The Daily Signal - Ken Cuccinelli Warns of Catastrophic Consequences to Rescinding Title 42 at Border

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Disclaimer: This interview was recorded before a federal judge announced Friday afternoon that the Biden administration could not rescind Title 42. In the face of the worst crisis our southern border has seen in decades, President Joe Biden has said he intended to rescind the public health rule known as Title 42 by Monday, May 23. U.S. immigration officials have invoked Title 42 to quickly remove illegal migrants over concern for the spread of COVID-19 and other communicable diseases. Now, even some Democrats are wary of the Biden administration's plan to end the public health measure at the northern and southern borders and have joined Republican lawmakers in cautioning officials against getting rid of it. Ken Cuccinelli, a Trump administration homeland security and border official who previously was the Republican attorney general of Virginia, sees disaster on the horizon if Title 42 goes. "If both the flow goes up to the worst prediction and Title 42 comes down, six times as many illegals will be staying in the United States as are happening on a daily basis today under the current open borders Biden policy," Cuccinelli says. Cuccinelli joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the consequences of rescinding Title 42, as well as to offer solutions for states to help fix the border crisis.  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 Monday, May 23rd. I'm Rob Blewe. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, Doug Blair sits down with former deputy secretary of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli, to discuss what could be next in the crisis at our southern border. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about an organization that has taken a practical approach to helping mothers and saving babies from abortion. Before we get to today's show, we want to tell you about our favorite way to get the news. every morning. It's called the Morning Bell. And each weekday, the Daily Signal delivers the top news and commentary directly to your inbox for free. You'll be able to read about the policy debate shaping the agenda, analysis from Heritage Foundation experts, and commentary from leading conservatives like Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, and Cal Thomas. It's easy to sign up. Just

visit DailySignal.com and click on the connect button in the top right corner of the page. We'll start sending you the morning bell tomorrow. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. My guest today is Ken Cuccinelli, former acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, former acting director of U.S. citizenship and immigration services, as well as senior fellow for immigration and homeland security at the Center for Renewing America. Ken, welcome to the show. Good to be with you. Absolutely. So immigration seems to be one of the hot button topics right now, and we are actually currently experiencing what could be construed as one of the worst crises at the southern border we've ever seen. Where is Biden failing the most?

Wow. Let me count the places. I mean, the numbers don't tell the tale of the failure here. And failure suggests, well, not succeeding. This isn't failure to the Biden administration. What you're seeing at the border is affirmative policy. It is an open borders policy. So they're succeeding in an open borders policy. They are failing from the perspective of those of us who respect our laws. And this last month, over 230, I want to say, 234,000 invaders across the border illegally, a record of sorts. But that doesn't tell the tale. The last time we had numbers in the 200,000 range over two decades ago, it was overwhelmingly adult Mexican males who can be turned around and repatriated to Mexico in about two hours. That's what our border patrol facilities were built for. That's why they don't handle families well. But now we have families coming from all over the world, Central America most numerically. And our entire system is not set up to receive that.

So the logistics of what we're dealing with now, if you were to compare to a 200,000 person month in 1998, is more like, 800,000, 600,000 in terms of the logistical challenge presented to the border patrol and to ICE, to law enforcement and the federal authorities along the border. And that is, as I said, intentional. And so interestingly enough, when you ask the question, where are they failing the most, they are systematically tying the shoelaces together, so to speak, of the border patrol. and of ice to make it as difficult for them to accomplish their missions as possible. So when you hear about reorganizations, it is intended to drive up bureaucratic slowdown

and to make deporting people back to their home country more difficult. And they have succeeded in that. They are on the verge of what would be the singular answer to your question, and that is taking down Title 42. Right. What people don't realize is as bad as it is at the border, still today, over 50% of illegal border crossers are nearly immediately sent back across the border under Title 42 authority. This is public health authority. It's not immigration law.

About 55%. So with absolutely no change in the flow of illegal aliens coming into the United States monthly, you will see more than doubling the number staying in the United States, even under the disastrous circumstances we've been seeing under the Biden administration. So they're literally going to more than double it without any change in the flow. And, of course, what we know is people respond to incentives. When they know the border is open and they can get in, they will come in greater numbers. So the estimates being as high as two and a half times what we're seeing now. And our system can't handle what it's getting now.

