Nearly 500,000 Kids ‘Trafficked’ in 3 Years at Southern Border: Chad Wolf

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “We’ve seen about 400,000 individuals being paroled into the United States … This is a historic abuse of the parole system,” says Chad Wolf, former Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and now executive director of the America First Policy Institute.

What is the parole system and what is it meant for?

What are the root causes of the crisis on the Southern border? How are current policies exacerbating it? And how are cartels exploiting the crisis?

“We’re approaching about 500,000 unaccompanied children that have been trafficked across that border,” Mr. Wolf says. They have to pay the cartels or work off the debt when they get to America, he says. And the Biden administration did away with background checks and vetting of sponsors in America for such unaccompanied minors.

“It’s almost as though the federal government is the last link in that human smuggling chain. They’re facilitating that child going to a sponsor—and not knowing who that sponsor is. Are we putting that child in harm’s way or not?”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Chad Wolf, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Chad Wolf:
It’s good to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Mr. Jekielek:
When we interviewed last, the border situation was very different. What did it look like then, and how does that compare to now?

Mr. Wolf:
I would go back all the way to 2019. 2020 was obviously Covid, so it looked different for a variety of different reasons. But in the latter part of 2018, and certainly in the first part of 2019, we had a crisis. We described it as a crisis, but nothing that compares to what we see today. We started seeing illegal apprehension numbers along that southern border start to rise.

We started doing a variety of different things, like Remain in Mexico or the migrant protection protocols and asylum agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. We started removing more and more individuals that didn’t have a legal right to be in the United States. Then, of course, Covid hit and everything started to grind to a stop.

As the Biden administration came on in January of 2021, they inherited a border that for a variety of different reasons was somewhat orderly and secure, probably the most secure border that I’ve seen in my lifetime. At the beginning of the Biden administration they dismantled all of that.

Mr. Jekielek:
In terms of the numbers that the Trump administration dealt with, how does the crisis then compare to today?

Mr. Wolf:
I’ll give you some monthly numbers. In the heart of our crisis, which is really the summer of 2019, we probably saw 40,000 to 50,000 illegal apprehensions over a given month. Compare that today to 250,000 to 300,000 in a given month. The order of magnitude is three or four times as much. The Biden administration, specifically along that border, has blown any type of numerical value or metric off the chart. It’s very hard to describe what they’ve turned that border into as far as illegal apprehensions, the gotaways, the crime, and everything else that follows up.

Mr. Jekielek:
If the number of apprehensions are larger, then there are also the gotaways. Please remind us about the gotaways.

Mr. Wolf:
As people come across that border, they do so in the eight or nine different sectors of the Border Patrol. Border Patrol is apprehending these migrants as they come across the border. In many cases, the migrants sit down and wait for Border Patrol because they know, at least under the Biden administration, they’re going to be released into the interior of the country.

But there is a segment of individuals that don’t want to be apprehended by Border Patrol and law enforcement. They want to abscond. They want to get away for a variety of different reasons. Probably some are national security threats. Some are public safety threats. They probably have a criminal record in their home country.

They know that if they are picked up and their background is run, they will be removed pretty quickly, so they don’t want to come in contact with law enforcement. Under the Biden administration there have been anywhere between one point eight and two million known gotaways. Those are the individuals that Border Patrol has seen on a radar feed or camera feed. They also have other ways to determine if large groups are crossing in areas where they don’t have agents along that border.

There are one point eight to two million known gotaways. What is the number of unknown gotaways? These are the individuals that we never see, we never encounter, and we don’t know if they cross, because we don’t have full domain awareness along that border.

Mr. Jekielek:
These are people who are trafficking fentanyl and other drugs. Human trafficking is a big thing which is very important to you. There is a significant number of people on terrorist watch lists that have been apprehended, which raises the question of how many have not been apprehended.

Mr. Wolf:
To your first point, any individual that comes across that border is being trafficked. They are being trafficked by the cartels. They have to pay a premium price of $5,000 to $35,000 to get across that border, depending where they are coming from. Chinese nationals pay more than someone from Guatemala or Honduras. They’re all being trafficked by the cartels in a variety of different ways.

We hear from the Biden administration that they have a humane border security policy. That’s not true, because they are encouraging more and more individuals, in numbers that we have never seen before, to put their lives in the hands of traffickers, smugglers, and cartel members that don’t care about life. They don’t care about anything but making more and more money. That really concerns me.

To your second point, obviously, there are the national security implications of what’s going on along that border. Border Patrol agents usually sign up for this job. They go to Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, New Mexico, for five or six weeks to learn border security. They want to stop bad people and bad things from coming into this country. They want to be on the line doing that national security mission.

They have not been able to do that over the course of the last three years. They’re mainly in Border Patrol facilities just processing migrants. But in a little over three years, they have apprehended about 350 known or suspected terrorists on terror watch lists identified by the U.S. government. That’s a startling number—350 in three years. Contrast that with all four years of the Trump administration, when there were about 16 apprehensions.

Why have we seen an increase in those types of individuals? It’s because they know what the rest of the world knows, which is if you want to come into the country illegally and remain in the country, now is your time to do that, given the policies that have been set up by the Biden administration.

Let’s look at those policies. There are many dimensions as to how this actually happens. There are the incentive structures that are associated with these various policies. There’s also various organizations which are funded to facilitate this process. For whatever reason, they believe that this is the right thing to do. It’s a combination of all these things, at least that’s how I view it.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please explain to us how this whole complex works.

Mr. Wolf:
There’s a variety of different reasons that we see the increase in the numbers along that border and one is the catch and release policy. You’ve heard that term a lot. It implies that Border Patrol will catch them, but then they get released into the interior of the country. You’re a migrant and you’re coming to the United States for any number of reasons. Maybe you’re an economic migrant. You want a better job and you want a better life for your family.

If you get into the United States by claiming asylum, that’s probably a fraudulent claim, because an economic reason is not the primary reason to claim asylum. But yet you’re released into the United States only hours later, or maybe a day later. That’s your end goal. We can talk about asylum and parole. But for the migrants, all they know is that they came in illegally. They were apprehended by law enforcement and released.

As long as you have that incentive structure in place, which we currently have had for three years now, you’re going to see more and more individuals, because that’s the end goal—to be released into American communities and then be able to work. If you’re claiming asylum, you can get a work permit five months later. If you get parole, you can get a work permit almost immediately. They’re here, they’re able to work, they’re able to send money back, and they’re able to do a variety of different things.

Until you disrupt that, until you start enforcing the law, both immigration enforcement and border security, you’re going to see that continuum continue to occur. That’s why we’ve seen these numbers remain at historically high levels. In February 2024, there were over 256,000 encounters with illegal aliens nationwide. That is an astronomically high number.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk about the distinction between parole and asylum, which is actually quite significant.

Mr. Wolf:
It is. But most people kind of conflate the two terms. You can come across and claim asylum. Let me back up, there are lots of countries that do this. They call them refugees. We are one of the only countries in the world that actually separate refugees from asylees, but there is no difference. It’s only that one is overseas and another one shows up at our southern border. We get some from our northern border, but mainly from our southern border. They are refugees or now called asylees.

But they have found through the cartels and others that the biggest loophole to get into the country and to remain here is to claim asylum. There are some very specific requirements that need to be met under U.S. law to actually have a valid asylum claim. It’s very difficult to prove in court, which is why you see many of these individuals never make it to court. They abscond into the U.S., never to be seen again, but they know that.

People will come across the border and claim asylum. But they don’t get a court date until five or six years later because there’s so many people overwhelming the system. I can comment on this because I’m actually quite familiar with asylum.

Mr. Jekielek:
Having focused on China-related issues, I know that with religious persecution the asylum system is a very important system. Even though it’s very onerous and difficult, there are still quite a few people that come in through the asylum system. It’s very valuable, but this is an abuse of that system.

Mr. Wolf:
Yes. There are individuals around the world that need the asylum protections that the U.S. offers. During the Trump administration, the questions were, “How do you identify those people that have legitimate asylum claims? How do you get those protections as soon as you can, so you don’t have to wait five or six years and be in this limbo state? How do you remove fraudulent asylum claims, so you’re not overwhelming the system?”

Those are the issues that we tried to address during the Trump administration. The Biden administration has these numbers. They know these statistics. Yet, they’re not really doing much about it, so you see this abuse of the asylum system occurring at the same time.

