National Security Implications of America’s Open Border Crisis Transcript

Interviewer: Welcome to today’s Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) Webinar. Today’s webinar features Todd Bensman. Todd will cover the national security implications of America’s Open Border policies. He has done a tremendous job covering this crisis since it began, and in particular, since President Biden took office.

I thank you all for joining us and for supporting EMET. Our work is only possible with your help. Our weekly webinars feature leading world experts on national security and related topics. We also perform important work on the Hill. EMET fights every day to ensure a safe and secure Israel and Middle East and strong US national security. Please consider sponsoring a future webinar through a contribution to EMET.  Today’s webinar will be recorded for future viewing, and I encourage everyone to share the link once we send it out. If you have any questions for our speaker, please feel free to use the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen to submit your question. I will try to address as many questions as possible a bit later in the program.

Todd Bensman is a two-time National Press Club award winner. He currently serves as the Texas based Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington DC Policy Institute. Todd writes and speaks about the nexus between immigration and national security. He frequently reports from the southern border in Mexico and from Latin America. He has testified before Congress as an expert witness and regularly appears on radio and television outlets to discuss illegal immigration and border security matters. He writes about homeland security and terrorism for numerous media outlets. He serves as a writing fellow for the Middle East Forum, and teaches terrorism intelligence analysis and journalism as a university adjunct lecturer. Todd is also the author of two books, Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in US History, and America’s Covert Border War, the Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration. I urge you all to follow Todd’s important work on the Center for Immigration Studies’ website and on Todd’s personal website. Welcome Todd, and thank you for joining us this afternoon.

Todd Bensman: Great to be here. Thank you for having me here. I am doing the best I can in a hotel room here.

Interviewer: We appreciate it, Todd. I know how busy you are covering both this issue and other important issues as well. Please start by giving the audience an overview of the situation on our southern border. Other than you and Bill Melugin at Fox, no one seems to be doing regular reporting on the illegal immigrants flooding into this country. In addition to those coming from Latin American countries, illegal immigrants are coming to the US from the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa as well. They also include Jihadists in their midst.

Please spend a few minutes discussing some stats on how many migrants may have entered the country illegally since Biden entered office. Please discuss the demographics of those entering and whether they are mostly children, adults, families or single males. Also, please touch on the gotaways. I read a report indicating there were more gotaways in fiscal years 2021 through 2023 than during the entire prior decade. I think this helps to put into perspective the massive increase in gotaways since Biden entered office.

Todd: Sure. What we are seeing is the greatest and worst mass migration crisis in American history. This is true by all objective metrics, including number, diversity and gotaways. We are seeing an absolute collapse of control over the border and a total open border for the first time in America’s history. I think that this may even be the worst mass migration crisis in modern history anywhere in the world. I am at pains to find another case that is even close to this in terms of raw numbers. All of this chaos is traceable to noon on inauguration day 2021. This literally started after the swearing in of Joe Biden. Biden immediately implemented of a menu of lenient and forgiving policies. Those policies enabled people to start pouring into the US that very day.

As of today, we have probably had a minimum of ten million crossings and attempted crossings. Some have been successful and some have not. At the Center for Immigration Studies, we estimate that six million of the ten million have succeeded in entering the country and will stay here permanently unless someone roots them out and deports them. Illegal immigrants are coming in to the US in a multitude of different ways. They are entering between ports of entry on the land border from Tijuana to Matamoros, or San Diego to Brownsville. They are also entering via the entire border of California, Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas.

The illegal entries we know about are those encountered by border patrol or those who turn themselves into border patrol. However, the administration has created other quasi-legal programs. They are authorizing scheduled illegal entries over the land bridges and by flight. These quasi-legal programs do not usually get counted in the illegal crossing numbers and that is by design. The administration does not want to count them. However, we are approaching about one million of these kinds of entries, in addition to the illegal crossings between ports of entry. Immigrants under these parole programs are coming in to the US at the rate of about 60,000 a month. The administration insists they are not illegal crossings, they are legal because the administration permitted them.

Interviewer: So, is Biden is actually flying illegal immigrants into the US?

