LISTEN TO THE FULL JULY 22, 2021 BROADCAST HERE MINUTE 36
Frank Gaffney asking for the latest on the border crisis.
Bensman: The latest numbers of June are out and they give lie to anybody who was trying to say that this was cyclical. The cycle normally does have immigration numbers dropping in the hot summer months but instead that rule was defied. The numbers went up again, instead of down as they almost always do, to almost 190,000 encounters at the border, so the crisis is raging.
Frank Gaffney: Can I ask you a question about that, Todd? Defining terms… encounters used to mean, when we had a border and were enforcing our immigration laws, that some percentage of those people would be sent packing. Today, does it mean that they were sent packing?
Bensman: Well, it is true that the majority of those who are apprehended, or encountered, under Title 42, single adults mostly, under the pandemic related Title 42. Only to try again, and again and again.
Gaffney: Only single, unaccompanied males? Is that correct?
Bensman: Well, under Trump it was for everyone. But what Biden did was exempt family units and unaccompanied minors who are in the tens of thousands. Those are the ones who are just pouring in, coursing over the border and just being processed right through. The single adults, though, are returned without consequence to try again and again and again until they make it through. Those would be the ‘gotaways.’ There were more than 50,000 of those estimated in this last month of June. It’s safe to say that even with the majority returned to Mexico to try again, our Border Patrol is completely used up and overwhelmed dealing with all of this.
Gaffney: I know you are concerned that these last vestiges of the Trump administration policy with regard to covid restrictions are about to be eliminated by the Biden team, not because the problem has gone away but because it’s still with us.
Bensman: There are powerful influencers in the American left that are lobbying for the lifting of Title 42, which is keeping the adults somewhat at bay, and the Biden administration has signaled that it is now contemplating lifting Title 42. I don’t know how they are going to do it but they are going to do it in some way or fashion that would at least appear to deter mass illegal immigration. But the truth is that you will probably see a Noah’s Ark type flood of illegal immigration… so that’s going to be the next thing to watch for.
Gaffney: We will be doing that as I know will you and we’ll look forward to your reporting on it. You’ve written about a UN quality to the invasion force, if I can call it that, coming up from the south. Talk a little about who is in this cohort now being given access to this country.
Bensman: That’s right. There is an international trail that connects the entire world through Central America to the southern border. And that trail is absolutely congested right now to an extent never seen. Just thousands and thousands of people from around the world are just coursing through the Darien Gap and then Costa Rica, Nicaragua, all the way up, from all over the world. I just came from the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border and put out four big pieces and a video report also from that border. And I met immigrants from the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, immigrants from Senegal, which is in the Sahel desert, which is populated by ISIS and al Qaeda franchises. And there are Africans coming from sub-Saharan nations that are riven by tribal warfare and atrocities and war crimes. We have no idea who these people are. Burkina Faso and Cameroon and Congo and also from Muslim-majority countries like Somalia. We just had two cross on Monday that I know of for sure. Yemen. Two just came over who were on the FBI’s terror watch list. So there’s a national security element to this, that is a heightened national security risk coming in to our southern border that I think most Americans overlook. And certainly Kamala Harris will not be going to the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border where I was, and where I saw smugglers and immigrants operating in the wide open, with no law enforcement heat. Nobody cares. Those countries are allowing immigration through to our country. I think the American public needs to keep an eye on that aspect of the border crisis. That’s an important aspect of the crisis.
Gaffney: When you add on top of it the empowering of other enemies of this country, namely cartels. Todd Bensman, you really have a witches brew of threats that are now metastasizing. And as you said, it is particularly terrifying because it is the policy and practice of the Biden administration to move these individuals, wherever they are coming from into the interior and across the country. I mean, literally, every community is a border one. It has obvious national security and homeland security implications does it not?
Bensman: That’s right. I think there’s a lot of onus and focus on the actual physical land border and what’s happening down there and how they’re entering. But the impacts of that mass immigration are a little bit delayed and not very easy to see, especially if people don’t want to see it, in the interior. Communities and cities across the country are filling up with thousands and thousands of people who are unvetted and who will soon join the illegal population. And the administration has eliminated deportation, especially criminal alien deportation. So you know, the impact on crime is going to be significant. You are going to be seeing cases like the illegal immigrant who attacked an Asian recently. And you’re going to see these gangs from El Salvador crop up with their machetes. And God, I hope not for terrorism, you know for anybody coming from these countries of national security interest.