CIS: Biden’s Secretive CBP One Scheme

Parsing Immigration Policy podcast with Mark Krikorian and Todd Bensman on October 26, 2023. Transcript.

Parsing Immigration Policy: Episode 128

MARK KRIKORIAN: Welcome to Parsing Immigration Policy, the podcast of the Center for Immigration Studies. My name is Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center. 

We’re going to be talking about the new report we released this week, authored by Todd Bensman on our staff, based on data that we had to sue out of the federal government. We had submitted a Freedom of Information Act request — a FOIA request, which is a process you have to go through to get the government to release data that they’re supposed to be releasing anyway.

They didn’t comply within the deadline set by the law. So we sued them, finally got the information, and Todd wrote it up in two reports that are on our website now, at the slideshow at the top.

Todd will tell us more about them, but the basic point is, data on how the CBP One — CPB is Customs and Border Protection — CBP One is a cell phone app that allows people overseas, foreigners, to schedule their illegal immigration into the United States.

(01:51)

As you can imagine, it’s something the Biden administration has not wanted to give a lot of details about — where are these people coming from, what are the total numbers, that sort of thing.

Todd managed to pry it out of DHS and wrote it up for us. The numbers themselves are important, and there are important implications.

Todd, thanks for joining us, if you could just give us a little primer on what it is that we were trying to get information about.

(02:21)

TODD BENSMAN: Sure. Well, the CBP One scheme is, as you described, this sort of strategy to bring people — who were going to cross illegally over the border — through the border through an official, established port of entry.

Through the buildings, there, that anybody would enter, so that they don’t add to the congestion and clogging and scenes that look terrible from a Fox News drone at the riverbank.

This was announced in a big way in January of 2023, and it struck me at that time that they were pitching this as something brand new. But I had already been to the border for a year, year and a half earlier, and had seen this operation in Reynosa, Mexico.

(03:18)

And then I saw it again, and wrote about it, in Mexicali, Mexico, and in Tijuana, that it had been expanded.

And so I knew that it wasn’t brand new. The administration also announced mainly that this thing was gonna be for four nationalities only — or, they suggested that it was going to be for four nationalities only — Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. Because those were the most numerous. So they were going to bring them over the bridges. 

(03:50)

KRIKORIAN: And the point was, they were the biggest illegal crossing groups, and they were trying to funnel them through the — so-called legally, in quotes — so that it wouldn’t look as bad in the Border Patrol statistics. That was basically the point, right?

BENSMAN: Exactly. Lest they be added to the Fox News drone footage, down at the riverbank, which looks terrible.

At any rate, I realized that in my earlier reporting, I had met people from all over the world who had been going through the CBP One parole process. In Tijuana, and Reynosa, and everywhere else. 

And that it wasn’t just the four nationalities.

(04:30)

KRIKORIAN: So, just to fill in for listeners — a wannabe illegal immigrant would schedule his illegal entry to the United States through this app, show up at a port of entry, be let in, and they would do some kind of processing, paperwork, check-in, or whatever. 

And then they’re paroled into the country, which allows them to get a work permit for a certain period of time, and they can renew that after a while.

But it’s all outside the law. In other words, these people have no legal right to come into the United States, but the administration is just letting them in.

(05:08)

BENSMAN: Right. It’s an ad-hoc kind of admission program that the administration just created outside of the authority of Congress. There is litigation, Texas and a bunch of other states are suing to shut it down. But those things take time. So at this point, nobody has officially declared in a court of law that it’s illegal, but a lot of people definitely believe that this is extra-legal for sure.

And in the meantime, they’re bringing in 30,000 — they said they’d bring in 30,000 of just those nationalities a month. But then, every time I went down there I noticed there were all these other nationalities in the line.

Kyrgyzstanis and Mexicans everywhere. And Hondurans. It wasn’t just those four. 

Every month, the administration produces an operational update, which is all the activity for the month. They have a section for these land port entries where they only ever talk about those four nationalities again.

