Your Town is Now a Border Town – The Immigration Crisis and The Risk to National Security – with Todd Bensman [Ep. 116]

Linda J. Hansen: Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101 - Breakroom Economics Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen. Your host, and the author of Prosperity 101 - Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, and the creator of the Breakroom Economics online course. The book, the course, and the entire podcast library can be found on prosperity101.com.

I seek to connect boardroom to break room and policy to paycheck by empowering and encouraging and lawyers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs. My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful. I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement, and retention, and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests and be sure to visit prosperity101.com. 

Thank you for tuning in today. Americans and many people across the world are rightly concerned regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities inflicted upon innocent people as the sovereignty of the Ukrainian border is ignored.

While the media is focused on the Ukrainian border, there is another border which more significantly affects and endangers American citizens and the liberty of citizens across the globe. America has long been a welcoming nation, and we have been strengthened by our diversity. And we have allowed millions to come to our country in pursuit of their American dream. We have welcomed immigrants from across the world, creating a beautiful melting pot of freedom, loving individuals working to sustain a vibrant nation.

However, there is a difference between legal and illegal immigration, and between sensible immigration policies and those that erode our national sovereignty and security. We are currently experiencing an immigration crisis unlike anything in our nation's history. Illegal immigrants are flooding our borders in record numbers and are often enjoying taxpayer funded housing, food, transportation, healthcare, and more. They are rarely vetted properly. And the increases in crime, drug cartels, human labor, and sex trafficking, and child exploitation indicate that not all are coming simply for political or economic asylum. While we genuinely care for innocent people caught in this web of deception, we must enact measures to secure our borders and protect our nation from being destroyed. Every town is now a border town, and our national security is at risk.

With me today to discuss this and more is my guest Todd Bensman. Todd currently serves as the Texas based Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies or CIS, a Washington DC policy Institute for which he writes, speaks, and grants media interviews about the nexus between immigration and national security. He frequently reports from the Southern border, in Mexico, and in 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. Separately, he has written about homeland security and terrorism subjects for Homeland Security Today, Townhall, The Federalist, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, SpyTalk, The Daily Wire, The National Pulse, The National Interest, and other publications. He also serves as a writing fellow for The Middle East Forum.

Prior to joining CIS, Todd led counterterrorism intelligence for the Texas Department of Public Safety's Intelligence and Counter Terrorism Division. Before his homeland security service, Todd was a journalist for 23 years covering national security after 9/11 as a staff writer for major newspapers. His recent book America's Covert Border War: The Untold Story of the Nation's Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration is a chilling reminder of the security risks of allowing for open border policies. I'm truly honored to have you as my guest today, Todd. Thank you for making time for this interview.

Todd Bensman: Happy to be here and thank you for having me on.

Linda J. Hansen: It's my pleasure truly. And many people are unaware of what is really happening at our nation's borders, especially our southern border. Could you please give us an overview of current policies and provide a brief comparison to previous immigration policies with other administrations?

Todd Bensman: Sure. Well, the United States is weathering the greatest mass migration crisis in its history. This is based on apprehension data collected by the Customs and Border Protection and DHS and published on their websites, which have us at about just under 2 million apprehensions on the Southern border just in 2021. And we're looking at about another 400,000 so far just in the calendar year of 2022, the first three months. So all together since the Biden administration entered office, which the spike tracks right to that date, we're looking at about 2.4, 2.5 million times that border patrol agents have laid their hands on an illegally crossing migrant.

Now that is going to be an under-count because there is this other category that is an official government category. It's not in the published realm, but I do have access to that, and they're called got aways. That's actually nomenclature. That's the number of migrants that are estimated to have not been apprehended. Maybe footprints in the sand counted or a surveillance video from a helicopter and nobody caught them. They get counted and put in there. And that is about another 40 to 60,000 per month for the last 15 months. So by my estimation, if you just do the number there, the math, it's going to be about another 500,000. So we're really pushing close to 3 million crossings since inauguration day. What happened on inauguration day? 

Prior to that, you had Trump administration policies that were very deterrence based, that addressed the enticements of the U.S. asylum system. And also, put into place Title 42, which took access to the asylum system off the table completely. The asylum system is the pivot key factor to mass migration because people can cross in. And the law says we have to deport them immediately with this one off ramp, which is if they say, "I declare asylum," they get to stay and be ushered into the country. 

So Title 42 took it all off the table when Trump was in office, and he had wait in Mexico and a number of other safe third country. Make your claim in Guatemala or Mexico, not here. And things like that, that really tamped down the numbers to 30,000 a month. 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 a month. And when Biden entered office, his very first five moves were all immigration related. Five executive orders right away that reversed all of that on the asylum issue and opened up a big aperture for Title 42, which is that families and unaccompanied children would no longer be subject to Title 42 in Texas. So that's what led to the 3 million. That's why we have millions of people. They're all families that are taking advantage of the exemption in Title 42 to claim asylum for which almost all of them are ineligible. But it's a weakness in the system. 

So those policies, the differences between Biden and Trump are what made the spike and put us in this historic territory. I know that's a big mouthful, but that's kind of the gist of it.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, understood. And I mentioned in my intro child exploitation and human labor and sex trafficking of adults and children. And when you mention that families are involved here, I know I've spoken with border patrol people who talk about the rent a kid type activities that go on. These kids are trafficked back and forth across the border to be their "family unit." And it's just a terrible travesty what's happening to so many innocent people who are caught in this web of deception. And we don't blame or demonize those who are innocently coming thinking that they have a shot to get to America. I mean, they are being lied to. But we must defend our own border and stop this invasion. Because like you said, it's the largest mass migration of immigrants in U.S. history. It's truly affecting our national security. And you mentioned the crime and things that are coming in. But your book America's Covert Border War talks about the jihadist threat, the terrorist threat that's coming in through the Southern border as well. Could you update people a little on that?

Todd Bensman: Well, one thing that is unique about this, another thing, one of many things that are unique about this particular mass migration event other than its incredible size that dwarfs anything that we've ever seen is that the percentage of people who are reaching the southern border and are part of this that are not from Central America or Mexico is about 40%. Now historically, that number is under 5%. So we're now seeing people from 150 different countries flying into South America and making their way through the dairy and gap jungle between Colombia and Panama to take advantage of these loopholes that have been opened up for them to immediately gain access to the interior of the country and resettlement. We've had about, of the two and a half million, probably 1.2 million have actually been resettled legally inside the country, rewarded for their illegal entries on these bogus asylum claims. So that has really attracted the attention of the entire world. 

So I was in Tapachula, Mexico in January for about eight days. It was my third trip down there, that is on the Southern border with Guatemala. And I met many, many dozens of Senegalese and Mauritanians, and Angolans, Nigerians. People from Ghana, people from Sierra Leone, Liberia. I mean really, Guinea-Bissau. You're meeting people from all over the world. But in addition to them, you are also meeting people from terrorism concerned countries like Syria, and Iraq, and Pakistan. Lots of Bangladeshis, and Somalis, and people from places where terrorist organizations operate. Because there are established routes from those places to our southern border. And those people are coming. Every day, they are reaching the southern border and also crossing in among all the other nationalities.

And the issue there is that most of the time, they don't have identification. So they just show up and say, "My name is Mickey Mouse and I declare asylum. Take me. Prove otherwise." And it's very difficult to prove otherwise, especially when you have this kind of a swamping, tsunami, Noah's flood of humanity. And it's about to get way worse. And we are having people who are on the FBI's Terrorism Watch List crossing that border with fair regularity. And I'll just give you a couple of examples if I have a minute.

Linda J. Hansen: Yes, please do.

Todd Bensman: In December, a Lebanese born Venezuelan crossed, swam the Rio Grande into Brownsville. We have a lot of Venezuelans crossing. And they ran his fingerprints, and he turned out to be on the FBI's Terrorism Watch List. I have all the records associated with this, with this case because of how it turned out. That individual was assessed to be a high risk, a category five member of a terrorist organization, a flight risk, and somebody with substantial derogatory intelligence associated with them. And the FBI recommended that they not release this individual. Typically, we will deport them to some other country, get them out of here. And instead, the ICE headquarters intervened on his behalf and set him free on grounds that he was overweight and therefore at risk of catching COVID. So he is now free and pursuing an asylum claim in Detroit, in the Detroit area.

