This is Jay Sekulow, Crisis on the Texas Border.
Thousands of immigrants under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you.
Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jay Sekulow. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the broadcast.
And as we start the broadcast off today, let me say this. There is a very serious situation on the border, actually in Del Rio, Texas, which is a border town in Texas. Over 12,000 people from Haiti, Mexico, other countries, and there's, if you're watching on our television stations or any of our social media platforms, there's a picture of it. I mean, this is utter chaos. And it's utter chaos because when you have a lack of process, you have a lack of control. And there is a lack of process.
A lot of these people coming in apparently are from Haiti because President Biden gave protective status to Haiti, temporary protective status because of the most recent earthquake. Which is compassionate, but compassion without process creates chaos. And this is chaotic.
And when you look at these pictures, Logan, you see them on the screen, they're heartbreaking. But it's the people, this is 12,000 people in horrible conditions. Yeah, I think we do have to break down to say, well, what is the reason they're coming here?
Why is this process like this? We talked about this in the radio meeting. Okay, well, we know that there is an issue. Clearly, these people are coming in because they need it. They need their refugees who need to find shelter somewhere. They find America.
Great. But what is the process and what can we do to actually fix this problem instead of just saying one or the other? It can't be just close the borders or open the borders.
It has to be somewhere in the middle where things can be processed. Well, here's what I'm saying. And we've said this and we have a Freedom of Information Act request out to DHS and other agencies. But Andy, when you have a lack of process, you have a lack of control. When you have a lack of control, you have problems. Criminal problems, problems all over the country in light of this. And of course, that's not that I don't want to discount the COVID situation and all this as well.
No, that's exactly right. The lack of process, which means how you go about something in an orderly fashion, giving due process. And I don't mean that in a legal sense, but I mean due process in the sense of humanitarian process, giving the aid where it's required, perhaps on the spot rather than bringing these people over here, giving it to them in their countries where they're of origin. But what it leads to is, as you say, chaos. And that is what I see when I look at Del Rio, Texas, and look under that bridge and see these poor people living in huts walking across waterways. I mean, it reminds me of terrible conditions that we have seen throughout history.
And this should not be the case in the 21st century in America. It's heartbreaking. I don't want to show lack of compassion.
It's absolutely heartbreaking. But you can't just say everybody welcome in. We've got to have a process. And this administration refuses to acknowledge what I call the crisis on the border. They said, well, we're not going to use the word crisis. They call it a situation.
But you were in the military for a long, long time. Is it a crisis or a situation? Either one, you have to have action. Yeah, absolutely. And you're right about the process. One of the things they teach in the military, and I so appreciate it when I was there, and this is a huge failure of leadership, but one of the leadership things they teach us is that we have to think about what the military calls second and third order effects.
In other words, how a decision impacts future results and how a poor decision can take a serious situation and make it even worse. That lesson, which is just standard in the military, is apparently lost on the Biden administration. Plus, with the previous administration, we had cooperation from the Mexican military on their southern border and on their northern border.
That is gone. These people, I looked at videos over the weekend of the people crossing the Rio Grande. There is absolutely zero presence of the Mexican military or law enforcement on the southern side of the river. They're simply not there. We've lost all cooperation with Mexico. President Trump, he made our aid to Mexico and our relationship conditioned on them helping us. That's gone. Yeah, it is gone.
And Logan, unfortunately, we're seeing the consequences. I like to hear from people on the border states. I mean, you can call from anywhere, but especially on the border states.
Yeah, absolutely. Give us a call right now. 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110 and get your comments in on social media. If you're watching on social media, share, like, subscribe, do all those things to make sure more people see this broadcast.
We would appreciate it right now. Thousands are watching. If you share this, it will go into your feed and thousands more will.
If you're watching on YouTube, hit that thumbs up. Please subscribe, retweet, do all the things you need to do to make sure people are informed and engaged as we say here on Secula. We'll be right back with more on Secula. And we have an exceptional track record of success.
But here's the bottom line. We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms.
That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org where you can learn more about our life-changing work.
Become a member today. ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We have created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.
It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.
Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. Welcome back to Secula. We're going to take some of your phone calls coming up about the crisis that's going on right now on the border as we see thousands and thousands of mostly Haitian migrants that have come in. I'm trying to figure out how they got to, ended up in Mexico. If you could transfer people like that, why did they transfer them to Del Rio, Texas?
Well, and part of the problem, Jay, I mentioned the second and third order effects. When Haiti had the earthquake, President Biden, instead of sending massive aid to Haiti itself, he gave all Haitians TPS, temporary protected status. Which means if you come to America, you can stay indefinitely as long as you have TPS.
So that actually made it worse, that decision. The assumption is you fly to Mexico for a lot of these people. They have commercial travel that's going on in Haiti, so you fly to Mexico and then you go to the border.
That's probably the most logical. You think of it as people who are escaping Cuba. That's not what it's like.
