Live from Music Row, Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed founder and president of LIBRE, Daniel Garza to explain Title 42, what will happen once it expires and the serious crime taking place at the McAllen, Texas-Mexico border.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line, Daniel Garza with LIBRE wants to talk about Title 42, which is set to expire this coming week. Daniel, welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
Garza: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be with you this morning.
Leahy: Tell us, Daniel, a little bit about LIBRE. What does LIBRE do, and what do you do at LIBRE?
Garza: Simply, I’m president and founder of the LIBRE initiative, which has been around now for over 10 years. To put it simply, we defend and honor our Constitution, our constitutional liberties, and freedoms. We believe in a free people, a free nation, a free market, and mobilize the Latino community across the country to make sure that we preserve that.
Leahy: Where are you based, Daniel?
Garza: I’m out of McAllen, Texas. Right here.
Leahy: I’ve been to McAllen, Texas. Great place to live.
Garza: A great place to live.
Leahy: Daniel, tell our audience, what is Title 42? Is it set to expire, and what will happen if it does?
Garza: It’s basically an executive order that was put into place during the COVID area, or era sorry, it’s a restriction that blocked migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. or at least kept them on the other side of the Mexican border until their case was heard or adjudicated. But it’s been executed very loosely.
If you’ve seen a very porous border, at least it gives the government authority to make an immediate decision to hold people back. But the way it’s been handled currently has allowed this crisis to worsen. And what’s happening at the border, as people have seen, is staggering.
It’s an unmitigated humanitarian crisis. It’s created a bonanza of illegal opportunities for cartels and human traffickers. And really, it’s an affront to our system rule of law. But if you remove Title 42, believe it or not, it would worsen the situation because they wouldn’t have the authority to have immediate deportation back and hold them in Mexico.
Leahy: What you’re saying is Title 42, an executive order, in essence, that during COVID that allowed border patrol agents, if somebody crossed illegally, to keep them out of the country until their case request for asylum is adjudicated. It’s been enforced sporadically by the Biden administration, but it could be enforced now.
That is about to have litigation about it. I’ve heard conflicting reports. Is it going to end? I think Ken Paxton, the attorney general down in Texas, has filed some lawsuits. Where does it stand right now? Is Title 42 going to end or is there a litigation that will stop it from ending?
Garza: Yeah, you’re right. There’s conflicting reports. Judge Emmett Sullivan had issued a decision to vacate and end Title 42, but apparently, it’s still in the books because of some other decision that was made. Honestly, I don’t even know where it’s at.
Our judicial system right now is so messed up, but the point is also one of the issues with Title 42 is that it when you process somebody and you deport somebody under Title 42, that violation doesn’t hang with them, doesn’t stick to them, and so they can re-violate our immigration laws.
Unlike, under our normal laws, when you process somebody, they are prohibited from reentering the U.S. for 10 years. So it’s not all a panacea either. Remember, this is a temporary program. It’s instituted by the President, not by Congress. And I think Americans really are tired of temporary Band-Aids.
We need permanency and certainty that any reform will be a step towards progress on the issue. Not this kind of back and forth where judges are involved. And there’s no certainty or clarity to it. It just muddles up everything like DACA.
Leahy: So you’re in McAllen, Texas, which is just a couple of miles from the border there with Mexico.
Garza: Half a mile.
Leahy: Half a mile. So on a typical day in your zone, how many illegal immigrants cross into the country? And what’s going to change if and when Title 42 ends? Will it be just a flood of immigrants? I saw one report that said it’ll be like 15,000 a day. My goodness.
Garza: Yes. Before the crisis, there was just from Las Penitas to La Jolla, which is about a 10 mile zone here where the wall is, I remember border agents telling me that 1,000 people would get through a day. And that’s because, of course, they intercept folks and then they go and process them in the office.
And then the cartels know when there are gaps, where there are openings, and that’s when the people flood in. And they know that through radar and heat-seeking kind of technology. Now, God knows how much it is. It’s probably five times, 10 times what it was before. And really to ignore what is happening here in McAllen and across the entire border is to allow child sex trafficking, rape, and cartel recruitment of vulnerable migrants.
There are hundreds of deaths of migrants that are crossing through really treacherous conditions that are inhospitable. And we’re seeing this unabated money laundering throughout the Rio Grande Valley here where I live. And thousands of stash houses that now litter the region really endangering local residents like myself.
And not to mention, of course, the marijuana, meth, cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl. Reynosa was just designated just across the border here, the bloodiest region in all of Mexico. It’s a really dangerous situation.
Leahy: What is a stash house?
Garza: A stash house. They have these sort of transportation hubs that the cartel has set up where they are trafficking people from one side of the border to the next. And to get them to the points of origin, depending on how much money you paid, they can also set you up with temporary housing.
And they’ll house like over 100 people in, in one house alone, just a regular residential house. And here’s the thing. For a while now, the federal government has been doing the jobs for the cartel by actually flying people to their destination of choice by plane or by bus. And so it’s just really fascinating what is happening here.
And it’s just a topsy-turvy world where our system is so overloaded that all they’ll do is just take a name that they’re provided and then fly them to wherever they’ve asked to fly with the promise that they’ll return for court. It’s that silly.
Leahy: What’s the solution to this problem?
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Daniel Garza” by Action Institute. Background Photo “U.S.-Mexico Border” by Amyyfory. CC BY-SA 4.0.
This whole thing is about as overblown as killer bees.