The President's Daily Brief - February 22nd, 2023. Biden Admin Attempts to Enact a Trump-Era Immigration Policy

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

It’s February 22nd. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve got three briefs for you this morning that are shaping America — and the world. First, we’ve got a couple updates on Mexico and immigration this morning, including a new rule from the Biden Administration about asylum seekers. But here’s the kicker: it’s actually an old policy promoted by Donald Trump. Second, we continue our look south of the border to an allegation this morning that the current president of Mexico took cash from the Mexican cartels years ago. Third, get out your maps and your safari hats because we’re off to Africa this morning. The countries of Tanzania and Uganda are launching a major new oil project that could impact the price you pay for gas — and the price for batteries in those electric vehicles. Later, we close out the podcast with a listener question about that ammunition shortage in Ukraine that we talked about last Friday. ----- Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th. The powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavat Theater.com. Only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. It's February 22nd. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief.

I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I've got three briefs for you this morning that are shaping America and the world. First, we've got a couple of updates on Mexico into immigration this morning, including a new rule from the Biden administration about asylum seekers. But here's the kicker. It's actually an old policy promoted by Donald Trump.

Second, we continue our look south of the border to an allegation this morning that the current president of Mexico actually took cash from Mexican cartels years ago. Third, get out your maps and your safari hats because we are off to Africa this morning. The countries of Tanzania and Uganda are launching a major new oil project that could impact the price that you pay for gas and the price for batteries in those electric vehicles. Later, we close out the podcast with a listener question about that ammunition shortage that we talked about last Friday in Ukraine. But before we get to that, we got to get started with this.

Big changes are coming to America's southern border. At least that's the idea if the Biden administration gets its way with the new rule announced yesterday by the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice. But before we explain the new policy, let's actually talk about the current one. And it might be helpful if you. you've got a map, either on your phone or in your mind. So let's say that you are someone from Honduras or El Salvador, and you want to seek asylum in the United States. Well, right now, it is legal for you to come all the way to America cross over the border without telling

anyone and then claim asylum. Now, most people who do that are rejected in their asylum applications anywhere from 60 to 80%. And that's because they don't qualify. They have no credible fear of being, say, tortured or persecuted. But because they're already here in the United States, they can stay for years, maybe forever, because of how long it takes to see an immigration judge, or because they flee to a sanctuary city run by Democrats who protect them forever. In other words, folks, the asylum system is a way to cheat the immigration system. Well, the new Biden rule would actually change that. And here's how. If you want to leave El Salvador or Honduras, you'll need to first now apply for asylum at the U.S. embassies in your home country or seek asylum in the first

country that you get to as you leave El Salvador or Honduras. In this scenario, being from, again, El Salvador or Honduras, those first countries that you would seek safely would actually be in Belize, Guatemala, or Mexico. That is where you would apply for asylum in those countries. But meanwhile, let's say you're already in Mexico, having fled your home country previously and you're on your way to the United States. Well, under this new rule, you will need to set up an asylum application on an app on your phone, and you will select an appointment time and present yourself at a port of entry. In other words, you can't just sneak across and claim asylum. But of course, some people will ignore all of that and just try to sneak across anyway.

And if they do, or if they fail to stop in that first safe country that I mentioned, well, all of that is grounds to reject their eventual asylum application no matter its merit. Now, if this sounds familiar, well, it should because it is more or less what the former president Donald Trump had as his asylum process. Or at least that's the allegation being made this morning by immigration activists and far-left politicians. They say that this new rule from the Biden administration is really Trump's old rule, and it has to be stopped. For instance, the organization ACLU, their lead attorney for the Immigration Rights Project, said that he plans to sue to stop this new rule. quote, we successfully sued to stop the Trump asylum bans, and we will sue again if the Biden administration

enacts these anti-asylum rules. Okay. Meanwhile, the International Refugee Assistance Project said, quote, this asylum ban was illegal when Trump tried it, and now it's still illegal. Finally, others on the left are going, well, remarkably further, maybe even a little bit bonkers in their outrage. former Biden White House official Andrea Flores, who now serves as the chief counsel for Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, she said that this new rule, quote, normalizes the white nationalist belief that asylum seekers from certain countries are less deserving of humanitarian protections than others, end quote. Regardless, this new rule will not take effect immediately and will instead go through a public comment period for 30 days before. the policy is finalized. And after that time, and assuming that it survives lawsuit by these left-wing activists, the policy will be in place for two years. Now, if you're wondering why Mr. Biden and his team are advancing this idea now, well, there are probably two things going on,

