America's Talking - Episode 77: Border Experts Warn of Post-title 42 Migrant Surge

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

Join The Center Square’s Executive Editor Dan McCaleb and D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper as they discuss the state of the southern border. Congress considers omnibus as deadline approaches. Small businesses report hardship due to inflation this Christmas season. Federal inflation data: Grocery prices continue to rise nationally. 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, everyone, and welcome to the America In Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. American In Focus is a production of America's Talking Network. I'm Dan McAil, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. To support great podcasts like this one, please donate by clicking the link in the show description. Joining me today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief, how are you, Casey? Doing great, Dan. How are you? Doing well. We are recording this podcast on Friday, December 6th. 16th, Casey, all kinds of things going on related to the border and illegal crossings there.

Title 42, the Donald Trump-era pandemic policy that allows immigration officials to immediately expel border crossers for fear of spreading COVID-19. It ends next week, December 21st. There's been a new surge in illegal border crossings the past few weeks, and many are concerned that once the Title 42 policy ends, it's going to get even worse. Tell us what's happening. Yeah, the border is a pretty interesting case right now. It's one of those kind of sad issues in American politics where it's a huge crisis. Both sides, you know, agree that it's not working well. And absolutely nothing gets done unless it happens in a lengthy court battle.

So, you know, that's how we are to become gridlocked in a lot of these issues like we were with abortion until the Supreme Court took it on. I think that's where we are now. All the battles with the border are happening at the court level. because Congress just isn't able to come to any kind of agreement right now. So this, and of course, executive action. I guess you could say it's executive action, but those are then challenged at the court level. So a Trump era order was Title 42, which you mentioned. This basically in the name of preventing the spread of COVID said that we could quickly expel migrants from the U.S.

for fear that they would bring COVID in. I mean, they weren't vaccinated, but they weren't tested. We had thousands and thousands of people coming into the country. we didn't know if they had COVID or not. And this was at the height of lockdowns, of mask mandates, of everything. This was implemented. And so now, naturally, there is the question of, well, when do we get rid of, you know, Title 42? You could say the COVID policy or the COVID, you know, pandemic is not as bad as it was.

But we do still have, you know, preventative policies in place. I mean, like, if you want to come into this country and you're not from the U.S., you do have to be vaccinated. I mean, you know, if a French citizen wants to be. to come to the U.S. for holiday, they have to be vaccinated to come here to do that. So we do have policy, stricter policies for those who are not U.S. citizens to help, you know, hold off COVID. But the other kind of obvious reason that Republicans want to keep Title 42 is it's really allowed border patrol agents to fight without having one hand tied behind their back and allowed them to get a lot of migrants, illegal immigrants out of the country quickly. And now that's set to expire.

And so the thinking is that there are. are many, many migrants and then the cartels are aware of this policy as well that are just waiting for this policy to expire so they can send across people. And as I've written about it, the CenterSquare.com, I mean, this is directly tied also to drug trafficking and fentanyl because, you know, I spoke to one former head of the Department of Homeland Security a while back. And he said that the basic strategy for these cartels is they will send across a whole flood of people, of just regular people. And then once the border patrol is kind of overwhelmed, dealing with

all these people, and then they take them back for processing, there's kind of a hole in the defense is there, and then they send through all the drugs. And so these issues, you can't talk about immigration without talking about drug trafficking. You can't talk about this Title 42 without talking about both of these. So Title 42

is set to expire. It could lead to a surge in illegal immigration in a year when really illegal immigration has soared since Biden took office. We're talking record levels. We're talking thousands of people, a day through certain, you know, through certain town. So it's really reached a crisis level and it could be about to get worse. Yeah. So, and that's, that's the big concern. There's been a huge surge in illegal border crossing since Biden took office because they essentially, um, without congressional

approval, changed immigration enforcement policy. But the concern now is that there's thousands of people gathered on the Mexican side of the southern border waiting for Title 42 to end. And so, and what's already been a huge surge in immigration would get even worse. In fact, we wrote at thecentersquare.com today about Arizona officials, a vast concern about what's going to happen when it does end next week, not prepared for the thousands of people that are expected to cross the border every single day when it ends. Of course, both Texas and Arizona and New Mexico over the past, past two years have been dealing with the surge. President Biden's policy has been to essentially

release most border crossers in the U.S. communities, and that's led to, you know, just public health concerns, not because of COVID-19, just because of the infrastructure is not in place here to deal with so many people coming across. You know, you and I could talk about, well, COVID-19, most Americans, you know, have moved on from COVID-19. We're no longer in a pandemic. All the restrictions that were put in place are behind us. So maybe Title 42 for that reason should end. But when the Biden administration is not following, you know, proper procedure and congressional, congressionally approved law with how to deal with illegal immigration, Title 42 was really the one thing that was left in place that kept what has been a surge from being worse.

