The Daily Signal - Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs Shares What the US-Mexico Border Is Like Now.” is locked Katrina Trinko is currently editing Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs Shares What the US-Mexico Border Is Like Now.

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border stopped on Jan. 20, thanks to President Joe Biden’s executive order, issued the day of his inauguration. What does this mean for the safety of Arizonans and many families who have ranches along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona? Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, joins the podcast to discuss that, cartels, drug trafficking, and why he thinks the Biden administration policies will encourage more illegal immigration.  We also cover these stories: The second day of former President Trump’s impeachment trial kicked off on Wednesday with House Democrats laying out a case against Trump.  Prosecutors in Georgia are beginning an investigation into Trump’s attempts to have Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, “find” enough votes to make Trump the winner.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now encouraging individuals to wear two masks when in public or when interacting with people outside their household.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, February 11th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. President Joe Biden ended construction of the border wall on January 20th, the day of his inauguration. The Biden administration had said they will always trust the experts. Do they trust or consult the Border Patrol's expertise when this decision was made? How do Arizonaans feel about the border wall construction ending? Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs, joins me today on the Daily Signal podcast to discuss. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review and a five-star rake on Apple Podcasts, and as always, encourage others to subscribe. Now, onto our top news. The second day of former President Trump's impeachment trial kicked off on Wednesday afternoon with House Democrats laying out a case against Trump.

Lead House impeachment manager, Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, open the arguments per ABC News. The evidence will show that he clearly incited the January 6th insurrection. It will show that Donald Trump surrendered his role as commander-in-chief and became the inciter-in-chief of a dangerous insurrection. And this was, as one of our colleagues put it so cogently, on January 6th itself, the greatest betrayal of the presidential oath in the history of the United States. Several House managers drew a direct link from President Trump's claim that the election was stolen

to the riots at the Capitol, including Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, per ABC World News. Day after day, he told his supporters false, outlandish lies that the victory, that the election, outcome was taken and it was rigged. And he had absolutely no support for his claims. But that wasn't the point. He wanted to make his base angrier and angrier. And to make them angry, he was willing to say anything. In order to convict Trump, that will require two-thirds of the Senate meeting all 50 Democratic senators and at least 17 Republican senators. prosecutors in Georgia are beginning an investigation in a former president Trump's attempts to have Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger, a Republican, find enough votes to make Trump the winner. Fannie Willis Fulton County's new district attorney sent a letter Wednesday, asking them to retain documents regarding a January 2nd phone call Trump made to Raffensberger, in which the now former president pressed the state's top election official to find 1,000,

780 votes, enough to hand him a victory over President Biden in Georgia, the Hill reported. Trump had reportedly sent in a phone call with Raffensberger that, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now encouraging individuals to wear two masks when in public or when interacting with people outside their household. The CDC released new mask guidelines on Wednesday after laboratory testing revealed that wearing a cloth mask over a surgical mask offers more protection than a single mask. The CDC also found that tying a knot on the bottom of an ear loop of a surgical mask allows the mask to fit more tightly to your face, offering more protection from the coronavirus. During a White House briefing, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said, in the study, wearing any type of mask performed significantly better than not wearing a mask.

And well-fitting mask provided the greatest performance at both blocking emitted aerosols and exposure of aerosols to the receiver. The CDC did clarify that a KN95 mask should still be worn alone. Twitter announced Wednesday that Trump will never be able to. allowed back on the platform, regardless of whether or not he runs for president again in 2024. Here is what Twitter's chief financial officer said on CNBC via the recount. Former President Trump was banned. If he came back, ran for office again and was elected president. Would you allow him back on the platform? So the way our policies work, when you're removed from the platform, you're removed from the platform, whether you're a commentator,

you're a CFO or you are a former or current public official. And so remember, our policies are designed to make sure that people are not inciting violence. And if anybody does that, we have to remove them from the service and our policies don't allow people to come back. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs on the border. We're all guilty of it, spending too much time watching silly videos on the internet. But it's 2021. Maybe it's time for a change.

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Start watching now at heritage.org slash YouTube. And don't forget to subscribe and share. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona. Congressman Biggs, it's always great to have you on the Daily Signal podcast. Rachel, it's always good to be with you, too. Well, you recently just got back from a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, and I wanted to ask and go through some of the stops that you made. But one of the first stops was in Sassaby, Arizona, getting to tour.

