Tangle - The situation on the border.

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

Over the last few months, a record number of migrant encounters at the southern border and a controversial new policy of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s has set off a wave of commentary about our immigration system. Plus, a forthcoming bill in the Senate.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the southern border, some immigration issues, Governor Greg Abbott from Texas and what he's up to these days, and some of the debate around that.

Before we jump in though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, the injured second suspect in a mass stabbing that killed 10 people in an indigenous community in Canada has died after being taken into custody by police. Number two, police in Memphis arrested a 19-year-old suspect after four people were killed and three were wounded by a man who drove around the city shooting at people. Number three, shelling has resumed near the nuclear power plant in Ukraine and residents were ordered to evacuate. United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kiev today for an unannounced visit as a show of support. Number four, a Michigan judge struck down the state's 1931 ban on most abortion procedures, saying it violated the state constitution.

saying it violated the state constitution. Number five, in Texas, a judge ruled that an employer mandate to provide coverage for an HIV prevention drug violated religious freedom. These migrants at this shelter in Eagle Pass, Texas, most from Venezuela, have all just crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into Texas, surrendered to the U.S. Border Patrol, received future immigration court dates, and some are about to board this bus for a 1,700-mile trip to Washington, D.C. The mayor of Chicago says Governor Greg Abbott is manufacturing a human crisis. Abbott has been busing migrants

to other major cities like New York, D.C. and Chicago. And this is a crisis caused by the Biden administration. Remember, two years ago, we had the lowest number of border crossings in decades. Today, we have the highest number of illegal crossings into the United States ever. Over the last few months, a record number of migrant encounters at the southern border and a controversial new policy from Texas Governor Greg Abbott has set off a wave of commentary about our immigration system. Currently, there are 331 million people in the United States. 41 million of them were born elsewhere, or about one in seven, and an estimated 11.4 million are unauthorized immigrants.

In July, the Border Patrol reported 181,552 arrests. That's a 5.6% drop from the 192,148 reported in June. With a little less than four months to go in fiscal year 2022, the agency has made 1.81 million arrests and expects to break 2 million in a single year for the first time ever. The pandemic has driven a surge in desire to come to the United States, with many Latin American economies being hit hard as demand for low-wage jobs, most often filled by migrants, is surging in the U.S. At the same time, smugglers have taken to WhatsApp and Facebook to tell migrants that President Biden's immigration policies are more lenient and that some people

who reach the U.S. are allowed to stay. The numbers are also being juiced by Title 42, according to border agents. That's the U.S. policy implemented under Trump that was meant to quickly deter migration by sending asylum seekers back to Mexico while they awaited a trial. Biden tried to end the policy, but his effort has been blocked by a federal judge. Border Patrol agents estimate that one in four migrants has tried to re-enter the United States in the last 12 months because under Title 42, they won't face prison for repeated entries as they would under normal U.S. immigration law. In response to the increased number of migrant apprehensions, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has started busing migrants from Texas to New York

City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. New York City officials say intake centers have received more than 4,000 migrants since late May. Abbott has sent another 7,000 migrants to Washington, D.C., and said that the move is both to relieve overwhelmed border communities and draw attention to the crisis at the border, which he says is being ignored by politicians in Washington, D.C. He also notes that New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago are sanctuary cities where illegal immigrants are supposed to be welcomed. In response, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has sent a delegation to Texas this week to meet with Border Patrol officials. Adams talked the talk about being a sanctuary city welcoming illegal immigrants to the Big Apple with warm hospitality, Abbott said in a New York Post op-ed. Talk is cheap. When pressed into

fulfilling such ill-considered policies, he wants to condemn anyone who is pressing him to walk the walk. At the same time, migrant deaths are increasing in the southwestern United States. In Eagle Pass, Texas, officials say migrants are drowning every day trying to cross the Rio Grande. Last week, nine migrants died and 37 were rescued in Eagle Pass in a single day after flooding drove up the river's water levels. 715 migrants died in the desert in 2021 in an area of southern Texas dubbed Death Valley. In July, 53 migrants were found dead inside an overheated tractor trailer in one of the largest mass migrant victim events in U.S. history. The Biden administration has pointed to high levels of apprehensions as proof that the border is not as porous as many Republicans claim.