I think these are people that are intentionally making these travel vacation trips and are doing this for good or bad. And they said some nations have actually lived in Mexico for several years, and then when this TPS happened, they said, hey, we're going north. Here's the interesting thing. The Biden administration refused to call this a crisis at the border. We have a FOIA request on this whole process, which is now in federal court, by the way, because, of course, the Biden administration did not respond.
But I made the statement, and I want to go back over this. This is, you know, we're hearing people say that this is a crisis in every way, shape, and form. The President has not yet been to the border to look at this. The lack of process and the lack of control, that's what I said.
When you have a lack of process and a lack of control, you have chaos. And, Harry, right now, I'm trying to, you're our director of policy, I'm trying to figure out what the policy is here, because there are 12,000 people living under a bridge in Texas. Well, briefly stated, the policy of the Biden administration is, number one, not to follow the law. Number two, to deliberately, and I would argue maliciously, allow immigrants to cross the border, notwithstanding the fact that the DHS secretary says the border is not open.
That is a flat out lie. In addition, the Biden administration says that this is not a crisis. But at the end of the day, Jay, the failure to comply with the law, the failure to protect the border, the failure to care about national security leads inevitably to a disaster. Our border is now flooded with thousands of immigrants from Haiti. They're overwhelming social services in Del Rio, Texas, and elsewhere. Crime rates are up.
COVID infection rates are up. And the Biden administration basically has hired a jazz band to play and the band played on, allowing this disaster to continue to foster, to fester, sorry, just like the Biden administration has allowed the situation in Afghanistan to fester. And I think at the end of the day, we have nothing less than a dereliction of duty. And there are a lot of, I'm seeing reports and we've seen videos of people being sent to obviously try to stop the masses from coming.
There are people who work at the border who are trying to figure out what to do. It isn't going to be, I hate how politicized, of course, always politicized, but how one side or the other it becomes because the answer isn't simple. And that's been the big issue. The answer wasn't simple under Trump. The answer isn't simple under Biden.
It just seems like it's gotten exponentially worse in the opposite effect. Like you said, the compassionate side that a lot of people have. It can't just be, you know, just free open borders, but it also can't be the other way where we're not allowing any refugees. We're not allowing, there has to be some sort of middle ground and process. And I think people look at the hypocrisy of the COVID protocols that are coming in. They have concerns with that. Now these are a lot of people who would be on the other side. It's so ridiculous to go, okay, yeah, if you have concerns about COVID on this side over here, and I think they're legitimate, then you go over here to the border and say, we're not testing anybody.
We're not vaccinating anybody coming in. Well, be consistent. I think that's what many people want. They want that out of their politics. No more red, blue media.
They want consistency and be consistent with your messaging. So here's an interesting statistic, and that is for the physical year as of today, there are, this is how many encounters there have been at the border by our agents. Andy, 1,541,651. That's as of today. For our entire year last year, there was 1,320,000, which was a lot too. But we're already up 200,000 for the entire year last year, and we're only in September this year. Yeah, that doesn't bode well for the remainder of 2021.
Of 2021, does it? You could be up 600,000 or 700,000 encounters. And you work with law enforcement, they are overwhelmed. Well, law enforcement is unable to cope with that type of a situation. Local law enforcement is, and the ICE people who are there, is just a skeleton crew, it seems to me, in comparison with what they have to encounter, Jay. But they're unable, local law enforcement is really unable to handle this kind of an influx of people, migrants, and they're human beings. That's the thing that really affects me. They're not just numbers, 200,000, 218,000. You know, you think of that in just squads and squads of people, but these are human beings. They've got individual health problems that have individual needs, that have individual physical and mental problems. We all do, but they have them because they've been uprooted from their home territory and they've been put in some river in Texas under a bridge, living there like animals, it seems to me.
And our federal government is not doing anything about it effectively. We've got an interesting caller coming in. Let's go to line three, Logan. All right, Laredo's calling from Texas on line three, you're on the air. Hi there, good morning.
Good morning. Yeah, this is Dominic. I'm a local dentist that goes to a detention facility once a week just to take care of the ICE inmates. And today when I went, I was unable to see anybody because the entire facility is on quarantine because of the COVID cases coming in from Del Rio. So this, I want to talk to you more about this because, Dominic, because this is important. So you're a dentist, you go in to do the medical services to the migrants coming into this facility, which I appreciate.
Yes, that's a noble task. You cannot do your job because of the migration coming in to that community because of COVID. Today we could not do any of it. Every time we go, there's always some portion of the facility that is under quarantine, but today the entire place was. So we just, there was actually no one that could be treated.
You know, Logan, you said this and this is true. I mean, this is the flip side of the COVID situation. Right. We're encouraging here utilization of therapeutics, vaccines, whatever it might be, to help people deal with COVID. And as you know, this is a serious situation. We know that in our own family.