You also have something else happening under the Biden administration, which is the abuse of the parole system. They have found out that to claim asylum, you actually have to be on the southern border. You have to have a foot inside the United States, for lack of a better phrase. The Biden administration said, “We’ve got individuals coming from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti that are trying to make it to the southern border and claim asylum. Why don’t we just give them parole? Why don’t we give them parole in their home countries and then fly them into the United States?”

Now, we see this abuse of parole, which should be on a case by case basis. This is in U.S. law, and parole has got to be for either national security reasons or significant public benefit for the United States. Yet, we’ve seen about 400,000 individuals being paroled into the United States. That’s an abuse of the parole authority. Certainly the Republicans in the House believe that, which is one of the primary reasons they impeached Secretary Mayorkas.

You see this abuse of the parole system happening. Maybe viewers won’t understand that as soon as you place someone in the parole system, you’re essentially acknowledging they have no asylum claim.
They have no legitimate reason to be here in the United States other than you paroling them in. Yet, we’ve done this with almost 400,000 individuals, primarily from four countries.

We were told by the Biden administration that if we paroled these folks, they would be put in jail and we would see less of them, in order to take the burden off the southern border. In fact, we’ve seen just the opposite.
We’ve actually seen more and more of these individuals trying to make it here.

Mr. Jekielek:
Parole basically means that the U.S. has some interest in having these people in the country. That’s how I’ve always understood it.

Mr. Wolf:
Yes. Either it’s of significant public benefit or there’s a national security reason. People get paroled in if they have to testify at a major trial or they need a health care procedure that they don’t have in their home country, so they are paroled in. This idea of paroling individuals in because they are from a very poor country like Venezuela, Cuba, or Nicaragua is not a legitimate reason to be let into the United States.

There are a lot of poor countries in the world. There are a lot of individuals that would like to pursue a better life here in the United States. There are legal avenues and legal pathways to do that, but parole is not one of them. Historically, both Republican and Democrat administrations have never done this. This is a historic abuse of the parole system.

Mr. Jekielek:
Many people in the organizations that are participating in this deeply believe that borders are a thing of the past and shouldn’t be there in the first place. They are very serious about making this happen because they feel borders are meaningless.

Mr. Wolf:
Yes, it goes back to understanding the foundational principles that immigration policy is based on. With the Biden administration, its foundational principles line up closely with the far-Left of the Democratic party. They think that anyone should be able to come into the country for any reason; if they’re seeking a better life, if their home country is dangerous, or if they don’t like their next door neighbor. Whatever their reason, the United States is the shining city on the hill, and they should be allowed to come into the United States.

That’s not U.S. law. But that’s the policy foundation that many of these nonprofit, non-governmental organizations operate on. That’s how the system has been devised for the first three years of this administration, and it’s still ongoing into the fourth year. Their main concern was how to process more individuals across the border more quickly.

It wasn’t how to stop the illegal traffic. It wasn’t how to deter this type of behavior. It wasn’t to make sure that people aren’t being raped and murdered and by the cartels and the smugglers. It was just how to keep the flow going as quickly as possible. That is one of their foundational principles.

Their second foundational principle is that no one should be removed from the country, and that the U.S. is the only place that you can seek asylum in the entire world. There are other safe countries, both in Central America and South America where people can claim asylum. But you see a lot of venue shopping, where they say that they can only claim asylum and be safe in the United States. That’s just not the case.

If you believe all of those things and you devise a system that way,
which the Biden administration has done well, then that plays into the goal of these nongovernmental organizations south of the border that help move migrants north, in loose contact with the cartels. But we also see on the U.S. side of the border, once they’re released from federal government custody, these NGOs take over there as well.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk about these NGOs. There are a whole variety of agencies, and some of them are actually government agencies. There are multinational agencies like U.N. agencies. Then there are also nonprofits which are part of this system. Please explain to us how all of that works.

Mr. Wolf:
All NGOs are not the same and we need to be careful. It’s not just one grouping and they all have different roles. Some have been around for decades helping individuals, taking care of them, and sheltering them. Some are in it for the right reasons. Some are in it for the wrong reasons, and we have seen the money flowing to them over the last three years has increased dramatically.

Mr. Jekielek:
Where does that money come from?

Mr. Wolf:
It obviously comes from the private donations they get. But in the last three years billions of dollars have flowed from the federal government. That’s from American taxpayers who are now funding these organizations to help shelter, transport, and in many cases provide attorneys, so that the migrants can then either sue or contest what the U.S. government is trying to do to them. Just imagine the U.S. government is saying, “You have no legal right to be here,” yet the U.S. taxpayer is funding their attorney to say, “No, they do have a right to be here.”

Mr. Jekielek:
Those are the ones that don’t get released into the country.

Mr. Wolf:
It’s for anyone and just depends on where they are in their asylum proceedings. That’s a really important point, too. The U.S. has a lot of these non-governmental organizations they are working with. Many of them are being used by the Biden administration to provide shelter and housing, because Border Patrol facilities are overwhelmed, and DHS facilities are overwhelmed.

As soon as they release these individuals in Brownsville, in Del Rio, and in El Paso, they’re out of federal government custody. Then the NGOs take over and say, “Where do you want to go? Do you want to go to New York?
We’ll buy your ticket,” which is reimbursed by the American taxpayer.

They’re going to New York or Chicago and when they get there, there are facilities and shelters they can go to. Again, it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more that you fund this, the more that you build these facilities, the more that you encourage this, the more individuals are going to come.

Mr. Jekielek:
What about the U.N. agencies? How do they fit in?

Mr. Wolf:
Overall, U.N. agencies are more closely aligned with the goals of these NGOs than they are with the enforcement regime that we saw during the Trump administration. They also believe that anyone should be able to claim asylum anywhere they want, and should remain in the United States while that occurs, despite U.S. law saying something very different.

Certainly, when I was at DHS and working with these groups and these individuals, it was always a challenge because they didn’t like enforcement action. They didn’t like holding individuals accountable for their actions and their decisions. They take a very different approach, so it’s difficult to work with them.

Mr. Jekielek:
You mentioned how the funding works. There are private donors that can go to any of these entities. Then you mentioned billions of dollars of federal money. At one point, I heard the number was $20 billion.

Mr. Wolf:
It’s not only DHS funding, but it’s also HHS funding and other parts of the federal government as well. It could certainly be up to that level.

Mr. Jekielek:
Is there an international flow of money supporting this?

Mr. Wolf:
From a governmental perspective, I’m not that aware, other than the U.N. providing them funding. But you’re definitely going to have some other wealthy individuals that are overseas that are contributing to this as well. The network of how they are funded has always been a challenge to really uncover. Many of them are very upfront about it and others are not upfront about it, so it’s hard to see.

But if they’re vying for U.S. dollars, they have to do that in an open competition like any other company. The DHS states what they need, and it’s very specific. There are only so many of these groups that can actually fulfill that mission, so that money continues to go to them. There’s the emergency management agency FEMA which all of this grant money is flowing through. There is a long list of all of these different NGOs or charities that have gotten money over the last three years.

Mr. Jekielek:
Systems are being overwhelmed. Mayors of sanctuary cities are saying that this is too much and that something needs to be done. Hospitals are unable to deal with these overwhelming costs not associated with health insurance. There are multiple examples of system overload. You can have an open border or you can have a social welfare state, but you can’t have both.

Mr. Wolf:
That is an interesting point, because when we talk about overloading the system, these numbers really started in 2021. We’re now sitting here in 2024, and we’ve had several years of this. In 2021, after only six or seven months, you heard from the governor of Texas and the Republican governor of Arizona at the time that their border towns were being overwhelmed.

People were saying, “That’s just what happens,” and didn’t pay real attention. But they kept saying, “Our towns are being overwhelmed.
We’ve got a population of 20,000, yet we’ve got 10,000 migrants in town. We can’t sustain this.” But you only started seeing national outrage when it started moving to New York City, Chicago, Denver, and to all these other areas.

In large part, they were sanctuary cities, but you had blue city, Democratic mayors saying, “What’s going on here? Why is my city having an influx of illegal migrants? We have a hard time sheltering them. We have a hard time taking care of them. What is going on?” Only then, in the public conscience, people started saying, “Wait a minute. What happens along that southern border doesn’t just stay there.”