Todd: They are authorizing them to fly in but not actually spending the money to fly them in. They have to pay for their own tickets. However, the administration is giving permission to immigrants from 77 countries to fly directly into 45 different American airports. They are also allowing immigrants to be escorted over the land bridges from Mexico into the United States. This part of the border crisis is not apparent to the American public. This is because it is happening inside airports, and the immigrants being transported look the same as everyone else. The immigrants being allowed to walk through land ports, blend in with others as well and they are not immediately apparent to others.

I mentioned that we have observed around ten million attempted crossings into the US under the Biden administration. About two million of those escaped scot-free into the interior. Over the past twenty years, we have had around 300 or 400,000 attempts to enter the border per year, on average, and a smaller number of them actually got to stay. Now we are observing about two and a half million to three million a year and even more than that, if you count the gotaways. To provide some perspective, the annual numbers are five times greater than they have ever been before. That is a quick thumbnail of what has been going on.

Interviewer: I think that people generally focusing on Latin American immigrants coming over the border. I am going to ask you to discuss Chinese nationals and others a little later. Before that, can you name some of the countries these immigrants are coming from? I do not think people realize where they are coming from.

Todd: Right. The border influxes of past have usually been made up of Spanish speakers. During your grandparents’ time, mass migration came from Mexico and Central America. Currently, more than 50% of illegal immigrants are coming from places other than Central America or Mexico. They are coming from 170 other countries around the world. That means, illegal immigrants are coming from every nation of the Middle East, including every Muslim majority nation. They are coming from the former Soviet Union and all of the former Soviet republics. They are also coming from every nation on the continent of Africa. I cannot think of one African country that has not been represented. Really the entire world is on the march here. We have more migrants than we have ever had before from China and from places like Senegal, Mauritania and Ghana.

The reason for this massive influx is the policies that Biden put in place at noon on inauguration day 2021. The policies were designed to let everyone in and to let everyone stay in. As we predicted, when word spread that the Americans had opened the gates, the entire world came marching in. It is human nature for people to respond that way. The news was transmitted via social media. People posted pictures of themselves with the Statue of Liberty behind them two days after their border crossing. That spurring the illegal immigration explosion. The administration ended deportation, ended detention, ended remain in Mexico and opened up the spigots for social welfare and housing, food and clothing. Of course, they came, ten million came.

Interviewer: Yeah, of course. Biden revoked Trump’s executive orders on day one.

Todd: Yes.

Interviewer: Then he let Title 42 lapse. You wrote about the impact of that as well.

Todd: Title 42 was the COVID era pushbacks on immigration inherited by the Biden administration. On the first day, they established vast exemptions for family units, unaccompanied minors and certain nationalities. Technically, Title 42 remained in place until May, 2023. For all intents and purposes, however, it was no longer being used to any great extent.

Interviewer: Are most people being permitted to enter the US because they are claiming asylum? Can you just touch on the differences in how asylum seekers were treated prior to the Biden administration versus now?

Todd: The Biden administration decided to do something entirely different from the Trump administration. They stamp immigrants into the US while they wait for an eventual meeting with an ICE official. It is only at that meeting, that immigrants have the opportunity to apply for asylum. We know that tens of thousands of people have disappeared and never showed up for their appointments. They had notices to appear and to report at a later point in time. Their cases have not even reached the point of requesting asylum.

The administration admits everyone, irrespective of whether they are applying for asylum or not. They are not predicating entry to the US on requests for asylum. They do not care whether immigrants are requesting asylum, and they do not ask about it. That is how the vast majority of these millions have entered the US. They are stamped in with a pinky finger handshake and a scouts’ honor promise that they will voluntarily report into the authorities sometime in the future.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about a real-life example. Around ten days ago, eight nationals from Tajikistan were arrested in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia. They are believed to have connections to ISIS-K. This is the same terrorist group that attacked the Russian concert hall last year. At that time, they killed 133 people and injuring around 145 more. They all entered through the southern border and claimed that they were seeking asylum. They were all vetted by federal authorities and released into the country. Thankfully, they were caught. From what I understand, they were caught via the monitoring of ISIS communications outside of the country. They were not caught because the vetting process at the border exposed them as likely terrorists. On the heels of that, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report recognizing the need to improve its screening procedures. I think we would both argue this is too little, too late.

The Inspector General stated, “DHS will remain at risk of admitting dangerous persons into the country, or enabling asylum seekers who may pose significant threats to public safety and national security, to continue to reside in the United States.” DHS revealed it has not been doing background checks on the millions of people coming illegally into the US. Rather, they are leaving that responsibility to those conducting the asylum hearings. These hearings may take years before they occur, if they ever do. So, the administration is not being honest when they assert that they are vetting migrants. We know that they have allowed hundreds on the terrorist watch list to enter the US.

Interviewer: Around how many people on the terror watch list have entered the US without being identified? I have read that the suspected terrorist apprehensions on the southern border have increased 2500% since Biden’s been in office. Can you talk about vetting and whether you think things are going to change? FBI Director, Christopher Wray testified to Congress about his concern over the links between our open border and terrorism. Please elaborate on all of that

Todd: Right. Well, as I have said before, the ultimate stranger danger is having millions of unidentified people coming into our country every year. Our systems are simply overwhelmed. We cannot possibly do what we are supposed to be doing to protect our country. We cannot continue doing the work we have been doing since 9/11.

Illegal aliens are coming in from the 40 special interest countries where terrorist organizations operate. These special interest countries include places like Tajikistan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran and Jordan. In the past, we have had 3,000 or 4,000 people a year come in from those countries and we have special procedures to deal with them. Upon crossing the border, they were immediately tagged as special interest aliens and held for secondary inspection and detention. FBI or intelligence officers would spend as much as they needed conducting eyeball to eyeball interviews with them. They would go through their pockets and call their home countries where possible. If needed, they would call the Five Eyes to determine if there was any classified intel on them. The FBI and intelligence officers ensured they figured out who these total strangers were and whether they presented any threat to the US. They were not able to clear all of them even when only 3,000 or 4,000 a year, were coming into the US. They would just get to as many as they could, and then would eventually bond them out or release them into the public.

In the current situation, we are no longer employing the set processes to vet special interest aliens. Since 80,000 to 100,000 special interest aliens are crossing the border every year now, the system is overwhelmed and it has crashed. The special vetting is not happening at all. The most that we do is to run the names they give us through a database. If time permits, we may run their fingerprints to check for a criminal history, and to see if they flag on a terrorism watch list. If they do flag on a terrorism watch list, we will detain them. Since Biden’s inauguration, 360 people have been flagged on that watch list. 169 were flagged last year alone. This is a vastly different number from the three a year or so, who were flagged prior to Biden’s inauguration. Then of course we have to consider the two million gotaways. I axiomatically assume that special interest aliens on the terror watch list have succeeded in entering the interior. I am going to make this assumption because the odds against it happening are too great. So, they are in the country.

I mentioned earlier that the southern border is flooded. Agents do not have the capacity to interview 80,000 special interest aliens. However, the most outrageous part of the vetting issue relates to the special parole programs I mentioned earlier. The administration is flying immigrants into the US or bringing them over the land ports, using a cell phone app. The immigrants are required to provide their names, fingerprints and biometrics before DHS stamps them in and accompanies them across the border. Well, at least one of the Tajiks you mentioned came in that way.

A CBP One cell phone app was approved in advance by the Department of Homeland Security. There is some informed speculation that more than one of those on the terror list came in under the CBP One Land Bridge parole program. The administration loudly and frequently proclaims that those coming in under that program are all thoroughly vetted and that the biggest strength of this program is that they successfully vet everybody that they pre-approve. However, we have at least one Tajik who was not successfully vetted under this program. By the time your recording is disseminated, I will have additional information out in the daily wire. In response to a FOIA request, we received data showing there are at least 1,000 other Tajiks allowed into the US under the program. There are others who have come in under this program from all the stans including Kazakhstan. They have come from all the special interest countries including Afghanistan, Iran, and Egypt. They came from every Middle Eastern country and from every Muslim majority country. Around 10,000 people have crossed into the US this way.

I have reported that their names do go through an extra layer of classified database checks. However, if they are not already in the system, they are going to get an all clear. Without the interviews I mentioned previously, we are opening up the country to terror attacks by the people entering the US through this program. I am writing about this threat right now. I am pointing out that this program is a danger to the United States because of the lack of vetting. Also, I am only referring to the ones we know about. I am only referring to the people who give us their names and fingerprints months in advance.

The people crossing over the border into San Diego, California right now are being stamped in without us even knowing their names. Most of them toss their IDs before they arrive. They could tell us their name is Mickey Mouse, and we would still stamp them in. The people pouring into California right now are from special interest countries like Egypt, Iran, Mauritania and Somalia.

Interviewer: Yeah, I think a border patrol memo was recently disclosed to the public. It said they are not vetting anybody coming across the San Diego sector. It is astonishing.

I want to drill down a little bit on the Muslim immigration issue. Obama brought in thousands of Syrian refugees and Biden has done the same with Afghani refugees. Most of them could not be vetted because they did not have documents or identification papers. As such, they were simply allowed into the country. I think you wrote there is a Muslim facility set up on the Tijuana side of our border with Mexico. Can you talk about what is happening on the Mexican side of the border? Does this support this migration of potential terrorists into our country? You also wrote an amazing article which was published in the New York Post. There, you wrote about the administration’s plan to bring unvetted Gazan citizens into the US. You called it a hard hell no in your article. Please elaborate on this for us.

Todd: It is true. There is media reporting on the flow of special interest aliens from Tijuana through California right now. However, nobody is really reporting on the Muslim migrant shelter on the Mexican side of the border. This shelter specializes in organizing, feeding, sheltering, housing and clothing the CBP One escorted parole entries into the United States. I visited that facility in November 2022 and wrote a piece on what was happening there. The information I am giving you is a little bit dated. In 2022, I interviewed many of the immigrants using the facility and ultimately interviewed the director of the facility. The facility is an exceptional special interest alien target for American intelligence and law enforcement. Many special interest aliens are right there in one spot as opposed to being scattered all over the border. I went there and asked what the Americans are doing to investigate the special interest aliens there. When I worked in intelligence, investigating that facility would have been a priority.

So, I asked the director if anyone from the American side had reached out to her. The answer at that time was no. I checked with my intelligence sources on the San Diego side, and they told me that they were not allowed to do any intelligence work with that facility. This is because it was considered a humanitarian operation. I reported that. The woman in charge of the facility claimed she kept copies of all the records and documents of everybody who stayed there, especially those she suspected of being radical. She said that if anybody on the American side were ever to call her for information, she would give them everything she has. She said she did not want a terrorist coming through the facility any more than anybody else did. I did hear that subsequent to my article, the administration shifted its position on this place, and is now conducting intelligence operations there. Of course that’s secret squirrel stuff. So, I did not even bother to ask what they were doing. I do not want to know and I do not want them to know.

I am also doubtful that they sustained any surveillance they initiated. If it has been sustained, I doubt it is very effective because of the sheer numbers of special interest to aliens moving through the San Diego sector. I just do not see how surveillance of that place can yield any results right now. We have to detain illegal immigrants on our side. Either that, or the Mexicans have to pull them out and detain them. So, that is a summary of what I know about the Muslim migrant shelter. You can find my reporting on that by Googling my name with Muslim migrant shelter. I still have my video footage and my written report from late 2022 and I do intend to go back to it. I have to get back there because I am the only one who has ever done a report on that place. I am a little bit surprised that I have to go back. After my piece, I thought everyone would do a story on it but they never did. What was your other question?

Interviewer: I touched on the fact that the administration is now talking about bringing Gazans into the US. We did not vet the Afghanis or the Syrians that we brought into this country and we are not vetting anybody coming across the border.

Todd: Yes. Bringing Gazans into the US is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. I am hoping the administration was just floating the idea to see what kind of opposition is out there on this. I wrote that New York Post piece because I wanted them to see that there is strong opposition against the idea. Gaza is isolated and closed and the Egyptians will not let anybody out. Hamas has been indoctrinating everyone in that territory for twenty years now. 100% of children have been indoctrinated in the ideology of violent radical jihad. They have been indoctrinated in their schools, their summer camps, their mosques and at home. The women are suicide bombers. Suicide bombings have been normalized there. Certainly, the men, whether they are fathers or not, believe that martyrdom leads to paradise for the whole family. So, importing people from that strip of territory, is a hard hell no for sure. Even the children from there cannot be trusted and it is one of the few places on earth where even children are suspect.

Interviewer: Yeah. Around two years ago, you wrote about the plot by an Iraqi illegal to assassinate George W. Bush. There’s been a number of other incidents that have been thwarted. Do you get the sense that these are lone wolf operatives, or are they operating in groups? I think there were twenty 9/11 terrorists. Do you know how these jihadists operate and whether there are cells in the country already? Are they reconstituting ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the US?

Todd: Up until this border crisis, I would have answered that we have become good at counter-terrorism in this country. We broke up big cells. If you were part of a large jihadist cell, your risk of getting caught was far greater after 9/11 than it was before 9/11. This is because we have intel everywhere and people are accustomed to reporting suspicious activity. So, terrorism in the United States was greatly disaggregated and the kinds of terror attacks we were seeing were from lone offenders. An example is the guy who drove his truck along a bike path in Queens a few years ago. He slaughtered pedestrians and recreationalists there. Another example is that of the couple in San Bernardino. They slaughtered 14 Californians in a crazy rampage. In that case, there were three perpetrators, the couple themselves and one other guy who provided them with weapons. Those two examples illustrate the small cell stuff we had been seeing in the United States.

After 9/11, we saw those sorts of attack in Europe as well. European countries were also successful at breaking up large terror cells after 9/11. However, Europe had a mass migration crisis between 2014 and 2016. During this time, the external operations division of the Syrian-based ISIS, infiltrated large teams of terrorists into the heart of Europe. They then succeeded in coordinating large scale terror attacks on Paris. They also coordinated attacks in Brussels a few months later.

It appears the Tajiks we discussed earlier, were part of a pretty large terror cell. That cell may have been trying to replicate the European attacks. This tells me that our mass migration crisis has changed the situation as regards the potential for larger scale terror attacks. There is a possibility that terrorists are planning to meet up in different cities and start working on terror attacks. So, our open borders and current immigration policies make me more worried about large cell terror attacks in the United States than I was previously.

You mentioned the assassination plot to kill George Bush. That plot was led by an Iraqi asylum seeker who was mistakenly allowed into the United States. As soon as he arrived, he began plotting to bring a bunch of his Iraqi ISIS associates over the southern border to assassinate George W. Bush. This was not a sting operation. This was a real terror plot conceived by real terrorists. They were going to come through Brazil then through the Darien Gap, right through Mexico and over the southern border.

Thank God they caught the guy. Court records state that prior to the plot to assassinate the President, the Iraqi asylum seeker successfully brought a couple of Hezbollah operatives over the border. He boasted about it to undercover FBI agents. So, the bad guys know this border crisis is a grand opportunity to commit large scale, large cell attacks. I would not be the least bit surprised if it happens. We could see three shopping malls in three different cities attacked simultaneously. I would not be surprised if gunmen were to go in there and kill people. I will also not be surprised when we find out that they came in over the southern border or via the CBP One app. The threat is elevated, and it is not just me who is saying it. The FBI director, DOD generals and the DHS 2024 threat assessment, say the border is a problem for terrorist infiltration. So, it is not just crazy Todd Bensman calling out the threat anymore. I have lots of company now.

Interviewer: I never ever thought you were crazy Todd Bensman. You have actually touched on a number of issues I want to tie together. We are facing a national security threat from the Mexican drug cartels. The Mexican government has no control over them. These drug cartels are linked to jihadist terror organizations like Hezbollah, as you mentioned. Are Islamic terrorist organizations coordinating with the Mexican drug cartels? Is the cartels’ involvement limited to fentanyl smuggling or are they also involved in smuggling criminals and terrorists into the US? Is there weapons smuggling going on? I heard a rancher being interviewed and he noted that many of the migrants crossing his property are carrying guns. You did mention you can imagine a bunch of malls being shot up. What is the Mexican drug cartels’ involvement in facilitating all of this?

Todd: I have some thoughts about that. I studied that question during my ten years in the intelligence division at Texas Department of Public Safety. I ran a counter-terrorism team, and we studied this issue in detail. The information we discovered is classified. I will say, however, that I do not believe Iran or Middle East jihadists are actively collaborating with cartel leadership to move operatives, or anything similar. They no doubt pay smugglers who are connected to the cartels. However, I do not think the smugglers know or care who they are. They see them in the same way they see any migrant handing them $500. That to me is not coordination or collaboration. At least it was not up until five years ago. It is possible it is happening now.

There is coordination and collaboration happening further south, in South America. There, local organized criminal gangs are working hand in glove with Hezbollah. That collaboration seems to revolve around drug trafficking, counterfeit product merchandising and things like money laundering. This is not to say that they would not help get operatives into the US. However, there are a couple of problems with the whole scenario. As an example, Hezbollah is a very tight knit group which is smart intelligence-wise. As such, they are not going to conduct big business with untrustworthy infidels. They are not going to share family secrets with infidels. They know that if they get busted, the infidels will trade on the information they know about the terrorists to get free.

Also, as terrible and money hungry the cartels are, they have shown they are not interested in willingly helping terrorists. They are against terrorism and terrorists because it is bad for business. They know they will face severe consequences if their leaders coordinate closely with terrorist organizations and the ties are subsequently exposed.

Interviewer: You mentioned criminal gangs. I want to turn away from terrorism and discuss child labor, human trafficking and the fentanyl crisis. We have no idea how many good old-fashioned criminals have flocked to the US. They may be gang members, murderers or child rapists. I have read that Venezuela has opened up its prisons and mental institutions and are sending their criminals and psychologically unwell into the US. I think the tragic murder of Laken Riley is the most well-known example of an illegal migrant murdering an American citizen. That migrant had a known history of violence and criminal behavior. There are many other examples of criminals acting illegally against US citizens. There was an attack on NYPD officers by a Venezuelan man who had entered the country illegally. He was released and his immigration case was actually dismissed and closed just before he shot the officers. This week an illegal migrant from El Salvador was arrested. He is accused of raping and murdering a mother of five in Maryland. He had connections to street gangs and a violent history that I think included a homicide. Yesterday the police arrested a machete wielding illegal immigrant from Ecuador. He is accused of raping a 13-year-old in a Queen’s park. Is it possible for us to track down all these criminals? Do you have an idea of the extent of the threat posed by MS-13? Are there other gangs which are reconstituting in the US? How concerned should we be about this seemingly escalating crime wave?

Todd: I think only Texas and Florida track criminal arrests by immigration status. Forty-eight other states do not bother to track arrests that way. So, unfortunately, we are not able to ascertain the extent of the problem. The powers that be, do not want us to know the statistics. The issue is a political one.

Texas does provide a pretty good database. I do not have their numbers in front of me, but they are public. If you go to the Texas Department of Public Safety and look up criminal aliens, you will receive all their reporting. You will receive hundreds of thousands of reports of violent criminal activity and drug activity captured over the years. You will also see incarceration rates. It is all there. These numbers are horrific and scary and they cover one state only. I think Florida has recently begun to require tracking of criminal arrests by immigration status. So, it is too early to rely on their numbers. Nationwide statistics are not available and so what is available is anecdotal. This is because nobody except people like you and me, really wants to know. I do not think it makes sense to deny what we are seeing in front of our eyes. During this mass migration crisis, we have imported incredible numbers of criminals and violent offenders from all over the world.

I am in the middle of completing a project to track DHS press releases. These press releases cover the terrible people DHS has caught. DHS is very proud to release this information. For me, their press releases serve as a data pool. They provide rarely divulged government information about the terrible human beings we are catching at the border. I understand there is a selection bias here. However, it is clear DHS is catching an incredible number of gang members. Most of the criminals being caught are probably gang members from South America, Latin America and central America. They are catching pedophiles, sex offenders and rapists. The sex offenders we are catching are disgusting, and they are just a test tube sample from the pool. They are the ones we manage to catch. We have two million who got away and we know nothing about them. I believe we are already experiencing a crime wave from this.

A common response to concerns expressed about crimes committed by illegal immigrants, is to point out that American citizens commit crime at about the same rate, if not more than illegal aliens. I think people need to understand that this comparison is intellectually fraudulent on its face. Nobody should even engage in an argument about it because it is completely bogus. We are stuck with American citizens. Of course, we must stop them from committing crimes and punish them accordingly, but we do not really have a choice about having them here. We cannot deport them and we have no escape hatch. Illegal aliens are all 100% deportable and those who are criminals should have been stopped before they ever entered the border. 100% of their crime is unnecessary. So, let’s dismiss comparisons between criminals who are American citizens and those who are illegal aliens. They are not the same. We are stuck with 100% of American citizens committing crime. We must deal with crimes committed by American citizens but we do not have to handle crimes committed by those who should not be here in the first place.

Interviewer: Yeah. I think many Americans misunderstand the issues because the mainstream media does not report the reality of what is happening. As an example, they fail to report on the number of single males that have entered the US. We hear AOC and others commiserating about children separated from their parents. However, we seldom hear about single males entering our country illegally. Please also address the Chinese nationals who have entered the country illegally. Why do they pose a serious threat to our national security? It is my understanding that encounters with Chinese nationals at the southern border have increased 8500% in March of 2024, as compared to March of 2021.

Todd: Yeah, I know a little bit about that. I was invited to testify before Congress about this problem just a few weeks ago. Close to 60,000 Chinese nationals have crossed the border in the last three years. More than half of them have arrived over the last six months. So, the rate at which Chinese nationals are crossing our southern border is extremely high and unprecedented and it mirrors what is happening with other nationalities. The number of border crossings for every nationality have broken all previous records for their fellow citizens. The Chinese are coming through in huge numbers because they know we will let them in. We used to ask them 40 questions. The Trump administration put together a list of 40 different questions for the border patrol to ask. The questions were designed to discern whether they were spies or suspicious in some way. The Biden administration reduced that number from 40 to five and I will bet you the border patrol is not even asking any of them. They probably let most of them right through. There are too many of them. They want to move them away from the border before Bill Melugin’s Fox News camera drones have a chance to catch them. So, that is the story there.

I testified that I believe that this is a significant serious espionage threat. Undoubtedly the Chinese Communist Party is sending spies to infiltrate the US. I have met Chinese people at the southern border. They are universally well equipped and well resourced. They are well put together with nice haircuts and good clothing. If they have to camp, they have good camping equipment. If not, they stay in all the best hotels. They are not economic migrants, by and large. They are probably people that want to live in the United States and upgrade their lifestyles.

Interviewer: Our friend Claire Lopez asked whether you can tell us about China’s assistance to illegal aliens in the US. There is a group called American Self-Guided Tour Channel in Mandarin on Telegram. This channel is run by someone spreading CCP propaganda. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Todd: Yes. Today’s illegal immigration is fueled by social media. Social media provides encrypted chat rooms, Facebook pages and intelligence from family members and friends. It provides people with exact instructions on how to get into the US and where to go once they are here. The smuggling train from China to the US is a big money maker now and people are cashing in on it. Typically, the Chinese will enter countries like Ecuador, Brazil or the Galapagos Islands as tourists. Then they plug into networks that put together a vacation package for them to get to Cancun, and another to fly from there to Tijuana. Smugglers fish them out of the airport and help them cross over to the US. They instruct them on exactly how to cross over. There is a lot of that going on.