(06:18)

So over time I came to understand that they were sandbagging on the country. They were just not interested in disclosing really how large it was, and all the different nationalities.

So we filed a FOIA for the information, at the Center, back in late March I believe it was. And they ignored us.

They also ignored a number of members of Congress who were interested in knowing the totality of the program. And they ignored those letters too.

(06:52)

Requests for information. Basic requests for information. So then it just became obvious, after they blew our deadlines, that we were going to have to take harder measures. Nobody wants to go through litigation, it’s a pain, it takes time, it costs time and money. But, as you know, you’re the one who authorized it, so, we went ahead and sued.

KRIKORIAN: And just so people know, we’ve expanded our FOIA operation significantly. We now have a full time attorney whose job is filing these FOIA requests — working with the staff on what to ask for, how to ask for it, and all that. And then, if they don’t get a response, to file lawsuits.

And we also have a button on the home page, you’ll see it, CIS.org, it’s a whistleblower button.

(07:48)

And that does kind of relate to the FOIA issue, too. Because it’s not just for, say, people inside the administration who have information that would be useful for us. We have a secure email address for you to send it to, if you think that something needs to get out there. 

Also, if you are in the bureaucracy, and you know of information that should be publicly available but that isn’t being released — in other words, information that we could submit a FOIA request for, that also is, that secure email address, to get in touch with our FOIA director.

So that we would be able to know specifically what to ask for. In what words. What file, what information. Because that’s the way you have to do it. Otherwise they’re gonna play with you, and not give you what you need.

(08:44)

So, what we did here is, you knew what you wanted, and worked on the request for FOIA. But I just want to insert, that if there are people listening here who are in DHS, or DOL, or Heath and Human Services, or any other agency, and you know of information that would be important to get out to the public, we have a secure way of your alerting us to the existence of that information.

We don’t want people to be compromising themselves or breaking any rules. But it helps in preparing and submitting FOIA requests to know exactly what memo to ask for and what data to request. And that’s what you did here.

So let’s just get them, first, top-level findings. How many people have been let in over the land borders through this CBP One scheme, and given parole — including work permits — and just let them go into the United States?

(09:43)

Right. Well, we can say that we know that now: 249,000 plus, just from the inception of the program — which, a lot of people who follow these things think that it only started in January of 2023, when they made a big to-do about it.

But it dates back to May of 2021, is when they actually began it. So if you include 2021, 2022 numbers, the total comes out to be about 249,000 through August. And then we know that just in the month of September there were probably another 30,000.

(10:23)

So looks like about 275, 280,000 all together for this span of time.

KRIKORIAN: And just to make clear here, too, this report is following up on earlier data you got about a different group of people using the CBP One scheme to be let into the country — even though they have no right to be here.

But instead of walking across the border with Mexico, which is what your new report is about, there is a separate group that are literally allowed to fly from their home countries, fly right over the border into interior U.S. airports? And that’s similar in size, right?

(11:03)

BENSMAN: Right. All of this is just part of what the administration calls its lawful pathways strategy. They’re going to create safe, orderly, humane, lawful pathways for illegal immigrants — people that would otherwise cross illegally — to just come in, I’ll put in air-quotes, “legally,” or “lawfully” or whatever, into the country. 

And that one involves a whole other set of nationalities. Those are a much more restricted, limited set of nationalities, but they keep on expanding it.

This one allows you to not even go into Mexico, on the grounds that it’s really dangerous to go through Mexico. You can apply for this in some safe third country, or your home country, on the app.

Put in all your biometric data, and everything, and then schedule for a travel authorization. If you get a travel authorization from Washington, you buy your own air ticket and fly into — the data showed 221,000 people […] just January through mid-September —

KRIKORIAN: Right.

(12:18)

BENSMAN: — had taken advantage of this from four of the countries. To 43 U.S. airports. The administration, CBP, is still fighting us as of the time of this reporting on the locations of those 43 airports, saying it’s sensitive law enforcement information or something like that.

