border security | Michael Patrick Leahy

National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd on Southern Border: ‘If the Outrage Exists, Then a Change Can Happen’

Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed special guest Brandon Judd, President of the National Border Patrol Council to the newsmakers line to discuss the current surge of Haitians under the Del Rio International Bridge and how it is up to the people educate themselves to make a change to the Biden administration’s border policies.

Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line right now by Brandon Judd, the President of the National Border Patrol Council. Brandon, apparently there are reports that there are more than 10,000 Haitians are under the Del Rio International Bridge on the southwestern border of Texas with Mexico. How do they get there and what’s happening with them?

Judd: I spent all day yesterday, and I’ll spend all day today down under the bridge. And what we saw is at the height, it was 14,870, some odd people that we had under the bridge. Now, these people were not in custody.

And as long as they didn’t try to further their entrance into the United States, they were able to stay under the bridge until we can take them into custody, transport them, process them, and then determine what’s going to happen with them from there.

The idea and these stories that are coming out by The Washington Post, by The New York Times, by all of these outlets are saying these people are going to be deported. That’s just not true.

Only a quarter of these individuals are going to be amenable to Title 42 and are going to be expelled because the vast majority of them are family units. And we know the Biden administration doesn’t expel family units from the United States.

The vast majority of these individuals crossed our borders illegally, they violated our laws, and they’re ultimately going to be rewarded for violating our laws.

And as long as we do that, we create this magnet that draws all of these people to come here to the United States illegally. And it’s completely and totally surreal. It’s a situation that we’ve never seen before.

And if you are able to get down there personally, what you’re going to see is that it seriously appears to be like a war zone. It’s crazy what is taking place right now.

Leahy: How does it happen? I mean, how do 14,000 Haitians get from Haiti to a bridge under the bridge of the Del Rio International Bridge on the southwestern border of Texas and Mexico? How does that happen?

Judd: Oh, they walk for the most part.

Leahy: They don’t walk from Haiti. That’s an island.

Judd: The cartels facilitate it. What’s very interesting about this is the majority of them are not coming from Haiti. The majority of them are coming from Chile or Brazil. Back in 2010, during all of the disasters that were taking place in Haiti, a lot of these people left and went to South America for economic reprieve.

And Brazil and Chile excepted these people in. Now that the pandemic has hit those two countries hard, and there’s been a huge economic downturn, these people are leaving those two countries and they’re coming to the United States.

They didn’t have to take boats up to where we’re at. They were able to come straight up through South America and Central America, up to the United States and the cartels, they facilitated this.

The cartels were able to get them up. And this is what’s amazing about what’s taken place is the cartels understand that all they have to do is cross really large groups. We’ve never seen anything like this before, but they know that all they have to do is cross really large groups then the border patrol will have to deploy the resources to that area.

And when we deploy our resources to that area, we create all of these artificial gaps in our coverage along the border. And when we do that, they’re able to cross their higher-value products such as criminal aliens and drugs into the United States.

It’s completely and totally crazy that we continue to operate the way that we do because we’ve conceded control of law enforcement operations to criminal cartels.

Leahy: Is this intentional on the part of the Biden maladministration?

Judd: That would be speculation on my part. If you were to ask me, I don’t have evidence of it, but, yeah, I believe it is. I believe it is. But, again, that speculations. That’s just my opinion. I don’t have any evidence of it. But I do believe it is.

Leahy: I don’t have evidence, but I have logic. I can’t see any other way this would happen unless this were intentional on part of a Biden maladministration.

Judd: When you look at the Biden administration bringing back the catch and release magnet, that then-President Trump was able to get rid of, we dropped to a 45 year low in illegal immigration.

The Biden administration almost from day one, when they came into office, reintroduced that magnet. And that’s why we have 200,000 apprehensions two months running. We’re expecting to see those apprehensions to be over 200,000 again in the month of September.

So, yeah, it’s crazy what’s going on. And until the people recognize that the policies of this administration that it’s not just border security.

It’s everything. Look at the economy right now. Look at the jobs market. Look at Afghanistan. Everything that’s happening in this country, these policies are horrible. And until the country stands up and recognizes this, he’s not going to change.

He’s just not going to make any changes as it pertains to the border. He’s not going to make any changes as it pertains to this very hard leftist movement and the defund, the police, and everything that comes with the negatives of a very liberal government.

Leahy: What does this do to the morale of the National Border Patrol agents out there?

Judd: All of the agents were all completely defeated. When we put on that uniform, we want to go out and we want to do the best job that we can for the American public. Our desire is to protect the American public.

Our desire is to be able to enforce the laws properly so that the public is safe. And when we see what’s going on, we basically become caretakers. We become babysitters if you will. And that’s not what we signed up to do.

We signed up to be able to go after the criminal organizations, the criminality that exists on the border. We’re looking at it. We know that all we’re doing is reporting to work to be babysitters caretakers, and prison guards, if you will. And that’s not what we’re supposed to be. Now we’re all defeated.

Leahy: Well, when you say defeated. Is it temporary? Is it permanent? Is there hope? What do the Border Patrol agents want to have happen?

Judd: There’s always hope. If we can get back to the mission that we originally signed up to do, that morale is going to jump right back up. But until that time when we say there’s always hope, there’s hope that the public is going to put enough pressure on this administration to do the right thing.