but that actually requires me to get into a little bit of analysis and opinion. So let me now clearly pivot away from facts and towards that assessment. So three weeks ago, there was a poll released by The Economist and YouGov that showed that 66% of U.S. adults wanted more border protections, with 45% saying that they strongly supported those moves. In fact, folks, just over half of Democrats themselves wanted a stronger border, and about half of Hispanic folks did too. So that, ladies and gentlemen, suggests that team Biden saw a political problem, especially as he likely ramps up his re-election campaign later this spring or summer. There's also another,

well, less cynical reason for Mr. Biden doing this. Title 42 is set to expire in a couple months, as PDB listeners will recall that rule also originated from Trump's time and office and has been used to automatically reject folks back into Mexico based on the COVID pandemic. right? Title 42 was a public health rule, and it was to slow the flow of immigrants into the United States legal and otherwise. But with Biden planning on lifting this COVID emergency declaration that he did, well, in May, in fact, is when he tends to do it, well, that means the Title 42 will go away, and there's no replacement for it. So this new asylum rule is the replacement policy. So folks, I will keep you posted on this, especially

the coming lawsuits and whether this new rule actually comes into force. Because if it does, I suspect that we'll actually see a drop in asylum applications. And, well, that's actually a good thing because the current asylum system is wildly broken and it's being used by immigration activists to squeeze in more illegals that don't qualify for asylum. They know that, well, once you get here, you can stay here. And that, my friends, is just wrong. For our next brief, let's actually stay south of the border with, well, it's one of more remarkable cases of Mexican corruption in recent years, with some very important lessons for you to consider as we think about whether Mexico will ever be a reliable partner for, well, much of anything. So here's the news. A federal jury yesterday convicted Mexico's former top cop and former intelligence officer on five counts related to conspiring to distribute cocaine, throughout the United States and for working on behalf of Mexican cartels.

Mr. Henaro Garcia Luna was once in charge of Mexico's battle against illegal narcotics and cartel leaders. Well, he was convicted for secretly doing, well, just that for providing and assisting illegal narcotics trade and these cartel leaders, specifically providing protection to the Sinaloa cartel. Now, in exchange, he collected, listen to this, two, $274 million in bribes. In other words, folks, this is like the head of the FBI or a former CIA officer being found guilty of not just selling drugs, but running a protection racket for the drug pushers. And I'll tell you, the court case highlighted some criminality here that is just jaw-dropping.

I want to give you just one example. So back in 2007, there was a major drug bust down. in Mexico with a massive amount of cocaine seized from this Sinaloa cartel. There were lots of cameras there to celebrate this seizure, and so too was Mr. Garcia Luna, celebrating it as well. Well, it turns out that it was all fake. The cocaine was actually flour and sugar that had been sort of put together, shalacked and sealed to make it look like cocaine. The real stuff had been swapped out, all thanks to this former corrupt head of the Mexican FBI, as it were, Mr. Garcia Luna. But putting that corruption aside, which is just, again, jaw-dropping,

there's another development that came out of this trial that you should know about, too. During cross-examination of one of the witnesses, the defense attorney asked the witness, it was a former cartel member, if he had ever given money to the now president of Mexico, Mr. Andres Manuel López Obrador, to which the cartel member said he had, sort of. So here's how it happened. Years ago when Mr. Lopez Obrador was the mayor of Mexico City, he was at the same time running for the presidency. So this witness, the cartel member, testified that he gave $7 million to a man named Gabriel Regino, who at the time worked for the then mayor and now president.

Lopez Obrador on his campaign. The $7 million, this cartel member testified, was for the Lopez Obrador campaign. Whether or not the now president was aware, well, not real sure.

But as this was happening in the courtroom, the judge, again, the judge in America, he shut down this line of questioning and very quickly moved on, which is interesting. Well, as you can imagine, President Lopez Obrador,

was not happy with his cartel member's statement. He is now threatening to sue the defense attorney who had the audacity of asking the question in the first place. So those are the facts this morning. Let me now pivot to analysis and opinion. Folks, what this case showed was that there is endemic rot and corruption in Mexico at every level of government. And not just potentially this current president.

In fact, witnesses testified about the likely corrupt of the former Mexican presidents of Fox and Calderon as well. And of course, it's not just at the top of the Mexican government where we find corruption, whether it be the current guy or the previous ones. We have example after example of senior military officers, mayors, governors, and drug enforcement officials who are also on the payroll of the cartels. So at some point, my friends, we probably just need to be honest. right. Mexico is a narco state. It is, in other words, bought and sold and run by the cartels. And so long as that is true, we will have a compromised neighbor and a compromised border. So that means that if we want to fix the border, it will not be in cooperation with the Mexican government. We have to do it on our own, unilaterally. Now, there are lots of ways to do that, but I fear none of them are very nice.

solutions generally involve a fair amount of killing the bad guys and, well, blowing their stuff up. Now, I wish that that weren't the case. I wish that we had some powerful folks in very important leadership positions down there who were clean. And to be fair, there is sort of one, their Navy. It's generally speaking the only group of clean men and women that that nation has left. So maybe it's time to, well, launch some covert action operations with some trusted friends in the Mexican Navy and see if we can't at least over time slowly clean things up and secure our border. With that, ladies and gentlemen, let's take a quick break. When we come back, I've got one more critical piece of news for you, so hang tight and we will be right back. Welcome back to the PDB. I've

got one more critical piece of news for you this morning. Folks, get out your maps and your safari hats too, because we are off on a journey to the heart of Africa this morning. To two nations who made headlines yesterday that I bet you didn't read about, but it is important. In fact, within a few years' time, it might mean that you pay less for a gallon of gas or more for the batteries inside those electric vehicles. So come with me this morning on a journey to Africa, in fact, to the very heart of Africa. If you pull out a map of the continent, you will see the biggest country smack dab in the middle called the Congo. that is a country that we've talked a lot about here on the PDB, all related to the dirty green mineral or element called cobalt.

But I want you to look at the northeastern border of the Congo into a country that we haven't talked about. And that's the country of Uganda. And I'll tell you what a place this is. Truly, it's one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. They've got rugged mountains and volcanoes, tropical rainforests, and woodlands, savannas, swamps, they've got it all. And their wildlife, my friends, is just absolutely gorgeous and impressive. They've got from elephants to the rarest of mountain gorillas and a park named,

and this is true, the be windy impenetrable national park. But there's one thing that I haven't mentioned that's really neat about Uganda, and that's actually the focus of this brief and why you should care. Uganda has some of the most beautiful lakes, the most famous, is the most famous This is Lake Victoria named after the former queen when Uganda was under the control of the United Kingdom. But the lake that we need to talk about is Lake Albert right along the border with the Congo. So underneath Lake Albert, buried deep below the bed of the lake, is something very valuable, and that is oil. Around 6.5 billion barrels in estimated reserves, which would take about 30 years to exploit. and the exploit is exactly what the government of Uganda wants to do.

That's because the royalty and tax payments that they would receive from this massive amount of oil would amount to around $2 billion a year for that government, which is a huge amount for them when you consider that their current national revenue is $4.5 billion. But there's a few problems standing in the way of this financial gusher. First, the oil is a little bit tricky to get to. It's underneath the lake bed. So the government has inked to deal with the French oil company TOTAL to drill some more technically advanced wells. But the wells themselves are in a tricky place, too.

Ten well pads will be inside the Merchizen Falls National Park. That's actually Uganda's largest. And through that park runs the Nile River right in the middle of an isolated jungle, which is home to giraffes and buffaloes and lions. In other words, it's ecologically sensitive. But the oil company and the Ugandan government say, not to worry, we will limit these well pads inside the park, and we're going to drill horizontally like a tree with roots to minimize our footprint.

But then we've got an issue with the oil itself once it's been brought up. You see, it's a very waxy, thick, viscous oil, and so to transport it, it has to be placed inside a very special pipeline. In fact, one that's heated to 120 degrees Fahrenheit or 50 degrees Celsius, and that's expensive and challenging, which takes us to the last challenge of this project, and the news actually that was announced yesterday. So the pipeline that starts in Uganda,

it has to get from Lake Albert to the Indian Ocean. Well, obviously, so that it can be exported for sale. But Uganda, as you can see on your... maps is landlocked. So they have designed a heated pipeline that's going to run underground from Lake Albert into the country of Tanzania. And that neighbor does have access to the Indian Ocean, which takes us to the news announced yesterday. Tanzania's government gave its approval to the final construction of the $3.5 billion pipeline that'll take that Ugandan oil to the tankers awaiting at the port city of Tanga.

