Jeh Johnson: No Quick Fix to Migration Woes

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And next to the immigration crisis on the U.S. southern border. The Biden administration is planning to roll out a set of new asylum restriction that some critics claims are so strict they echo Trump’s. The new policy would deny some migrants asylum if they cross the border illegally or failed to first apply for safe harbor in another country. Jeh Johnson was secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama. And he joins Michel Martin to discuss how the issue today is even more challenging than ever.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Mr. Secretary, Jeh Johnson. Thanks so much for talking to us once again.

JEH JOHNSON, FORMER U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: A pleasure to be here again.

MARTIN: So, you served as President Obama’s the secretary of Homeland Security for four years, from 2013 to 2014. Back then, you said, the situation at the border was a crisis. Now, apprehensions at the border are at an all-time — well, they are at levels that we haven’t really seen in some two decades. Just before we sort of dig into the details, why do you think that is?

JOHNSON: Well, first. Michel, there were times when we saw spikes while I was in office. May 2014 comes to mind. We had, that month, 68,000 apprehensions on our southern border, which back then, nine years ago, did feel like a crisis. Now, of course, the numbers are multiples of that. The problem is bigger. It is also true that the level of resources that border security personnel in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico have, are much bigger as well. But the problem is definitely bigger now. And it is a crisis in multiple respects. A, numbers of 250,000 a month — 150,000 a month even overwhelm the border patrol’s ability and ICE’s ability to keep track of all of these people, to process all these people, to place in the immigration courts, all these people. And frankly, it overwhelms the communities in the southwest or along our southern border, in Texas and Arizona, to try to absorb these numbers into their local charities, their volunteer organizations. So, numbers like this are a crisis, and we should not become — you know, we should not look at this in any sort of normalized way.

MARTIN: Why do you think it is happening now, the common wisdom here is that the sort of informal networks, or however — people who are trying to make the decision to cross are making it, are anticipating the end of Title 42, which was the Trump sort of era mechanism to rapidly deport people citing a public health emergency?

JONES: From owning this problem for the 37 months that I did, there are certain basic lessons that I believe remain true. One, the push factors are the predominant driving force behind people showing up on our southern border. The problem is bigger now in 2022, 2023, because you have Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti contributing to this problem. When I dealt with it in 2014, it was principally Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and people from El Salvador. Now, you have these additional countries with whom we have almost no diplomatic relationship to engage in the process of repatriating them. That is number one. Number two, the smugglers exacerbate the message. They are like used car dealers who say that, the sale is going to expire at the end of the week. You’ve got to go now. So, there is a bit of a feeding frenzy, a snowball effect to this. And so, you see numbers increasing like they are because people see other people leaving — heading north and decide it is time for them to come to. And the other corollary to this problem, the hard lesson I learned, is that we can do certain things to enhance enforcement on our southern border, which will have an almost immediate impact on the numbers. Because illegal immigration is a very information sensitive phenomenon, it reacts sharply to information about perceived changes one way or another. But so long as the underlying conditions exist in these sourced countries that are driving families to make this basic decision to leave, this problem is going to continue to persist. And the numbers are always going to laps back to their longer-term trend lines. No matter what you do in the short-term.

MARTIN: But in the near-term, as you certainly know, the Biden administration has announced this new policy or — it is a proposed policy. It’s open for public comment now. And the details are that it would basically create a presumption of illegality if you don’t meet certain conditions, right, which would make it easier to deport people. It says that, you know, most — if you cross the southern border illegally, if you don’t notify the authorities that you are coming through this app, or if you don’t apply for asylum in a country that you have passed through, which is, you know, most likely in Southern Mexico. And obviously, the, you know, advocates say that this is as inhumane as anything that the Trump administration, you know, envisioned. So, just, what is your top-line reaction to this?

JOHNSON: Well, first, nothing this administration has done approaches the level of inhumanity in the policies of the Trump administration. That was deterrence on steroids. Separating children from their parents, separating infants from their mother is inhumane and it violates just basic laws of decency. OK. Now, my view is that what this administration is doing is built off the success they had with Venezuela last fall. They basically created a policy for those coming from Venezuela to say, there’s a right way and a wrong way to come here. Let’s create this legal pathway for you to come here and apply for asylum. Follow that. Don’t just show up on our southern border. That program saw some success because the numbers of Venezuelans, after that program was announced, declined significantly. The basic point here is you can’t padlock a burning building. You have to give people away to leave legally and safely. And so, the administration is building on that to say that we are creating these lawful, safe mechanisms for you to seek asylum in the United States. Here is the way you do that. You know, use this app or apply in country or apply in Mexico and your asylum claim will be considered. And so, they are trying the Venezuela experiment but on the much larger scale. I have no doubt that once this policy goes into effect there will be legal challenges to it. People have a basic right, if they qualify for asylum in this country, to receive asylum. Under the law, even though you might qualify legally on — for asylum, because you have a well-founded fear of persecution in your home country, there are certain things that can make you ineligible for asylum. For example, if you are a convicted felon someplace. And so, the administration is trying to broaden those bases for in eligibility to encompass, not following the pathways that are prescribed. I am sure there will be legal challenges to that. And we will see how the courts consider it.

MARTIN: Well, how — what do you consider though? I mean, I’m interested in your opinion.

