The Cipher Brief tapped expert Mike Fisher, former Chief of CBP, for a deeper understanding of what these numbers mean and what - or who - is driving much higher numbers of people to the U.S.’ Southwestern border, and the resulting national security implications.
The Cipher Brief: Let’s talk about Central America, specifically Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, where the most current and urgent immigration problems are originating from. It seems like the tension around this issue is building to a breaking point. What are we missing in terms of what’s going on at the U.S.- Mexican border?
Fisher: This really has less to do with those three countries than it has to do with why people, in general, would come to the United States. People will continue to come as long as they believe that the benefit exceeds the cost. Right now, they do, and you can see what's happening as a result. More and more people as we’ve seen just this past week, are being released in the U.S., and they are never going to show up for their immigration hearings.
Claiming asylum is a low bar threshold upon entry, and typically only two out of ten of those cases, when they do go to the Judge, will be valid cases for asylum. That doesn't suggest that people are not coming from poor economic circumstances, and it doesn't take away from the stories you hear in the news about gang violence, which are true, but under the current law for asylum, those cases do not and will not qualify. But people don't care because asylum is not the reason why the vast majority are coming here. Their hope is just to get here and get released, and if it's not Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, then it would be some other countries, because the law applies to everybody, not just people from those three countries.
The Cipher Brief: Do you believe there are efforts to amplify, the "Get to America now" message? Has there been a change that’s impacting this issue, that we’ve missed?
Fisher: I was speaking with some agents just recently in San Antonio, and they explained to me something that I didn't realize and haven’t heard on the news, which is that the smuggling organizations have realized an easier way to make money, from two perspectives.
One is they no longer have to deliver these groups across the border, they just point them in the right direction, because all these people are doing is crossing and waiting for the border patrol. They no longer have to pay to be smuggled across, evade the border patrol and walk for miles through the desert to a safe house. Now the smugglers just tell the groups to, "Go across the river, get across the border and wait for the border patrol to pick you up”. So that’s one change.
The second thing is that the smugglers are now actually running charter busses back and forth.
Mike Fisher, Former Chief, U.S. Border Patrol
"It used to take between three and four months for these groups to get from Central America to the U.S. Now they've reduced it to just two or three weeks, and this is impacting the numbers of immigrants we are now seeing."
So, this has just become a bigger enterprise of smuggling and the smugglers are reaping millions and millions of dollars every month by moving a vast amount of people. And groups that left a month ago are now calling back home and reporting that the border patrol let them go, which just inspires the larger groups we’re seeing now and it will continue until and unless the U.S. authorities start detaining people, start holding the hearings, and people are ordered deported, and are put onto planes and flown back to their countries. When that first plane hits Guatemala, and those people are right back where they started just three or four weeks ago, that’s when this will begin to stop. Unless that happens, people are going to continue to come. It's already past the breaking point, and more and more people are being released in the U.S.
The Cipher Brief: Why isn’t Mexico more involved in stopping the flow?
Fisher: Mexico doesn’t have the capacity to stop these large groups of migrants. The best that they were able to do in 2015 and 2016 was slow these people down, which is the reason we saw a drop in the numbers of Central Americans after seeing a surge in June 2014. Also, Mexico only gets a handful of people who are actually claiming asylum in Mexico.
Typically, under the asylum rules, if someone is fleeing a country for whatever reason, religious or political persecution, you have to claim asylum in the first country. The problem is, even if they were asked, these people are not going to want to claim asylum in Mexico, because their intent isn't to get asylum, their intent is to get into the United States.
Mike Fisher, Former Chief, U.S. Border Patrol
"Mexico just doesn't have the resources, certainly at their Southern border with Guatemala, which they've never really patrolled anyway. The current Administration's threat of closing the legitimate points of entry along the southern border, seems to get some response from Mexico because of the millions of dollars a day that they would lose in their economy. But broadly speaking, this is a challenge that Mexico has never been able solve."
The Cipher Brief: What can you share about U.S. policing activities in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador?
Fisher: ICE and other investigators from the United States have worked in those countries and continue to identify the leaders of the networks who are smuggling these people. I don't know if that is an effective short-term solution. At best, it may turn into some transnational criminal organizational investigation that broadens into maybe a RICO case or some large smuggling case. But with the number of smuggling organizations and networks that are out there, it’s not really a short-term fix for the current issues.
The Cipher Brief: Why does it seem so difficult - as a nation – to have a sober conversation about illegal immigration?