Everybody's making their choices on what they want to do, but I'm going to tell you something. If you've got 12,000 people coming into the United States and you're not even testing, which you could do, by the way, except they're so overwhelmed they can't. Now you can't get a medical services that they need that we would like to see them get, which is Andy's point, this is where you have had a humanitarian failure of huge proportions. And it's going to be worse in the next weeks. Yeah. It's complete chaos.
And I think Andy was right. You look at the images and you don't think of this as just a number anymore. You see people who are suffering, who are dealing with situations. You assume a good portion of these people are coming from places that are, they need to be, you know, seeking refuge somewhere. Right.
Completely understandable. I think as Christians and as people who listen to this show, you have to feel that way. If you don't, check yourself. But if you do, you then look at the process that's going on and go, this is chaos. We're watching video right now that's being shown of just people and the border patrol on horses trying to chase people out of the country. It is completely chaos. As you said, complete chaos as people are, 12,000 people are stuck packed under a Texas bridge.
We had the caller who called in from Texas saying he can't provide medical services because there's a COVID outbreak. It's a mess. I don't think there's an easy answer for this, but clearly we're headed down the wrong direction. But what happens with any political position?
They become blind to their own failures. It has to be, well, I was right the whole time. You were wrong. Let's just ignore it. I hate that. I hate that about Republicans.
I hate that about Democrats. Don't be blind to your own problems. You can see the issue that's happening. No one is pretending this isn't happening right now. But what you see is a complete disconnection between the administration and what's happening at the border. What I don't understand, though, is how do you address a crisis, which this is, or a challenge, whatever they want to call it. Really, I mean, at this point, it's very, very serious. How do you address it without deploying your executives that are in charge with enforcing this, Harry?
Well, you can't. I think that's the simple answer. And I think the Biden administration has made a deliberate decision not to deploy our immigration czar, Kamala Harris. The Biden administration has made a deliberate decision not to send the President down to Del Rio and other places which have reached crisis proportions. So the Biden administration instead has engaged in a deliberate policy of resettling immigrants without testing them for covid. And basically it has become a massive super spreader throughout particularly the south, but also perhaps in other red states. And so I think at the end of the day, the American people have to bring pressure to bear on the Biden administration to do what?
To simply do its job. The President has a responsibility to protect the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that includes the protection of the border. We are a sovereign nation, and I think the Biden administration continues to forget that. I have tremendous compassion for these people. I'm the grandson of immigrants from Russia, so I understand how important it is to seek freedom. But my grandfather was able to go through, at least they had it. They had a process, and in your family too. I mean, there was a process. Well, you kind of wonder that. There isn't, the wife brought up, there isn't the Ellis Island situation.
No. Well, the border ports are supposed to be that. The ports of entry. The problem is we don't have order and we don't have process.
We'll be back with more in a moment. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.
It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, the Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.
Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. The challenges facing Americans are substantial at a time when our values, our freedoms, our constitutional rights are under attack. It's more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines protecting your freedoms, defending your rights, in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena. And we have an exceptional track record of success.
But here's the bottom line. We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms.
That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work.
Become a member today. ACLJ.org. We're talking about this crisis at the border. The ACLJ has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Homeland Security and Border and Customs and other agencies requesting information and to find out policy determinations on why there was a cancellation of particular operations that were in place, but also to find out why this situation is going on pretty much unabated. I mean, it's just happening. It's getting, as you see, worse. I'll also tell you, I'm holding my hand a copy of the federal lawsuit that our Office of Government Oversight, our government accountability project, filed in Washington, D.C. So that case has been filed in Washington dealing with the same issue. Let me give you some numbers, though, because this shows you how this has changed over the course of a five-year period. This is, we're talking about encounters.
That's encounters that our law enforcement had on the border. In 2017, 303,000. 2018, 396,000. 2019, 301,000. 2020, 317,000. 2021, 1,541,651. That is, in 2020, it was 1,320,165 for the entire year.
So we've already exceeded the year. The problem here is we want to show compassion, which we should show as concerned human beings. These aren't, like Andy, you said, they're human beings.
But the lack of process, the lack of control, the lack of order ends up in chaos, which is what we're seeing. Put those pictures on the screen. They're horrific.
Yeah. Well, it is horrific to see people like this. Again, as I say, human beings, they're not just encounters. These are children. These are adults.
These are men. These are women who look like they have been through hell, and here they are huddled under an interstate bridge, walking in waterways with backpacks on, living in sheds and shanties and things like that. Who knows what kind of food, if any, they're being provided for water. We know that they can't get dental services.
We heard from a dentist in Laredo, Texas, who says, I went there today, but because of the instances of COVID, I was turned away and couldn't give them dental services. So what other services are they getting? I can answer that. The answer is none.
None. No, this is really serious. Yeah. One of the things that our producers sent me an article that the border agent found a toddler and a baby abandoned along the Rio Grande, baby in a car seat. And you see the photos. I mean, obviously they blurred out the faces of the children, and they put them into some sort of protective custody. But you look at it, and it's insane.
It's pictures of where they're just dropped at the border and hope that things go better. People aren't doing this. I mean, there are some people who are doing it for nefarious means. There are a lot of people who are doing this because they're desperate.
They're very desperate and can't lose sight of that. I know I got some heat from people saying, you know, I was sounding a little too compassionate. I'm compassionate when I see a three-year-old baby. There it is. So I'm compassionate.
I'm compassionate when they're adults. Look, my grandparents fled Russia. I mean, but there was a process. We all immigrated here at some point. Yes.
The country's not that old. Okay. So the Homeland Security Secretary back in March, this is what he said. Take a listen. Do you believe that right now there's a crisis at the border?
I think that the answer is no. I think there is a challenge at the border that we are managing, and we have our resources dedicated to managing it. Okay. Does anybody listening to this broadcast or on this panel of experts right here, I'm going to look at one by one.
We'll start with Wes. Does anybody – now, to be fair, that was in March. So I'm asking our producers, has he made any subsequent statements saying it's bad? So he's going down there today. Oh, that's good.
From March till the end of September. Wes? Yeah. I mean, this is a horrible, horrible situation.
It should break the heart of any person who has any kind of feelings of decency for what's going on down there. Their unwillingness not just to admit there's a problem – for months they've not even admitted there was one. Even if they're admitting it now, they're not doing anything to address the problem. There's a failure to respond. There is some reaction, although it's a poor reaction, instead of being proactive.
And think about this. It begins with some simple fixes. You mentioned process. A process might look like having a really truly secure border in the name of compassion and humanity so that there are orderly ports of entry and we have a process to help these people. What they're doing now, the lack of process, the lack of border security, is actually inhumane in and of itself. I think so.
Harry? Well, I think Wesley is correct. And I think first and foremost, I would say the Biden administration has incentivized this crisis. So in other words, they have failed to be proactive. They have failed in their responsibility, in my opinion, to send the Haitians back to Haiti, for instance, and then to provide needed aid and assistance in Haiti, in country.
And so the Biden administration has also ignored secondary and tertiary effects in the United States. So we basically placed our criminal law under stress. In other words, sheriffs, police officers, they have to deal with more and more crime. Also, more and more crime is rising, for instance, in many border communities. So the homeowners are suffering from that. In addition, social services are basically inundated. They cannot keep up. No, they said Catholic charities have earned max.
And so you're right. So Catholic charities cannot keep up with their humanitarian assistance. So at the end of the day, it's failure, failure compounded by failure. But Andy, you know, and I want to be compassionate here, but I think part of that compassion has to be, I keep, I started the program by saying order, process, control. And because this is, what do you do, how do you help 12,000 people under a bridge? Well, you don't.
Right. You've harmed them. You haven't helped them. You've taken them from their native land or they have come from their native land and you're giving them this temporary status instead of giving the aid to them in the land where they are from. Whether it be Haiti or Guatemala or Honduras or wherever it is, that's where you dispatch the aid. You don't bring them to the United States. Take an interstate highway, stick them under a bridge, put them in huts. In the United States of America. In the year 2021 in the United States of America, doing that is not only inhumane, it is barbaric is what it is to do that. Yeah.
They're walking across rivers holding packages above their heads so that they don't drown in the water or a child is abandoned in a little reed basket, you know, and then doctors who can't get in there, dentists who can't get in there, and then the Secretary of Homeland Security hadn't been down there for six months. Yeah, I know. They're coming today. Let's take this call. All right, really a couple minutes. Let's go to Michael in Oklahoma line two. You're on. Michael, go ahead. Yes, thank you for taking my call. Sure. I have a quick three-part question, then I'll hang up and let you answer.
Yeah, you gotta go quick. One is, under the executive branch in the Constitution, isn't it their responsibility to secure our border? Yes, it's under the Constitution, it's the executive, yes. So is this dereliction of duty? I'm not going to go to whether this is the, I'm not going to the political side of whether this, no, this is bad policy, okay, which this is really bad policy, and that is the problem here, Wes, it's bad policy. And it has dramatic bad effects. It's a crisis.
It is. Health, safety, national security, the drugs, the human traffickers. Plus, think about it, with two million people a year coming into America that we know about, it fundamentally changes who we are as America. And it's a strain on all of our social, you know, of underpinnings that try to help people.
It is a crisis on about eight, ten different levels, and they're not addressing it as such. All right, we'll be back with the second half hour of Sekulow coming up. Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. As you heard, we'll take some phone calls, and Rick Grinnell's joining us, I believe, in the next segment, or coming up in a couple segments, and he'll be joining us as well. If you don't get the full hour of Sekulow live on your local station, you can find us broadcasting live each and every weekday. On Facebook, look up Jay Sekulow's page. On YouTube, look up to the ACLJ page. If you're watching right now, stay tuned, hit the subscribe button, share it.
We'll be back with more again. Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. Check out the great work, blogs, and news at ACLJ.org. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights, in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you, and if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life changing work. Become a member today.
ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jay Sekulow. Hey everybody, we were talking about the crisis at the board of the first half hour of the broadcast. We'll talk more about that, but I also want to get into the situation that barely got a mention on Friday. And that is that the strike in Afghanistan that was supposed to take out an imminent threat, including one of the ISIS-K planners, actually was a strike on civilians. And again, horrific because the loss of lives, including seven children, and the rest of them were aid workers. So it was a failure of intelligence.
Rick Grenell will be joining us, we're going to talk about that. This is a Pentagon right now in crisis, I think it's fair to say. Because there's a lot of explaining to do, and it looks like it was a failure of intelligence, so we're going to get into that. We did just get word that the Supreme Court of the United States is going to have oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson's Women Health Organization. That's the big case involving Roe v. Wade. I'm holding a copy for our people watching on TV or social media, a copy of our brief that we filed in that case in my hand right now. But I will also tell you that we announced Friday that we are representing the state of South Dakota and Governor Noem in another major abortion case. In fact, there's an email going out on that today at the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. So the pro-life issues are front and center as we move forward.
So we've been talking, as I said, about, again, December 1st will be the oral argument, decision probably June of next year. We've got a lot of issues we're hitting. We're hitting Afghanistan, we're hitting the border crisis, we're still getting calls on the border crisis. Let's go ahead and take one of those calls right now, Logan. And then Rick Grenell is going to join us, I think, in the next segment.
Let's go to Bianca in California. Line 3, you're on the air. Thank you for taking my call, Logan. Also, my husband and I financially support you guys.
We are so thankful for you. My question is, what happened to the thousands of Central and South Americans who were under that bridge? Where did they go? Are they there too? And now we have thousands of Haitians.
What's going on, please? Oh, yeah, we don't know the exact makeup of the 12,000 people that aren't. We know that there is some Haitian refugees that are there.
But I'm sure, Wes, you're saying, yeah, no one's taken a census. Right, and this is just one crossing. This is Del Rio. This crisis is… One port of entry. Right, one port of entry. This crisis is spread all along the southern border of the United States.
This particular incident with the bridge, and I think the number's up to 14,000 now, are mainly Haitians, but there are also Central and South Americans mixed in with that group as well. But this is just one sector. There are multiple sectors where similar things are happening. So, Andy, when you got a situation, because you deal with law enforcement, law enforcement's trying to be compassionate here. These people are mostly innocent. I mean… They didn't do anything.
They didn't commit any crimes, as far as I know. They're just uprooted from their homeland because of natural disasters or problems there. It's a dark problem of how we're handling it. And we are not handling it in a right fashion. We're handling it in an inept fashion. We're taking people and we're sticking them like animals under a bridge. You might as well put pens around there and throw slop on them.
I mean, that's what you're doing. You've got them crossing rivers holding baggages above their heads. It's terrible.
It looks like things that I've seen in films years ago. This should not be happening in America in the 21st century. Absolutely. I think there's a lot of people who are outraged about this. We're seeing response from members of our ACLJ family and team who are responding, people who see the humanitarian crisis and wonder what they can do.
There is a petition on our website, as you said, that is a demand, potentially demand the Biden administration even address the border crisis. That's what it feels like. Feels like we're all talking about this.
And it's mute from everyone else. Yeah. Well, you've got the mayor of Del Rio, Texas, who's a Democrat. Listen to this question from the reporter and the mayor's response. You have been trying to tag President Biden on Twitter. Have you heard from him or his office or vice President's office? Not directly from the vice President or President's office, unfortunately. I have been just trying to spread the dire situation here.
I mean, if you're trying to tag him on Twitter, so hopefully you'll get a response. I mean, that shows you the absolute chaos and how many crises are happening. This isn't just one we've had week after week for the last few months, whether it was obviously COVID, which was inherited, had that issues. And coming from COVID, you had Afghanistan, Afghanistan, you had Israel. There's been a crisis of the week in there. All of them are equally horrible and horrifying.
I think that's wrong. But this one is a few hundred miles away from right here. You know, we're not that far away dealing this one.
We'll be right back with more. And Rick Grenell coming up in the next segment. The challenges facing Americans are substantial at a time when our values, our freedoms, our constitutional rights are under attack. It's more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in courts, in Congress and in the public arena. And we have an exceptional track record of success.
But here's the bottom line. We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms.
That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life changing work.
Become a member today. ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.
It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, a play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.
Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. I'm talking about two crises. I mean, you've got this crisis on the border that is just horrific, 12,000 people living under a bridge. And like I said, when you've got no process and no control, you end up with chaos, and that's what we have. And then you've got this horrible report coming out of Afghanistan that the righteous strike, as General Milley called it, ended up being eight workers and seven kids in the white Toyota, which evidently was some kind of failure. Joining us now is our senior advisor on so many of these issues, Rick Grenell.
Rick, I want to start with, first, let me get your sense on the border situation. I feel horrible for the people living under the bridge. I mean, 12,000 people. They had a picture of a three-year-old kid who's in basically a car seat and just left there.
