Todd Bensman: Terrible Border Bill is Dead

ProAmerica Report with Ed Martin, February 19, 2024

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ED MARTIN: Todd Bensman is all over the country. Right now I think he’s out west somewhere. He’s been all over the world, his coverage from Poland got a lot of attention, and of course, down on the border.

Bensman is a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, CIS.org. He’s great, there, you can find his site and his writing. There’s a lot of other people over at the Center for Immigration Studies who do great work. Really an important organization that’s at this moment maybe more valuable than ever, although they’ve been going for years.

So welcome back, Todd. Before we go on to where we are today, it looks like the border deal that got so much attention is pretty much dead. Everybody says it’s over.

[1:05]

Two things about that. One, what was it, really, that got it killed off ultimately? What is it that caught the attention of the public or the lawmakers enough to stop it?

And then, what are your thoughts that the Republican party would put that up? You know, a bunch of senators would say, this is good enough?

BENSMAN: Sure. Well, first of all, republicans in the House, who are border hawks, who follow the border and have been doing the impeachment — there’s a lot of knowledge about the border, and what causes this, and how to stop it. There’s actually a lot of institutional knowledge because of the impeachment investigation, et cetera.

And those lawmakers understood, from the get-go, that what was being proposed, over there, was a ruse. That none of it, actually, would have stopped the border crisis, it would have incentivized more of it, and codified it, and made it harder for a future republican president to put a stop to it, because there’d be this legislation.

Also they understood that the president already has the authority to put an immediate stop to this, to deport one hundred percent of everybody crossing that border with no chance at asylum. Which would immediately halt the border crisis in about two hours.

So they just told Donald Trump about it, and Trump came out strongly against it. Once Trump came out strongly against it, the others had to kind of fall in line on it. That’s what killed it.

[3:10]

MARTIN: […] What really happened here, was that, enough of the House members actually knew, for a change, what was going on, weren’t snowed by — hey, do you want the Ukrainian money? — or something else. But you’re very clear on the timing, and the cause and effect, that it was Trump saying this was a bad deal that was enough to knock it back.

I watched the media say, Trump did X, and I just don’t believe them, ever. 

But that’s interesting and important, because from my standpoint Trump has the best positions on this.

One thing, when you say that border bill would have codified it, let’s see if I simplify it too much when I say the following: ultimately it was going to allow people coming in — in fact, it was going to require that they be allowed to come in — in some number they were throwing around under that system, and the only stoppage of that was possibly down the line, right?

BENSMAN: Right. They were going to codify that it was ok to let 35,000 a week into the country. Five thousand a day. And then, if the president thought that that was too much, or that we were being swamped, he would quote-unquote “close the border” then.

But there was never any language in the bill that described exactly what it was that he was going to have to do to close the border, or when. It was left open, just like it is now, for the president to simply blow it all off and say, yeah, you know, we can take 5,000. All this money for extra personnel down there has given us the ability to take 8,000 a day, so we’re fine.

They would have codified it. But even over one thousand, a former DHS secretary said, was an overwhelming crisis. 

[5:46]

MARTIN: […] [Your] most recent [book], Overrun, is about the Biden administration’s decisions, immediately after getting into power, and how their policies put us here. Very prescient. 

Todd, Mayorkas. I was for the impeachment because you at least have to say that you’re doing things, to be accountable, and then do them.

So, in this case, ok, he’s impeached. Everybody agrees, I think, that the Senate is not going to move on it, it’s not going to go anywhere. But it made a difference. 

Who are the heroes in the House? I’d like to say their names. The House members who stood up and, on the border bill as well as on [impeachment], were out there, clear, figuring it out, and who are those heroes?

[6:35]

BENSMAN: A lot of this was spearheaded by the House Homeland Security Committee. Mark Green. He really pushed this thing through. And then you had members of the Freedom Caucus who were pushing from behind him.

They did a bang-up job, the committee did, and especially the staff, did a great public service creating a series of investigative reports that are on the House Homeland Security Committee’s website that I would urge everybody to go read.

But remember, this thing just barely passed. […]

[7:55]

MARTIN: The Biden administration has at least changed its messaging, trying to blame Trump for this border deal going down, and trying to sound a little bit more — they sound more opposed to the immigration crisis. They’re not doing anything! We’ve known that for a year, we’ve listened to Todd Bensman from the border, a couple times, where he’s saying, look, people may be saying there’s a crisis — nothing’s changing. The Biden administration is, in fact, opening it wider.

But the Democrats know it’s a problem in terms of politics. And you’ve been at this a long time, years and years. Is this the height of the public’s paying attention to this?

[8:35]

BENSMAN: All of the polling is showing, consistently, for the last six months, that the border crisis is a top-ranking apex issue for the 2024 national election. It is. The Biden administration knows this full well.

There is a complexity to the border crisis that I think the Biden administration is taking full advantage of, where people just don’t understand how it all works, or what really is happening down there. Which is why I wrote the book.

Because […] people are more prone to accepting Democrat campaign arguments about it. Like, it’s Trump’s fault. Anybody who understands anything about this can trace it directly to inauguration hour, plus one, in 2021. It literally started within one hour.

