America's Talking - Illegal Border Crossers Total Over 10 Million Since Biden Inauguration

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

More than 10 million people have been reported illegally entering the United States since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the greatest number in history and of any administration. They total more than the individual populations of 41 states. 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 today, as he does each and every week, is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are you, Casey? Doing well, Dan. How are you? I am doing fine, except for this next segment here, Casey. We're recording this on Friday, October 20th. National security is a growing concern here in the U.S. with what's going on in the Middle East and in Israel's conflict with the Hamas terrorist group. Since President Biden took office, we've written a lot, and we've talked a lot about the border crisis here in the U.S.

and floods of people crossing the border every day. And now with the two ends, the things happening on two opposite ends of the world, there's concerns that they might come together. And because we've had so many people illegally crossed the border, and many of them have gotten away, meaning they haven't been apprehended, We don't know how many known or suspected terrorists have illegally entered the country undetected. And there's growing concerns that there could be some terrorists or want to be terrorists among that group. You wrote about that earlier this week. Casey, tell us about it.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's not hyperbole at all to say this is a major national security threat that I really believe the federal government does not have a great handle on because they don't have a great handle on the border. It's hard to have a great handle on the problem where you don't even know how big the problem. is, as we say often on this podcast, we actually do not know the real number of how many people are coming into the country because there's no way to track people who come in undetected, and we've had great reporting at the cindersquare.com showing that number of people who get away or come in undetected is in the millions, right? So we don't know whose people are, but even the ones that we do know who they are, hundreds and hundreds of them are on the terror watch list, which the federal government maintains, the FBI really runs it,

the terror watch list and they're you know when somebody's on the terror watch list they don't they do treat them differently which is good of course they you know they catch these people and they don't have the same level of lax policies that they do with a lot of other migrants the same is true for people who have pretty serious criminal records but still dan i mean if we for how many the question is how many people on the terror watch list come into the country for everyone that we catch right that we don't how many or do we don't see for everyone we do see So I talked to some experts about this to the chair. I talked to former acting director of Department of Homeland Security, Laura Reese.

I also talked to, you know, the head of the Department of Homeland Security Committee in Congress, Representative Mark Green. And they basically raised big concerns that with this data and what we know from the border, that not just the southern border either day, and also the northern border, which I know you've pointed out before, is that terrorist. coming into the U.S. is a real problem. So Laura Rees, who used to lead the Department of Homeland Security, she straight up just told me that Hamas, the terrorists connected to Hamas coming into the U.S. is a problem. She used the word Hamas too. I'm not reading the global politics into a general terrorism concern. I'll be part of her quote. She said a terrorist attack facilitated or inspired by Hamas is absolutely a real threat in the United States. The visceral hatred toward Israel and America that's on display here at home and around the world should be a wake-up call.

So, Dan, wake up. Do you think we are awake to this threat? I don't hear that many people talking about it. I mean, I know we talk about it. We do a lot of reporting on it. But I just don't think that this is broadly known or issue that we've woken up to. What's interesting and somewhat frightening, Casey, is, you know, You were working on this story as almost an enterprise piece. There was no looming threat that anyone was talking about or saying. So you were working on this sort of on the side as an enterprise piece. And after you filed the story and I was editing it, we heard about an unclassified document from the San Diego Field Office,

where their intelligence unit, the border field office in San Diego, California, their intelligence unit issued a document. that assesses, and I'm going to quote directly from it, assesses that individuals inspired by or reacting to the current Israel-Hamas conflict may attempt travel to or from the area of hostilities in the Middle East via circuit circuit across the southwest border. So they had intelligence that this actually could be happening. Right. I mean, so there's the federal government, when the government, I guess not the federal, the government is raising those kind of concerns in saying it publicly, you know there's even more going on behind the scenes that maybe they're not wanting to talk about yet.

And this isn't the first, you know, the first, this has been going on for a while. I mean, in last summer, there was a big, you know, the U.S. extradited, cartel members in Mexico, right? And if you looked at those documents, you found that, in the allegations, you found that those cartel members had allegedly been working with Hezbollah buyers. Right. So the cartels have a relationship with, Hezbollah. This is not something I'm making up. You can read this on the Justice Department's website.

Some of these cartel members said they extradited are either selling, you know, things to Hezbollah, whatever may be, but they have a relationship with them. So it's not out of the realm to think that the Hezbollah, which is the Iranian back, different from Hamas, but is a different terrorist group that also hates Israel and has been, you know, attacking them for for years and years and and trying to wipe out Israel for years and years and also hates us by proxy because we, you know, have been supportive of Israel, these groups that are, this isn't just theory, this isn't just speeches, they are literally actively trying to kill Israelis right now. These are the same people that we know for a fact are in Mexico and almost certainly

coming across the southern border. And then, you know, there's people who are already active coming in, Dan, and then there are young people who can become easily radicalized, right? Which is something we've seen, I've reported on, you know, young people, who through media, through the internet, chat rooms, different things, they are kind of just normal kids, but they get radicalized by these groups, and then they become dangerous to the communities they live in. So that's another factor to think about. And it's not pretty, it's not, there's nothing really comforting about it. And we don't even really deport people anymore because Biden has almost entirely shut down immigration and custom enforcement ice.

So we're really not even deporting people anymore. So I don't think we have a good long-term strategy to even to deal with this right now. We certainly don't, Casey. And in the remaining moments we have left, I just want to go over some numbers that our border correspondent, Bethany Blankly, put together and compiled. The federal government's fiscal year goes from October 1st to September 30th. So they report data based on fiscal year, the fiscal year, not the calendar. year and of course we're in October so we're in the new fiscal year but last fiscal year alone there were nearly four million illegal border crossers in a single year that includes both those people who were apprehended by border patrol agents but also gotaways nearly a million

godaways in those numbers since president Biden took office it's more than 10 million illegal border crossers. Among those numbers, of course, are also Godaways. And how do we know about gotaways? There's surveillance cameras. There's Border Patrol uses drones and things like that. These are the people who are spotted between ports of entry entering the country, but we don't have any patrol border patrol agents in the vicinity to apprehend these people. So they're known to have crossed the border and literally got away. So, as you said earlier, we have no idea who these people are or even where they are in the United States right now. Border security needs to be a priority of the News House speaker.

In a separate segment this week of American Focus, Casey and I talked about Representative Johnson of Louisiana, who was finally after three weeks without a speakership elected to the position. I think that should be a priority of his. Casey, final word before we have to close it. Just that 10 million number is shocking. 10 million migrants coming in just in Biden's term. The population of New York City is 8.5 million people. So in just those few years, we have more than enough people to,

than the entire population of our largest city. So I think that's interesting. I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's interesting that you point that out, Casey, because in this story from Bethany Blankley, or border correspondent, that more, that 10 million represents,

more than the individual populations of 41 U.S. states. There's only nine U.S. states that have greater population than the number of people who have illegally crossed the border since President Biden has been in office. Our listeners can keep up with the border crisis coverage at the center square.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKalib. Please subscribe. Thanks for listening.