This case was so egregious, that somebody in federal law enforcement leaked these documents out so that the public might know about it. I think I may still be one of the only people who has written about it. Nobody wants to know about these cases.

But we had a Yemeni cross or get caught by the Mexicans last year. He was interrogated by the FBI in Mexican detention. He was on the FBI's watch list, and they did attempt to deport him back to Yemen. But he came back and was caught again in Piedras Negras right across from Del Rio, Texas. And the Mexicans were so overwhelmed. Remember, this mass migration crisis is really swamping the Mexican systems as well. And they had to clear out their detention facilities and they let him go with everybody else. And we don't know where he is today. They sent a be on the lookout alert for him throughout the American inside of the border with his photo. I have that with the whole story of this individual. And I can't tell you that they ever caught him. 

They have apprehended Yemenis on the watch list in Calexico, California recently. They caught a Saudi who was on the watch list in Yuma district. Y'all have to take my word for it. This was coming directly from the chief border patrol agent in charge of the Yuma sector who tweeted this out with the guy's photo on it and everything.

So this is an issue. And when you have a swamping, debilitating crush of humanity like this, the odds grow that somebody like that is going to get through and shoot up a shopping mall. I don't mean to be alarmist here. But in addition to people like that, you have MS-13, you have convicted murderers, child rapists, war criminals from the Congo and Sierra Leone, and from all over the place that we don't know who they are or what they did back in those places. We're just letting them into the country. This is a terrible thing that's happening for that reason. And we haven't even talked about the drugs and the sex trafficking and things like that, which are part of this as well.

Linda J. Hansen: It is part of it, and it's truly all of it plays together to impact our national security and our sovereignty, and the safety of every American citizen young and old. This affects every taxpayer. It affects every business. It affects every single community. And could you address a little bit how the Biden administration has decided to disperse these illegal immigrants throughout the country on taxpayer funded flights, trains, or bus rides to various places within the heart of America where they may not even know who these people are or what their background is. But they're just dropping them off in the middle of the night on our tax dollars, and they impact these local communities and overwhelm the resources of these local communities, and endanger the safety of the citizens. So could you address that?

Todd Bensman: Sure. Well, there's a lot going on with that. It's a complicated conveyor belt of importation of illegal immigrants throughout the country. But starting with the asylum system which I mentioned earlier, the Biden administration opened up an exemption for family units and unaccompanied minors. 

Those are the ones who are just pouring in at the border. When they cross the river, the border patrol and national guard accept them and take them to a kind of a makeshift field processing station. They get them processed, log their bags and belongings. It takes all night long to do hundreds of them. And these are going on all day, every day, everywhere along the South Texas border.

They take them on buses to brick and mortar facilities. And in those facilities, normally you have to deport these people. They cross illegally. But when they say I declare asylum, it's the off ramp to the lawful deportation process. They're even then supposed to remain in detention by law under statute. It's not an if or maybe kind of a thing. It says thou shout detain until their asylum claims are approved. But Biden administration has waived all of those laws, and are providing these legal documents at the brick and mortar places that are called notice to appear or notice to report, NTRs, NTAs. And these papers are legal documents that within a day or two are handed to every migrant to go into the interior. And in a year or so, to self-report. It's like an honor system. "Please report when you get a chance."

But they have to leave the border now. And the way that that happens is there's this whole system of non-governmental organizations to aid and assist the migrants to board buses. Commercial buses or charter buses, depending on where you are and how big the people are, and air flights. Any city that they choose to go to is where they go. So we're not telling them to go someplace we say, "Where do you want to go?" And they say Orlando.

I have a lot of Haitian former villager neighbors there, whatever it is. So they choose to go there. And they either bus there all day, all night. The buses are rolling all over the country and have been for over a year now. I first saw these buses loading up in February of 2021. I boarded the buses, took video. I interviewed everybody, the drivers and everything else. And that's the way that's working.

In addition to that, especially for the unaccompanied minors, we are at historic levels of those, because Biden said we will leave no child behind in Mexico. So naturally, everybody sent their kids over the border. And so we are reuniting them or uniting them with foster families, or their own parents, or uncles, or cousins, or whatever. But we're not going to put them on buses by themselves. So we are loading up aircraft, and we are flying them in the middle of the night. I don't know why they were doing it in the middle of the night. It looks sketchy when they do that. But those are the midnight landings that you hear about where they're dropping the kids. 

They're also doing that with families. Putting them on commercial aircraft if they were declared vulnerable. They don't have the money or whatever. They have a long way to go. And they've got little babies or whatever. That taxpayer expense, we are picking up their tabs, filling those flights, and dropping whole families off in different parts of the country as well at huge expense. But we don't know how huge the expense is, as they're not telling us

Linda J. Hansen: This is just so much to take in. And for people who may just be hearing about these things for the first time on this broadcast, I do invite you to keep learning about this and follow Todd's writings and things, which we'll give information about at the end. But he's not making this up. And it's actually even worse than what he's describing. 

And I know during the Trump administration, there was a lot of media attention on kids in cages. And people were up in arms about that. But then for those of us who were paying attention, we saw that right after the Biden administration began the horrific conditions for minors and all families at the border, they were just crammed together in these facilities. And it was during COVID, and there were no COVID precautions and things. Could you address that a little bit and talk about how actually we do, especially the Trump administration and really other administrations in the past have really tried to help actual families. But a lot of families or perceived families are not really families. They're using children to appear to be a family. And it just creates a bureaucratic nightmare. And it puts all these people at risk, these victims in this web of deception that I call it. So could you address what happened at the border with children and families, at the beginning of the Biden administration?

Todd Bensman: When you make public statements like, "We will leave no child in Mexico." And you say, "We are going to let families come in and be resettled." Then that's what you're going to get. The whole world is going to send those demographics. 

So what happens is that you're in the village in El Salvador, or Guatemala, or whatever, and you get wind of this. Everybody who shows up with a kid is getting in. You know that that's your ticket. It's a ticket. A kid is a ticket in. But the smuggling fees are steep. It might cost 8, 10, $12,000 to come in with your couple of kids. It's very expensive.

So what happens is if you're a family that has three children, it is financially wise to take one of your kids, not three of them. Because it's going to be a lesser smuggling fee if it's just you and one kid. But your other kids might go with, but other people in your village don't have kids. So you're going to lend your kid to that family, and you're going to claim that that kid belongs to them. And you're going to get a break on your smuggling fee. They're going to owe you. They're going to have to pay you for that kid. And it happens internally like that at the village, grassroots village level these deals are cut. 

The problem is that when they reach the U.S. border, we require evidence that that kid is your kid. You have to have a birth certificate with your name, and signature, and identification for everybody to show that that is your kid. Or a legal guardian with legal papers for that kid. And if not, it is incumbent morally on the United States to separate that kid from whatever adult they came in with just in case it's a trafficking situation or some kind of an abuse situation until we can sort it all out. So those kids are placed in HHS Health and Human Services custody. It's a different department, and they have all sorts of facilities that are you could call it kids in cages, but whatever. When it was Trump, it was kids and cages. But under Biden, they have plastic sheets and things, and it's not cages. But whatever. They have to sort that out. So there is a separation that goes on until they can figure this out. And it sometimes takes months to figure that out. And they have a lot of kids. The number of kids that are separated and are unaccompanied that came in with an adult that isn't their parent or legal guardian. Everybody's got to figure that out. It takes some time. That's why we have a lot of that.

Linda J. Hansen: Yeah. And it's horrible to think of what these young people are going through. And then I know, I've heard so many stories of these young people, and women and children, and really anybody who pays the smuggling piece or whatever. But then they get across the border, and they can't make a way. So they find out that they are really indentured servants, or sex slaves, or whatever. I've heard of people who are not allowed to leave a home because they are basically slaves. And this is really a horrible example of human exploitation and abuse really of innocent people who are seeking freedom. Of course, there are criminals involved in this. But there are a lot of innocent people being trafficked and sold into sexual slavery or human labor trafficking. And it's just a horrible example of things gone amiss. And the way that the Biden administration is currently opening the border, flooding the border with people, it's having a real human toll which will impact generations.

