republicans are kind of leading this charge against a new position that President Joe Biden has appointed. And it's a special representative for the State Department's quote, equity action plan. So equity is definitely a buzzword that can mean a lot of things. But it usually means, it usually has to do with, you know, racial, gender, sexual orientation, liberal social policy. And really trying to encourage, coerce, coax, other nations around the country to fall into line with progressive ideology on things like gender, which are still really controversial in the U.S.

And especially on gender, I think, you know, on race, there would be more agreement. But a lot of the gender policies that are playing out in the schools, things like that are, you know, very controversial. The country is very spit on it. But the State Department is pushing it global. So in a State Department video for the rollout of this position, the new appointee, you know, talked about a whole of government approach to advancing equity by centering it in our foreign policy. And that's really brought up one of the major criticisms we've seen from Republicans is like, is why is advancing equity? and gender equity central to our foreign policy, shouldn't it be, you know, protecting American interests, shouldn't it be American economic interests and national security

interests that are central to our foreign policy? And are we sacrificing those areas to advance the more progressive social agenda? Right. It's not like the world, not just the U.S., but the world is facing a number of major issues. Russia's in Ukraine, of course, is still going on. And that's impacting food and oil because Ukraine and Russia are big exporters of things like wheat and Russia, of course, oil. We just talked about the U.S.-Mexico border, the number of problems that we're facing there, 40-year-high inflation, supply chain issues. So, essentially, the pushback is why are these becoming priorities? And of course, let's also mention this new position, equity position comes in the wake of the Department of Homeland Security,

creates this disinformation governance board, which also receives significant criticism and pushback from Republicans. It just, it seems like we have enough priorities as it is. Why is the Biden administration forcing this other stuff? Yeah, and it plays into like a bigger, I think what we've seen as a strategy for, President Biden since he's taken office. He's had a, has a very gridlocked, divided Congress. He hasn't been able to pass many, you know, major policy reforms other than a couple, you know, big spending bills to respond to COVID. You know, he called on Congress to, you know, nuke the filibuster to pass his voting rights bill. It didn't happen. He called on him to nuke the filibuster to pass some kind of

abortion law in the after, you know, in the wake of Roe v. Wade's overturn, overturning by the Supreme court. It didn't happen. So he hasn't really, Congress doesn't really want to work with him on a lot of this stuff. And so he, he's kind of taken this tack of using his executive orders and the federal agencies he oversees to be really aggressive. And then if the Supreme Court overturns it, then the Supreme Court overturns it. So we saw that with the eviction moratoriums. The White House explicitly said that they felt their eviction moratorium probably wasn't constitutional, but they did it anyway. And then the Supreme Court said, yes, that was not unconstitutional and overturned it. I think that's the best example of they just do it anyway.

And if it's if it's overreach, then the Supreme Court will kind of slap our wrist and we won't be able to do it. But we're going to move fast. We're going to move quick and do the things that we want to do, even if it's beyond what we're, you know, supposed to do. And so the eviction moratorium is kind of a tidy little example of that. But I think we see that with the disinformation governance board. It's kind of those things that, you know, they want to address. disinformation around things like the election probably. And so they created a board with some law enforcement power,

which is really scary to a lot of people. You know, there's always been a concern since the DHS was created that its powers would be used to spy on monitor, intimidate American citizens. I mean, that's since both parties. You know, Democrats were very worried about that when DHS was created than have been since.

So this is a, you know, concern over DHS overstepping is not a part. as an issue at all. It just depends on who's in power. In this case, it's Republicans more upset because there's a Democratic administration creating a kind of free speech regulation board through DHS, which is kind of a worst nightmare, worst case scenario that we've seen in the minds of a lot of libertarians, civil libertarians, people like that. So I'll say, this is part of what I think Biden is resorted to, which is over leveraging his agencies because he can't get much done otherwise. Let's bring it back to an issue that pretty much every American has concerns about,

and that's gas prices. After the average cost of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. breached the $5 mark across the country last month that has ticked down, it's looking at AAA's gas prices index right now. It's down to 472, which still was nearly double, gas prices were when President Biden took office. But a new poll this week, you reported on Casey, shows that Americans are still concerned about the cost of gasoline, and they expect higher gas prices this year. That's right. All the polling, and I've read a lot of these polls, I've written about a lot of them. Across the board, Americans are pretty pessimistic about the economy, especially in the next year. You know, different leaders can give different analysis and speeches, but ultimately, Americans are not impressed and they're not optimistic.

So this is a, you know, this is another good example. Rasamussen reports released a poll, which found that 59% of those surveyed say it's very likely they'll be paying more for a gallon of gas six months from now than they are today. of course that comes as gas prices have hit record high last few weeks. They passed $5 a gallon for regular gas nationwide. Now they've kind of dipped back down a little bit. Despite that dip, Americans are not hopeful that this is some ongoing trend and they're going to keep going down. They expect to be paying more. And so, you know, I think that this is really indicative.

And there's also a Monmouth poll, which found that the number of Americans, Americans who are financially struggling has increased by double digits in the past year. So people who say, I am struggling big time. I am having a hard time is increased significantly. And they point to inflation and gas prices as the top problem. So inflation and gas prices are top of mind for American families. And this isn't just for poor Americans. That was interesting to me.

It found that even those Americans who are making, you know, will be considered above average salary or struggling. So 58% of those earning less than 50,000 say they're struggling, okay. But 35% of those earning 50 to 100,000 say they're struggling, which is up 15 points. And 28% of those earning more than 100K, which is up 18 points, also said they're struggling. So this is also across racial and ethnic lines. This is across salaries, though it does vary some. But this is a nationwide thing.

This is all Americans. they're reporting, hey, this inflation and this gas prices is hitting all of us now. Yeah, and as you previously reported, inflation and the high cost of gasoline is affecting Americans purchasing habits, cutting back on going out to eat to restaurants. That, of course, affects restaurants and restaurant workers, buying generic brand or the cheapest brand products that they that they can find in grocery stores, cutting back on all kinds of spending. That will also have immediate and future impacts on the economy.

Absolutely. This is a domino effect. You know, when people come back, I mean, you may remember when George Bliss said it was our patriotic duty to spend more money to stimulate the economy and kind of taking some flag for that sense. But it illustrates the principle, which is the more Americans are able to spend, the more that the economies around them are able to benefit. It's just kind of common sense that if a whole town is tightening their budget and stops going out to eat as much because prices are higher, then all the local restaurants are going to suffer.

When the restaurants suffer, they lay off workers. When those workers don't have paychecks anymore, they're not able to spend as much money. So it has this domino effect. And the same is true when the economy is growing. More money means more money for everyone because, you know, velocity of money increases and everything. So all this is really tightly interconnected. That's why sometimes it's hard to say exactly how well the economy is doing and what's happening. But we do our best to kind of read between the lines.

And right now, Americans consumer confidence, their outlook on the next six months to a year is not good. Right. And as we've talked about previously as well, it is midterm election. here. So how these concerns that Americans face over the economy, over inflation, over the price of gasoline, all those things combined, how it's going to impact them when they go to the polls come November. But that's all the time we have this week. Casey, thank you for our listeners. You can find all of the Center Squares podcast at America's Talking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. There is no cost. This has been the America in Focus podcast for Casey Harper.

I'm Dan McAid. We'll talk to you next week.