Right. You're hitting on something, which is, I think a lot of Democrats would say, hey, Republicans are not being good, you're not operating in good faith on this title 42 thing. COVID is not what it once was. And you're just using this COVID-era policy to keep illegal immigrants out of the country because that's what your voters want. And that's ultimately what you want is to have lower levels of immigration and, of course, an end to illegal immigration.

And the Republican response to that, although this hasn't necessarily been vocalized, but I think this is what's happening, reading between the lines, is yeah, maybe, maybe this isn't exactly true to the spirit of Title 42, but don't lecture us on good faith when you aren't enforcing the laws that Congress has put on the books. And when Biden has done everything he can to allow illegal immigrants to come into the country and to stay into the country, one really telling example that I think shows really the Biden, administration's philosophy on this is they changed the immigration and customs enforcement. So that's ICE. They changed the rules for ICE shortly after Biden took office. And this was, we reported on this, but a lot of people didn't report on this. They changed the rules for ICE and made it much, much harder for ICE to arrest and deport people. And basically, if you don't have like felony criminal record, the ICE is not really going to come after you during the Biden administration, which is a big change from the Trump administration. I'm sure the war.

has gotten out on that. So Biden basically made it where if you, if you can get into the U.S., you're probably not going to get deported, I mean, unless you're a violent, unless you're a criminal. And so when you're making changes like that, we're actively have policies on the books at the executive administration that's not going to deport people, even though they broke, you know, broke the law coming into the country illegally. And for a long time, we've been deporting people for that. Countries all around the world deport people for that. So I think there's like a lack of good faith on both sides on this. You know, Biden's not enforcing the losses they are. He's changing technicality. and federal law enforcement so that they don't have to do what Republicans would have them do.

And so I think the border is one of the messiest issues right now in America. Of course, there's real, you know, lives at stake. I mean, people are, you know, hurt all the time at the border, and not to mention the fentanyl and the overdoses there that we alluded to earlier. But, yeah, there's definitely not good faith, but it's on both sides on this one. And because of just pretty much everything you said there, there are a group of a Republican in Congress who were calling for the impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In fact, you covered a news conference this week where they essentially

expressed that sentiment that Mayorkas has to go. Tell us a little about this. That's right. Republican House lawmakers gathered outside the Capitol building this week and basically called for Mayarchus's head. I mean, they're not so graphically or so literally, but they call for the impeachment of the DHS secretary, they cited these just astronomical immigration numbers that, you know, we've referenced. It's really been led by Representative Andy Biggs, a Republican from that state of Arizona. And so, and he's actually kind of, there's been a little bit of talk about him trying to make a run for a McCarthy spot. I don't think that's going to materialize, but it's something to keep an eye on. You know, he said every day he remains in office, America is less safe.

That's a quote from Biggs about Mayorkas. So they're talking about the same. safety. There definitely are, you know, safety issues, of course, again, the fentanyl. One thing that was talked about a lot during the Trump administration that we haven't heard about hardly at all since then is MS-13 and really violent gangs and their presence in the United States and how they're using the Southern border. I think that's in the mind of a lot of Republicans when they talk about the safety issue. But they, you know, Title 42's expiration is on the horizon. I mean, the latest, you know, I think I've mentioned this earlier, but. the latest border patrol data just shows, I mean, we're talking about, we're in the millions of

people a year at this point coming across. And places like El Paso and the data are seeing thousands of migrants each day. You know, it's a western town in Texas. It's not that big. They're seeing thousands of people each day. You look at some border towns and there's just people can't. It's like, it looks like chop did in Seattle when all that was going. I mean, it's just there's camps of people. It's totally out of control. And they're saying, Mayork, it's like, you haven't done anything about this. Now, how much is Mayorkis's fault and how much Mayorkis is just taking orders from President Biden? I mean, we'll probably never probably know that. Right. And also this week, just going to touch on this very briefly, so we've got to move on.