Todd Bensman: Well, it's true. The policies are what is enticing, luring, drawing like a tractor beam these journeys during which people are killed, and victimized, and raped, and things happen along the way. So there is a direct line that you can draw between a decision in the White House and child death, and murder, and rape, and victimization. The administration comes out and says it even. They say stay home. But nobody's going to stay home on your word when everybody who can show up at the border gets a free pass into the country, immediately with no detention. So as long as you have a policy like that, you're going to have dead kids. I don't mean to sound hyperbolic about that, but that's just the way it is. You're going to have dead kids when you make decisions like this.

Linda J. Hansen: It's horrible. Can you address the drug trafficking too? We've talked about the human trafficking, obviously. But the drug trafficking a little. And just touch on it a brief bit before we go, because I know the increase in fentanyl into our nation has been astronomical during this administration especially. And the effects on American citizens and the drug overdoses, especially during COVID. And everything has just been so heartbreaking. But we can link this back to some of these border policies as well.

Todd Bensman: Well you should just keep in mind that even when the border is under control, even when things are kind of normal. 30,000 a month, 20,000 a month, you have drug trafficking in significant quantities. It's very difficult to stop drug smuggling and drug trafficking, even in good times. But I think that when you have ... remember I was describing these border patrol processing centers at the brick and mortar locations facilities, but also in the field. And when you have 1,500 come over in the morning, you're just going to be working that all day long. You're going to have 10 agents doing that processing duty. And that's 10 agents multiplied by hundreds and hundreds of agents across the border that are not on the line. So I don't know if we'll ever have the numbers to be able to quantify what happened. But I very strongly suspect that the drug trafficking and the drug traffickers have had a field day. That the number, that the amount of drugs that they've been able to push through in the crisis mode that we're in, where all the regular surveillance systems, you might be able to see drugs coming across. But who you going to call to go get it? They're busy bringing water over, and diapers, and formula and stuff over to the family.

So I think that that's where we're at, but that's drugs that never get caught. So we don't know really. But I think that what we do have for counting are bodies. 100,000, 102,000 I think we're up to now of Americans who have died from this fentanyl drug, which is being made in labs inside Mexico, from precursor chemicals that are imported from China and India in these labs in Mexico. And it's very easy to smuggle that stuff over. A bag of pills, they make it in a pill form. You stick it in your pocket and cross in with everybody, and get away and whatever. It's very easy I think to smuggle that. And they're lacing it into marijuana, and cocaine, and heroin to kind of enhance those drugs and give it a little extra kick. Except that the people using it by and large don't know that the illegal drugs they're buying has this stuff in it. And they're dying, all over the country. And what's really sad about the fentanyl crisis to me is that it is addressable in other ways that involve collaborative relationships between American intelligence, and military, and law enforcement, and Mexican counterparts. Where they could be going in and physically destroying these labs and just keeping the pressure on it. Keeping the pressure on lab, after lab, after lab. Not letting them get new toeholds and footholds in a ceaseless kind of campaign against the labs.

But nothing like that is happening. The administration has not initiated anything approximating that. They don't care. The head of the DEA or DOD generals, and nobody is talking about doing a solution to this. It's almost like they just don't care or something. It's bizarre. You have 100,000 dead Americans. Maybe you could cut that down to 70,000. Anything would be good.

Linda J. Hansen: It's a tragedy. It truly is. Well before we go, I do want to have you define for our listeners a couple terms that are in the news now, are coming up. And they may hear the headlines about it and not really understand what it means. But in the news, we're hearing about Title 42. So I'd like you to let the listeners know what Title 42 is all about. But also, I've seen headlines, and I know you've spoken about it quite a bit. The Ant Operation, and what that means to the flood of immigrants into our nation. So those are things that the listeners will hear about. But unless they take a minute to look beyond the headlines, they may not understand how this impacts their daily life and the security of our nation.

Todd Bensman: Well I'll talk about Title 42, because this is a very significant development. We are about to see the border crisis as we've seen it so far enter a brand new phase. A bigger, more catastrophic phase. This is the pandemic control health order that Trump ordered up in March of 2020. This is the one that they exempted the families from. Now those families can claim asylum, but the single adults and families along a lot of other parts of the border are still being pushed back into Mexico. They are not allowed to claim asylum under this order. And to an extent, that has been the last speed bump to totally open borders, completely wide open to everybody and anybody in the world to cross over. And that is about to end. They announced the date that they will lift that Title 42. They never could keep it forever anyway. I mean, it was always intended as a temporary measure, but it was somewhat effective. That's going to end on May 23rd they've announced.