We’re not finished, by any stretch, with that, trying to get those details about which airports they are. But between the two programs, we’re looking at 470,000 people, at least, probably in excess of 500,000, most of them just in the 2023 period, who have been brought in sight unseen into either U.S. airports or spilling out from land port buildings into the country.

KRIKORIAN: And to be clear, these are people who have no right to come into the United States. This administration is essentially bypassing Congress’ authority and just letting these people in, even though there’s no basis for it.

(13:24)

BENSMAN: Right.

KRIKORIAN: So, we’re talking half a million people, and that’s just one piece of the illegal immigrant flow that this administration has let in.

As you said, your new reports are about the ones who have been coming over the land border using this CBP One app to schedule their illegal immigration.

They’re coming from lots of countries, not just the four countries the administration talks about. What kind of range of countries, and why is that important?

(13:53)

BENSMAN: The range of countries surprised even me. I mean, I’ve been meeting the immigrants in my field research, on the bridges, and I knew that there were a lot of Mexicans. But then, not that long ago, I met Kyrgyzstanis in my hotel in Matamoros, Mexico, and they were all on this CBP One app. And then I met some other — you know, from all over the world, I’ve met them.

(14:20)

KRIKORIAN: Just for people who aren’t geography geeks like I am, Kyrgyzstan, during the Soviet period they called it Kyrgyzia, it’s a former Soviet republic in Central Asia that borders on China.

BENSMAN: Right. It’s in a dangerous neighborhood, with Tadjikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan as well. There are a lot of terrorist organizations that are active, very deadly, and running around through all those borders. It’s really quite porous over there. And many hundreds of people from those countries fought for ISIS in Syria, are returning fighters, and there’s a higher risk.

I counted, of the 97 countries in total that have been allowed appointments and then approved for parole into the country, of those there were 24 countries that are of national security interest. That are on a U.S.-designated list because of those kinds of problems in those countries.

(15:30)

We don’t really know who they are. So we tag people from those countries — or we’re supposed to — for enhanced security vetting and interviews. And it’s unclear at this point — one of the questions we raise in the reporting is that we don’t really have an answer about what they’re doing for security vetting on these people.

KRIKORIAN: Right.

BENSMAN: They’re supposed to run them through criminal database checks, we know that. But if you’ve never been in the country before, there’s no crime that’s detectable [in U.S. databases]. You’ve never been here. So, unless you’re on a terror watch list — and not everybody is, who is a bad guy — you’re just going to be ushered right into the country.

And so, we just wanted to raise that as the national security issue that a lot of homeland security professionals believe that it is. And members of Congress, and a lot of regular people, are worried about this right now. Because of the war in the Middle East, and even before there was a war in the Middle East. That was maybe inflaming passions of people who were crossing the border.

(16:38)

KRIKORIAN: There’s always been a war somewhere in the Middle East, even before the current one.

BENSMAN: That’s true. 

We point out that there are these 24 countries that we know are on the list, and those are beyond Central Asia. Places like Iran, which is very much part of this war. And Lebanon, where there’s Hezbollah. 

And places like Yemen, and Syria, there were some Syrians that showed up, some Iraqis. And it goes on like that. A lot from Mauritania and a few from Bangladesh, and Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Sudan, and so forth.

(17:18)

Those are countries that I don’t think the administration was eager to publicize, or boast about — look how we’re helping all of these Uzbekistanis. There’s like 18,000 of those. Or, look how we’re helping, you know, nobody was boasting about that. 

It took a FOIA lawsuit to just pry that out. And hopefully it will better inform the public about what questions to ask, next time there’s a press conference or whatever.

KRIKORIAN: And the important point here is that we get at least some illegal border crossers from some of these countries — and you wrote a whole book on how our security apparatus responds [to] an illegal border crosser from Syria or one of these other countries where terrorist groups are active. What security agencies do. In other words, what kind — do they do interviews with them, that kind of stuff. To see whether they’re just regular working stiffs, which is bad enough when they’re illegal aliens, or whether they actually represent some kind of threat. 