If that doesn’t happen, the morale is going to stay in the tanks. Now, the one thing, even with the moral being, what it is, I’m so proud of the agents that we have. I’m so proud of everybody that goes out there day in and day out.

We’re still going to do the job. We’re going to go out there and we’re going to do the best that we possibly can. We just don’t feel good about it right now.

Leahy: Well, that makes perfect sense. I mean, you’ve got three and a half more years of the Biden maladministration. Is there anything or anyone in the Biden maladministration, my words, not yours, that you trust? Or that wants to actually implement the law?

Judd: (Sighs) That I know of? No. If you look at DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, anytime that you change administrations, they’re able to come in and they’re able to appoint political appointees in very high-level positions.

The leader of the Department of Homeland Security is a political appointee. The leader of Customs and Border Protection is a political appointee. And the leader of the Border Patrol is not a political appointee.

The Border Patrol falls under CBP, Customs, and Border Protection. Customs and Border Protections fall under DHS. And even though the leader of the Border Patrol isn’t a political appointee, that person must do what those political appointees want them to do.

Otherwise, they can be removed from that position. They can’t be fired, but they can be removed from that position and just reassigned somewhere else. The political appointees will do exactly what the administration tells them to do.

If the Biden administration knows that the public is upset with what is going on, then you can see a change in the stances in the operations and the leaders of the agencies. They will fall in line with that.

There has to be enough public outrage. And if there is, then we will see changes. But anytime that you have The Washington Post, The New York Times sugar coating and telling half-truths, then you’re just not going to get the outrage that we need for the public to let him know that they want change.

And that’s why we have to look at both sides. You have to not just listen to those left-leaning outlets. You have to seek out the truth when you find the truth. If the outrage exists, then a change can happen.

Listen to the full first hour here:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 am to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.

Center for Immigration Studies’ Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan Predicts Porous Border Will Be a Political Loss for Biden Administration

Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Center for Immigration Studies Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan to the newsmakers line to discuss the ramifications of a broken immigration system and the political consequences for the Biden administration.

Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line now by Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies.

And, Jessica, you have been with the center since 1992. Before that, you were a foreign service officer with the Department of State.

Have you ever seen the implementation of our immigration laws at the border so awful?

Vaughan: Good morning. No. This is really a historic time in a bad way for border security. Things are truly out of control. The Border Patrol is overwhelmed with people arriving illegally.

The policies today are encouraging people to show up here illegally, knowing that most of them are going to be allowed in. If they can get to you on U.S. soil, they will be allowed to stay here indefinitely with little threat of immigration enforcement under the policies of the Biden administration.

And they’ll get here one way or another. Some are searching down the Border Patrol to turn themselves in if they’ve come with a child because that child is a free pass into the country.

Others if they’re single adults or just trying over and over again in the vast areas of the border that do not have any barriers or where the Border Patrol is distracted by all of the child and family arrivals.

They just keep trying over and over again until they get in again, because, under the Biden policies, there is no threat of immigration enforcement.

Leahy: We’re talking with Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies. A longtime expert on American immigration law. Now, Jessica, I am not an expert on immigration law.

I don’t play one on the radio, but when I look at this and I hear people say, well the Biden administration is just they’re just not doing it competently.

I look at this and I say, no, no, no. It doesn’t look like that to me at all. It looks like they are intentionally violating American immigration law. Do I have that right? Or is there a nuance that I’m missing?

Vaughan: (Chuckles) Well, I wouldn’t claim to have any special insight into the motivations of the current policymakers.

I just know that there are more than 100,000 people every single month who are arriving illegally and being allowed to stay here, and it’s going to be more than a million new illegal arrivals this year.

They’re in charge of the policy. They know that it’s happening. I think that there is probably a raging debate within the Biden administration about this.

I think that it’s probably along the lines of, well, this is a good thing for our country, and we feel good because we’re helping people from other countries get a better life.

A few others are saying we’re okay with this, but this is a political disaster so how can we kind of hide what’s happening? There are definitely, I think, are people who are aware that this is going to cause political problems.

I don’t think that there are many people within the Biden administration who understand that this is actually a problem for our country on many other levels, including the enormous burden on state and local taxpayers to provide services to these new arrivals.

The loss of job opportunities to Americans and legal immigrants at the lower end of the income scale who are going to be displaced from employment opportunities.

The public safety problems caused by letting in people that we don’t even know who they are. The potential national security implications.

Because we’re getting people now from all over the world, including the Middle East and African countries, as well as Haiti and parts of South America.

Not to mention just the integrity of our immigration system. One of the casualties of this is going to be that the public is going to not be interested in any of the mass amnesties that the Biden administration would like to enact for illegal immigrants that have been here for some time.

And we don’t have any integrity in our immigration system. Our border is simply porous right now, and I think that there is going to be real dissatisfaction among voters with the situation.

And I think that in the long run, the Biden administration’s political goals of more open legal immigration are not going to happen because they’re not controlling illegal immigration.

Leahy: Can you stay with us through the break? I got a big question I want to ask you about Alejandro Mayorkas.

Vaughan: Ok.

Listen to the full second hour here:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.