Biden yields to defenders, border deluge continues

Editor’s note: The following excerpt is from Chapter 4 of “Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in American History” by Todd Bensman.

When the American people elected Donald Trump on November 8, 2016, my job changed abruptly. Overnight, we had to fear, prepare, and prevent the assassination of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the massacre in downtown Austin.

The threat emanated from a new front that I knew very little about. The most commonly known hyper-violent “anti-fascist action” movement today is known by its contraction “Antifa”.

President Trump’s inauguration in Washington has sparked widespread antifa riots beyond security perimeters. The rioters burned cars, smashed shop windows, overwhelmed street blocks and attacked police officers who tried to stop them. The brawl lasted for hours. Police hit the mob with stun grenades, tear gas, and beanbag projectiles. Six police officers were injured. As Trump walked part of his route to the parade toward a group of black-clad demonstrators, incognito his services pushed him back into an armored vehicle. It took the riot police time to retake the streets by force, and more than 200 people were arrested.

What I had seen in Austin up to that point was just a small taste of what was to come. After the election, its catalytic energy was used in the “Occupy ICE” nationwide protest campaign. Militants have set up tent camps near ICE facilities across Texas in an attempt to hinder the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants. At the same time, a fierce propaganda campaign began demonizing ICE agents. The credible threat to their livelihoods led to the immigration-related phase of our intelligence work until I left the civil service in August 2018.

It wasn’t always like this. In fact, these positions have never spread so rapidly on the far left as they did during this time. The modern Democratic Party has always detested illegal immigration, and its leading voice is the biggest proponent of border and immigration policies seen as outright Trumpian.

Consider César Chavez, a Democratic union leader and a prominent member of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. His legacy is so cherished among the party’s elite that President Biden placed a bronze bust of Mr. Chavez on his Oval Office desk alongside a photo of his family. Surprisingly, the famous farm worker advocate was a vehement anti-immigrant. In fact, he launched the famous grape and lettuce boycott to counter the federal government’s refusal to stop illegal immigration. Powerful agricultural players wanted cheap labor from illegal workers. But Chavez realized they had cut wages and undermined his strike on behalf of legal workers. Chavez went further by opposing legal immigration through the Bracero Program from 1942 to 1964.

Chavez took particular anger against illegal Mexican migrant workers. In 1974, Chavez went so far as to send 300 thugs to establish a “wet line” near Yuma, Arizona. Vigilantes organized patrols to harass migrant workers and “persuade them to turn back.” However, the patrol soon turned violent. They beat at least 37 immigrants as they crossed the border to deter others from breaking the lemon pickers strike that year. passed and stopped the border crossers on their side.

In a 1974 interview, Chavez said, “There are so many illegal immigrants coming in. They come in thousands. It’s incredible. It’s a vicious attack on local workers. Even though many are of Mexican descent, the workers themselves are very upset, very worried and very angry at the illegals coming to break their strikes. will be stolen.”

Other left-wing icons have taken similar hard line. In 1990, Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, joined the civil rights leader in a congressional attempt with La Raza’s Illegal Immigration Council to legalize the employment of illegal immigrants. stopped. In the mid-1990s, Barbara Jordan, an iconic civil rights pioneer and the first black woman elected to Congress from the South, led a presidential commission calling for stricter enforcement of immigration laws and a reduction in legal immigration. led. Jordan has since tirelessly advocated strict border controls as a means to end illegal immigration.

Even progressive Democratic icon Bernie Sanders was far-left America’s latest hero, echoing Chavez sentiment in the 1970s until 2015. What Sanders believed in his circa 2015 and Trump’s “America First” mindset of protecting working-class people from illegal immigration. No one has ever called a Jewish socialist a racist because of his belief that immature illegal immigrants undercut working-class American wages. July 2015 In an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein, Sanders characterized the “open borders” policy as a “right-wing proposition” championed by companies preoccupied with cheap foreign labor.

Like myself and President Obama, Sanders saw illegal immigration as a threat to American sovereignty.

When asked if he supported open-border immigration, Sanders told Klein, “We are abolishing the concept of the nation-state. I don’t think there is a country in the world that believes in that.” “If you believe in a nation-state, or a country called the United States, Britain, Denmark, or whatever, I believe that you have an obligation to do all you can to help the poor.”

But in 2019 and 2020, every Democratic presidential candidate took a spectacular turn like the tent-dwelling Occupy ICE activist. All 15 asked each other about who would end the most deportations and close camps the fastest, who would have the hardest time curtailing ICE, and who would be the most diligent to extend abuses. I tried to settle the game with a 1-on-1. The Asylum Act would most strenuously deny that most border jumpers were coming for work and not escaping murderous government persecution. An extreme idea has become a stage orthodox.

So what the heck happened? What were these ideas and their sources, and how did they become the putative new laws of the land?

“Trump has changed the world. I don’t think there is any question about what happened. I am in the middle of that battle.

“Even if people want to be a little more moderate, I’m not going back to a more moderate position,” Cartwright told me. “Nobody moves left. It’s like this standoff.

This newly reinvigorated progressive left race suddenly demanded what nearly every mainstream Democratic candidate had promised was resistance, negative consequences, or unhindered border crossings with no limits. A policy that can only bring about immigration. Under this new design, anyone who wanted to come from anywhere in the world could enter and stay forever, without fear of deportation. In summary, this new political left bloc was finding significant political purchases for the following demands:

• Bill Clinton’s 1996 Reform Act decriminalizes illegal border crossings. This is considered a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison, with progressively longer for subsequent offenses.

• End all deportations, except for terrorism and extreme criminal activity, not only for new border crossers, but also for the estimated 11 million aliens living illegally in the United States.

• Do not build physical barriers, such as walls, that could impede pedestrian crossings and demilitarize border law enforcement surveillance.

• Retire the ICE by reformatting it for other obligations that do not involve deportation.

• Close ICE detention facilities and cancel government contracts for a network of private facilities to enable detention and deportation.

• Abolish permit requirements for new arrivals to work and otherwise participate fully in the economy and public welfare systems.

• Provide a legal pathway to citizenship for those who have entered and stayed illegally.

• Solve the root causes of immigration by rebuilding the countries of origin in Central America.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden was no exception, by 2019.

During the debate, he telegraphed that he did not feel the need for a detention center and said he would do whatever was necessary to open up the one-way highway to the asylum system and add some lanes. Indicated.

Candidate Biden said during an internationally televised debate on June 27, 2019, “Look, we shouldn’t lock people up. You must have the ability to absorb it and keep it safe until you hear it.”

And the new Joe Biden thought the old Joe Biden of 2006 was wrong about building the wall. Because now suddenly “walls aren’t a serious deterrent”.

Most of the new Biden’s immigration aides and advisers came from the usual policy think tanks where new presidents usually draw advisers and political appointees. Most of them were hailed by advocacy groups that openly support the policy of dismantling America’s immigration enforcement system and opening its borders to the world. Collectively, the advisors who entered the White House were made up of notables from Hait’s “tribal moral community.”

They have spent their working lives advocating prescriptions that have only led to mass cross-border migration. They agreed to construct an epic narrative of illegal immigration as a new victim group worthy of a civil rights campaign. They estimated that all economic migrants were endangered political refugees and asylum seekers. They believed the United States had no right to deny entry to people crossing its borders. They believed that a foreigner who crossed the border illegally was no different than a legal immigrant who met the requirements and paid the dues. They believed immigration law enforcement was cruel and could not be ignored. All advocated sacrificing coercion entirely for the disproven experiment of rebuilding a troubled nation so that its citizens would want to stay at home.

The following year, after some or all of the president’s immigration officials played a role in 296 administrative actions on immigration, political pragmatists within the White House launched a massive onslaught at the border. has begun to recognize and curb its political responsibility. Them.

Handing over border security to the most ardent theologians of frontier politics and religion soon had lasting and serious consequences for the nation. The asylum system was to be returned to the widest possible extent. why? They were well aware that the American asylum system was a major factor in mass immigration.

• Todd Bensman is a Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and has worked for nearly a decade as an Intelligence Officer in the Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety.