Andrew Arthur is Resident Fellow in Law and Policy for the Center for Immigration Studies. He began his legal career through the Attorney General’s Honors Program as a clerk to an Administrative Law Judge in the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer at the United States Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review. Later in his career he was promoted to the Immigration and Naturalization Service General Counsel’s Office in D.C., first as an Associate General Counsel, then as an Assistant General Counsel and Acting Chief of the INS National Security Law Division. In the General Counsel’s Office, he supervised attorneys handling cases involving espionage, terrorism, and persecutors. He advised the Attorney General among others on matters pertaining to National Security. In 2001, he left INS to become a Counsel on the House Judiciary Committee where he performed oversight of immigration issues. After 5 years there, he was appointed to the immigration bench serving for eight years as an Immigration Judge at the York Immigration Court in York, Pennsylvania. At the beginning of the 114th Congress, Judge Arthur left the bench and came back to Capitol Hill, where he served as Staff Director of the National Security Subcommittee at House Oversight and Government Reform before taking retirement from federal service in 2016.
Crosstalk continues to monitor progress on our nation's southern border because many believe this to be a national security issue. One state, however, decided to take action. The governor of Texas made great efforts to secure his state but is being thwarted and fought against by the Biden administration. Speaking of the President, he curtailed many of the Trump policies which brought much broader protection to the U.S. He seeks to blame the previous administration and Congress as a source for failing to take action on what he describes as meaningful border control legislation. So what about the Senate? Just yesterday they released their border bill. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson described it as “dead on arrival.”
Just how bad is the situation? FBI Director Christopher Wray has indicated that the number of illegal immigrants evading border patrol agents and escaping into our nation is a source of “great concern for the FBI.” Andrew noted that in December, Customs and Border Protection encountered about 300,000 people entering the U.S., of which nearly 250,000 were entering illegally. These are the largest numbers ever seen in U.S. history and doesn't include those aliens that entered our country illegally and managed to evade border patrol agents (the “got-a-ways”).
Get caught up on the details of this issue as Jim and Andrew cover the following and more...
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