The end game for a lot of these migrants is not Brownsville, Texas. It’s not even Houston, Texas. It’s Chicago and New York and other cities throughout the country. Only when we started seeing large numbers going to blue, sanctuary cities, did people start to wake up and say, “Perhaps this is a bigger issue than we acknowledged.”

The Governor of Texas and others along that border were telling you from the very start, “This is going to be a problem because we’re already overwhelmed. It’s seven, eight months into 2021 and we’re overwhelmed.” You’ve only seen that increase. It shows you that this is a bipartisan issue.

It’s not just a Republican issue that says the border is out of control. You have Democratic mayors and Democratic governors saying, “The border is out of control. Please do something about this because we can’t sustain this over the long run.”

Mr. Jekielek:
Obviously, the health care issue is very significant.

Mr. Wolf:
That’s a good point, because people often say, “What’s wrong with all the illegal immigration that we see here? Aren’t we better for it as a country?” I then respond, “Yes, we’re a country of immigrants, but you need to come the right way. You plan for it. You need to be vetted. We need to understand who you are.”

With this influx of folks coming across the border, it’s not only the illegal activity and the fact that they’re breaking laws by coming across that border, but it’s all the downstream effects. The health care systems get overwhelmed. It’s the same thing with the public education system. All these children are coming into public schools where English is not their first language, it’s their second language.

Are the school systems resourced to address those public health and public safety issues? Law enforcement is asked to do more and more, particularly along the border. Yet, their resources have remained the same. We’re only starting to realize that these downstream effects are a real problem.

Mr. Jekielek:
I don’t know the situation with wages, but the assumption is that the illegal aliens will make less than Americans or green card holders. Have you looked at the numbers? Is this actually taking jobs away from Americans, or is there just such a huge job market right now that that doesn’t matter? How does that work?

Mr. Wolf:
There is a lot of inconsistent data on this front. There is certainly a concern that the individuals you’re allowing to come in are now competing for low skilled jobs they could be taking away from Americans.

Very few of these individuals are coming in with advanced degrees. There’s a whole different visa program that deals with that. But this is certainly an argument to be made, because it’s not just 30,000 coming in. In one month, December of 2023, we saw 300,000 come in.

If you continue this month after month and year after year after year, it is going to have some effect on U.S. jobs and wages. I have not seen enough data to say how it is affecting things at the moment. Undoubtedly, it’s going to affect things in the long run. We just may not have seen it yet. After saying all that, there are certainly some low skill jobs here in the United States that are usually taken by migrants.

We call them seasonal workers or H2-A workers, which allows them to come in to do a seasonal job and then leave and go back. We know that this visa system is badly abused. We talked about that during the Trump administration. There’s a number of things that you can do on the legal immigration side. We have about 75 different visa programs that allow individuals to come in to either visit or work.

Does some of that need to be reformed and looked at? The answer is, “Yes.” But until you get that border under control, there’s really no reason to do all that if an individual can come across the border and then be released, or get parole and then get a work permit the day after.

Mr. Jekielek:
We talked about trafficking and how effectively all of this coming through the border illegally is trafficking. Let’s talk about child trafficking, which is a vulnerable population, and also the trafficking of drugs and fentanyl. How has this changed due to these increased numbers?

Mr. Wolf:
Let me just say that anyone trafficked anywhere is terrible. When we think about trafficking, the most vulnerable populations are the ones we need to understand and see what is occurring. I obviously think about tender age children that are being trafficked across that border. There’s a term that we use called UAC’s [Unaccompanied Alien Children].

We have seen that number explode during the last three years, because as you see more and more individuals coming, you’re basically seeing every population, whether it’s single adult males, whether it’s families, or whether it’s these unaccompanied children. All of these numbers are exploding, because of the overall numbers increasing as well. Over the course of the Biden administration, we’re approaching about 500,000 unaccompanied children that have been trafficked across that border.

These are children that don’t come across with any parent or any guardian, or any family member at all. They are trafficked by the cartels. They are either having to pay a fee upfront or they will have to work that off later.
They will have to pay a fee once they get here. Unfortunately, all of these children are being abused, particularly if you’re a female.

We have these numbers and know they’re being abused, but the Biden administration hasn’t really done anything about it and hasn’t been putting safeguards in place. During the Trump administration, we tried to do a number of things because all these individuals are released to sponsors here in the United States. They go to Health and Human Services and then they are released to sponsors.