However, over 1 million of those migrants have been released into the U.S. interior while awaiting hearings during Biden's term. Distinct from the hundreds of thousands who have crossed undetected, those migrants are hoping to win asylum claims and legally stay in the U.S. Interestingly, unlike migrants of the last few decades, it's not overwhelmingly Mexicans and migrants from the Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala who are crossing the southern border. Though those four countries continue to account for the largest proportion of migrants, people from countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are crossing in increasingly high numbers as they flee from dire economic conditions and authoritarian leaders. Migrants from countries besides Mexico,

El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala account for 40% of total apprehensions this fiscal year. In a moment, we're going to explore some commentary about the southern border with a focus on the current state of things and Abbott's decision to begin busing migrants to other cities. We've covered immigration repeatedly in Tangle, and you can find our previous issues with a link in today's newsletter or by scrolling back on the podcast. First up, we'll start with what the writer sang.

Many on the right blame Biden's rhetoric and lenient policies for the crisis on the border. Some praise Abbott's move to bus migrants to other cities, saying he has every right to demand help in dealing with the migrants. Others say Biden's policies are actually crueler than Abbott's because they have created a humanitarian crisis. The New York Post editorial board said Biden's open border is attracting a whole new category of immigrant. Much of the other nation groups come from Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, and Nicaragua, but Haiti and even Ukraine contribute too, the board said. Vice President Kamala Harris' supposed mission of addressing the root causes of Northern Triangle migration looks even more pathetic, and not just because she's barely

pretended to try. The rush from Cuba, etc. would drown out any progress, even if she'd actually made any. This is a clear result of President Joe Biden's decision to do away with everything his predecessor, and even President Barack Obama, had done to stop the tide. The Border Patrol now basically waves every comer in, treats nearly all as asylum seekers, and sends them on their way into the interior, requesting only that they check in from their final destinations. It's racist, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot-Gran stands, for Texas to bus illegal migrants to her city, the board also noted.

Not that they don't want them, she quickly clarifies. Chicago welcomes hundreds of migrants every year to our city and provides much-needed assistance. So what's racist about it? Could it be that Chicago, no matter how welcoming, finds itself overwhelmed by aid seekers encouraged by President Biden's own border policy? Which is exactly Governor Greg Abbott's point. Texas is busing a small fraction of the thousands of illegal migrants his state has to deal with every day. He's giving Democratic mayors far from the border just a taste of the financial burden and responsibility he faces because of federal indifference. In Newsweek, Jonathan Tobin said Democrats are discovering only the federal government can solve the border crisis.

Liberals in deep blue cities far removed from America's southern border have been lecturing Republicans for years about the ideals of Emma Lazarus's poem on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The Trump administration and politicians in states like Texas, overwhelmed with the problems associated with illegal immigration, were blasted as hard-hearted xenophobes, Tobin said. There's no sign that politicians on the left are rethinking their support for amnesty and the opening of the border, but mayors of New York City and Washington, D.C. have discovered that these ideological chickens have finally come home to roost. The result is a quote-unquote

humanitarian crisis that is making it harder for Northeast liberal elites to pretend that only right-wing hate mongers worry about illegal immigration. While New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been spouting rhetoric about welcoming immigrants, he's also acting as if his city has been the victim of a dirty trick. He called Abbott's tactic unimaginable and horrific. He's been begging the federal government to help him address a problem that is overwhelming a social welfare system already dealing with an out-of-control homelessness problem, Tobin said. The federal government should help cities cope with bust-in migrants, but not by sending them money. Instead, Biden should reverse his immigration policies and return to his predecessor's policy of sealing the border, including resuming work on the wall Trump

wanted to build. In Unheard, Batya Ungar Sargan said Biden has gone as far as a president can go without actually abolishing our borders. Where did millions of migrants get the idea that Biden had invited them in? From Biden himself, naturally. During the 2020 primary debates, then-candidate Biden said that migrants illegally crossing the border should not be detained, and like nearly every other candidate on the debate stage, he said he would decriminalize illegal border crossings. Millions of migrants were listening, along with the human traffickers who extort, torture, rape, and kill them, she said. And Biden has more or less followed through as president. From day one, he stopped construction of a border wall with Mexico, ended President Trump's travel ban restricting travel from 14 countries, and dramatically reduced deportations from more than 267,000 in 2019 to just 59,000 in 2021.