So all and all, the heated pipeline will be 900 miles long, or 1,400 kilometers, which will make it the longest of this type of special pipeline in the world. So all told, the budget for this project, inclusive of this fancy pipeline, is around $10 billion. The two governments of Tanzania and Uganda are ponying up some amount of money, but it's mostly coming from the French oil company Total and, well, I'm sorry to say, the government of China. Yes, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation is in fact financing and profiting from this deal with a modest equity stake. So folks, I bring you this news for a couple

of reasons. First, we should see this Ugandan oil hit international markets by the year 2025, just three years away. So whether this ends up in your gas tank or not, it will increase global supply, and at least in theory, soften crude prices. That is good for your pocketbook. But the second reason that I flagged this for you is because of that extra $2 billion that the Ugandan government will earn each year. That's almost 50% of its current budget or current revenues of $4.5 billion. So what do you suppose the Ugandan government will do with that extra money? Well, the current president is a man with the last name of Mu-sevani, and he has been in power since 1986. Now, there are elections, but, well, Mr. Musevani always wins them, and probably always will.

Parliament scrapped term limits a number of years ago, specifically for his benefit. So the question is, what will this African strongman do with, well, his money? Because in the past, his military has gone into the neighboring country of the Congo to chase after some Islamic militants who are trying to kill him. But with all that extra money and no limits on his power, maybe he sends in a bigger, more well-funded military and just stays in the Congo for a while. And that would fuel conflict in the very areas where there are lots of mining operations that benefit the world, things like tin, gold, and something called tantalum. That tantalum is a mineral that is vital for the batteries that power the dirty green energy revolution,

especially for those electric vehicles. So folks, I'm going to be watching this one for a long time to come. This oil project has the potential to really scramble the politics and military operations of not just the heart of Africa, but maybe impact our economy too, either to our benefit, you know, because of all that new oil, or maybe to our detriment, and all because of that rare tantalum that is very much needed for the dirty green revolution. And that, ladies gentleman, concludes your morning brief. But I've got one more thing before I let you go.

We'll be right back. This is a Bose moment. You've been there before. Somebody's apartment, small talk that's going nowhere, plastic cup, that's almost empty. It's not great. Then someone hits play on a Bose speaker. heads nod, feet, feet, tap, one person dances than everyone does. Awkward becomes electric.

When Bose sound fills the room, you don't just hear the music. You feel it. Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose.com. Welcome back to the PDB folks. I've got one more thing before I let you go. Last Friday, we talked about the ammunition crisis that is hitting Europe and the United States.

And I said that they are sending as much ammunition. as they can to Ukraine. And that's because the Ukrainians are firing up 7,000 rounds of ammunition a day. Well, a listener named David in Colorado said, well, what kind of ammunition are we talking about? Because if it's for small arms, well, no big deal. But if that 7,000 figure is for artillery,

that is a huge number, which could lead to shortfalls for the U.S. military. So, Brian, how about, clarification. Well, David, awesome question. And yes, a little clarification is in order. So according to Bloomberg News, let's step back for a second and say this. On an average day in Ukraine, both the Russians and the Ukrainians fire 30,000 artillery shells at each other. That's almost one million artillery shells a month. Now, here's why that's a problem. while Russia fires more artillery about twice as much in any given day,

their stockpiles, factories, and allies are keeping them with largely enough artillery to keep that pace up. But that's not true for Ukraine. According to NATO's Secretary General, who spoke to journalists on February 13th about this issue, Ukraine is firing artillery at a rate many times higher than what we can produce or our allies in Europe. So that means to keep up with the Russians, the West has got to dramatically increase the production of these artillery rounds. And, well, we're all trying. For instance, in Germany and Slovakia, their main producers of these 155 millimeter shells, they're ramping up production to around 100,000 a month, but hopefully next year at some point. Not now.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army is also increasing production from the current levels of 14,000. artillery rounds to 20,000 later this year. Now, they're hoping to get that up to 90,000 a month, but that's going to be next year, maybe all at a facility and Iowa. But folks, Russia alone keep this in mind, they can produce 140,000 of these shells each month on their own. Now, that's not including rounds from North Korea, which they are getting, or from other allies like China, which they may or may not get.

So let me just say this all differently. Just sum it up. Right now, Russia is currently firing the same amount of artillery ammunition in a single day in Ukraine that Europe can produce in a month. So until that gets fixed, Moscow has an artillery advantage. Now, they will likely lose it in time, but for now, it's important to remember this as a weakness in our war of attrition. because Moscow, folks, they've got us beat on this one for now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief.

As always, we close out the show, reminding each other of why we are here, talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John, Chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Good day.