We increased the vetting of those sponsors. We wanted to know who was coming to pick that child up. But we also wanted to know all the other adults in that household where that child is going. Who are they? We wanted to do the background checks and the vetting on all of that.

The Biden administration canceled all of that because that takes time and their facilities were backing up with more and more children. They said, “The easiest way to get the children out of the facilities is to loosen the vetting requirements,” which I think is extremely dangerous.

Mr. Jekielek:
A whistleblower, Tara Rodas, came on the show a while back. She could identify patterns and ended up finding examples of these sponsors being people of ill intent and cartel-related. There are specific cartels that are monetizing people and drugs.

Mr. Wolf:
Yes. The cartels only care about one thing, and that is money and how to make more of it. They care nothing about the human misery, the human toll, and the death and destruction of these individuals. But going back to the children aspect and how that works, a child is trafficked across that border. A Border Patrol agent picks them up, transfers it to HHS, who then hands them off to a sponsor.

It’s almost as though the federal government is the last link in that human smuggling chain. They’re facilitating that child going to a sponsor and not knowing who that sponsor is. Are we putting that child in harm’s way or not? We should be doing everything that we can to first discourage parents from putting their children in the hands of cartel members to come here. But if they do get here, then we should be understanding who we are releasing these individuals to.

Of course, there are some fraudulent family units that come across. Some are being trafficked. During the Trump administration, we did rapid DNA testing along that border to determine if a parent with a child coming over is actually the parent. We want to make sure we take that child out of that dangerous situation. Again, the Biden administration has done away with that as well.

Mr. Jekielek:
What about drug trafficking?

Mr. Wolf:
Obviously, drug trafficking is a big issue. Today, it kills about 100,000 Americans annually. That is happening in no other place in the world. There is no other drug that is killing that many Americans every year. The majority of the precursors for fentanyl come from China. They come into Mexico and are manufactured into fentanyl, which then comes across the southern border.

Mr. Jekielek:
These precursors come through ports which are run by the Chinese Communist Party. There’s a symbiotic relationship that has developed there.

Mr. Wolf:
Yes, there is a connection, 100 percent. Then the drug is flowing through that southern border and obviously coming into American communities everywhere. Public enemy number one for the United States should be the Mexican cartels. We know where they operate and what they do. We keep saying that it’s a problem. It’s time for the Mexican government to do something about it, but they have their limitations for a variety of different reasons. It’s time for the U.S. government to do something about it and say, “You are killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, and this is no longer acceptable.”

Mr. Jekielek:
Please tell us what would be effective, because various things have already been attempted.

Mr. Wolf:
For the longest time, we have looked at this issue as a law enforcement issue. Agencies like the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms], or the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration], have all done law enforcement operations. Even elements of DHS would do this from time to time. You had some success there. You were able to bring certain people to justice here in the United States and bring them to a court of law. That’s all great.

But as soon as you pick up one, as soon as you take the head off of the cartel, someone else pops up. I don’t know that you’ll ever be able to eradicate them, but how do you diminish their power with the trafficking and obviously the illegal narcotics? There’s a variety of ways you can push the Mexican government to do more.

Again, some would say that they’re actually compromised, that the current president of Mexico is actually very closely tied to some of these cartels. What you need to do is you need to use leverage. President Biden needs to use his leverage to say, “I’m tired of seeing this happen day after day, year after year. I’m looking at designating these groups as foreign terrorist organizations.” I’m not saying that he should do this, but he should use military force as leverage to get the Mexican government to do more.

There are things that you can do on the offensive cyber operations. There are things that you can do in the intelligence community. You need the will to do it, and you’ve got to make it a priority. It has never been a priority in the history of our country to do this to such a close neighbor. But the fact is they are so close and there are ungoverned elements of that country that are impacting Americans every day. I would say it should be issue number one.

Mr. Jekielek:
Drug warfare is an official form of unrestricted warfare that the Chinese Communist Party employs.

Mr. Wolf:
Yes. Some people ask, “Does the Chinese government know about this?” The answer is, “Of course they do.” They’re indirectly killing 100,000 Americans every year. Some would argue that we are at war with China.

