America's Talking - Sanctuary Cities Have Regrets as Flood of Illegal Migrants Continues

Episode Date: July 29, 2023

Leaders of major metros around the U.S. have pushed for more progressive immigration policies in recent years by declaring themselves safe havens for illegal immigrants. Now, however, as the realities of the financial and social impacts of those policies sink in, some local leaders are thinking twice. Millions of illegal immigrants have flowed across the southern border since President Joe Biden took office, with many seeking haven in self-proclaimed "sanctuary cities." 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'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today, as he does every week, is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. We are recording this on Friday, July 28th. Casey, it's been another week of news about the ongoing border crisis, which is not just a border crisis. It's affecting communities across the country, including so-called sanctuary cities, sanctuary states, localities and states that have said that they're going to open their arms to immigrants, whether they entered the country legally or illegally or not. But since President Biden's taken office, since states like Texas and Arizona have been overwhelmed with illegal border crossers and have initiated plans, or not just plans, have been busing migrants to sanctuary cities across the country.

Sanctuary cities themselves, even though they're not Texas, which is getting the brunt of the illegal immigrants coming into their communities, they've been having a hard time dealing with the influx of migrants as well. You wrote a sort of a round-up story this week about what sanctuary cities are doing, and in some cases it appears like they're backtracking. What's happening here? Yeah, I mean, if you laid it out well, there's been a lot of cities, actually far more than you think. You might just think it's something like San Francisco and New York City or something.

A couple of the most liberal cities have done Chicago some kind of virtue signaling and said, hey, you know, we want to be a sanctuary city, which is easy to say when you're so far from the border like New York City is, right? And there is definitely some of that. But there's actually many, many dozens and dozens of counties who have declared themselves sanctuary cities or sanctuary cities. there's sanctuary counties. And so this trend is really grown. People, you know, want to say, but I will say most of these are not these border counties, right? And so there's this question of the disconnect between people in northern or even just Midwestern or East Coast states who have very open border policies on immigration, but don't actually deal in real time with the reality

of people, you know, coming across the border in the way that, for say, for instance, Texas, does, right? And so we have seen now as immigration is just, you know, swollen to such a high level that some of these cities are getting more and more of the impact and also because of the busing policies of people like Abbott and DeSantis sending migrants to other cities like Chicago, like New York City, those mayors that were once pounding the drum of sanctuary city and progressive immigration politics are now having second thoughts, right? So an example of that would be a city like New York or Chicago, which we referenced it. So New York City Mayor Eric Adams, he publicly said earlier this month that the city cannot handle any more migrant

stand, which, I mean, setting aside what you think about this, the politics, to me, that was immediately a funny statement because, you know, New York City has like eight million people and they've gotten a few thousand illegal immigrants, you know, from some of this busing stuff. Yeah, let me just jump in there. Can we continue to thought in a moment? And that's compared to cities like El Paso, less than a million people that have just been overwhelmed at the border town, border community on the Texas, Mexico border. They've been overwhelmed with migrants coming into their community from across the border. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, you're right. I mean, you're right. There's like tens of thousands every few weeks coming across.

We had 175,000 last month alone. And, you know, El Paso is one of the biggest choke points. for that immigration, right? So, I mean, we're talking over the last few years, hundreds of thousands of people coming through the small town of El Paso. And then New York City is saying they can't handle it. And they actually were planning to pass out materials and flyers at the southern border to discuss or to discourage illegal immigrants from going north to New York City. Right. So they're like, hey, we're sanctuary city, but let's, you know, let's put a cap on this. Right. And so, which, funnily enough, I think, is the view that most people or most mayors, regardless of political

affiliation, would have. It's like, hey, we want some immigrants. Like, we want to be an open place, but also we need to be reasonable and can't overwhelm what entitlement and funding we have to, you know, help these people. I think that's probably, Dan, I would see if you agree with me. That's probably the view that everyone in America holds, regardless of political views. It just works itself out differently based on where you live and what other allegiances you have politically. But, hey, sure, I'm open to immigrants. I mean, I'm a good guy, but we just got to be smart about it, and we can't have so many people that were overwhelming all of our systems, and they don't have a place to sleep. I just want to make one thing clear. So we call it a border crisis, a border issue, but it's not just communities.

This is a national issue because you also have floods of fentanyl being smuggled across the border that's making its way into communities across the country. And related topic that I want to get into, something else we reported on at the Center Square. this week, and that is in the first nine months of the federal fiscal year, the federal fiscal year begins October 1st, ends September 30th of each year. The first nine months of this federal fiscal year, 525 known or suspected terrorists have been apprehended attempting to illegally enter the United States in those nine months alone. And that does not count what border officials call gotaways. Those who successfully sneak their way into the country are not apprehended, but between ports of entry, are not apprehended. And we don't know where they are.

The federal government doesn't know where they are. That's got to be concerned. 525 have been apprehended. And these are folks who are on a terror watch list, on an international terror watch list. They've been identified by the international community as being known or suspected terrorists. 525 have been apprehended, but we don't know how many have not been apprehended who successfully made their way into the country. Right. And that's probably the scariest thing about all this is we don't know. And if someone, I mean, remember Dan what great links and elaborate planning, for instance, the 9-11 hijackers did. Right. I mean, this wasn't like a spur of the moment. Hey, next weekend, we're going to do this. I mean, they took a long time, went to flight school, did things like that to really prepare. And so if if there are a terror, who are that intent on getting into our country on the terror watch list. I mean, they,

they can take the, you know, the measures necessary to avoid detection at the southern border, and we'll never know. I think that's like the biggest thing is you can say, oh, we've caught 525, you know, terrorists. It's like, well, we'll never know about the 526 guy who was undetected and slipped by unseen. There's no way to measure how many people you're not seeing by, you know, like by definition. It's impossible to measure that. And so, And you think about when, you know, Dan, I know you never left the country, but when I've, you know, gone overseas and come back, you have to go through such screening to come into the country when you fly in. And but when you come across the southern border, it's like there's nothing. So the terror, the threat, I'm going to be, you know, talking to some experts about this.

Actually, you should keep an eye on the center square.com and probably this, you know, this podcast. because I'm going to be talking to some national security experts about the impact of this. What is the threat? How dangerous is this? And what can we do about it? Where are some stuff there, Casey? I do look forward to your future reporting on this. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.

But we are out of time. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKeel. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening.