00:02:04.780It was the policy during the Obama administration where when an illegal immigrant was caught, they'd be given a court date sometime in the future.
00:02:14.940And let go and said, hey, come to court.
00:02:17.760And lo and behold, a whole bunch of them never show up.
00:02:20.180This is not complicated to figure out.
00:02:22.500One of the most significant things the Trump administration did was end catch and release.
00:02:28.280But the most important thing that the Biden administration did is they ended the remain in Mexico policy.
00:02:37.580Now, what is the remain in Mexico policy?
00:02:39.600It was one of the biggest foreign policy and immigration victories of the entire Trump administration.
00:02:47.560And the Trump administration negotiated a deal with the government of Mexico.
00:02:53.060So the vast majority of the immigrants crossing illegally into this country are not Mexicans.
00:02:58.580They're Central Americans now who are crossing through Mexico.
00:03:01.420So there are illegal immigrants in Mexico crossing Mexico's southern border illegally to get to the United States.
00:03:06.780So they're largely coming from Guatemala, El Salvador, a couple other countries.
00:03:12.140Nicaragua and countries that have a lot of violence, that have a lot of criminal activity, that have a lot of poverty.
00:03:18.560And so they're fleeing that in large numbers.
00:03:20.660The remain in Mexico policy was an agreement with Mexico where if these folks come and want to apply for asylum in the United States, they stay in Mexico while the case is proceeding.
00:03:30.720And what the Biden administration did is it took that really important international agreement and it essentially ripped it up, said, nope, we don't want to remain in Mexico.
00:03:41.460We want them here and we want to let them go.
00:03:44.100And that consequence, we are seeing massive numbers of illegal immigrants being released into the United States.
00:03:52.040And in turn, look, if you're sitting at home in Guatemala and you're trying to decide whether to come when you see people being released, when you see people getting to stay, that's when you jump in a caravan and head north.
00:04:04.060Well, you know, there was a liberal journalist, Martha Raddatz, on a liberal network, ABC, interviewed an illegal alien.
00:04:10.800His face was covered because he's obviously committing a crime.
00:04:13.320And she said, would you have done this under Trump?
00:05:24.660And the numbers plummeted and the reason they plummeted is that people believed Trump was going to enforce the law.
00:05:32.180And so if you're making the decision, do I leave my country, do I pay thousands of dollars to a human trafficker, do I engage in a life-risking journey only to be apprehended and sent home?
00:05:57.460Because, you know, this is a very basic matter.
00:06:00.240But when you incentivize certain behavior, you get more of it.
00:06:03.080When you disincentivize certain behavior, you get less of it.
00:06:06.040You know, Michael, if you say things like that, you're going to identify yourself as a conservative and they're going to require you to wear like a patch or something.
00:07:52.640And it goes back to what you just said, incentives, which is kids and parents realized, okay, the president just announced if you came as a kid, you get to stay.
00:08:47.340Or perhaps they do understand incentives, but actually they desire this sort of behavior because they think it gives them advantage.
00:08:53.740You know, it reminds me of years ago, I was reading a newspaper article, and I think it was a city council member in San Francisco who said, I don't understand.
00:09:02.920We have the most generous homeless benefits in the country.
00:09:06.240And we keep getting more and more homeless people.
00:09:15.860And we're saying this with these kids.
00:09:18.400But, you know, to play devil's advocate a little bit, to give the devils their due in the Biden administration, Jen Psaki said something the other day that I was sort of exasperated when she said it because they said, okay, you said you wouldn't put the kids in cages and you're putting the kids in cages.
00:09:34.360And you're letting some of them go, but you have to separate them because you've got to verify that the adults that they're with actually are their relatives.
00:09:40.920And the things you're doing, it's basically just what the Trump administration did, except it would seem to be to a much greater degree.
00:09:47.620And she said, well, there just aren't a lot of options.
00:09:51.020I said, well, where was that kind of understanding when President Trump was doing that?
00:09:56.460And I guess, though, I would want to take her question seriously.
00:10:00.080What are you going to do when there aren't a lot of options?
00:10:28.940Look, during the Obama administration, I remember traveling down to Texas.
00:10:32.960And a lot of, you know, of our 2,000-mile border that we have with Mexico, 1,200 of those miles are along the border of the state of Texas.
