Morning Wire - Immigration Surge Incoming | 3.19.22

Episode Date: March 19, 2022

The Biden Administration braces for a massive surge of migrants, basketball player Kyrie Irving can't play due to being unvaccinated, so he sits in the audience instead, and Los Angeles spends more on apartments for the homeless than most Americans pay for a home. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Biden administration is bracing for another massive surge of migrants at the U.S. southern border as a Trump-era order is set to expire. Why is the White House expecting an unprecedented surge, and what is the plan to manage the influx of migrants? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's March 19th, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire. If the sports world done with vaccine mandates, we'll discuss the saga of an NBA star whose stance against mandates has created a ripple effect among his fans and fellow athletes. And Los Angeles is spending more on individual apartments for homeless people than most Americans pay for their homes.

We'll talk to an expert about the fallout from the state's housing first policies. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This show is sponsored by Birch Gold Group. The market's slow decline has now worsened. And you need to make sure that your savings are protected with alternative investments. Head your savings today before it's too late with Birch Gold. Text the word wire to 989898 to claim a free info kit on physical gold and silver today.

Again, text wire to 9898-98 to protect your savings with Birch Gold today. The Biden administration is reportedly preparing for a massive influx of migrants at the southern border as a Trump-era immigration order is set to expire. Here with more on the ongoing border crisis and why immigration officials are bracing for another record-breaking migrant surge is Daily Wires Cabot Phillips. So Cabot, obviously, a lot of our attention has been turned to Ukraine, but the border crisis is still ongoing. First, can you give us an update there?

Yeah, the latest data from the Customs and Border Protection really underscores how serious this crisis has become over the last two years. In February alone, there were more than 164,000 migrant encounters at the southern border. Just for context, in February of 2020, that number was just 36,000. So five times more in just a two-year span. For fiscal year 2022, we're now on pace for over two million migrant encounters. That would be the highest number in recorded history. And according to reports, the Biden administration is preparing now for an even greater influx if a Trump-era immigration policy is revoked.

So tell us about that policy specifically and how it's affected things over the past few years. In March of 2020, right when COVID first hit, President Trump implemented, Title 42. This was an immigration order that allowed border agents to immediately expel illegal immigrants due to health concerns, in this case, COVID. This meant that even though it was claiming asylum could be turned away before being given a hearing. Remember, the order was initially put in place as a means of curbing the number of migrants who'd get caught at the border, claim asylum and then get released into the country, but never show up for their asylum hearings. Right. Now, President Biden initially hinted that he would rescind the order because many Democrats

called it inhumane or anti-immigrant, but once the number of migrants flooding the border increased, his administration actually began relying on it because basically border agents were being overrun. Now, they've actually used the order to expel over a million illegal immigrants since 2021. But now, according to reports from Axios, the CDC may be rescinding Title 42 as the pandemic winds down. And that would open the door for even more migrants to make it across the border without being deported. And just how much is that expected to change things on the ground? Quite a bit.

If the order is rescinded, which could happen as early as next month, the expectation is that hundreds of thousands more migrants will attempt to enter the country. Keep in mind, many of these migrants are well aware of the state of American immigration policy, and obviously the removal of a policy meant to keep them out will play a role. Even the Biden administration is admitting that now. They reportedly created a new, quote, Southwest Border Coordination Center to prepare for the expected wave that would come. This was previously under wraps, but it's basically a command center for them to coordinate between different agencies from a logistical perspective. And if nothing else, it shows how serious they're expecting this threat to be.

So if Title 42 is rescinded and there is an even greater spike than we're seeing right now, what sort of federal response can we expect? There are a few things expected right now. first, the expectation is that various agencies, including ICE, CBP, DHS, and even the TSA will be sending staff to the border to help with processing. For example, DHS Deputy Secretary John Tyn has already reportedly sent an internal email to employees asking them, quote, to consider stepping forward to support the DHS volunteer force, which helps with data entry for detained migrants. And second, in addition to building new facilities to house migrants while they're awaiting trial, the DHS. the DHS has also expected to request planes from the U.S. Marshal Service to transport migrants around the country after their cases have been hurt. So more broadly, how are the American people responding to President Biden's handling of immigration? Yeah, President Biden is really in a tough spot on this one.

On one hand, he campaigned on opening up the border and peeling back Trump-era immigration policies. But at the same time, he's aware and his staff is aware that Americans don't support the idea of allowing millions of people to come here. illegally. And poll after poll shows that the vast majority of Americans are unhappy with his handling of things so far on immigration. One Harvard poll last month, for example, showed him 36 points underwater on immigration with just 32% of Americans approving of the job he's doing there. Another political poll earlier this month was same story, 37% approved on immigration. So you can definitely expect Republicans to once again hone in on that issue come November. The data is clear. The longer this crisis goes on, the more upset voters are getting. And again, it does

seem like things are about to get even worse. Well, we'll definitely be following that ahead of midterms. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. That's DailyWire's Cabot Phillips. Coming up, a Brooklyn Netstar is blocked from playing since he's unvaccinated. So he bought a ticket to his own game instead. You can get this show and all of the content you love, wherever you are, all on the Daily Wire app. Even if you're not a Daily Wire member, you'll be first to know what trending with mobile notifications for the latest news, and you'll get content from all your favorite Daily Wire shows. Download the Daily Wire app and keep up with the facts no matter where your day takes you. The saga of Brooklyn Nets star point guard Kyrie Irving continues, as New York City's

vaccine mandate stops Irving from playing in home games. Here to tell us what's going on as Daily Wire sports reporter Joe Morgan. Joe, what do you have for us? Well, it's kind of a fascinating and confusing situation, to be honest. So let's take a step back. In September, Brooklyn Netstar point guard, Kyrie Irving, participated in his team's Media Day virtually, raising questions about his COVID-19 vaccination status. In order for Irving to be eligible to play in Brooklyn home games, he needed to have at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and that's due to local New York City regulations. So his absence pointed to him abstaining from getting the shot. One month later, in October, Nett's general manager, Sean Marks, put out a statement saying that Irving will not be part of

the organization, quote, until he is eligible to be a full participant, meaning that Irving would be shelved even from practices until he received the vaccine. The following day, Irving took to Instagram to tell the world that he was indeed unvaccinated, saying the, quote, nobody should be forced to do anything with their bodies. Then in December, as the Nets were being ravaged by the new COVID-19 variant as well as injuries, the Nets did an about-face allowing Irving to return to the team in order to play in Brooklyn's road games. Since then, Irving has played 19 games all in the road, scoring a Brooklyn franchise record 60 points in just 35 minutes Tuesday night in Orlando. It was an amazing experience. So Irving is still unable to play in home games due to which mandate.

Yeah, so that's the private sector mandate, which requires all in-person employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. In late February, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the relaxation of the city's public sector vaccine and mask mandates, while keeping New York City's private sector vaccine mandate, meaning that the vaccine is not required for fans attending basketball games in New York City. It all kind of came to ahead over the weekend when the world was able to fully see the insanity of Irving's plate, to be honest. On Saturday night, Irving attended the ACC championship game between Duke and Virginia Tech at Barclays Center, which is where Brooklyn plays, maskless and unvaccinated. The very next day, Brooklyn welcomed the New York Knicks

to Barclays Center, and Irving was once again, not allowed to suit up with his teammates. He did, however, attend the game, sitting courtside to watch Kevin Durant dropped 53 points in the win over the Knicks. Brooklyn Star Kevin Durant had some thoughts, calling on New York City Mayor Eric Adams to, quote, figure it out.

Early on in the season, you know, people didn't understand what was going on, but now it just looks stupid. So hopefully, Eric, you've got to figure this out. All right, so they're allowing unvaccinated fans into the arena, but they're not allowing unvaccinated players to compete. It seems nonsensical. Yeah, of course it is.