But, what this is about, that you’ve written about, using the CBP One app, these poeple are being ushered into the United States. The Biden administration is affirmatively saying, yes, we will let these 13,000 Uzbeks into the United States.

And that’s a very different thing, both in principle and in scale. If you had one Uzbek a week, for instance — I’m not picking on Uzbekistan in particular, but it’s just in front of me — it’s easy to do more intense interviewing, or what have you, to see if this person is a bad guy.

(19:07)

If you’re getting dozens of them, over the period that you’re looking at, just from Uzbekistan, what kind of reasonable investigation can you do with that number, that volume of people?

BENSMAN: Well that’s the question. Not much. I testified not long ago, in September, to a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee about this very thing. I pointed out that we had so many Special Interest Aliens — or Special Interest Migrant is what the Biden administration calls them because they don’t like the word “alien,” — were coming over that the system that you just described, of interviews and vetting, that, when we have 3,000 or 4,000 a year, is just not capable of processing volumes like these, that are coming in illegally.

(20:02)

The Daily Caller said 75,000 in just eight or nine months of 2023, instead of the three or 4,000 that they normally get. 

You make a very important distinction. Because the ones who are crossing illegally, we just don’t have a choice in that. We just have to contend with them, when they enter of their own volition. 

But with all of these nationalities that we are approving for CBP One appointments and parole is done by affirmative choice. We don’t have to choose them. We could deny their applications for appointments and parole. But — this is an important distinction — because we’re not. 

(20:48)

About 7,300 we just chose to bring in, and I have no indication at all, at this point, that the vetting of people that we choose to bring in from those countries is anywhere near what it needs to be to assure the American public that they’re not going to come in and do something.

KRIKORIAN: In other words, the Biden administration is knowingly overwhelming our ability to do the kind of close vetting, and interviewing, and what have you, that is warranted for people from these dangerous, potentially dangerous, countries?

(21:30)

BENSMAN: That’s right. And you know, the administration needs to be asked about what they’re doing here. I didn’t have time, between the time we got this, to go after. But surely, now that the information is out there, there are responsible people who have a reasonable expectation of getting an answer about — what are you doing to vet the people that you choose to affirmatively stamp for approval to come in this way from those countries.

KRIKORIAN: You had spoken to an anonymous source, who you referred to, who said they are doing some kind of enhanced vetting of people that are being approved through this appointment scheme, but come from one of these dangerous countries. 

But, what can running their names through a couple more databases say, like, with classified information? How much could that really help? How much does that really improve the vetting, if you’re not sitting down and interviewing them and checking all the stuff in their pockets, and all the paperwork they’re carrying, and everything else?

(22:36)

And how much good does it do to run their names through three other databases, in addition to, say, the two of them that everybody gets run through?

BENSMAN: I did reach out to somebody who is directly involved in vetting CBP One applicants, who had come in for parole over the bridges, and who knows all about this. And the information I got back was that the special interest migrants — or aliens — that are being brought in through this do go through another round of checking through classified databases, but not much else.

But then, even this person said, you know, if they’ve never registered on anybody’s intelligence radar, anywhere in the world, or in our federal databases, intelligence databases, then of course there’d never be a hit, it would come out as clean.

(23:35)

We don’t have everybody who should be on a terror list actually on the terror lists. There are a lot of people coming from countries that have terrible intelligence services. [They] don’t bother to collect this kind of stuff, and if they do, they don’t share it very well.

KRIKORIAN: They don’t even have DMV’s, quite honestly.

BENSMAN: Yeah, some of them. 

KRIKORIAN: Some of it is just the issue of basic identifying information. Let alone friendly intelligence service.

BENSMAN: That’s right. And you know, others are gonna be hostile diplomatically to the United States. I don’t know how they did an intel check on the Iranians that they let in. 

KRIKORIAN: Right.

(24:12)

BENSMAN: You know, you can’t call Tehran and say, hey, can you do us a solid on this?