We've got other topics to talk about. But Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who's sort of been front and center in leading efforts to stamp down the border crisis, he's called for an investigation into American-based groups who might be assisting with the illegal border crossings and the surge there. He's saying there are American groups who are working potentially with the cartels, the Mexican cartels, and helping traffic human beings across the border. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with that. But Casey, let's move on. More inflation news this week, while.

inflation does seem to be slowing down. There are certain areas of the economy that where costs continue to go up. One of those is food prices. They continue to soar. Tell us about the latest inflation data. Yeah, I mean, I think that we really cover the inflation data differently than everyone else. I mean, people often say, oh, this is what the top line number says. Biden is doing a little bit better or a little bit less.

But we look through and see, well, what individual goods that really matter to people? How are they fairing? Are they getting a lot more expensive? So we wrote about recently wholesale vegetable prices increased 38% in November. 38%. If you own any kind of small business where you are buying or selling vegetables, a restaurant or something, 38% increase in your cost is no joke at all. So that's, you know, we're definitely seeing, although inflation is slowing down,

we're seeing certain areas where it's still rising in some areas where it's spiking. So for instance, another example will be grocery prices. And this isn't just because of vegetables, but grocery prices have risen. in 12% in the last 12 months, which far outpaces, even the normal level of inflation, certainly outpaces people's wages, you know, increased. No one that I know, unless you changed industries, changed jobs, you probably didn't get a 12% raise in the last 12 months. So, you know, these numbers are higher. The food index overall increased half a percent over the month with the same with the, you know, food at home index. So these are, these prices are

rising. It does vary. You know, energy costs have gone down from their record high. That's helped people out. Gas prices, you know, surpass $5 a gallon in the summer. They've gone down. We just help people out. And a lot of that has been helped by President Biden draining our strategic petroleum oil reserves. So, you know, we did pay a price for those lower prices, but I think it did help now whether I think we're going to start seeing this month and going into the new year, whether those prices begin to rise again because of the petroleum oil reserve. It's not going to be helping us out as much anymore. into the new year. And of course, OPEC, you know, Biden had his negotiations with Saudi Arabia and OPEC, which

really apparently failed. I mean, on all accounts, it seems like they failed. So the OPEC has said that they are going to be releasing less oil, which will raise energy prices for us. So, you know, the top line here is energy prices are lower. Shelter prices are a little higher for people to have a place to live. Food prices are a lot higher. And we're all waiting with baited breath. of whether oil prices are going to shoot back up in the new year because of some geopolitical and things Biden is done. And because of continued of inflation, the Federal Reserve again this week announced a new rate increase, half percentage point this time, which is down from three quarters of a percent, but still interest rates continue to go up. Tell us more about this.

Yeah, this is the seventh rate increase for the Federal Reserve. Half a percent, as you said, is lower than some of the, you know, three quarters of a percentage increase we have seen, but it's still a pretty notable increase in seven in one years a lot. And it shows that for all Democrats, you know, posturing about inflation being transitory and not, you know, not as big of a threat, as Republicans were saying, you know, in the last year, when Federal Reserve raises rates seven times a one year, I mean, you know that they're taking the interest rate. They're taking inflation seriously because raising these interest rates like this have a real consequences it does hurt the economy we've seen some of the effects of that I mean

the more and more you raise and the more you risk going into a recession so it's really this balancing act the federal reserve is trying to do with they have a recession in one hand and they have inflation in the other and they're trying to slowly get inflation kind of more under control without upsetting the recession apple cart and starting off you know setting off this course of events that puts the economy me in a really bad place. And of course, as interest rates go up, the cost of borrowing goes up along with it. If you're in the market for a new car, a new home, the cost of buying that and borrowing

money to make those kinds of purchases is much, much more expensive. So what that does is essentially people who might be in the market for a new home or a new car or whatever, they might back off because of it. And that has an effect on the overall economy. Right. Or like you're, I know that you probably your personal loan, Dan, you got to buy, to buy out all the Trump digital trading cards.

I mean, the interest rates on that must have been astronomical. I heard you and our producer, Cole, talking about that, uh, pre-recording. I don't know what you're talking about. What? Oh, so this is off topic, but I think our listeners will give, we'll give 15 seconds to it. Trump has said he said, had a big announcement coming. Big announcement. People are saying, is this the official, you know, some kind of presidential announcement? Is this a vice presidential announcement? What's going on here?

Everyone comes. The big announcement is there are some new Donald Trump digital trading cards. So you can buy those for, I don't know how much they cost. They're digital only. You can't get a hard copy? Yes. No, these are digital trading cards. There's a picture of basically Trump looks like Superman. It's his head on the body of Superman, which the feedback I saw was kind of negative. It's like, hey, DeSantis just passed you up in the polls and this is what you're focusing on. You should be, you know, making some bigger announcements talking about policy. Talking about your message or something like that.