JOHNSON: Our immigration courts are hopelessly backlogged. And it takes years to adjudicate in asylum claim. And migrants know that. Two, three, four or five years. The other point about the way we adjudicate these asylum cases, many cases, on the front end of the process, the migrant has to establish a case of credible fear. I have a credible fear that if I’m returned to my home country I will be persecuted. That bar is relatively low. The ultimate bar to asylum is much higher. And so, you have a certain high percentage of people qualifying on the front end for credible fear. And on the backend, for ultimate adjudication of fear, that number — that percentage is much lower. Migrants know that, people know that and many, because they are so desperate to leave where they are coming from and stay in the United States or willing to stay here, even for a couple of years while their asylum claim is pending, they get to send money home to families and they are making a basic choice that they are better off doing that and staying in Venezuela or Guatemala or Haiti or Cuba.

MARTIN: What I’m getting from you is you don’t really think this policy is going to hold up. You think this is a way to slow the flow right now, is to send a signal that it’s just not going to be easy and to kind of take the pressure of? Is that really what this is?

JOHNSON: There are — Michel, there are push factors and then there are aspects of our broken immigration system that operate as magnets. The sheer length of time it takes to adjudicate an asylum claim is a magnet. The two differing bars between credible fear and the ultimate case for asylum is a magnet. The push factors are the biggest factors. They overwhelm the system. But our broken system does have these features that operate as magnets. And what this administration is trying to do, at least in the short-term, it is to address those facets of our broken immigration system that are serving as magnets. Measures like this will cause a downturn in the numbers of apprehensions on our southern border. We saw a downturn in the month of January 2023, for example. But so long as the underlying push factors persist, the numbers are always going to revert back to their norms, to their longer-term trend lines.

MARTIN: So, I get what you are saying about the push factors. I mean, the push factor is something that, I think, people have talked more openly about. I mean, certainly, it is something that Democrats talk a lot about.

JOHNSON: Right.

MARTIN: They talk about the effects of climate change. They talk about the effects of gang violence. They talk about the effects of kind of political instability in, you know, certainly, in, you know, Haiti right now. But are those — is there really a will to address those factors? And does the United States really even have the capacity to address those factors?

JOHNSON: One question is, do we have the will to do this? The second question is, can we do this? So, let me start with the can we do this? Through a sustained effort, I believe we can. For example, in 2016, my last year in office, we got Congress to appropriate $750 million to three countries, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador for this very purpose. For example, enabling a coffee grower in Guatemala to get better at delivering his product to the market gives people in that country hope. It enables them to encourage workers to stay in Guatemala because they have a future. Funding for anti-corruption efforts can work. Now, getting to the will we, you know, do we have the will? I fear that we do not. People want quick fixes to this problem on the southern border. And it is not a problem amenable to quick fixes. Just like there’s no quick fix to climate change. This is not something that can go away just because you issue an executive order or you, you know, somehow close the southern border. So, we have to come to the recognition that this is a problem that requires years to solve and address. And I have talked to both Democrats and Republicans over the years who recognize that. Politically, is it attractive? Not very. But the reality is, if we’re going to address this, and this one of the hard lessons I’ve learned when I own this problem, you have to address it at the source.

MARTIN: Why is this so hard? I mean, this is a situation where, you know, really going back years, Democrats and Republicans all agree that this is a problem?

JOHNSON: This is so hard because it has become over politicized. Over the last, I will say, 10 years, this has become a lightning rod, red meat over politicized issue. Frankly, many in our politics today stoke racism around this issue, the so-called Great Replacement Theory, which is embraced by high percentages of Americans. People are somehow afraid of the browning of America from our southern border. So, it’s become an over politicized issue. And politicians — politicians on the right, frankly, stoke this and it has become very difficult to reach compromise on this. As recently as 2013, Comprehensive Immigration Reform passed the U.S. Senate with 68 votes. That is a whole lot of Republicans as well as Democrats. At some point along the way, this became a talking point and it has become more attractive on the right and the left to politicize this issue, scream at the other side, call them evil and not do the hard work to come together and try to reach compromises, which too many people view as politically costly.

MARTIN: OK. Well, you’ve identified some the — sort of the push factors on the right, as it were in terms of, you know, not getting to solutions. Where have the Democrats failed? How have they contributed to failing to solve this problem?

JOHNSON: There are certain things that no matter what you do people on the right and the left are going to yell at you. On the left, they get upset if we arrest people, if we detain, if we deport people. The logical extension of that is open borders. On the right, we should arrest everybody, detain everybody and deport everybody. Somewhere in between is an equilibrium that we have to try to achieve, which is exceedingly difficult to achieve as long as the politicians among us are simply in their extreme opposite corner screaming at each other.

MARTIN: The last time Congress passed Comprehensive Immigration Reform was in 1986. There was a Republican president and Democratic-controlled Congress.

JOHNSON: Right.

MARTIN: Just based on your experience in this area, do you have a sense of what would it take to get back to some sort of bipartisan consensus?

JOHNSON: When the Republican Party decides for itself that it is in its political self-interest to embrace immigration reform, for a long time, that was not their view 1986, 1980s during George W. Bush’s presidency, he was all about immigration reform, and as recently as 2013. The Republican Party has walked away from that and doesn’t want anything to do with this issue except to scream and complain about the numbers crossing the southern border. Again, it all tracks back, Michel, to where do the political incentives lie? Or at least, where do politicians perceive that their political incentives lie? In my opinion, Americans should judge — voters should judge their representatives based upon stuff they get done not simply what they scream about and what they say they stand for. If we had a report card for members of Congress for the number of bills they sponsored and got passed versus simply, where do you stand on all these overheated issues, we’d see a lot more getting done in Washington, including immigration reform.

MARTIN: Jeh Johnson, former secretary of Homeland Security, thanks so much for talking to us once again.

JOHNSON: Thank you, Michel.