And when that happened, according to the Washington Post, they anticipate as many as 18,000 illegal crossings per day, which translates into 540,000 a month. Which if it holds for 6, 8, 10 months, we're looking at 6 million people. And these are people that are all going to get in. They are not going to be returned to Mexico. They are all going to be immediately paroled into the country. So there would be just hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people who will just be on a super highway from ... it won't just be Texas either. It'll be Arizona, New Mexico, California. Everywhere along the border, they will just pour over. That the Biden administration realizes this, and they are attempting to marshal resources to contend with an unorderly population transfer. They're going to the Pentagon for soldiers. They are putting together fleets of aircraft so that they can move people quickly off the border so they don't pool up into these big camps into the interior from California to Brownsville. This is something that is really, if it turns out the way that they're predicting, that will be really striking in a truly historic event for America.

Linda J. Hansen: It's as I said before tragic in the sense that there will be a lot of innocent people affected by this. And the taxpayers of America are footing the bill for all of this. So those of us who are tax paying American citizens who work hard every day to take care of our families, grow our businesses, and pay our taxes faithfully and legally, we are funding all of this. And as these illegal immigrants come in, we are funding their transportation, their healthcare, their education in many cases, their childcare. I mean so much that we are funding. And eventually, you're going to have more people taking money from the government than there are people putting into the government. And that's a great recipe for the fall of America, in a sense. 

Could you also just describe the Ant Operation? Because that's been in the headline some, and just give a brief description of what that is. So when people see that in the headlines, they understand what that means.

Todd Bensman: Yeah. Sorry. I forgot about that. What that's about is the Biden administration cut a deal with the Obrador administration very early on, where they asked the Obrador administration to try to block up and slow some of the migration coming in over its southern border, which I like to call our other southern border, because that one is very important. Because it's a major emptying pipeline, emptying out migrants from all over the world coming through there and from Central America. That's a bottleneck spot.

So what the Mexican government has been doing is requiring them to apply for asylum, and residents cards, and other kinds of permiso slips. And hold them there for 2, 3, 4 months until the numbers build up into the tens of thousands. 50, 60, 70,000. And it looks like they're doing what they're supposed to be doing under the agreement, the bilateral agreement. But they have secretly been releasing them every three or four months en massa in a way that nobody can see so that they can't see that they're violating the deal. And that there won't be a big Del Rio migrant camp, or a caravan, or something for the media to focus on. These are called ant trails, where they arrange for the releases to happen in 14 different individualized lines that go to 14, 15 different Mexican cities so that you don't see it in a big caravan or a big Del Rio migrant camp under the bridge that's a big eyesore for everybody.

So right now, there is a swarming, swamping wave at the southern border. In the Del Rio sector and in the Rio Grande Valley sector. And that is the result of the latest Ant Operation that the Mexicans authorized two weeks ago. They had 70,000 down there, and they are now releasing them. And the stories that you're seeing and hearing right now are the result of the Mexican release in violation of their bilateral agreement with the Biden administration of all these people.

And you can't blame the Mexicans in a way, because those people were rioting every single day. They were staging violent attacks on Mexican government officers, breaking into offices, taking over buildings, burning tires, throwing rocks and stones, overturning cars, setting fires, and every single day. And the Mexicans are like, "Okay, time to do an ant operation and get all those people to the U.S. border." That's who we're getting.

The swamping effect of that is so profound, that border patrol can't manage it. So they are just releasing people all over small town Texas. They're wandering around in droves and packs, begging and asking for food, and handouts, and transportation. And we just couldn't handle it. So they're just walking around out there.

Linda J. Hansen: This is another example of policies that are detrimental to our nation. We can see that this mass migration and especially illegal immigration that is affecting our nation truly destroys our sovereignty and our national security. And what would you say would be the best things that listeners can do to help prevent this and bring our immigration policies back into sensible immigration policies that both care about the immigrants and protecting the safety and wellbeing of the immigrants, but also protecting the culture of America, the security of America. And what would you recommend for the listeners to do?

