NBPC’s Brandon Judd on Biden’s Border Debacle

CLAY: We bring in now Brandon Judd. He’s the president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents rank-and-file Border Patrol agents nationwide. He had an op-ed yesterday with Fox where Brandon reported that in the month of November, the Border Patrol recorded more than 52,000 got-aways on the southwest border, enough people — I’m reading from his article — to fill Joe Biden’s hometown of Greenville, Delaware, 22 times.

Brandon, is there any suggestion that the Biden administration, basically throwing up their arms and reembracing what the Trump administration had done with the Remain in Mexico policy, is going to fix what has been a sieve at our southern border? Or is possible for the Biden administration to fix the mess that exists right now?

JUDD: It is possible for them to fix it. Are they actually going to implement Trump’s policies? No, they’re not going to. They’ve locked themselves in a corner. They know darn good and well that if they implement the Migrant Protection Protocols, more commonly known as Remain in Mexico, they know darn good and well that if they implement it properly, illegal border crossings will drop to historic lows and if it drops to historic lows, then they’re gonna have to admit that they were wrong.

They’re gonna have to admit that Trump got it right, that his border security policies were good, and that they were wrong for causing all the chaos that they caused. They’re not going to do it, which is why they’re slow rolling it right now. I mean, we’re only enrolling around 30 people at any given time into the Migrant Protection Protocols. So, no, I don’t think that they’re actually going to actually implement it properly ’cause they know if they do, it’s gonna work.

BUCK: Hey, Brandon, it’s Buck. So basically, they’re saying that they’re doing this so that then they can say they’re doing something, because the alternative is the continuation of the de facto open-border status quo. I haven’t been down there in some months. The last time I was down there at the border, Brandon, they were just…

Border Patrol agents were telling me they were overwhelmed, overstretched — to put it mildly — and that people who want to run elicit contraband, drugs, human smuggling into the country apart from the situation of the migrants who are surrendering themselves and claiming credible fear. It’s all out of control. Can you give us a sense of where we are right now with the overall year numbers? How many illegals have actually crossed in, how many got-aways are we having a month? I think that puts ’em into perspective for everybody. And are we hitting all-time records? Have we ever had a year that’s this open?

JUDD: So in fiscal year ’21 which ended at the end-of-September, we broke all records in both apprehensions in got-aways. We had more than 400,000 got-aways in ’21 alone. We had nearly 1.7 million apprehensions, and the first two months of this fiscal year we already have 100,000 got-aways. Now, in the op-ed I wrote 52,000 in the month of November, but you couple that with the 48,000, just under 48,000 in the month of October, and we’re already at a hundred thousand in two months.

We’re on pace to go 600,000 got-aways and on top of that we’re on pace to make two million apprehensions! This administration refuses to define the problem. And if they refuse to call this, the chaos that they have caused — if they refuse to define the problem, they’re not gonna come up with the solutions that they need. All they say is, “Well, it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge. It’s not a crisis. It’s a challenge.” But if you don’t define it as a crisis, you’re not going to develop the policies, the programs, the operations that is going to allow us to fix the problem. They’re just not going to.

CLAY: Brandon, thanks for coming on with us. Several months ago, the Fox News was able to report on a mass collection of illegal immigrants, many of them Haitian, underneath a bridge, if I remember correctly, in Del Rio, Texas. They then cleaned up that huge mass of people. But my understanding is the vast majority of those people were just allowed into the country. How many people that are coming across the border illegally are just being allowed to enter into the country?

Being given a report, that they have to show up at court or whatever else, but then we just never end up hearing from those people? You talk about getaways and people who get across the border and all those things. But we’re releasing a lot of these people into the country with the hope that they’re gonna show up for these court proceedings when many of them aren’t. Isn’t that a reality of what’s going on?

JUDD: It is. It is. It’s called a Notice To Appear. We will issue notices to appear or Notices To Report, NTAs, NTRs. With those NTAs we give them a de facto legal status. So, imagine this: You cross the border illegally, you break our laws, and then you’re rewarded by being given a de facto legal status and release. The Border Patrol alone released approximately 150,000 people with NTAs in fiscal year ’21. Then ICE released just as many.

Then you also have to consider the unaccompanied children that were released to HHS OOR, Health and Human Services Office on Refugee Resettlement, they then released people to foster homes. It was nearly 600,000 people were released in fiscal year. So, no, I mean, those are astronomical numbers.

CLAY: Wow.

JUDD: 400,000 got-aways and then 600,000 people were released with NTAs or NTRs. A million people! That’s how many people we added illegally to our population in fiscal year ’21.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. He’s got a great op-ed on FoxNews.com published yesterday. Brandon, where does this go? At some point you have to wonder how it’s possible that this can continue as it is with the numbers just growing going month after month without some real… I mean, the American people are very — actually when they poll them — dialed in on the issue of immigration.

They think that illegal immigration’s an important challenge to deal with. And yet there seems to be not only no political urgency in D.C. right now under the Biden regime to do anything about it, but obviously there’s a general media blackout. One of the reasons we wanted to have you on is just keep making sure that we get the information out there all across the country. Where do you see this going? Basically, I’m asking you, does it seem like the people in charge right now like what’s happening?

JUDD: Yeah, it does. It does. It looks like they’re pandering to their base. It truly feels like this is a lame-duck administration. It feels like they know that they’re a one-and-done and so they’re gonna try to get as much done to satisfy their liberal base that they possibly can. You know, it’s funny, because as much as much as I love to put on the uniform and going out and patrolling the border, I’m heavily involved in politics for my membership.

And any intelligent person knowing what Biden’s age was like, we all wondered when he won, “Is he really going to run for reelection because if he is, he’s going to be a centrist. He’s gonna be right down the middle.” Obama in his first term, he was pretty much down the middle — and then of course when he won the reelection, that’s when he started legislating through executive order. But this administration it truly feels like they know that they’re a one-and-done so they’re trying to do as much to satisfy their liberal base as they possibly can in the four years they have it.

CLAY: Brandon, Joe Biden’s people have tried to make a big deal of the fact that he’s not been to the border, as if not mattering, and that he had been to the border at El Paso back when he was running for president, I think, in 2008 or whatever they tried to say. Why does it matter for the president, based on the people that you represent, to come to the border and see for himself what is happening there?

JUDD: As much as I hated the Haitian crisis, as much as I hated seeing how much stress my fellow agents were under in that particular stretch of border, it was great that the American public got the visual. It was great that they got to see what is happening to the border. At the top number we had about 14,000 people under that bridge. But we’re arresting between five and 7,000 people every single day, every single day.

We’re arresting more than a caravan every single day. And unless you come down here and actually see it, you will not get — you will not understand — the full magnitude of what’s taking place. If you don’t go into the processing centers… I look back in 2019 when Vice President Pence went to McAllen, he went into the processing center. He saw how bad it was, and it was like night and day, the changes that they make.

So, if you do not come down and actually see for yourself what is going on, it’s just like defining the issue. If you don’t see it, if you don’t define it, you’re never gonna come up with solution. And that’s the problem. And let’s be clear. Joe Biden didn’t come to the border. He drove through El Paso. It’s a far cry to drive through a border city than actually going out on the border, looking and seeing whether or not we have the resources that are necessary, seeing all of the different things, aspects on the border. All he did was drove through El Paso. He’s never been to the border.

BUCK: Brandon, I just want to know before you go get back to speaking to the men and women of Border Patrol, how is their morale? How are they feeling about the mission and what they’re being asked to do day in and day out?

JUDD: In the 24 years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve never seen the morale lower than what it is today. You know, we put on the uniform, all law enforcement — this goes for law enforcement across the nation. I don’t care if it’s the Department of Public Safety, your local police officers, your county sheriffs. Every law enforcement officer, they put on that uniform because they want to do a job and protect the American public. We care about the American public.

But when you put that uniform on and you know that all you have is people that are trying to defund the police, not putting policies in place to take care of the smash-and-grabs, not doing anything to actually secure the border, you really wonder why. Why is it that I continue to do it? And, you know, thank goodness — thank goodness — to my fellow agents for having that dedication.And even in the face of what is taking place right now, they still, every day, put on that uniform, go out, do the best that they can to protect the American public. That’s what drives them.

BUCK: Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Counsel. Brandon, really appreciate you coming by. Talk to you again soon.

JUDD: Thanks. You guys have a good one.