the border wall and there's some spots where construction has ended well actually it's completely ended since the Biden administration ended the construction on the 20th of January the day of the inauguration so can you tell us a little bit about what you saw on during this trip and especially at this first stop yeah so when we we went there there our first step was sassaby and sassaby used to have like a mile of fencing kind of either way and and it had at the end into the fencing. It had four-strand barbed wire with a small kind of handmade gate with a slip-knots. So if anybody was coming in from Mexico, it would be really, you just lifted the slip-knop over the post, and in you could come. And all paths, from the north side, we could

see into Mexico, you can see all paths led to that little gate there. But what we saw under the Trump administration, they had extended that fence quite a ways, a good news, a good number of miles on each side, and they, you know, it was just definitely an improvement that was there, and it slowed traffic down according to our friends in the Border Patrol. And it went right to the edge of the Indian Reservation that said the Tihona-Odom Reservation that's there and stopped. But, you know, it was really good. It's really an improvement. Well, as we've talked about a little bit, the Biden administration did end construction on the border wall. And so on a broader note, how has the rhetoric do you think from the Biden administration

affected the situation already at the border with this construction ending? Is it resonating with caravans and illegal immigrants? What do you foresee happening as all of this movement now with the construction has stopped? Well, stopping the construction, they left gaps all along the border. and some of those gaps are 50, 60 miles or longer even that people can get in because the fence didn't get finished. And then when you add the rhetoric in of the Biden administration talking about amnesty, their attempts to prevent deportations, their attempts to stop the MPB or remain in Mexico program, their willingness to let lapse the agreements that they have with the Northern Triangle State, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. All of those things basically incentivize people to come into the United States.

And so that's why you're seeing caravans coming together. You're saying cartels inviting people more. You're seeing NGOs advertising. All of that is going to bring more people in. It's going to act as a draw. and now this notion of basically revamping ice and not removing people from this country who are violent criminals,

it's really going to be a problem for the United States. You're going to have a massive surge of people coming in, and a lot of those people just won't be very good. Well, speaking of that surge that you just mentioned, Congressman Biggs, there's, you know, expected to be quite a big surge, and the administration has talked about amnesty for more than 10 million illegal aliens. How do you envision more illegal immigrants coming into the U.S. for that amnesty? How do you envision how that will affect not only the country but also the

state of Arizona as a whole? Well, first of all, the infrastructure of the immigration nationalization services, it just cannot process and deal with it because they're also on to deal with increased refugee numbers and amnesty numbers. And when that happens, you're going to get back to the catch and release program that had been. really curtailed under President Trump. So what that means is people are going to come in, they're going to make a false amnesty claim. By the way,

there are over a million of these people in the country today who were told to show back up and they've never bothered to show back up. And they will be given a piece of paper that says, appear back at this particular building for

your amnesty interview or hearing or whatever it may be, and it'll be a couple years out. That's what happens and catch and release. They'll go into the country. They'll be in our country, in the interior. There will be no one that goes and gets them because ICE will not have that authority to do it anymore. Or they'll curtail that authority. So you're going to get overrun. We don't have the infrastructure to deal with it. And quite frankly, the biggest month that we ever apprehended in the big search two years ago was about 160,000, just under 160,000

and people we apprehended, I believe we're going to be well over 160,000 on a monthly basis. Well, one of the stops that you made during this trip to the border was the Nogales port of entry. Can you share a little bit about what you saw and learned during that stop? Yeah, so we visited the customs side of the house, so CBPC stands for customs. So when we went in, we saw, you know, the apparatus. We saw the lanes for cars. we saw the walk-through lanes of this one Mariposa port of entry. And they took us in, and we could see they showed us an example of the substantial amount of fentanyl that they've seized and other drugs as well.

We got to see the loading dock where they're checking produce and everything else. I mean, it is a big-time operation that happens there, and drug trafficking is picking back up. And so as we went along the border, we had some areas where they said, where they were hard drugs. And this is where it was right there in O'Gallis area right there along the border. It's the hard narcotics that are coming in. And now in substantial amounts. When we went further east, it was marijuana is still big and bigger because it's cheaper to bring in black market marijuana than use the dispensaries in a state, even where in Arizona, where a pot is leased. now. So you see increased drug trafficking. That's part of what happens when everything else is,

is human trafficking is increasing as well. When you see border crossings increase, you're going to see drug trafficking increase too. Is there anything you can talk about when it comes to how cartels traffic these drugs into our countries and sort of the systems that they have down to evade, you know, law enforcement finding them? or anything you can share about how much of a science they really have this down to? Yeah, it's pretty amazing. So, like, they will make, in some of these commercial truck-type things, they'll have fake watermelons, for instance, or fake melons that have been hollowed out, and there's

narcotics placed in there, and they stick those in the center so that hopefully, if that trucks being x-rayed or if you have dog, you know, drug-sniffing dogs, that they won't catch it because you've got all this other things. They'll, they will put them in engines, they will put them in tires, they will put them just in amazing places in cars. They'll put them in body cavities. And we saw examples of all of that while we were at the Mariposa, the Nogales port of entry that you're talking about. So it is sophisticated stuff. and a lot of these people don't get prosecuted and so they just get sent back to Mexico and they'll try it again later.

Well, one of the really in the lightning parts of the trip that you went on was this visit to Bell Ranch in New Gallas, Arizona, and the Chilton family has this ranch. Can you tell us a little bit about how the border wall has really impacted their community? Yeah, so that's great, that's a great question. So as the border wall in O'Gallas has been expanded, and by the way, Rachel, they kept a lot of the old border wall, which was shorter. It was 12 to 18 foot in different places. And then they built this new bigger wall, 30 feet high. It really has slowed traffic down in some of those areas because now you've got a double barrier, and they've extended it out of ways.

And they have found that it has really slowed down some of the encroachment from south of the border under their ranches. But, as we were told, the fence ends. And right now, because the Biden administration has no intention of finishing the fence, it ends. And so it basically acts as a funnel. Now they're going around the fence and they're coming in. And I think Mr. Chilpin told us that they've got like 60 miles, something like that, where there's no fencing or really anything at all on his ranch. So they continue to have people coming through.

And Southern Ranchers you and I met, they contacted this actually the very next day and said they just had a bunch of illegal crossers come across their ranch the day after we had been talking to them. Well, one of the other people we got to speak with with Sheriff Mark Daniels and Sierra Vista, who talked a lot about the impact of the Biden administration ending construction on the border wall. And Congressman Biggs, can you share with us? some of the concerns that he talked about, that he is concerned will specifically impact his community in Sierra Vista. Well, since Sierra Vista is so close to the border,

and Cochese County is a big, you know, geographically and border county, he is concerned, you know, human trafficking is big and drug trafficking is big. And the U.S. Attorney General's in Arizona, and all along the border, they're overrun, quite frankly, and so they require certain amount of cases. You know, drugs, I won't tell you, the pounds that you have to have, but a certain amount of poundage of drugs, and they have to have it on their possession when they call it. You've got to catch them just so cold before they will take that case. So what they've done is because they're concerned about the crime and the increase of crime in their small community of Sierra Vista,

The sheriff down there's done an excellent job with they've got cameras, they've got people watching, and they've got a cooperative agreement with a county attorney there that they will prosecute those cases because they're really concerned about juveniles. Because one of the things that's happening is on the American side, young people are being recruited to, for relatively to the kid, a lot of money, but to the drug cartels and whatnot, it's not much money. They will pass this money along so that these kids will bring in drugs or help human traffic. So they're concerned about that. And now the county attorney is down there, the local officials actually stepping in,

and they're prosecuting those cases as state crimes. And they have been resoundingly successful. What can you share about what the Border Patrol thinks about this border wall construction ending? I know and then maybe a lot of different reporting is discussed and talked about how the Border Patrol feels. But since you talk to a lot of these agents, one-on-one yourself, what is your perspective on what the Border Patrol thinks of this construction stopping? Well, almost universally, when I talked to Border Patrol agents, they think the fence is very, very helpful. You know, most of them agree it's not the be-all and end-all, but it's very helpful because it only takes. It takes one agent to patrol two miles, two linear miles, if there's a fence, but it takes

three to five agents per every mile where there is a defense to provide adequate control and command of that. So you're talking about a six or ten to one, somewhere between six and ten to one, agents necessary. So they like defense. They also need equipment. They want better communications. There are places where it's so rugged.

A lot of people just don't realize how rugged it is out there, but it is so rugged that there are times they can't even communicate, so they want better communications, equipment, and whatnot. But the fence has been a really terrific deterrent, and if we can finish the whole fence, it would be a fantastic deterrent and make our agents feel safer, and it would also make them more efficient. Well, and finally, Congressman Biggs, what does the ending of the construction of the border wall big picture mean for the safety of not only these ranching families along the border, but also just Arizonans as a whole?

Well, Rachel, as you know, you've been down a couple times now with us, and you know that the fencing is important because it slows it down, but when you don't have fencing, we really don't know what the number is of people that are getaways. We think we know. We think we have an idea, but they're getting away. probably at least one to one. So we know right now we're catching about 3,000 people across the border every day. That means that you probably have 3,000 people you're not catching. Something like that. And it isn't just that they impact the border ranchers.

They get up into Tucson and Phoenix. And then Phoenix is a loadout point to go all over the country. And they'll bring drugs and they'll smuggle these humans. They'll traffic in human beings, for Pete's sakes. They'll bring them in, and they'll send them all over the country. And even the people who have what I would call benign intent to be here, in other words, they want to come, they want to work, they are being trafficked because the cartel controls everybody who's coming across that border.

Everybody's coming across the border, whether you're coming a legal shipment in a produce truck or whatever. they're all paying a mortida of some kind to get across the border from the cartel. And so what it does is you've got bad guys that are coming in as well, and that spreads out to the entire country. And all of the rhetoric from the Biden administration is going to exacerbate that. It will not get better. It will get worse because of his policies and his rhetoric and claims.

Well, Congressman Biggs, thank you so much for coming on. the Daily Signal podcast and talking to us, we really appreciate having you with us. Absolutely, Rachel. Anytime. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeart Radio.

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