Bensman Departs Center Immigration Studies and joins Trump Administration as Senior Adviser: THE EXIT INTERVIEW

Special Note to readers: On June 2, 2025, I took my oath to protect and defend the United States and began serving as a senior adviser/White House Administration assigned to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where I’ll be serving the Border Czar and other senior Department of Homeland Security leadership as needed. This obviously means I’ve also left the great Center for Immigration Studies after nearly seven very productive and interesting years of writing and speaking about the border (follow the center on X @CIS_org). And letting you know on this portfolio website about my many years of boots-on-ground migration trail reporting from South America to the Southwest Border, all of published editorials, and many of media interviews. My shift to the new role means I’ll go (mostly) dark for a while – not reporting and writing like I did – so as not to trouble White House communications strategy. I’ll maintain my X, GETTR, and Truth Social accounts as well as my newsletter, just not in the same abundance as Before. One day I expect to be back to writing and reporting national security and border policy, of course, given that this kind of government work is always finite, tied as it is to term limits. So stay with me as: I Shall Return. In the meantime, following are my last couple of interviews before my swearing in where I discuss highlights of my seven years work on the border and beyond for the Center – and the challenges the Trump administration was facing in its deportation and border security agenda as of June 2025. Thanks for sticking with me here and for reading my work all these years. It ain’t over, just on a bit of hiatus.

See Also: Hearts of Oak Video Podcast: Tackling the Border Crisis: From Journalist to…now White House Policy Advisor

“Well, as of now, I’m still outside the wire as we speak here, so I have no idea, really, what they’re doing already. I do have a long list of my own ideas so I’ll have to get inside there and reconcile it with whatever they are doing to make sure I’m not duplicating. And of course I’m at the service of Tom [Homan] and whoever else- you know, probably everyone is my boss. I’ll do whatever’s asked of me wherever I can help, though I do have my own ideas but I’m not going to talk about those right now.” – Bensman on Hearts of Oak video podcast

Summary

In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Todd Bensman, the Center’s Texas-based Senior National Security Fellow, discusses his experiences at the Center as he prepares to depart for a new role as “Senior Adviser to the Border Czar,” Tom Homan. Bensman and host Mark Krikorian reflect on his nearly seven-year tenure at the Center, focusing on his firsthand experiences with border issues, extensively documented in two books authored while at the Center.

Growing out of field research for the Center in Latin America and his graduate studies at the Naval Postgraduate School, Bensman’s first book, America’s Covert Border War, addressed the national security challenges of the border, specifically focusing on “special interest aliens” – i.e. illegal border-crossers from countries where jihadist terror groups operate.

Bensman’s second book, Overrun, is a history of the Biden border crisis, based also on numerous visits to Mexico and Central and South America, where he interviewed hundreds of migrants, officials, aid workers, and others. Bensman uncovered the CBP One program during its pilot phase, prior to its public disclosure, shed light on UN funding for illegal immigration, and provided on-the-ground reporting during significant events such as the Del Rio migrant crisis and the lead-up to the end of Title 42.

In his closing commentary, Krikorian weighed in on the recent admission of several dozen Afrikaners from South Africa into the United States as refugees, highlighting facets of the issue not addressed in most media coverage.