A former top-ranking U.S. border official suggested one reason the migration crisis at the southern border has continued for 40 months is because the Biden administration has not clearly identified the problem, much less a solution.
Recently retired Border Patrol Deputy Chief Matthew Hudak told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview in May that while some parts of the White House and Department of Homeland Security prioritized following through on President Joe Biden’s campaign promises, they have pursued a plethora of initiatives that do not line up with the Border Patrol’s strategies.
“I think there’s portions of plans in different offices. I think the fundamental question is, ‘What is success?’ So to have a plan, you need to have a vision or a goal, something that you are trying to achieve and then you build a plan to get to it. And I think that’s part of the confliction that’s there right now is, ’Is your objective to secure the border and prevent anybody or anything from entering the country that you do not authorize?’” Hudak said. “That’s what I think when we look at border security. That’s what we look at — that nobody or nothing gets in without using the proper methods through the ports of entry and such.”
But Hudak said if the Biden administration’s definition of “success” for border and immigration policy was to “allow as many migrants into the country,” then an increase in encounters would not be viewed as a problem and policies would be crafted much differently.
Biden’s first 100 days
Biden spent his first 100 days in office unveiling immigration executive actions, admitting more refugees, gutting a program that required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico, and reuniting children separated from their parents under a 2018 Trump administration initiative.
Within weeks of taking office, the number of immigrants coming to the border soared. But Biden defended his administration when he said the government statistics blew the problem out of proportion, and he blamed his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, even as some Democrats pointed to Biden’s lack of focus as being part of the problem.
Hudak and other officials accused the Biden administration of silencing them as the crisis began in early 2021 and continues today.
Behind the scenes, Hudak said he had not seen a strategy for the border, much less a desire to lower the number of encounters.
“Part of the challenge is there really is not a consistent view or a shared view of what exactly the right outcome is so you end up with actions, policies that are all individually working in their own direction that really ultimately compete against each other,” Hudak said. “I think that’s what we see play out on the border right now.
“If your perspective is, ‘I want to focus on security at the border so I don’t have people or things sneaking by me,’ then it has not been successful and you’re not doing things in a way that support that,” Hudak continued. “So I think it really comes down to what is the success that you are trying to achieve? And then that should be the comparison in the measure for the results you see.”
Forty months in crisis
The crisis at the nation’s borders will hit a new record later this month when the number of immigrants encountered attempting to enter the United States is expected to surpass the 10 million mark under the Biden administration.
At no time in history during any White House administration has that many people come to the border — even in two terms.
The situation has triggered criticism from Republicans, who have accused the Biden administration many times in congressional hearings of failing to respond adequately to the unprecedented surge of immigrants over the past 40 months.
Jonathan Fahey, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, agrees with Republicans’ sentiment and said the lack of decline in illegal immigration to the U.S. is the White House’s fault.
“The reason for the unsecured border is the Biden administration has pursued an Open Border policy, which entails refusing to enforce existing law and actively thwarting any attempts by others to enforce the law,” Fahey, partner at Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky and Josefiak PLLC, said in a statement. “In doing so, they have put their political agenda ahead of public safety and national security.”
Nonpartisan think tank Bipartisan Policy Center’s Theresa Cardinal Brown maintained that no president has overseen a border that would meet the legal definition of a “secure” border.
“There are differing ideas of what a ‘secure’ border means depending on who you speak with. For some, it means literally zero unauthorized entries. In fact, that was a definition of operational control included in the Secure Fence Act of 2006, but one which the DHS under the Bush administration pushed back on as it is an unrealistic standard,” Brown, a former DHS appointee from the Bush administration who now is senior adviser for immigration and border policy at the BPC in Washington, said.
No law enforcement agency in the world is successful at preventing “100% of crimes,” Brown added.
On the other hand, Democrats are more concerned with maintaining immigrants’ ability to seek asylum.
“For many Democrats, the problem is not one of illegal immigration, since it is legal under current law to ask for asylum even after illegal entry, but insufficient processing capacity for asylum-seekers,” Brown said. “But that supposes that we can continually expand our processing to address increasing numbers of asylum-seekers at the border.”
But one issue that has caught the attention of both parties is whether deterrence or facilitating asylum ought to be the focus of the government.
Changing migrant demographics
For decades, Mexican men were the large majority of immigrants arriving at the border until a decade ago when Central American families began making the journey, aided by cartels that recruit and charge people thousands of dollars each to move them to the U.S.
A CBP official told the Washington Examiner that the smuggling organizations have greatly broadened their scope since 2020, increasing at unprecedented rates the number of immigrants being smuggled from Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America.
The Biden administration has focused on improving conditions in Central America so that citizens of those countries do not flee, but that approach does not address the reasons immigrants are fleeing other countries.
“What you’re seeing is the cartels are recruiting from more and more nontraditional locations in order to maximize the money that they can make through human smuggling,” the CBP official said in a phone call Monday. “The problem is the laws have not been updated to deal with that changing situation.”
Some countries, including Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, do not take back their citizens from the U.S., making deportation impossible, and the cartels know that citizens of these countries will most likely be released into the U.S.
The department has been listening to employees from day one of Biden’s term, according to the DHS.
It hired several hundred employees to carry out intake of immigrants in custody rather than bring agents in from the field to do paperwork. CBP has also erected nearly a dozen tentlike facilities along the southern border over the past three years as overflow facilities for holding immigrants in custody.
Hudak said the foundational problem that he witnessed while second in command at the national headquarters for two years under Biden was the difference in approaches to achieving a “secure” border.
“It fundamentally comes down to the question of, ‘How do you define a secure border?'” Hudak said. “Our perspective has always been the lower amount of entries at the border or attempted entries, the better we can interdict those that do cross the border illegally, and we can stop them, whether it’s drugs, weapons, persons.”
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Brown agreed with Hudak’s point that to solve a problem, the problem must first be agreed upon in order to create a solution.
“Our existing laws, processes, personnel, and infrastructure are not sufficient to address this new migration, and I do not believe the previous strategies of deterrence and prevention are likely to be effective in the long term with this paradigm,” Brown said. “We do need our elected leaders to work together to design a new system at the border to address the new paradigm. That probably needs to start by agreeing on what problem (or problems) they are trying to solve.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
