It’s often been said - you campaign in poetry and govern in prose, and now it seems like the Biden administration is stumbling as they attempt to execute on promises he made before the election. Advocates are pressuring the Biden team, but it seems like nobody will end up satisfied. Newell spoke to Andrew Arthur from the Center for Immigration Studies Friday morning to get the latest.
“Andrew, what is the state of the Southern border today?” Newell began.
“Things are bad and they're getting worse,” Arthur said. “The Mexican government has started to refuse to accept the return of children families with children back across the border. If you remember the directors of CDC back in March, instituted basically a quarantine on the US border. Anybody who entered illegally or without proper documents was expelled back to Mexico, but Mexico has started refusing to accept the return of third country nationals under that policy. So border patrol was simply processing individuals and releasing them into the community. Border patrol apparently doesn't have the capability to test for COVID, so those individuals are largely unscreened. That situation is probably going to get worse. Mexico changed its laws purportedly, although I've never seen it, back in November and required all families with children to be sent to shelters in the country, and their shelters are full. So now the Mexicans are saying, there's no room in their country. Everybody has to come here. We've already seen the numbers of the borders jump. 50 members of Congress sent a letter to the secretary of DHS on February 9th talking about the rising illegal immigration crisis beginning at our Southern border, basically catch and releases back at the border. The Mexican government has used efforts to stop people coming across its Southern border. But you and I both know that if people are coming, they're going to get in.”
“How do we square this up?” Newell asked. “Pete Buttigieg is talking about the implementation of travel restrictions, as well as testing and maybe vaccine passports and the list goes on and on as a result of the pandemic, but we don't have any similar requirements of those coming into this country. In fact, a very disjointed approach at the present time. I understand they're testing the crossings of the border in the San Diego area but they're not doing so in Arizona, New Mexico or Texas.”
“No, it is curious… each state has its own border, but by and large, those borders are completely open.” Arthur said. “From here to California, I'd get stopped at Checkpoint Needles to make sure that I didn't have any agriculture or fruit on me, but I could go right through today. Whereas traditionally, in order to get across the border, you needed a document that had been issued by the States government that would allow you to do so. That's been completely turned on its head, or would be under the proposals. I believe that there was a proposal to perhaps restrict travel to and from Florida… the idea that we would actually restrict the movements of United States citizens across state borders is remarkable. But contrast that with the policy that I just described in which border patrol agents are simply getting the names and the addresses in the United States of individuals who've entered illegally and then letting them into this country. I mean, it's, it's astounding. It can't be squared.”
Listen to the entire interview in the audio player below.