And this is horrific. And the Biden administration is clueless. We just had a dentist call us who was willing, has been going to the ICE facilities to provide free dental care for people that, you know, migrants coming over.
They had to close it because of COVID, and he was not able to do service. So this is total lack of control. We'll get to Afghanistan in a minute, but I want to get your take on the border. Look, the border is close to where we are. It's troubling because we know Americans have big hearts, and we don't want to have refugees, immigrants camping out in these types of conditions on the border.
This is just unacceptable. But I think that the language of the Biden administration, Jay, is encouraging this. They're encouraging people to come when there is no plan of action. And what we need to be able to do is tell people, this is the greatest country in the world. You're welcome to apply. We have a very long line. We have a system where we will go through and check each person and decide who gets in. The problem is we have 100 million people that want to come, and we only allow 1 million people a year to get citizenship. We are very generous, but the reality is if we don't have rules, if we don't have a gate and a big, huge wall, I like to say build the wall, let's have a big wall, but let's have a big, wide gate where there's an orderly line and we listen to people who want to come in. Okay, so one of the things, we'll switch to Afghanistan in a minute, Rick, but I wanted to talk about this, was I've been saying that the lack of process and control is what the Biden administration is lacking on the border issue here.
Of course, a resource commitment, that's obvious. But border control, you have to have controls, you have to have process. We have a refugee process in this country. If someone's fleeing a country, and you know this is your work as an ambassador and as DNI, I mean, we have process.
None of the process is being put in place here, and I think that process is failing, and we're failing at a miserable rate, and we're putting human suffering front page on the papers, and we look like as a country we have no idea what we're doing. And let's also remember this is Congressionally mandated rules. We're following what Congress says to do. Our embassies who are in the front lines with Foreign Service officers making these decisions are doing the best they can.
They are working as quickly as possible. But we have to have an orderly process. You can't have people rushing into the border demanding that they come in. We have people who have been waiting in line for 10, 12, 13, 14 years, and while that's unacceptable to have people just lingering, we do have rules and we have to get the complete file before we make a decision.
You know, I was just thinking about this, Rick, because my relatives, you said 13, 14 years, my grandparents, it was about 14 years, but they came in through Ellis Island, there was a port of entry, they went through the testing, they learned English, and eventually became citizens. In fact, Logan's wife, Amanda, found my grandfather's order signed by the District Court judge. Naturalization.
His naturalization order signed by the District Court judge. So, let's go also, we can't ignore though, General McKenzie, the head of the U.S. Central Command, did a press conference on Friday, you talk about not confidence builders, these are not confidence builders, to announce that the ISIS-K fighters killed in the U.S. drone strike actually did not happen. That the drone strike instead was seven kids and a couple of aid workers, and it was apparently a failure of intelligence, you were the head of DNI, what is going on here, and they were making this as the, we've stopped another major attack, and this is after the 13 Marines were killed. This was supposed to be another attack, and what is your sense of what is going on there?
Well, let's summarize, let's remember there was chaos where the Taliban were taking over, we had Marines and other U.S. individuals killed, people who were defending America, they were killed, more than 100 Afghans were killed, and so the response from the U.S. military was, we're going to go get ISIS planners. They announced that they got very senior ISIS planners, they couldn't give us their name. Right. I immediately had a red flag, and I tweeted out right away, if you can't give us their name, then it's not a righteous hit.
Right. When you think about a righteous hit, that means that it's a very clear bad guy, and we were right to take out the bad guy. Well, we should know who that bad guy is. If they cannot tell us, then clearly there was a mistake, and I got to say, Jay, our media just jumped to parrot and regurgitate what the Biden administration says as a righteous hit. We got two ISIS people, but they need to be more skeptical. When you don't give a name, then you clearly don't have a target. Could you imagine if this happened under the previous administration, what the reaction would be?
I can't even imagine. Now, having said that, what Colonel Smith, so you have this failure about intelligence or something. I mean, obviously something happened. General Milley is in charge.
What's the responsibility here? Yeah, you know, this was a rush to action, and I give deference to the military in almost every situation, but this was a failure of leadership on multiple levels that keeps getting worse as bad decisions are made because of bad motivations for making those decisions. This whole fiasco in Afghanistan was based on an arbitrary date and a political consideration for the timeline. Concerning this, though, and Rick knows more about this than I do, but what troubles me about this, they had been tracking this guy for eight hours. And then they lost him. They lost sight of him several times. He was driving a white Toyota. There's thousands of white Toyotas in that country, but at the time they took the strike, the car was not even approaching the airport. It had stopped. And normally when Intel is identifying a likely target, and I do know this, there's real time combo between whoever is observing this person and whoever is what we call the trigger puller somewhere else.
And it appears that that was the total breakdown too. So, Rick, in a situation like this, what would be the, what's the accountability level here? Because they said there's going to be an investigation, but they don't expect disciplinary action. I'm not saying blame the person that pulled the trigger on the drone. I mean, he's probably, he or she was probably following an order, but I'm sure, but what does look, what does this, what does an investigation look like here?
