WASHINGTON—Former U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan sat down with The Epoch Times on April 24 to discuss border security. Morgan, who led the agency during the final months of the Obama administration, is also a 20-year veteran of the FBI.
I think the other thing that’s important that it illustrates is the failure of the government of Mexico to be a proactive partner in resolving this problem. Their southern border is completely unsecure, and the border between Mexico and the United States, the cartels own it. So it really does show the government of Mexico’s inept ability to handle this issue.
But now, with President Trump making the threats that he’s making, to close down the border, we see the government of Mexico finally starting to step up [and] we’re seeing reports that the caravan is being broken up.
But, mark my words, they’re still going to get here. Congress has still failed to do its job to protect the American people, so the same laws apply. So there’s a good chance that the majority of these individuals are still going to be allowed into the interior of the United States.
With one exception, if the president is able to continue with the new approach—the Migrant Protection Protocol—to make the individuals seeking asylum remain in Mexico, there is a chance that those numbers could be reduced. But, right now, that’s only being done at the ports of entry.
It’s not what’s happening in the Northern Triangle countries. It’s what’s happening in the United States. It’s the Congress’s failure to address this problem again and again. And the Northern Triangle countries getting more educated ... they know once they get here, they’re in. The Border Patrol and ICE are so overwhelmed right now that a lot of these migrants coming, they’re not even asserting credible fear for asylum, and they’re still being allowed in because the agencies are overwhelmed.
But make no mistake, the cartels own that border. And so as they start coming through, they’re going to tax them. And they‘ll take the caravans, no matter how big or small, and they’ll direct them to certain areas, so the Border Patrol can be engaged, and they'll sneak criminal aliens in and bad things in. And so it’s absolutely being done every day.
So although 65 percent are family units and unaccompanied minors, that still leaves 35 percent of people coming across that they’re not all good. And this is the false narrative. Some of them are rapists, some of them are murderers, some of them are pedophiles. Some of them are gang members. This year already, Border Patrol has apprehended as many gang members so far in the first six months than they did all of last year. That’s a fact. It’s not hyperbole. And we need to make sure we’re being intellectually honest.
And that’s just who we’re apprehending. Again, the border is still 60 percent wide open, meaning it doesn’t have enough infrastructure, technology, and personnel. And because anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of Border Patrol resources are being pulled away and dedicated to the humanitarian side, the border is even more wide-open for the cartels to do what? Exploit. To bring drugs, contraband, and bad people in.
And now, in some sectors, it’s up to 40 percent of the Border Patrol resources are being pulled off the line. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what that does to the border. It’s wide-open and the cartels are exploiting this every single day.
What we need to do is very clear. Congress needs to fix the Flores Settlement Agreement and TVPRA, and catch-and-release ends. This problem, Congress could fix in 15 minutes by doing those two things, and they know that.
So I can only draw one conclusion: that they’re not doing this [is] based on their political agenda and their ideology. For me, I can draw no other conclusion from a law enforcement perspective because they know. The experts have been telling them for a very long time what they need.
We’re going to expect a million [people] this year. That’s not hyperbole, that’s fact. You know, former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said a bad day—and I was a Border Patrol chief under Jeh Johnson—for him was 1,000 apprehensions. We’re getting 4,000 a day now. And he says, in anybody’s definition, it’s a crisis.
But we have to remember, a lot of times, again, we get sidetracked with the individuals coming over here, either legally or those that are claiming asylum. We forget to talk about the ones that are entering illegally that are bad people. There are. What about the thousands and thousands of angel families, the thousands and thousands of American citizens that had been killed by illegal aliens that had ICE detainers, multiple ICE detainers that should not have been here. Those are [deaths] that could have been prevented.
We’ve given hundreds of millions of dollars in the Northern Triangle countries forever. And what has happened? The numbers continue to skyrocket. We’ve been working with Mexico for decades to try to get them to be part of the solution here and they’ve failed. They’re still on the sidelines. We’ve been working with Congress for decades to fix this, and they failed.
We need to look at the regulations that handle credible fear. And we need to improve the burden of proof, because we know that 85 percent of the claims are found to be unsubstantiated. So we know that there’s an issue with the credible fear. It’s too loose. We need to tighten that up.
I think we need to pass a regulation that will actually give ICE the ability to detain family units while they’re going through the immigration process. At the same time, let’s reinstitute what they used to do called “port courts.” That means we shut all the assets, a whole government approach down to the border, everything that you need, soup-to-nuts, to be able to have the immigration hearing and do that quickly. And then, if those claims are found to be substantiated, then they'll be allowed in. If not, we remove them immediately.
And the last thing that I would do that closes that incentive package that’s out there—because again, they’re not coming here because of what’s going on in the Northern Triangle countries. They’re coming here for economic equality. That’s it. And to some degree, family unit reunification. So we need to remove that incentive. And so the last part of that is we need to ramp up our interior enforcement. There are over a million illegal immigrants who entered the country illegally, filed a false claim, have received due justice through the immigration proceedings, and they’ve found to be false, and they’ve received a deportation order removal. A million, and they still remain here illegally.
We can’t wait for Congress. We need to act ourselves.
And then, judicial activism. I’ve never seen judicial activism at the height it is now, especially on this issue. It’s just incredulous to me.
I always say if I had five minutes, I would tell [Trump]: “Mr. President, sir, stay the course, fight it. Take that to the Supreme Court.”
Because if he could win in the Supreme Court about making the asylum seekers remain in Mexico, that’s huge. I mean, right there is a game-changer to be able to do that. If we can apply the Migrant Protection Protocols along the whole southwest border, and make individuals wait in Mexico, you’re going to see those numbers go drastically down, because you’ve removed the incentive. You now will be telling them, no, you don’t get to grab a kid and get a free pass into the United States.
As soon as it stops becoming profitable, and starts becoming an issue for the cartels, then you'll see them go back to their old ways of just doing drugs again. So that’s an issue that’s got to be addressed. For Mexico to be a really valuable player in this, we have to address the cartels. But here’s another thing. Let’s force Mexico to deal with the cartels a little bit more. And I think the president’s threat of shutting down the border is having an impact.
So back in the ‘90s and early 2000s, I think we reached a height of about 1.5 million. There are two distinct differences that really drives these false narratives.
First, is that the individuals coming across were being caught and sent back two or three times on the same day. So really if you look at it at 1.5 [million], it’s really probably around a million or even less.
The second part of that false narrative is that 99 percent of them were Mexican adults, and within a couple of hours through expedited removal, we were removing 90 percent of them.
Now, this year, we’re anticipating a million, but 65 percent of them are family units and unaccompanied minors. And because of our broken laws, they get to come in, which means 650,000 to 700,000 this year are going to be allowed into the interior United States. So that’s why it’s no comparison from back in the ‘90s to now. And that’s why I’ve been actually saying the crisis that we’re facing right now is the worst in our history along the southwest border.
And what the American people need to understand, too, is that of that 650,000 that we’re going to let in, 85 percent of their claims are going to be found to be false and they’re going to be given an order of deportation—which they’re not going to comply with. And so each year, each month, we’re adding tens of thousands of people that now have been ordered removed and are here illegally, and we’re not doing anything about it.
And the taxpayers are footing the bill.