The Biden administration also vowed to end Title 42, a Trump-era restriction that allowed migrants to be turned away due to the pandemic, though a federal judge in Louisiana has for now blocked Biden's attempt to end the policy, Ungar Sargan said. Of course, many of these progressives also have compassion for migrants crossing the border in search of a better life. I do too. It's impossible not to feel for people seeking a better life for their children. But what about America's own struggling workers? Why no compassion for them? Like so much of what passes for political debate in America in 2022, the fight between Governor Abbott and Mayors Adams and Bowser is less about values and more about interests. Big city Democrats want to flatter the moral vanity of their elite base

by rhetorically supporting illegal immigration, but only so long as border states such as Texas and Arizona are the ones who foot the bill. Alright, that is it for the rightist saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. Many on the left criticize Abbott's policy as cruel and inhumane. Some call out the Biden administration, but maintain there is no invasion or border being overrun given net immigration is at historic lows. Others say Republicans are doing little or nothing to address the actual issue. The Chicago Tribune editorial board called Governor Abbott's actions cruel, writing about the arrival of 60 migrants at Union Station earlier this week. Make no mistake, this was an act of political

theater and unconscionable immaturity, rendered immoral by the unpaid cast, migrants looking for a better life for their families, the board wrote. And, of course, Lightfoot knew how to play her assigned role as a whole slew of people who opposed Abbott's actions rushed to Union Square to speak their minds to waiting cameras to pen their stories of outrage and defiance. They knew that the idea of one state busing migrants hundreds of miles to another state without offering meaningful notice to ensure the provision of services is not exactly a functional or humane way to handle the issue of immigration. But they also knew that the inflamed rhetoric of how Chicago is ready to welcome anyone who arrives at the border, even via a bus from Texas, was only playing into the hands of Abbott and his many supporters in both Texas and Washington. In essence, what we ended up with Wednesday night was a dysfunctional

war of words between Democrats and Republicans, a fight between a red state and a blue city, each offering up catnip for its own partisans, the board said. Meanwhile, stuck in the middle of all of this were surely decent, worried, scared families, unsure of their fate and how and where they were going to land. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown.

When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The Washington Post editorial board said we need immigrants, not overheated rhetoric. Net immigration to the United States, the number of all foreign arrivals, including illegal ones, minus the number of departures, has been on a downward slope for five years, partly but not only because of the pandemic. As The Economist noted recently, migrants added just 247,000 people to the U.S. population in the year that ended in July 2021. That's the smallest

increase in three decades and an amount equal to less than one-tenth of one percent of the country's population, the board said. The Trump administration, having launched an assault on legal as well as illegal immigration, drove down the number of entries through red tape even before COVID-19's arrival. Despite the fact that most apprehended migrants are sent back to Mexico under a public health edict the Trump administration imposed, Republicans predictably weaponized the surge of migrants at the border, using it to scare Americans and score political points. The fact that net immigration is tumbling and contributing to labor shortages and thereby also to inflation by helping drive up wages is lost in the tsunami of political rhetoric about an invasion, the board said.

Despite its contradictory messaging, the Biden administration has taken measured steps to funnel migrants legally into seasonal non-agriculture jobs in sectors where they are desperately needed. This summer, it made available an additional 35,000 temporary visas, more than double the usual cap, to help meet demand from hotels, landscaping businesses, restaurants, and amusement parks, among other employers. The bad news is that those numbers are too modest and will not offset projected stagnation in the U.S.-born labor force

over the coming two decades. In CNN, Raul Reyes said Abbott is cynically using migrants as prompt. Abbott's busing plan is not just heartless, it's also bad policy, but that appears to be by design. His state is sending migrants to New York and Washington without coordination with authorities there. This is deliberately cruel, as some migrants arrive not just with emergency housing needs, but also with health issues, said. Arguably the most distinctive feature of Abbott's busing plan is not what it does, but what it doesn't do. It doesn't deter unlawful migration, advance immigration reform, or promote the humane treatment of asylum seekers. And it certainly does not solve any border crisis. Here's one more thing that Abbott's cruel actions on immigration will do,

inspire other governors to employ the same heartless policies, Reyes said. The conservative media coverage that his stunt has received is likely encouraging other officials to follow his lead. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, for one, has already joined in. His state began sending migrant buses to Washington in May. Of course, there are significant challenges at our southern border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in its monthly operational report that there were 207,416 encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border for June. One thing is clear. If the numbers fall, it won't be as a result of Abbott's draconian busing plan.