How did this happen basically? Well, well, first of all, there's going to be multiple people who messed up. Remember that intelligence is an estimate and that estimate is given to public policy officials and who are politicians and those politicians are the ones who have to make the decision. And so I want to pick up on the point that it was rushed because that's exactly what happened. The political people rushed the process. Clearly the intelligence community was not completely comfortable or settled on this target.
They gave some sort of estimate that we think this is something or they gave specific information as to what we believe is happening and who is doing this activity. But then it's up to the politicians to make the decision. They use the information and because it was so rushed, they didn't have an absolute target, but they wanted the political win. And look, we see this with the Biden administration on a variety of things. Word is now coming out that the Biden team rushed the Nord Stream 2 decision, even though there were pieces of information saying that the Russians had stopped building Nord Stream 2 and they were waiting on the Biden team. What did the Biden team do? They got out in front and they said, well, it's almost built, so we're just going to give it over.
This is the political rush job in order to have the applause of the crowd, the media saying that you're great. And I think that what's happening from the NSC is Jake Sullivan is viewing these things as an academic exercise and not really understanding the reality. I think you're absolutely right. Rick, we appreciate your insight, as always, on these matters. We appreciate your observations. And again, it's a mess. I mean, it's a mess, and my heart goes out to these people that are suffering, but we have got to get a process in place. Now, the DHS secretary is now on the ground in Del Rio. That's breaking right now.
A little late, I might add, but better late than never. He flew into the international bridge via helicopter. He's getting a tour of the migrant camp and is receiving an operational update. It's something? It is something. Yeah, and they'll have a press conference, so we'll monitor that closely and see what it is.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, though. We are going to head into the last segment of the show for today. To give us a call, all you've got to do is call 1-800-684-3110.
If you want to talk about Afghanistan, if you want to talk about the ISIS drone strike or lack thereof, you can also talk about, obviously, what's going on on the border. We'll take all sorts of questions coming up in the next segment from our panel. That is at 1-800-684-3110. Phone lines are open. This is the perfect time to give us a call.
1-800-684-3110. Let me also say that as we announce Friday, we are happy that we are pleased that we're representing the good people of South Dakota in a major pro-life case at the Eighth Circuit. And at the same time, Dobbs, the Dobbs case, which puts Roe v. Wade front and center, is going to be argued December 1st, so we'll get a decision by June. We filed our brief in that case already, but a lot going on on the life front as well. Support the work of the ACLJ. You can do that at ACLJ.org.
That's ACLJ.org. And also, make sure you're following us on our multiple social media platforms these days. I'm sure a lot of you are watching them on those platforms, but you can find us on all the major social media platforms, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram. All of us have accounts. Follow us there.
We'll be right back. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.
It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, playing parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.
Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. The challenges facing Americans are substantial. At a time when our values, our freedoms, our constitutional rights are under attack, it's more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines protecting your freedoms, defending your rights, in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena. And we have an exceptional track record of success.
But here's the bottom line. We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms.
That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today.
ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Secula, wrapping up today's show. We'd love to take your phone calls. 1-800-684-3110. Phone lines are ringing right now, so if you're on hold, be patient. 1-800-684-3110.
We do have a few lines open, so it would be a good time to call. Let's start off this segment with a clip from MSNBC. Again, from MSNBC.
And if you're losing MSNBC, then maybe you're losing a lot of the country. Let's hear from Stephanie Ruhl on MSNBC. Just earlier, was it earlier today? Earlier today on the current crisis on the border.
How about a message from our Vice President? Where is she? She was supposed to be in charge of all of these migration issues, going to those Northern Triangle countries. That's obviously not Haiti.
That was one of her first international trips with the message, do not come here illegally. People aren't listening. No, people aren't listening. And look, I think there are some very valid reasons that people would seek refugee status in America.
Who knows what? And I think the big problem is the sort of vetting process that's happening right now is just chaotic. It's a mess. A lot of people do look at it, see the concern. But if you're losing MSNBC, if you're losing people on that side, you lost them already with Afghanistan. You lose with this, then the tide will turn and people will start looking for other options, even within your own party. Even within the Democrat party saying, clearly, this is not how things could be.
And nor how they should be, for that matter, when you have essentially a ghost as the President and Vice President when it comes to some of these issues. People who just disappear and just pretend if we don't address them, if we don't address it, no one will even remember that it's happening. And sadly, that does work sometimes. It does work because it gets it off the news cycle.
Whether that's Afghanistan, whether that's Israel, whatever it is, eventually if we just, you know, can distract long enough, oh yeah, it moves on. We move on to other things and other, not necessarily stories that don't matter, but inconsequential stories that take over the news media. We saw the horrible story that's going on right now with the woman who found her remains and the whole controversy among her boyfriend who was there.