KRIKORIAN: And frankly, even if they told you something, could you really believe it? You know what I mean? In other words, if you had, I don’t know, Iranian or Syrian intelligence, say, “Yeah we’re definitely gonna give you information on this guy, we looked him up and he’s clean.” How could you even believe that?

BENSMAN: Right. The whole thing is problematic. Even the ones that are coming in illegally — 

KRIKORIAN: Sure.

BENSMAN: — they go through database checks, too. But, in the pre-mass migration period, at least we could get an FBI agent eyeball to eyeball with that person in a detention center and spend hours and hours grilling them about where they’ve been, and they’re associations, et cetera.

But if you’ve got thousands of them, you just can’t do those interviews. I’ve done those interviews myself, when I was with the Texas DPS. It takes, very exhausting and tedious to go through and finish one. 

(24:11)

KRIKORIAN: Right.

BENSMAN: There’s just no way that they’re doing this. I don’t believe they’re doing this. But, you know, I don’t have that confirmed. Somebody needs to ask that question.

KRIKORIAN: Exactly, yeah. I’m not holding my breath, but, hopefully somebody will.

BENSMAN: Right. And, you know, there were some other strange unexplained nationalities that they were granting this to. […] You had some onesies and twosies from strange places like France, from England, the UK, come up to our border and ask for a CBP One appointment and parole.

We had one or two from Canada. Like, what? Somebody’s gotta explain. Whatever that story is, is probably interesting. All of those stories are probably interesting. But, you know, still, you had to have somebody in Washington, somewhere in those agencies, stamp a “yes” on those applications. 

And then you had people from Hungary? And Poland? And as I’m putting out this story, these aren’t places known for persecuting — they’re not even particularly poor countries.

(26:20)

KRIKORIAN: Right. And the premise behind this whole thing is that they are paroling these people in, in order for them, supposedly, to pursue some kind of asylum claim. Or make some kind of claim for protection.

Which, may or may not even happen — it’s obvious people are gaming the system. 

But, you know, if you’re from Britain or Canada or France, first of all, if you could just fly here on a visa waiver, in other words you don’t even need a visa — I don’t know, and you don’t speculate in the paper. But my guess is, some of these are people who could come here from France or what have you, but would have to do it as a tourist. They wouldn’t have a work permit.

And so this is a way to game the system to get employment authorization.

I don’t know that that’s the case, but that’s one thing that occurs to me about why you would use this CBP One gimmick to enter the country, illegally basically, rather than just fly in as a regular tourist.

(27:28)

Let’s not forget what you’re talking about here, the reports that you released this week. These are people coming across the land border from Mexico. So, they’re not coming from, like, England and they can’t get a hip replacement or something, which is ludicrous enough. 

But these are people who are already in Mexico. Like I met, earlier this year, I was on the Arizona border — these people did not use CBP One, they just walked across the border and were let go, but they were from the Republic of Georgia and had flown to Mexico, to Cancun, from Paris, and then took a bus up to the border.

You know, everybody who’s been using the system or the CBP One system that we’re talking about here, crossing the land borders, has gotten themselves to the Mexican border already.

And then they’re using this as a way to get across and into the United States.

(28:21)

BENSMAN: Right. And so, whoever stamped “yes” on those, I’d like to ask them, what were you thinking? What was this all about? Was there really no other alternative for that person to enter the U.S. to get whatever it was that they want?

They get a work permit, is the big distinction. And I have met British subjects who have been in line for legal immigration applications for years and years and years. Very frustrated about it, can’t get it in, takes too long.

And I can kind of maybe see one of them saying, you, know what, I’m gonna throw up my hands and try this. And then, it worked. I wonder if that’s what it was.

(29:00)

KRIKORIAN: Right. Americans even make this joke, it’s, “why don’t I go to Mexico, and cross illegally, and then I’ll get free health care?” Something like that. 

And so, arguably, it could well be a handful of people are kind of doing that same gimmick.

There are also some other nationalities. There were large numbers of Russians, isn’t that correct?

(29:23)

BENSMAN: Yes. That was a surprising finding. Because the Russians were in the — about 24,000, it coincided with the war, of course.