00:10:40.520So we've got more than half the border is in Texas.
00:10:43.240And I remember visiting, going to Lackland Air Force Base outside of San Antonio where they were housing.
00:10:49.140They had built facilities, built the early cages for kids.
00:10:54.300I was there visiting, and I remember I was talking to an official from the Health and Human Services Department.
00:11:00.300And mind you, this is the Obama administration, so it's the Obama HHS.
00:11:04.920And this official described to me how the cartels were putting guns to the heads of little kids and forcing children to cut off the fingers or the ears of other kids.
00:11:20.020And what would happen is a family in Nicaragua or Honduras or Salvador would give $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 to a human trafficker.
00:11:30.320These human traffickers are not nice people.
00:11:34.060They're not, they don't love children.
00:11:37.200They are vicious, horrific, criminal cartels.
00:11:41.740And what they would do, once the family had given $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 to the cartel, to the trafficker, they would then deliver to the family their child's finger or ear.
00:11:56.900And they would extract more money from the parents.
00:11:59.020And so the Obama HHS official told me that they were getting, number one, kids that were horribly deformed, had fingers cut off or ears cut off.
00:12:07.640And they were getting other kids who were psychologically traumatized because they had a gun put to their forehead.
00:12:12.820It wasn't even the traffickers that were cutting off the fingers and ears.
00:12:28.280If you're creating a system that is incentivizing tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, and the Biden Department of Homeland Security is projecting over 100,000 kids coming in the country unaccompanied, little boys, little girls.
00:12:42.880If you're putting little boys and little girls in the hands of human traffickers, you're not compassionate.
00:12:49.340And every one of those kids that is sexually assaulted and those –
00:12:55.040I remember, you know, I think it was Huffington Post some years ago with Fusion published a survey.
00:13:01.680I believe the number was between 60 and 80 percent of women and girls who crossed the border illegally were raped or sexually assaulted along the way.
00:13:10.060It is – it's staggering, and it's not humane or compassionate.
00:13:16.400And I will say I get frustrated with Democrats who virtue signal about how much they love immigrants, that they support a policy that involves a bunch of immigrant children being physically and sexually abused.
00:13:30.220And the real compassionate policy is what we have had, which is to say we're going to enforce the law, we're not going to do catch and release, and if you come here illegally, we're going to send you home.
00:13:41.340And the reason that is compassionate is you don't end up with kids being handed over to traffickers.
00:13:46.840Those numbers dropped dramatically, and we're seeing that, and it seems like Biden and the Democrats don't understand cause and effect.
00:13:54.980There's the question of the justice in and of itself of saying a people has a right to have its own borders.
00:14:00.220But then there is this secondary effect, which is you're going to see those numbers plummet.
00:14:06.040You know, obviously that's a good argument.
00:14:07.360And 6,000 to 93,000, we're not talking a small effect.
00:16:43.380I'm biting my tongue on all the great jokes I could make about the press right now because I actually do sort of defend them against the Biden administration.
00:16:50.540So I actually believe in a free press.
00:17:24.900Here's an amazing stat in Harlingen, Texas.
00:17:27.800The illegal immigrants they're releasing are testing positive for COVID-19 at a seven times greater rate than the U.S. population.
00:17:39.200I also did not realize it was that severe.
00:17:41.600All I noticed was that the administration is now admitting that it is releasing people into the United States who have not been – illegal aliens who have not been tested for COVID.
00:17:54.900And you saw the DHS secretary was sort of backed into a corner on this, and he said, well, it is the official policy to test.
00:18:01.700I said, right, but are you doing that?
00:18:04.060Well, we are doing our best, and it's an admission.
00:18:07.300It's all but an admission that they are releasing people in the midst of this pandemic where we're not allowed to leave our homes in some cases.
00:18:13.160And they're releasing them in Texas, my home state.
00:18:25.220So they're perfectly willing to release illegal immigrants who may be criminals into Texas, into the United States, even if they may have COVID-19 and not test them.
00:18:35.700But yet they won't allow a single reporter with a camera to see anything on the border because that reporter might have COVID.
00:18:45.360I'm willing to bet even if that reporter tested negative that day and had been vaccinated, they'd still say, no, it's not the COVID risk that they're worried about.