That is a terrible story, something we should be talking about. Is it something that should be wall-to-wall 24-hour coverage? Probably not when you have this happening at the border, where it easily distracted a sensationalized country in terms of news media right now. And, you know, what you just described, Logan, is a description of how this administration is operating largely.
And that is everything is, you know, planned and analyzed and decisions are made strictly on the politics, on how it looks politically. If it's a hot rock for Americans, well, we better address it. If we can sweep it under the rug, well, we're going to let it go.
The fact that the President of the United States and his nine months in office has yet to go to the border says just about everything we need to know about how seriously they're taking it. This is a crisis, as I said earlier, on multiple levels. It's humanitarian. It's health. It's safety.
It's all these things. The Vice President went to the wrong part of the border and has never been back. She's really, really busy, you know, tossing out the coin at ball games and going to Europe. But the President needs to go down there, if nothing else, to send a message that we care and that we are taking the situation seriously. But, in fact, as far as policy goes, your dad's right. We are not taking this seriously. We're not even attempting to fix the issue. Yeah, let's hear another clip. This comes in from CNN. Again, just yesterday, this is CNN.
Again, not exactly red media in any likelihood. Let's go to Jim Johnson on, again, on CNN from the Obama administration. We have to get control of our borders. 200,000 a month is a lot of people. DHS just released the numbers for August. It's 200,000.
August is typically a month where it's very low. And those kinds of numbers and the images you just showed your audience saps the ability, it overwhelms the ability of DHS, the Border Patrol, ICE, to cope with the incoming. Yeah, so that's coming in from CNN. We have MSNBC. We are, you know, I was hoping in my lifetime we would see sort of the end of this red and blue media split, where you saw conservative media and liberal media both taking their own agendas and running with it, where no one was calling it like they see it.
No one could find any fallibility in their own party or fallibility in their own side when things went wrong. And you may really see this, I'll be honest, more on sort of the, what you say, the CNN, the MSNBCs. And then on the extreme side, you have it on the sort of the right wing media that's beyond even your Fox News.
And maybe they know nothing that President Trump did could be, you know, a mistake. That can't be how the media portrays situations like this when there are real humanitarian crises happening. All of us look at it, whether it's Afghanistan or whether it's what's happening on the border, all of us look at and go, this is horrendous. We can't believe our country is allowing it or this is happening just a few hundred miles away from where we're sitting right now.
It is hard to fathom that this is the place we're at. And I'm actually happy, just like I said this during Afghanistan, that you've actually seen the media put away their partisan sides briefly. And look, we saw it happen when they started questioning Blinken. Guess what? The politicians went right back to, how can we blame this on the previous administration?
That's not going to change. But the media, the media could have a moment here where we finally go, you know what? As Americans as a whole, we see this as a major problem. Who wants to take it?
Let's go to Harry. Well, I appreciate your ability to dream, but I think the reality is what is important and what has been missing in American discourse for a very long time is a commitment to truth as opposed to the accumulation, if you will, of political power. So in this particular case, it's important to put all of this in context. So the Biden administration has demonstrated its ability to conflate Afghani children with ISIS-K fighters, just like it conflates the debacle in terms of the withdrawal from Afghanistan with success. Now the Biden administration is apparently willing to conflate the U.S. border with Mexico with the border between Kansas and Missouri. And so instead of adhering to its responsibilities and basically enforcing the law, it has basically allowed another disaster to occur on our border. So I am somewhat heartened that the mainstream media is recognizing that there is indeed truthfully a catastrophe. And I think Jay Johnson, a former official from the Obama administration, has been one of the individuals who's been willing to at least tell the truth. And so I think the American people should be able to, listening to Jay Johnson, occasionally listening to CNN, occasionally listening to MSNBC, to discern that truthfully we indeed have a catastrophe on our border. And now the question becomes, are there individuals within the Biden administration who have the will to do something about it? Are they prepared to address this?
Are they prepared to reverse policies that are not working and perhaps consider policies that were working previously? Look, if the media starts turning on you for your own political futures, maybe that could happen. I hate to say that, but people are selfish. In Washington, D.C. in politics, people are, what's the word I'm looking for, the worst. They're the worst. You walk around and it feels dark and evil for a reason.
People are very selfish in that. So look, if they see a political tide turning and how they find that out is through sources like the media. If they don't turn on them, guess what? You're going to be hearing a lot different tune coming out of everyone in Washington, D.C. and in the White House.
That's a big moment that could really shift this. So make sure you stay on it. Make sure that you voice your concern, because as media goes, so does people.
So follow them, follow us. Hey, show's wrapping up for the day. I appreciate you all watching and tuning in. We'll have a lot more coming up tomorrow. Check out ACLJ.org. Not only can you support the work, you can also read incredible content written by everyone here and check out our latest videos on YouTube and on Facebook. Remember, like, subscribe, do all those things. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Become a member today. ACLJ.org.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-08-21 21:15:06 / 2023-08-21 21:38:52 / 24