And I have met Russians down there, who have explained, they didn’t want to get conscripted into the war, so — looks like these are probably going to be a lot of war draft dodgers from Russia.

But, you know, a lot of Russians just came and entered illegally and got in that way. Think something on the order of another 25,000, at least, just crossed illegally in the last year or so, couple of years. 

And, again, the administration — that’s a diplomatic possible implication, there. Russian-U.S. relations. “We’re trying to run a war over here, that you don’t like, maybe, but you’re taking in our draft dodgers. And, you know, we might do something about that, if you keep doing it.”

(30:22)

KRIKORIAN: This despite the fact that fleeing conscription is explicitly not a grounds for getting asylum. So, we’re letting people in to apply for asylum, when they’re basically telling us the basis of their claim is something that’s already precluded, and they’re guaranteed to be turned down. It’s crazy.

BENSMAN: When I was doing some research about the Russians crossing the border, I noticed that their surge coincided with public statements by the president and his spokeswoman that, hey, if you can get yourself to the U.S., we’ll give you asylum here.

Come on. 

And, right after that, is when that surge happened.

So, clearly this is part of some kind of a policy, and they just sort of like smerged it in, where you can’t really — folded it into the blanket, so to speak, so, nobody can really tell that there’s a policy going on in the middle of all of this.

(31:22)

KRIKORIAN: Interesting. Interesting. So, are there other shoes to drop, as it were, from this particular request for information? Is there other stuff in the pipeline?

BENSMAN: Yeah, there’s more coming, but before I go there, there was one other nationality that is really striking —

KRIKORIAN: Okay.

BENSMAN: — that they were letting in, and that’s Mexican nationals.

KRIKORIAN: Oh, right.

BENSMAN: In fact, Mexican nationals ranked, I believe, as the number one CVP One beneficiary of parole. And that is really interesting. There were more than 57,000 through August. And I knew that they were letting Mexicans in this, because I met lots of them in line, as they were waiting their turn to cross the bridge.

This is unusual. You know. Because Mexicans don’t really qualify for asylum. It’s established, for many many years, you don’t really see very many Mexicans apply for asylum because they’re turned down in the 96 plus percentile range.

KRIKORIAN: Right.

(32:32)

BENSMAN: The presumption is that, well, if you live in a bad neighborhood, you can move to a good neighborhood. Just as well as somebody in South Chicago. You’d move to, you know, West Chicago and escape the gunfire, or whatever.

But here they are being granted in very, very large numbers, 57,000 work authorizations. So, I don’t know what this is, somebody needs to ask the administration to explain this. They owe the American public. If they’ve created a new work program, outside of Congress, and folded that up in the blanket where you can’t see it, either, it’s lost in the creases.

Then, that needs to be brought out. And Congress should have a say in something like that. The people should have a say in something like that. I’m not saying it’s a terrible thing to let Mexicans working, or anything like that.

But if you’re going to do it, announce it. It doesn’t look like they did, here, if that’s what this is.

So, I don’t know. That’s a strange one.

(33:35)

KRIKORIAN: More things we might expect, at least, from this original FOIA request?

BENSMAN: We’re still in negotiations. There’s foot dragging and resisting at every step of the way. Every line item in my FOIA, we’re having to negotiate and battle to try to avoid court. At some point we may actually end up in court. 

But one of the data sets that I’m very interesting in receiving that we asked for, and they said that they have it, are the 43 airports that they’re flying people in from foreign countries.

And dropping them in there, you know, like in the northern cities I suspect. Like New York and Chicago, those places that are being flooded and having a big problem absorbing unfunded burdens are blaming Governor Abbot for busing them in. I strongly suspect JFK and Chicago O’Hare and Boston Logan, and all of them, are probably on the list. And those would be Biden flying them in. 

(34:39)

And I’m sorry if you don’t like the political optics of that, but it’s not law enforcement sensitive. They’re claiming a law enforcement exception for providing the names of the airports. So, we’ll see what happens with that. 

