America's Talking - Governors Ask Biden for ‘Honest, Accurate’ Information on Illegal Immigration

Episode Date: September 23, 2023

Twenty-four Republican governors said illegal immigration burdens every state and asked President Joe Biden for "honest" and "accurate" information about the situation. A letter sent Tuesday blamed Biden's policies for a surge in illegal crossings at the southern border. 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 in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today, as he does each and every week, is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Too good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, fresh off of a few days off, but couldn't skip recording America in Focus with you, Casey. Had to be back by this morning. I'm glad to hear that.

Are you recording this from the deck of a cruise ship? I am recording this from the comfort of my home office, Casey, but thank you for asking. We are recording this on Friday, September 22nd. Casey, the ongoing border crisis has been more than challenging, not just for border states, but for states across the country. Essentially since President Biden first took office and drastically altered U.S. immigration policy, the center square has been covering this crisis since day one, but it's so multifaceted. It's hard to keep track of everything going on. This week, a group of Republican governors asked President Biden for a full counting of what the border crisis has meant for the American people. Bring us up to speed on this.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, the border has really fallen into crisis mode, and it's become a political crisis for the Biden administration because there's so many videos, for instance, going viral, just showing seemingly thousands of people walking across the border unfettered. We have all the reports from the border from, you know, some good reporting at the soonerstores.com that these agents are overwhelmed. You know, I've talked to people and written about how the cartels will actually purposefully overwhelm a section of the border with migrants. And then once all the border agents are busy, they will shoot through a load of fentanyl, right? And just get a bunch of fentanyl up across the border. So this has been going on for a while now. It's gotten much,

much worse since Biden took office. There are some policy reasons for that. But as you said, these governors are raising the alarm. And it's gone from just a couple of border states to, you know, This is a nationwide coalition, a couple dozen states. And, you know, I thought this excerpt from the letter is really interesting to see. Analysts estimate the annual net cost of illegal immigration for the U.S. at the federal state and local levels at least $150.7 billion. So we're talking about this taxpayer angle here. States are forced to provide financial, educational, and medical support to migrants entering our country illegally,

support that is skyrocketing costs due to record inflation and unprecedented influx. of migrants into our states. And so, you know, what they're saying is this is a huge financial burden on these states and especially on these counties and cities like El Paso, some of these border counties where they're getting like legitimately tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people over the last few years. And many of these people are either just coming right across the border and camping out or they're needing medical assistance. They're, you know, dehydrated different things. They could be pregnant. They could be. There's just so many issues when you have that many people walking through a small Texas or Arizona County that rise up and that arise.

And so when you have, as we've talked about, there's been actually millions of illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration is increased by, you know, 850 percent in some cases, according to a Republican say, which is also at the northern border. I'll point out. And you've pointed this out as well. It's not just a southern border anymore. The northern border has gotten much worse. And the last thing I'll point to is just the national security.

implications of this. You know, they referenced this in the letter, but I've written about this recently as well, which is that there are many people on the terror watch list, Dan, who are coming across the country. We know they're on the terror watch list, and we know they're coming in, and we're just not doing much about it. I'm going to come back to that final point you made there, Casey, in just a minute. That's one of the many facets of the border crisis that complicates the story. But I want to go back to this letter that the record.

Republican governors sent to President Biden. They estimated that the annual cost of increased illegal immigration, as you said, $150.7 billion. I've got to think that that's a very, you know, that's a staggering amount of money when you're talking about a recurring cost year and year out. But I have to think that that's a very conservative number. Because at the center square.com, you know, we've been reporting about the national. aspect of this crisis, but also the impact on states and local governments. And man, just as an observer, a follower of the news, someone who edits are reporting on this story, that just seems low. I would guess it is significantly higher than that when you talk about housing, medical

costs, education in schools. It's hard to get, for example, it's hard to mail down how much it cost schools to bring, for example, you know, many, most of these folks are not English language speakers. So the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the cost to schools to bring them in to the classroom, um, help teach them, um, English, help acclimate them, um, to the American educational system. Hundreds of individuals on the international terror watch list have been apprehended at the border. But as you and I know, there are thousands of individuals who cross the border every single month that go undetected known as Godaways. That's the, that Godaways is the term that the Border Patrol uses to account for those

who they, who are detected crossing the border, but we don't have any personnel to apprehend them. or we don't have enough staff to apprehend them. We don't know who those people are. What percentage of those folks are on the terror watch list that are getting into the country undetected? And there was an alert that was put out by Arizona Port authorities about the potential for these folks getting into the country. And it could lead to another September 11th type tragedy. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely grown to the point where we're not just talking about a few Latin American. countries sending people over. I mean, there's so many millions. You know, there's actually a lot of

Chinese people are coming across the border, right, which raises kind of interesting national security questions about and spying questions since they're an adversarial nation that we are increasingly in tension with and could potentially be in some kind of war over, you know, Taiwan, God forbid, soon, you know, soon enough. But so there's questions like that. There's people from the Middle East who are coming across the border too. So it's not just, you know, what maybe people think of as a few Latin American countries or something, sending people over. There's so many millions that it is really from countries all around the world. And so there is that interesting question.

I want to go back to what you're saying about the cost. I mean, we legitimately, you know, we legitimately don't know how many people that are coming into the country. We have these estimates. We know about how many people we caught. And we know about how many people that were spotted, but got away, as you said, were gotaways. But we don't know about the people who come in. and just are never detected. And so, I mean, we, it's how do we quantify the cost of this

when we don't actually know even how many illegal immigrants that are coming in, you know, every month? And the number is astronomical. It's growing. The more overloaded the border is, the more people are probably getting through unseen. And I wish I had this sat handy, but I know that we've referenced it before that the number of people that have come in, you know, just this year, for instance, is more than the population of several U.S. states, right?

So this is such a large number that the idea that we could quantify it and say, oh, it's $150 billion. I think you're right. It is low. We really don't know the scope of this problem. And it's pretty hard to measure the true cost when you start talking about education, the medical system, even policing. There's so many different avenues to it. The center square.com from day one has covered this ongoing border crisis story better than anyone in the national media. And least listeners can keep up with.

it, all the fastest of it at thecenter square.com, but we are out of time for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McAulip. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.