There’s one other thing that I think even a lot of Republicans either don’t want to admit to, or, nobody really knows that this is happening — that the Biden campaign is so fearful and fretful about this issue as a campaign issue, that Biden himself went down to Mexico City, just before Christmas — and he sent Mayorkas and Blinken down just after Christmas — to meet with Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador, to have them crack down on the immigration through their territory.

[10:18]

And they have. They've absolutely gone medieval on illegal immigration in Mexico, to the extent that I’ve never seen before.

The Mexicans have successfully dropped our border crossings from 12,000 - 14,000 a day, to [inaudible]. And it’s supposed to be an operation that will last through November, through the November elections.

It drops the numbers to a threshold where the media lose interest, and they go away.

That’s what’s happened down there. I just returned from Mexico. I interviewed a whole bunch of Mexican Army soldiers, and [inaudible] immigrants in Mexico, NGOs, everybody’s talking about these really aggressive Mexican operations. They’re round-ups. Tens of thousands. 

[These] round-ups [are] not getting covered in the U.S. media at all — except by me.

And they’re shipping them 1,500 miles to the southern part of the country by airplane and by bus. And it’s forced. These are round-ups, forced round-ups all along Mexico’s northern [border], especially in Texas.

[11:50]

MARTIN: […] Todd, you mentioned this draconian focus of the Mexican government to slow things. You cut out, actually, when you said they cut it down from twelve to thirteen thousand a day, down to “X”. And then you cut out, so I don’t know. But my question is, where are “X” coming from? If the Mexicans are cracking down on it?

[12:25]

BENSMAN: It’s dropped from thirteen, fourteen thousand a day to four thousand a day. Five thousand a day. They’ve cut this by 80 percent. Most of the ones that you see coming [inaudible] Iran, Afghanistan, from extra-continental nations. Special Interest nations. Coming through from China. In California and Arizona.

Texas is almost shut down. There’s just a trickle coming through Texas, because of what Biden is having the Mexicans do for his political campaign.

Remember, when it’s ten thousand a day, you’ve got international media down there. When it’s five thousand a day, they go away. 

That is the goal of Biden’s Mexico campaign.

You won’t read about this, really, very many places. The New York Times has acknowledged it. But nobody’s really down there tying it to these diplomatic trips that happened at the end of December and early January.

[13:45]

And they’re still happening now. The Mexican foreign minister and all of his people are coming to DC. There’s a lot of back-and-forth. For the Mexican operation. And it looks like that operation is —

MARTIN: Let me clarify, though. If the Mexican government can round up ten thousand Latin American illegals, and say “you’re not supposed to be here,” and ship them south, at the same time they end up with three or four thousand, five thousand extra-continental people that arrive, and they’re allowed to keep going? Why would they be allowed to keep going? 

What’s the corruption factor, here? I don’t understand it.

[14:32]

BENSMAN: I don’t understand that part either, if I’m being honest. I suspect — and I don’t have this, I plan to go down there and find out. But right now it appears as though, if you’re an extra-continental, from certain countries, Mexico cannot readily deport them. 

MARTIN: Oh!

BENSMAN: They’re coming through the Darien Gap, the Mexicans are still letting them through. They’ll let them through. This is all about road checkpoints. There are roadblocks all over Mexico, now, where they can filter them out by nationality, if they want.

So if they’re Chinese, and they’re coming in on the bus, it’s like, oh, they’re Chinese, they can stay on the bus and keep going. That’s what I think is going on.

And then, of course, nothing changed on our policy. Everybody who reaches our border is immediately let into the country, to stay permanently.

So, the pull factor is still there, but the Mexicans have knocked out the freight trains which is the key to all of those numbers.

[15:53]

Now the Mexicans are occupying the rail yards and not letting anybody on those trains. And those who sneak onto the trains somewhere else are getting rousted off of them […]. Those trains are showing up empty now, at [Mexico’s] northern border, compared to December and November.

This is all planned. This is all part of the Biden administration plan to get that media attention somewhere else.

[16:25]

MARTIN: When you say the Mexican government does that — is the Mexican government in control, or is it the cartels? In other words, is it in the cartels’ interests? […] Are the cartels, really, in charge?

BENSMAN: Well, the cartels know when to retreat. They do strategic retreats. This thing is such a big diplomatic deal, this is president on president kind of a thing. There are good reports, credible Mexican media reports, that the Mexican Navy is actually up on their northern border.

I didn’t meet any of them, I was looking for them. That’s always a tell-tale sign. Because the Mexican Navy is regarded as the least corrupted institution in Mexico. Probably because they’re on ships out at sea.

But when the Mexican government really, really wants to enact change, they can overcome the cartels for periods of time. And they do.

MARTIN: I see.

BENSMAN: And the cartels will strategically withdraw and go away. This is something really different, and big. Because this is the Mexican Army up there, now, regular Army. It’s not even the National Guard, it’s the Army.

And it’s permanent. They’ve got these big mobile barracks that have been wheeled in, that fit 20 at a time. And they’ve got Humvees, and they’re doing round-ups. They’re footing the bill to put them on planes. 

MARTIN: Wow.

[18:35]

BENSMAN: The cartels will benefit, eventually, from this. Because they’ll up their prices, for the ones that have money, down there.

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