And here's the kicker. Unvaccinated visiting players are allowed to play, but not unvaccinated players whose home market is New York City. The game that Irving attended over the weekend, which I alluded to a few seconds ago, ended up with the Nets being fined $50,000 for allowing Irving into the locker room. Incredible. Thanks for the update, Joe.

Yeah, you got it. Daily Wire sports reporter Joe Morgan. A recent audit found that Los Angeles is spending up to $800, $37,000 per apartment for the homeless. This comes after similar reports of high costs for homeless projects in California. Here to talk about those numbers and some of the problems with housing the homeless, we have back with us, Judge Glock from the Cicero Institute. Judge, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me back. Now, we recently talked with you about California's homelessness crisis. In that segment, you mentioned that back in 2016, the state embraced a housing first strategy to deal with the homeless, which basically meant giving every undoneysmalism. sheltered homeless person, a permanent home, no strings attached. So was this spending part of that program? Yes, basically. The same year California passed its housing first mandate. L.A. voters passed referendum HHS, which promised to spend $1.2 billion on what's known as permanent supportive housing

or PSH. That means permanent housing for the homeless that comes bundled up with counseling and health services. Importantly, however, people in the houses don't have to use any of those services. And why is that? Well, anyone who works with the homeless knows that most of the long-term homeless out on the streets are what they call service-resistant, meaning that even when offered services, counseling, drug treatment, mental health services, they refuse to take them. So when housing is contingent on participation in the other programs, most of the homeless rejected. But the idea behind housing first is that you take away all of those other requirements, mandated participation in programs, just to get homeless people to agree to take the housing.

That means no requirements for sobriety, no mental health checkups, nothing. The theory is that people would start using those other services of their own volition whenever they saw fit to. Sadly, the evidence is they still don't. And what's driving the price of these apartments so high? I mean, L.A. is expensive, but $837,000 seems very high for just like a basic one-bedroom apartment. It is, even for L.A. So the median cost of these units is about 500,000, but yeah, in some instances, they've cost upwards of 800K, as this audit showed. The biggest additional cost that's driving up is what we call soft cost in the construction trade.

Things like consultants, architects, financing, basically everything but the land and the actual building itself. The city audit found that these soft costs in these subsized apartments could be up to 40% of the whole cost of the building, almost as much as the actual material and building, And that's about twice the level for normal non-subsidized apartments. The reason for this is there's this whole white-collar industry built around all the paperwork that goes into so-called affordable units for the homeless. Accounts and lawyers have to deal with all these special rules. Planners and architects have to meet all these special government requirements. Now, you said that the soft costs are the biggest contributor.

What else drives up these costs? In general, what's causing these high housing costs are some of the same problems that are housing, high housing costs all across California. California just makes it really hard to build, that it's hard to develop new land outside of cities. California also has special environmental lawsuits against all development, which drives up price and slows construction as well, and some of that impacted these units too. Now, is this problem unique to housing first units, or are these costs typical for other kinds of subsidized housing in California? Sadly, this is pretty typical. In fact, in San Francisco, the average affordable

housing unit cost about $750,000 per unit to build. Ironically, studies showed that these so-called affordable housing units cost much more to build than your basic market rate housing, largely because of all these soft costs and other additional hoops developers have to jump through to build government-mandated housing units. Now, when I was an L.A. resident, it did concern me that it seemed like so many of the homeless were from out of state. Do we have any data on how these programs affect the migration of homeless from one state to another? Yeah, Los Angeles actually surveys the homeless on this, and they found about a third of the people on the streets come from outside of L.A. County, and about 20% come from outside the state entirely. So it's not hard to observe the kind of incentives these programs create.

Right. Well, we're just about out of time, but Judge, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks so much for having me again. That's Judge Glock of the Cicero Institute. Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. love our show and you stand with our mission, please consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know. If you like this podcast, get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at dailywire.com slash subscribe.