So the idea that it can't handle what's coming is sort of a foregone conclusion. Right. Now, Title 42 does seem to be the kind of most important immigration policy that we're looking at right now. True. Are you placing, like, you're saying that even double the amount of immigrants would come in simply by removing this one policy from the equation? policy from the equation. That's right. And that is, again, with no change in the flow. What I hear talked about so much in the news is, oh, we'll go from 7,000 showing up at the border every day to 18,000. Okay. We're also going to go from 3,000 staying in the United States to 18,000 under those numbers.

So in that circumstance, if both the flow goes up to the worst prediction and Title 42 comes down, six times as many illegals will be staying in the United States as are happening on a daily basis today under the current open borders Biden policy. Now, to play devil's advocate for a second, many might argue that as COVID starts to kind of wane away, Title 42 as a health measure isn't necessarily something we need to be using. Is Title 42 the thing that we need to keep in place, or is it more that we're using this as a tool to expel migrants quicker? So two things.

First of all, as long as any American anywhere is mandated to do anything because of COVID, we should have Title 42 on the border. It should be literally the last COVID restriction to come down, the very last one at our borders. And that's for obvious reasons. So long as American citizens have to adjust their lives, i.e. give up. liberty because that's what it is when you accede to government power, they take it from you. It is a zero-sum game. And as long as that's going on anywhere, if TSA is suggesting masks is enough to keep Title 42 up and enforce on the border. Literally any restriction or suggestion of restriction at the smallest school board in the smallest county in the smallest state in America.

then Title 42 should be in place. It is a public health order. It is not something you just make up to contend with the immigration situation and the invasion situation on our southern border. But it is a very useful and effective tool. I will tell you that when I was the acting deputy secretary, we were turning around not 55%, but 85%, 90 or more percent of illioles. legal border crossers, and we were doing it in under two hours. And we were doing it without bringing people into border patrol facilities, which is a model for another approach that I believe states can take that I've advocated for, that being

that state governors in their role as commander-in-chief, can respond to this invasion under Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution by repelling the invasion. And how that would look logistically is just state officials doing. what the federal officials have been doing under Title 42, but under another different authority, this being the authority of the Constitution. Well, since it looks like the Biden administration is going to move forward and remove Title 42 protections

and make it more difficult to expel migrants at the southern border, what needs to be put in place to prevent that increase of at least six-fold migrants from entering the country? So anything we might talk about isn't going to happen with this Congress. I mean, just isn't. Unless Republicans in the Senate stand together and on immigration issues, let's not forget, there are plenty of Republicans who, for all their rhetoric, are effectively pro-illegal immigration.

And then there's that many of them don't want to appear mean, and they instantly succumb to the ad hominem attacks, which is all the left has in defending these policies. People can't see me doing air quotes here on defending. But the fact of the matter is that's the only possibility if they can get a Democrat or two to agree with them and use budget language to force the administration to use emergency removal powers across the board to do other things. There's nothing in immigration law that did.

deals with illegal entrance other than Mexican citizens with the kind of speed that Title 42 does. So when Title 42 comes down, there's nothing that will work as efficiently. They also, and this leads back in time to them getting rid of the Remainan and Mexico program, which was the most effective deterrent put up in the Trump administration. And it was an effective deterrent because everybody coming up from Central America knew they couldn't get in and that they would have to wait for their hearing and they were claiming asylum.

And it's important to realize the people who decide asylum cases are career immigration officers. They're not politicals, whether it wasn't Bill Barr, it wasn't, you know, me or Chad Wolf or Mark Morgan. That isn't who decides these cases. It is the same people day in and day out who decide them all over the the country. And I tell you that to tell you this. The asylum grant rate coming out of the Remain in Mexico program was, as I recall, between 1 and 2 percent, whereas the overall grant

rate was something like 25 percent. So our theory at the outset was that all of these people coming up are gaming the system. And the results proved we were right. And so, So when they basically were confronted with the reality that they couldn't game the system, in other words, they'd have to wait outside the United States for their hearing to conclude, and they knew they weren't legitimate assailees. Many of them went home. And then those cases that were concluded, as I told you, there was a 1% or 2% finding of actual meeting the conditions of asylum. And there's nothing like that left in the Biden administration.