I am skeptical about the extent to which the CCP is openly involved in facilitating these crossings. I am skeptical because they are the spymasters and there is no need for them to be openly involved. They do not need to be openly involved on a Facebook page or in a Telegram chat room with thousands of people in it. They can simply instruct their agents to enter the US. Those agents can easily figure out how to do it. There is less of a need for professional smugglers to assist people in crossing the border. Everybody knows where to go, for most of the way at least. Go to this town, turn left, there will be a guy there who will take you through a few miles for $50. So, that is how it works today.

Interviewer: Do you have any thoughts on Biden’s recent executive order? I guess he finally discovered that he does have a pen he can use. This order permits 2,500 illegal immigrants per day to enter the US. 2,500 immigrants a day sounds awfully high. What are your thoughts?

Todd: I think a lot of people are making the mistake of taking Biden’s executive order seriously. The premise of your question is that the intent of the order is real. That is not the case. The order is window dressing and it is full of loopholes. Everyone is allowed in as long they say some magic words. Until they do, the order states we will be really mean to them. I am still waiting for the sympathetic liberal media to find one victim who was deported as a result of this order. I am waiting for them to show someone crying and complaining about how terrible it is that they were denied the American dream. The fact that we are not seeing any feature stories about the impact of Biden’s executive order, confirms what we all suspect. They are not really deporting anybody under this order, nor will they in the future. I am not sure why they put it out there like that, but it is not serious at all.

Interviewer: Yeah, thank you. The order does not seem serious and it does not appear like it is being enforced in any way anyway. Somebody asked where all of the illegal aliens are going and whether they can ultimately be deported from the bigger cities?

Todd: They are going everywhere. They can go wherever they want. Typically, they will join family members who came in earlier, or they will join people who have jobs for them. If they do not know where to go, they access their social media apps and figure out which city is providing free food, rent and housing. Then they go to that city and partake. They are in all 50 states. They are not just in the big cities of New York, Chicago and Boston even though we hear the mayors in those cities screaming the loudest. They are going all over the country.

Interviewer: I live in Westchester County. A few years ago, I remember hearing Biden was flying illegal aliens there in the middle of the night.

Todd: Yes, I remember that.

Interviewer: They fly illegal aliens in the middle of the night because they are trying to hide what they are doing. There are different terms used to describe the people entering the US illegally. I have heard them referred to as illegal immigrants, illegal migrants, foreign nationals or illegal aliens. Is there a term that you think should be used to describe who these people are?

Todd: Yeah, there’s always a debate about that. Sometimes I slip and say migrant and somebody will catch me on that. The legal term is illegal alien. That is the term in the statutes. That is what our lawmakers and lawyers have always called them. If people cross illegally, I have no problem calling them illegal immigrants or illegal aliens. I do not believe any of them are migrants. Calling them migrants implies that they are here to work for a while and then they are going to return home. All of these people are here to stay forever, so they are immigrants in that sense. Because they came in illegally, I do not have a problem also calling them illegal immigrants. So, sometimes I slip and use the word migrants and everybody gives me hell for that.

Interviewer: I think I’ve been using the term migrant throughout this, so I apologize for that.

Todd: Migrant is not the technically accurate word to describe the people coming to the US illegally.

Interviewer: How many people has Biden granted amnesty to?

Todd: Five hundred and seventy-nine thousand as of now.

Interviewer: Astonishing. One of our viewers commented that this webinar should be shared with members of congress, other politicians and various news sites. We know that you testify before Congress and you write extensively. Are you reaching policymakers who might be part of a future administration?

Todd: Totally. I am in deep with all of that. They are reading my work and they know me. They often cite my work in their letters and in their materials that they put out. That is how I really know my work is having an impact.

Interviewer: We have run out of time. I apologize to those who had questions I did not get to. I encourage everyone to follow Todd’s work. Todd, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to join us.

Todd: The best way to keep abreast of my work is to go to my website, https://www.toddbensman.com/. I also have a free newsletter. Whenever I write something, I announce it via my newsletter. Accessing my website is the best way to sign up for my newsletter and to get to my social media.

Interviewer: Terrific. Again, thank you very much and thank you everybody. Have a good afternoon. Bye-Bye.

Todd: Thank you.

[END]