Fisher: It's political and it's always been political, even since the 1980s. There is a certain segment within Congress that has always wanted illegal immigration for a variety of reasons. It's cheap labor and the thought that these individuals that are populating a lot of the districts are going to vote Democratic so there's no reason, from that standpoint, for them to stop the flow. They rationalize that by saying, "Well, this is a country of immigrants. Those people all are coming into the United States for a better life." All of that may be true, but it misses the point in terms of having laws. This country is based on laws and rules. I've always been of the opinion, and stated it when I was the Chief, that if you don't want the Border Patrol or DHS to enforce immigration laws, then change the laws. Nobody in Congress is ever going to do that because the laws make sense. We've had this on again, off again enforcement mentality that has sent mixed signals to people that would want to come into the United States illegally, because they can't otherwise get here for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the amount of immigrants that we allow in this country from various parts of the world in any given year. It's a political issue for many, which is the reason why you're not hearing a lot of discussion.
I’m amazed by the debate over, "The crisis on the border." When I talk to Border Patrol agents, and when I study the numbers we’re currently seeing, this is, in comparison, nothing that we've seen over the past two or three decades. Yet, I can't hear a rational explanation from anybody that suggests that this is, in fact, a crisis and we need to change it. It's almost as if you just ignore it, at some point, it will go away. The problem is, as the Commissioner of the Border Patrol (now acting DHS Secretary) Kevin K. McAleenan mentioned during his testimony in March before the Senate Judiciary, it's going to get worse, and he was right. Unfortunately, I think it's going to come down to a significant event that is going to shock everyone to realize that we definitely have to fix the problem now. I think the Administration is doing what they can, given their authorities and the level of funding. I know that they've got a facility in El Paso which is a short-term solution to be able to hold more people for an extended period of time, but they are still being handcuffed in their ability to adjudicate these cases faster by some court precedents. Legislative changes could have a real impact. During his March testimony, Commissioner McAleenan was asked specifically, "What things should Congress do to fix this problem?" He articulated a half dozen or so, all of which, we have been asking for from the Department for years. It just seems that it's easier for them to hire more Border Patrol agents or add more wall funding, which doesn't really get to the root of the problem.
The Cipher Brief: Is there too much over-classification of information that, frankly, in today's world might actually help in terms of a national understanding of this issue? Or do you feel like DHS is striking the right balance in terms of how they are communicating publicly about what the challenges are?
Fisher: I know that they're getting more out in front of these issues publicly, but I don't know if the message necessarily is clear, because when you say, "We're averaging 2,000 apprehensions in a 24-hour period," I don't think the typical person has a real understanding about what that means, and how bad this crisis is. I think they could perhaps do a better job in terms of explaining, not just the difficulties in the process and the laws, but also the loopholes in the laws and the challenges within the court precedents.
I think they also really need to explain how this is going to affect and has already affected these communities in the United States that have to absorb these people. When you start looking at increases in diseases which this country hasn't seen for many, many years, there's not yet a widespread public correlation. When all of a sudden, six cases of polio appear in one particular district, you’re going to see more reporting about where the people with Polio came from.
Mike Fisher, Former Chief, U.S. Border Patrol
"The fact that they're not being screened is worth mentioning. There was a reason why people stayed for weeks, if not months on Ellis Island back in the 1900s when the immigrants were coming in. The country needed to protect the homeland from anyone who was coming in who may have had a disease. They were put in quarantine, which people have forgotten about now. We need to be able to screen and protect the citizens of this country while recognizing the need for legal immigration."
Also, I think people are just getting so used to people coming into this country illegally, they forget the fact that these people, first and foremost, are breaking the law. If the FBI, for instance, decided that they were no longer going to investigate kidnapping, the amount of kidnapping cases would skyrocket. If State Troopers decided they were no longer going to enforce the speed limit, you would see increases in the numbers of traffic deaths are all over the country. People need to realize that there is an effect to not enforcing laws. I just don't know if that message is coming across. I do know that the current situation is untenable at our borders. The real risk is the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of Border Patrol agents who should be patrolling the border for bad people and bad things that are otherwise taken off the border from doing their patrols, because they're involved for most of their shifts in doing administrative work for the influx of people coming across. Border Patrol agents are spending hundreds of hours just basically chaperoning people instead of patrolling the border. That is a real risk when you don't have the proper level of patrol capability. I think more and more people need to hear that side of the story.
The Cipher Brief: What about the actors out there with real nefarious purposes who are able to exploit the chaos that's being created?
Fisher: Smuggling organizations are orchestrating this right now. They're moving hundreds and hundreds of people and flooding a particular area, knowing that the Border Patrol, when they come and pick them up, and make the arrest, are going to leave that area open. Then they're just moving tons and tons of narcotics, and they're doing it in a coordinated fashion.
Read more from former Chief of Customs and Border Protection Mike Fisher in The Cipher Brief.
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