On this Monday morning, growing fallout over the Bite administration's
handling of the border surge as another massive caravan of
migrants crosses through Mexico,
heading our way to the United States.
Former US Border Patrol Chief Ron Vitiello joins us right
now from the DC area.
Ron, morning to you.
Good morning, Steve. OK, so these migrants largely.
Venezuelan About 1000 of them crossed from Guatemala into Mexico
over the weekend.
Why didn't Mexico stop them?
That's a really good question.
Mexico has been helping recently.
And look, all of the success that we had on
the border in the Trump administration
was because we're doing all the right things,
including engaging Mexico in a way that made them help
us.
And So what is this administration going to do?
Because everything they've done so far is to encourage this
kind of activity,
right? We're not taking people out of the pipeline.
You know, the numbers are muted in the sense that
encounters at the border between the ports of entry are
lower,
but they're not lower overall,
right. People are coming using CV P1,
they're coming to the port,
and they're being released in the United States when you're
releasing over 1/3 of everyone who comes to the border.
Then they're going to just encourage more people to come
into the pipeline.
So now this group is formed in southern Mexico.
They're going to walk up to the United States border.
And it remains to be seen if the Border Patrol
will be given the tools
that they need to stop this kind of traffic.
And and so far this administration,
they stopped the wall funding.
They put a moratorium on deportation and removal.
They told everybody that's in the country illegally that they're
not going to send ICE out to look for them
and so.
We as a as a nation,
this administration specifically is encouraging this.
The incentives are all wrong and they continue to tout
that they're being successful on the border when we can
see with our own eyes that they're not.
And these people in the pipeline know that as well.
You're absolutely right. The administration is saying that migrant encounters
have dropped by
70% since the end of Title 42.
But run, you know, for these,
the 1000 people who are now in this caravan heading
our way.
Didn't they get the memo that after Title 42,
it was very clear, you crossing the United States illegally,
we're going to send you back and you cannot apply
for five years?
Is that going to happen?
They they come up to the river and are we
going to let them in or we're going to say
we told you come back in five years,
right. Consequences matter. If you tell people that if they
come to the border and a third of them get
released in the United States,
you're not going to stop others from coming,
the another thing this administration did,
we had the asylum accords with the Northern triangle and
we had the migrant protection protocol with Mexico.
That was the consequence. That meant if you came into
the United States illegally,
then they sent you back into Mexico to wait for
your immigration hearing or if you were in a safe
third country,
that you. Came from Guatemala into into Mexico.
You could apply for asylum there.
That's what was happening. That gave us
45 year lows in activity on the southwest border.
We've done exactly the opposite under this administration and this
is the result of it.
These people know. They look at the sense of entitlement.
The reporting says they're coming to the United States because
they want to come here and work because they know
that many of them,
many of them, too many of them are going to
be released in the United States and they'll be on
this economy.
We'll never see them again,
right. But it used to be,
Ron, the only way you could get in the.
Country with asylum was you were being persecuted
or, you know, a threat of death.
But instead it's like, hey,
I want to make money because I can make more
money in New York City than I can in Guatemala.
The system is overwhelmed, and this administration is sending a
signal to the rest of the world.
So Congress needs to act here.
We need to get the Senate back,
and we need a new president that will actually enforce
the law.
Give us a secure border,
a secure homeland and an immigration system that has integrity.
We don't have that now.
We won't until these. This crew is out.
Yeah. OK, Ron, thank you very much for getting up
early on this Monday.