All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. I hate to do the throat clearing first, but on immigration stuff, I really do always find it necessary. I just first and foremost would like to point out the fundamental story here, which is that millions of people are risking life and limb to make a treacherous, unlikely-to-succeed journey to the United States, knowing full well they may die or lose their family or be imprisoned in the process. Reading about these stories always hits me hard, mostly because I'm reminded of how often I take for granted the life many of us have here, and it's frankly humbling to see how much so many others are willing to sacrifice or risk to get it. There is no doubt that what is happening at the southern border is a failure.

The Biden administration's agenda on the border has been incoherent. His rhetoric is all over the place, he's tried to end policies without adequate replacements, and his vice president, who is supposed to address the root causes of migration flows through partnerships in Latin America, has spent three whole days there over the last 16 months. Meanwhile, border encounters and fentanyl smuggling have all surged. To me, it looks like a combination of Biden's policies with the inevitable reverberations of the pandemic and political changes in Central and South America that are sending so many people fleeing to the U.S. We have the unique distinction of being both one of the

hardest countries to immigrate to and one of the most tolerant of legal and illegal immigration. Many Americans on the left who view our policies as draconian and cruel can make their case well in a vacuum. The horrors of being an undocumented immigrant crossing southern Texas or Arizona or California are self-evident, but viewed in the context of how other countries, even countries like Mexico, treat migrants crossing their borders illegally, there are far worse places to be trying to immigrate to than the United States. As for Governor Abbott, I think what he's doing is smart, but incredibly cruel and even redundant, which makes it unhelpful in the long run. It's smart. There is no doubt his ploy is

doing precisely what he wants it to, which is draw attention to the border crisis. It's cruel. There's no way around the fact that he's toying with human lives as political theater. It's not as if he's shipping migrants off to a work camp or something, sure. Some very well may end up being better off being sent to Washington, D.C. or New York or Chicago instead of staying in Texas, where resources are already strained and the welcome they get may be much less friendly. But it's hard to shake the image of someone treating innocent people like chess pieces, and it's plainly irresponsible to do this without coordinating with those cities ahead of time. It's also redundant. Most unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. are already living in one of 20 major metro areas.

Of course, Austin, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Riverside, which are all in border states, make up about 7 of those 20 metro areas. But D.C., New York, and Chicago are all on that list too. In a more sane world, what Abbott is doing would actually be part of U.S. policy. We should be moving migrants awaiting asylum hearings from these border towns into the U.S. interior because we should all share the responsibility for our policies. If we were doing what Abbott is doing in an organized, humane, coherent way, maybe we wouldn't lose some 40% of asylum seekers in the process. It isn't fair to folks in Eagle Pass, Texas or other border towns to live

through the chaos of our immigration policy, which is driven by the federal government. Federal policies are burdening these three or four states in a way they don't burden the other 46, and that's an issue. Cities and states who proclaim to be welcoming to immigrants should actually welcome those immigrants. Of course, no president in my lifetime has been able to successfully navigate the issue, largely because it will take a massive act of Congress to reform what is pure dysfunction. Trump reduced legal and illegal immigration, but some of his policies were overtly cruel and in some cases counterproductive to the degree that many Americans turned on his policies. Biden appears to not know what he wants his policies to

be, and it's hard to find a metric where you could argue his administration has been successful. The result is a legitimate humanitarian crisis, with people dying every single day in our rivers and remote deserts and border states. I've said this before and will say it again, that my policy solution to this has always been rather simple. We need more immigration judges. A lot more. The migrants coming here are generally people seeking asylum, which they have a right to do, or people seeking work, which can be hugely beneficial to our country if it isn't done illegally. Only a very small fraction of them are or will ever be criminals or threats to society. Many won't have a claim to asylum or won't be able to get a legal