Todd Bensman: Well, there's really a limited menu of options at this point if you don't like this. If you want to return some semblance of control to the border, you have to vote in people who will do that. And right now, you have Republicans who are in the minority in both the chambers, and the White House is Democrat. And they have turned over immigration policy to very far left progressive liberals from the Bernie Sanders camp. Those are the ones who have done this.

So those people would have to, if you want to do something, you just have to vote. And you have to make sure that your representatives when they do win or if they do get power back in the chambers, that they use it to halt appropriations, to bring attention to these things. To force hearings, public hearings to require that their representatives eliminate the Flores loophole. I don't have time to go into that, but the Flores loophole. Google the Flores loophole and demand that it be ended. That has to be ended. The asylum laws have to be reformed. The loopholes in that have to be closed up. 

There are certain things that are just a few things like Flores, the asylum law that are the main drivers of this. It doesn't have anything to do with climate change or bad governance in Central America. Remember, there's people coming from 150 countries. We're not going to nation build Haiti out of this thing. So that whole thing is sort of a faint. It's a misdirection. We're doing something. Don't worry about it. Let them all come in, in the meantime for 30 years of nation building. We need to get onto this idea that there are policy things that draw mass migration. And you either click the yes, the green light, or the red light on these things. Flores loophole has to be closed up first and foremost, and the asylum system has to be fixed or taken off limits, put off limits to ineligible economic migrants. We have to have policies that deal with those two or three things. And this would be over overnight.

One other thing is the countries of Panama, Costa Rica, and Guatemala have to close their borders. If those countries closed their borders, we saw this during the pandemic, they did close their borders in coordination with one another. And it shut it down. It ended. And we saw that happen. It was a like a laboratory experiment that went successful. And today, they've got their borders wide open and they're busing the people through as a matter of official government policy. So we have to demand that diplomatically, we force Costa Rica and Panama to shut their borders down, and Colombia too.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, your comments remind me that ideas have consequences and policy matters. And elections have consequences. So it matters who's elected. We as citizens need to be alert and aware, and engaged in reaching out to our elected officials at all levels of government. And for the employers listening, I hope that you will take note of all of this. And one, find ways to explain this to your employees so that they can understand how their jobs are at risk, how their livelihoods are at risk, how the safety of their families is at risk because of these policies. But also, please in your employment practices make sure you're following legal employment practices. Don't hire illegals. Make sure that you are conducting your business in a way that does not support this illegal immigration that's happening to our nation. Our nation is being destroyed from within and from without with this border crisis. But we are truly being destroyed from within as we are being invaded. So please stand up to it.

I invite you to learn more. Todd has many writings available, and he's appearing regularly on various media outlets. So you can follow him. Todd, could you please give all your social media information so people can follow you and learn more about this on a more regular basis?

Todd Bensman: Sure. Well, I'm on Twitter. @BensmanTodd at Twitter. And I'm on GETTR, tbensman at GETTR. I have a Linkedin account. You can join that. And I have a website toddbensman.com where you can see all my writings for years. And everything's there. It's a big library of my stuff.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, that is great. And I really encourage listeners to go find him there. I follow him on GETTR regularly and watch his interviews and read his articles. And that is what inspired me to have him on the podcast.

But also, you will want to read America's Covert Border War: The Untold Story of the Nation's Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration. That is his recent book. And as I mentioned before, it's a chilling reminder of why we need to protect our border security. So thank you Todd. Do you have any other closing statements before we sign off?

Todd Bensman: No. You got another couple hours. It's a big topic, but thank you for having me. I appreciate it. 

Linda J. Hansen: It is. Well, maybe we can have you back maybe after the Title 42 date, and we can update the listeners on that and help people understand how to protect our nation and how to protect their families in the midst of this immigration crisis. So thank you.

Todd Bensman: Thank you.

Linda J. Hansen: Thank you again for listening to the Prosperity 101 podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share, and leave a great review. Don't forget to visit prosperity101.com to access the entire podcast library, to order my newest book Prosperity 101 - Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck. Or to enroll you or your employees in the Breakroom Economics online course. You can also receive the free ebook 10 Tips For Helping Employees Understand How Public Policy Affects Their Paychecks.

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