They took that down first. Now they're taking Title 42 down. So, you know, the next best program is already gone. Right. I would say this puts more and more and more and more and more pressure on the states. One interesting result may be in the governor's race for New Mexico this year. I've not listened to yet the Republican candidate. there. But this is an obvious opportunity for a candidate to say, well, I'll stop people at our

border because they have the authority to do that. It is controversial. I grant you that. But in light of an intentional failure, is that, you know, legitimate phrase? But the federal government is obligated under the guarantee clause to protect all 50 states from invasion. And at least for the border states, it can't be said that they're doing that. They're inviting. the invasion. And so in that situation, the governors have the authority to repel the invasion themselves under Article 1, Section 10. And at the Center for Renewing America, we've been pushing very hard that they should be doing that. And, you know, you get governors like Abbott say, I'm doing everything I can. Well, no, no, actually, you're not. You're doing some things.

But as we saw in the numbers this month, highest ever, after, you know, a month plus ago, a month or so ago, Governor Abbott had a press conference and said, we're going to take these unprecedented, that was his word, not mine, unprecedented efforts. Well, they obviously didn't slow the flow at the Texas border, and it's no really difference when, no matter where you are on the border. Operation Lone Star, cool name, Lone Star, we got a cowboy hats on, has done nothing. Sounds cool. Lots of photo ops.

Lots of photo ops for Governor Abbott. That's what it seems to be for. Governor Ducey has his own border strike force. You notice how cool the names are, but they do nothing because these governors have failed to use all of their authority. They refuse to do it thus far. In Arizona, you have at least one candidate, Carrie Lake running, saying, I am going to do this. And unless some other candidate steps up and says they'll do it, she will be the next governor of Arizona. That's my prediction.

As you note, at the beginning of our conversation, immigration is an issue of great interest to Americans right now. It shows up second in a lot of polling. Even after the Dobbs draft was leaked, it still shows up as second. And you can imagine how those polling numbers differ in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas. Right. And so much bigger issue there. And to have local authorities who are failing intentionally. to use the authority they have is creating a small wave of voters who can make the difference

in those primaries in those elections. As we wrap up here, I briefly want to ask you, it seems like you're discontent with a lot of the work that the states are doing right now to stem the tide of legal immigration in their borders. What can they do? What's one thing that they could do right now that would start to fix that problem? Well, really the only thing to do, you know, for instance, Texas has done a bunch of things. They're using criminal trespass.

They're building more wall, which is helpful, but only if you have enforcement connected to it. Enforcement means with a consequence resulting in removal. And they have that power, and Greg Abbott has so far declined to use that power. And the way it works is we've all been told with responsibility, authority comes responsibility, right? So Abbott denies that he has the authority to avoid the responsibility. Governor Ducey is doing the same thing over in Arizona, and yet they do have the authority, and they refuse to use it. I think that that's going to be harder and harder to maintain as the federal government opens the border more and more and more. Even as a political matter, it's amazing to watch them sort of point their gun at the bottom of their own boat and just keep pulling the lanyard, you know.

And Democrats have disagreed with the Biden policy since last spring, 2021, literally within about two months of Biden implementing these new policies. Democrat voters by a substantial margin have disapproved of his immigration policies. So it isn't just Republicans. It isn't just independence. It's Democrat voters. So you've got to ask yourself, what's going on here and what's going on here is the truly radical left, the same. Stalinist left of the Democrat Party has the wheel in the Biden administration. And we see it in places other than just immigration. We see it in energy policy, an environment. We see it in, you know,

their treatment of 75 and a half genders and so forth in cultural issues as well. They are so far out of the mainstream. And the immigration area is no different. But until states actually return people. If you're sitting in another country thinking about coming to America and you know if you come to the Texas border, they're going to put you back in Mexico. If you come to the Arizona border, they're going to put you back in Mexico. Until you believe that, which means regular and reliable returns, you'll come. Right. Right. Without that in the states can do it, there won't be a change in this flow. That's just a fact. And we've proven it over and over and over. Absolutely. That was Ken Cucinelli, former acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, former acting director of U.S. citizenship and immigration services, as well as senior fellow for immigration and homeland security at the Center for Renewing America.

Ken, thank you so much for your time. Hey, great to be with you. Conservative women, conservative feminists. It's true. We do exist. I'm Virginia Allen. And every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories that are a particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those

on the so-called feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to politics and policy. Plus, we bring you an exclusive interview with a problematic lawmaker or conservative activists every second and fourth Tuesday of the month. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcasts. And we are also problematic on social media. So, be sure to follow us on Instagram. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who's up first?

In response to Thomas Jipping's commentary, Democrats push radical abortion bill far more expansive than Roe. Mike writes, thanks to Thomas Jipping for his explanation of the proposed abortion law from leftist U.S. senators. As a Catholic, it's scary to see how the influence of evil can cause human beings. to inflict death on the most vulnerable among us. Not to see what this is actually doing to a baby is mind-boggling to an intelligent person. And in response to Cal Thomas's commentary, the left's intimidation of justices is illegal,

but will Biden enforce the law? Ronald McCormick of Tampa writes, the Constitution sets up the responsibilities of all three divisions of the federal government, with the clear intent of a balance of power. The courts are there to punish wrongdoers under existing law, and the members of the court system must maintain complete subjection to the law, remaining out of politics. Otherwise, everyone has no protection, as is the case today in communist nations, such as China. The unfortunate blurring of lines among our legislative, executive,

and judicial branches is resulting in what we are seeing. It begins with a person who leaked the draft Supreme Court decision on abortion, runs rampant through the lips of Nancy Pelosi, and ends up in the streets with uninformed, easily persuaded people demonstrating outside the homes of the justices, clearly trying to intimidate those whose calling is to make a decision of the law, not politics. Your letter could be featured on next week's show, so send us an email at letters at daily signal.com. At the Heritage Foundation, we believe that every single policy issue discussed in D.C. tells a story. So we want to tell it well. On the Heritage Explains podcast, co-host

Tim Desher and Michelle Cordero, take one policy issue a week, mix in a creative blend of clips, narration, and hard-hitting interviews to equip you on crucial issues in under 20 minutes. So get your story straight. Subscribe to Heritage Explains wherever you listen to podcasts. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. Over to you. Thank you so much, Rob. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, women facing crisis pregnancies are going to need hands-on, practical support. And the good news is that the pro-life movement is ready to offer that support

through organizations like Let Them Live. When husband and wife Nathan and Emily Burning were connected with a pregnant homeless woman who planned to have an abortion because she couldn't afford a baby, they jumped into help. They emptied their own bank accounts to give the mother what she needed to bring that new little life into the world. When Nathan and Emily realized that many women have abortions because of a lack of financial resources, Emily says that she and her husband knew they had to do something to help. Seventy-three percent of women have abortions because of financial burden. And Let Them Live's mission is to help these women cancel their abortions and choose life with financial support. Since its founding in 2019, Emily and Nathan have helped to save the lives of hundreds of babies through

the mission of Let Them Live. do it, Let Them Live is very simple. We get connected with women that are pregnant, that are in need of financial support, and we crowd fund. We pair donors with specific moms to support them during and after their pregnancy. By offering not only financial help, but also emotional support through counseling, Let Them Live is empowering women to become mothers. Take, for example, Atoria and her baby boy. Because of Let Them Live, Atoria was given the financial and emotional support that she needed to choose life for her baby. It really surprised me that I had people, strangers that cared about my situation, that were willing to help and step in and provide support. And I'm just a stranger

to them. But that support changed my life. Atoria's baby boy just recently turned two. He has a bright smile and his mom says that his life likely saved her own. Let Them Live is continuing to expand their reach so that they can save even more lives. They have even just recently launched a podcast called Bridging the Gap to Shine Light on how we can all be a part of supporting women as they choose to take that step into motherhood and as they choose life. So if you want to learn more about let them live or how you can get involved, you can visit let them live.org. Virginia, thanks so much for sharing that story about Let Them Live. We're going to leave it there for today.

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