work visa and would then be deported. There are 1.8 million pending immigration cases and only 576 judges to process them. That's 3,125 cases per judge with 715,797 new court cases recorded in 2022 so far. You can do the math for yourself. Delineating which migrants fall into what bucket is currently impossible, because we have hundreds of thousands of people crossing the border every month, and not nearly enough law enforcement, lawyers, judges, and other officials to process them. The result is that many thousands get released into the U.S. with a pending faraway court date. Many of those people simply disappear, living for years on end without legal status. Others try to follow the law and navigate our

system but run into chaos and dysfunction when they do. Some will find legal above-board avenues to be granted asylum, join the workforce, and integrate into the U.S., but it's not easy. To the Biden administration's credit, it's also true that apprehending 2 million migrants is not the stuff of an open border. Thanks to improved technology and barriers on the borders, far fewer migrants are getting into the U.S. undetected, and it's easy to reframe all those apprehensions as the sign of a secure border, even if it also represents a surge in migrant activity. I also give the Biden administration credit for working with the Mexican government to hire more immigration judges and providing migrants with more lawyers.

This is a good start. A remain-in-Mexico policy where migrants are being housed in actual facilities rather than violent, sexual-assault-filled encampments, paired with more funding for immigration enforcement, judges, and lawyers, could actually be a successful combination. But whatever the change, it is happening far too slowly and on way too small of a scale. All right, that's it for my take. We are skipping today's reader question because this podcast got pretty long on our main topic. But as always, if you want to send in a question, you can do that by writing to me, Isaac, I-S-A-A-C, at readtangle.com. that by writing to me, Isaac, I-S-A-A-C, at readtangle.com. Next up is our under the radar section. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he is planning to hold a vote on codifying

same-sex marriage into law. The Respect for Marriage Act would enshrine federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages and repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. The potential vote sets up a history-making showdown on the Senate floor on a key cultural issue, according to Punchbowl News. Democrats hope that forcing a vote on marriage equality, which is broadly popular among Americans, will separate them from Republicans. But there's also a good chance the bill, which passed the House with significant Republican support earlier this year,

could end up with 10 Republican votes and become law of the land. Sponsors of the bill say they are hoping to carve out an amendment for religious freedom. The Washington Post has the story, and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. Next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Americans who say it is completely true that there is an invasion at the southern border is now 28%. The percentage of Americans who say it is completely true that there is an invasion at the southern border is now 28%. The percentage of Americans who say it is somewhat true that there is an invasion at the southern border is 25%. The percentage of Americans who say it is completely false that there is an invasion at the southern border is 19%. The percentage of Americans who say they don't know is 27%.

The estimated percentage of migrants crossing the border who evade detection or encounter is now 10% according to the American Immigration Council. The number of Russian soldiers the Ukrainian government says have died in the war is now 50,610. All right, last but not least, our have a nice day section. Electronic tax filing could soon be a few clicks away, free of charge. That's the lead from a recent Washington Post story on one plan the IRS is exploring after an infusion of funds from the federal government. The agency is spending $15 million to study free government-backed tax filing system that could overhaul the way Americans file their taxes.

For years, corporate tax services have charged fees for people to file their taxes, and private providers like Intuit, TurboTax, and H&R Block have dominated the market. But now the IRS is looking into rolling out a system more taxpayers can access, which it says will increase its efficiency and reduce the cost of filing.

Washington Post has a story, and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. Washington Post has a story and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for the podcast. Tomorrow, we're going to be releasing a transcript of our interview with Hiram Lewis from last week. If you are a regular podcast listener, you may have listened to it. But if you want to get that transcript, you got to subscribe to Tangle, readtangle.com, subscribe. That's our Friday edition this week otherwise we'll be right back

in your ears on Monday have a great weekend peace our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul edited by Bailey Saul Sean Brady Ari Weitzman and produced in conjunction with

Tangle's social media manager Magdalena Bokova who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. Thanks for watching! Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.