And then the center has just filed a lawsuit, another FOIA lawsuit, over the nationalities. We were seeking nationalities and locations and group affiliations of people who crossed the border who turned out to be already on the FBI terror watch list.

We’ve had a record number of those in the last three years — 270 that they’ve caught, that we know of, who flagged on the FBI terror watch list.

And this data is provided on the CBP.gov website. Every month you get to see how many more they caught. But there’s no illuminating details about it. Like, it doesn’t tell you how many might be affiliated with Hamas and Hezbollah, which would be very useful right now.

KRIKORIAN: For sure.

(35:49)

BENSMAN: Or if there’s some other foreign policy thing happening in some other part of the world that we would want to know if those nationalities were coming in, and they’re not giving it, they’re just ignoring us, actually. They just ignored us into oblivion, really. 

Except that we’re not disappearing into oblivion, we’re suing on it, now. We just filed, October 13, so keep your fingers crossed on that.

KRIKORIAN: Well, very good. Thank you, Todd Bensman, the reports we published this week by Todd are the result of prying this information out of the supposedly most transparent administration in history.

And they’re grouped together on our website. One is, “New Records Unveil Surprising Scope of CBP One Entry Scheme.”

And the other report, the companion report, is “Thousands of ‘Special Interest Aliens’ Posing Potential National Security Risks Entering via CBP One App.”

So, neither one is an encyclopedia. They’re both pretty concise and give the information that we managed to get out of the administration and the context that Todd is able to bring to it because of his extensive reporting down there on the border.

So, thanks for joining us, Todd, and I’m sure we’re going to have you back, because this issue isn’t going away.

BENSMAN: Thank you, appreciate it.

(37:16)

KRIKORIAN: And finally, I wanted to draw your attention to a couple of blog posts that were on our site this week that look at the end of the fiscal year situation at the border. The federal government’s fiscal year ends September 30.

The data was for the fiscal year that ended, FY 2023. We are now in FY 2024. […] The government belatedly released the information for the previous fiscal year that just ended.

They released it on a Saturday morning, hoping, I guess, nobody would notice. We noticed. Andrew Arthur, in particular, who follows this very closely for us, wrote a couple of blog posts, first one, “Truly Wretched Border Stats Released in a Saturday Morning ‘News Dump’.”

And the other, “More Startling Takeaways from CBP’s Saturday Morning News Dump Stats.”

And you probably have heard already, a little bit of this, if you follow the issue, but it’s the worst situation at the border that it’s ever been. When you put everybody who was so-called “encountered” at the border — that’s the politically correct term that the Biden administration uses for illegal immigrants coming, either sneaking across the border or coming through ports of entry, as we talked about yesterday.

Or coming through ports of entry as we just talked about with Todd. There were 3.2 million such encounters — illegal immigrants either at the northern or southern border, or the ports of entry, a 15 percent increase from the total number in the previous year. So it’s only getting worse.

They’re coming from a wider range of countries. The numbers of illegal immigrants being let in at ports of entry — again, that’s the kind of thing we were just talking about — is higher than it’s ever been.

And the administration is actually, as I’m recording this, asking Congress for millions more dollars for the border, but saying that what they’re going to do with it is speed up the Border Patrol’s processing of illegal immigrants coming into the United States!

So, I’ll let you look into the details, if you want, but it’s bad. It’s getting worse. And there was an economics advisor in the Nixon administration, actually the actor Ben Stein’s father, who said if something can’t continue forever, it won’t.

And I don’t see how this can continue, but it’s been getting worse every year the Biden administration has been in power. We’ll see if that trend continues.

I’m always loathe to say it can’t get any worse, because whenever you say that, it always gets worse. I think it’s probably going to be getting worse. And we will be here following it, at the Center, both with our research and our podcast. So please tune in to future podcasts. You can subscribe at any podcast platform you like. Leave us a review, or a rating. Or if you have any compliments, criticisms or suggestions, feel free to email us at center@cis.org.

Until next time, this is Mark Krikorian.

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