I'm not interested. You're feigning your lack of interest, but I know that personal loan. Give me, you know, a good, you know, hard copy of one of those things and I'll consider it. I don't want people reading, like the baseball card, you know. Mm-hmm. Can we get back to actual news? Yes, please. Because of inflation, because of soaring interest rates, because of, you know, workers,

shortages. Small businesses are reporting that they're having a tough time. They're here heading into the holiday season. Christmas just, you know, just barely over a week away. And small businesses are struggling. You wrote about this at the center square.com this week. What do you know? That's true. So, but the small business, small business report, Golden Sacks, they talked to, you know, hundreds of small businesses said, hey, what are you guys struggling with? They keep up with this. They have a network of, you know, thousands of small businesses that they work with. And 52% of those surveyed small businesses say their profitability has not met expectations, even while 79% have increased prices compared to last year because of inflation.

So that's a pretty note-worthy thing that over half of small businesses haven't met their goals, haven't met expectations. 40% said that demand has decreased compared to last year. So only 33% said it has stayed the same. So, you know, well over two-thirds, say they're, demand is stagnant or even more than that, you know, has decreased. They also said that larger businesses are better able to handle the pain of inflation. That's how small businesses perceive it. You know, 84% of those surveyed believe bigger retailers have a competitive advantage in this holiday season due to their

ability to better withstand inflationary pressures and offer lower prices. So bigger retailers, they can afford to make less money. They can, bigger retailers have access to more funding via loans and investors. So, you know, often, you know, we see that bigger retailers and things like COVID, for example, they will just get some loans, batten down the hatches and just weather it and take a few years of losses driving out their smaller, driving their smaller competitors actually out of business. And then when they come out of the storm, they raise prices and the market is more clear and they can actually remake those profits. So that's the kind of, that's the thing you have to watch out for when smaller businesses and are facing off against larger businesses. And in

this case, these small businesses are saying that's exactly what could happen this holiday season. Yeah, and with the possibility of us heading into a recession, small businesses employ, you know, more than half of U.S. workers. And, you know, with the looming recession, as many economists say, is coming, that's kind of scary and what that's going to mean for jobs and the economy. overall. Casey, we have time for just one more story here. More than a year after President Biden's, what many call disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the new Republican oversight chair is demanding an investigation, demanding accountability for it. What happened this week here? Yeah, I mean, in one sense, there hasn't been a lot of updates on the Afghanistan withdrawal. I mean, we know

some of the facts on that. We know 13 U.S. service members were killed in that withdrawal. We know that the Taliban almost immediately took control of the country. We know from polling data that Afghani residents report more suffering than in years past that the educational opportunities for women have really plummeted. We know there's been a pretty oppressive Taliban regime that's taken over billions of dollars of military equipment were left behind by the U.S. military that went into the hands of the Taliban. So all these facts are pretty established at this point. And I think what Republicans are saying that's new is, hey, we're getting this majority

come January and we're not going to let this go. We're not just going to say, well, that was unfortunate and move on. We're going to press into this. We're going to see how did this happen? What was the planning? I mean, did we know it was going to be this bad? Was there something we could have done to prevent it? Those kinds of questions.

And so I'm James Comer, the new, going to be the new chair of the House Oversight Committee. He's a Republican from Kentucky. He sent a string of letters to several Biden administration officials asking questions about this very thing. And so I think really what's noteworthy here is that Republicans are prioritizing this Afghanistan withdrawal in the next two years when they look at what they're going to investigate. I think what they're looking at is COVID origins, you know, what way down with COVID. they're looking at the Afghanistan withdrawal and they're looking at Hunter Biden's laptop. So when we think about the next two years, I think that's what we can expect to see Republicans focusing their investigations on. Thank you, Casey.

Let me just go back to something that's really not newsworthy that we talked about. You say I could get a Trump digital trading card for $90? Our producer, Cole told me, is $99. 99. We can check check him. Yeah. I still have some Christmas shopping. to do. I have a couple members of my extended family that maybe I'll look into that.

Yes, yes, yes. You could ask for your Christmas bonus in cards. All right. That's all the time we have. We need to end this debacle. A reminder to our listeners, you can find all of the Center Squares podcast at Americastocking.com. Take a look. Please subscribe. There is no cost. This has been the America in Focus podcast. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McLeod. Join us next week for our special Christmas edition week of the American In Focus Podcast. Talk you later.