How Fraud at the Border Hurts the Needy and Helps the Wealthy. Interview with Border Reporter Todd Bensman
Almost everyone wants to help downtrodden and poor people seeking a better life. But according to Todd Bensman a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and longtime reporter, the public is seriously misled about current immigration at the U.S. southern border. Right after his July testimony at a joint hearing of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement and the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, I had the opportunity to interview Bensman.
Rosenberg: Your book, "Overrun," published this year about what you call the "greatest border crisis in U.S. history" was an eye-opener to me. A few years ago, the news was full of reports of crowds and caravans of people trying to cross the southern border yet reportage has virtually evaporated.
Bensman: Yes, when it gets bad enough at the border, the international press does show up. They did for the Haitian migrant crisis. Through early 2019 you couldn't throw a rock in any direction without hitting an American reporter now. Since then, almost all policies are designed to avoid any replication of that kind of scene.
For example, families with children under seven, unaccompanied minors and pregnant women were sent back to Mexico on the day before inauguration. On the day of inauguration, January 20, 2021, that stopped immediately and the new orders were for these three big categories to be allowed in. Those were considered the most vulnerable populations.
Rosenberg: Is that what they sometimes call "Catch and Release"?
Bensman: Yes. And of course word of these exemptions got around quickly; you started seeing pregnant women out there everywhere on the trail. The Border Patrol literally began welcoming migrants as opposed to detaining them and bringing them back to the bridges and pushing them back over as they had done before.
Rosenberg: What is confusing is this 180 degree turn in policy was barely covered by mainstream media.
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