Mr. Jekielek:
China says that they are in a people’s war with America.

Mr. Wolf:
We need to understand and recognize the reality of what’s going on there. There are many other Chinese threats to the homeland in a variety of different ways. This is just one. It’s very important for people to understand that this is not just happening because the cartels are powerful. Yes, they are powerful, but they’re getting a lot of these precursors from mainland China.

Mr. Jekielek:
Many of the people coming across the border are single, military-aged males, which is obviously a concern, and there’s quite a number of Chinese as well. It’s actually a mix of people. Some actually do have a credible asylum claim, and they see that as an opportunity to get in. Then others are military-aged males that don’t have that credible claim. How do you view this?

Mr. Wolf:
Yes, that’s right. The system is so overwhelmed at the moment that it’s hard to identify those Chinese nationals that are fleeing persecution from the Communist Party. But it’s not the totality of all the individuals coming over. Again, it’s hard to identify who is, and who isn’t, when they won’t even get a court date for six years. Who knows what’s going to happen to them in six years?

With the rise of Chinese nationals coming across that border, as you indicated, most are single adults. Overall, if you look at the entire population coming across the border, the majority are single adults. There are a lot of families and children, but the majority continue to be military-age, single adults between the ages of 18 and 35. The numbers of Chinese nationals have spiked over the last three years so significantly that something is going on.

I can’t put my finger on it, but there seems to be an effort underway to push more and more Chinese nationals. Now, that could also coincide with a very lax border security policy of the Biden administration. The two could be working hand in hand. But we’ve never seen these numbers of Chinese nationals coming across that border illegally.

Mr. Jekielek:
I’ve heard that the census is conducted based on the total number of people in various states vs. the number of people who can actually vote. This is being used as a strategy to increase the number of electoral seats. Obviously, the Democratic Party would be saying that. What do you make of that argument?

Mr. Wolf:
The census is used for a variety of different things, for funding for social services and things of that nature. A number of Democratic politicians have recently said, “They need to be counted for redistricting purposes or for other things.” This idea that certain districts are going to have an influx of illegal aliens that gets them more representation in Congress doesn’t feel right to a lot of Americans. That’s not the way the system was designed to work. But what we see, again, under the Biden administration is that that’s exactly how they designed the system over the last three years. Many Americans are kind of shaking their head and saying, “This doesn’t make any sense.”

Mr. Jekielek:
Is this intentional?

Mr. Wolf:
We’ve had some Democratic politicians actually say, “We want more migrants to come in for redistricting purposes. They’ve said the quiet part out loud, frankly. Now, these individuals at least cannot vote in federal elections, but laws can change. Certainly at the state level, they are allowing these individuals to vote in state elections. That’s a slippery slope to them voting in federal elections.

Then you’ve got the Democratic Party saying, “Voter ID should not be needed to vote in federal elections. You can see the concern of most Americans who say, “We’ve got an influx of individuals coming over. They’ve said they want them for redistricting purposes. There’s no voter ID to vote in federal elections. How do we know individuals who are voting are U.S. citizens?” Many Americans are saying, “This doesn’t feel right.”

Mr. Jekielek:
In municipal elections, there have been laws passed that facilitate this non-citizen voting.

Mr. Wolf:
Particularly in Arizona. Arizona has a few of those laws at the state level.

Mr. Jekielek:
Here we are today. If you were to get your old job back, what would you do? What happens on day one?

Mr. Wolf:
It’s a big undertaking. You’re not going to be able to turn this around overnight. But there are certain things that you can do, starting on
day one, that sends a signal not only to the American people, but also to the cartels, the smugglers, the traffickers, and everyone that’s involved in this chain of events. You send a signal that it’s not going to be business as usual as it has been the last four years and that we’re actually going to go back to enforcing border security law.

You can restart border wall construction in priority locations that we know have been stopped, essentially, for the last three-and-a-half years. That is a force multiplier for Border Patrol. It’s not the only solution out there. There’s other things that you’ve got to do. The Remain in Mexico program is very effective, and it can be approved upon.

There are things that can be done that start to slow that flow. You’ve got to turn that around the whole catch and release policy. You’re talking about changing the incentive structures and changing the policies. The Biden administration, which we haven’t talked about, came in and said, “Anyone coming across that border illegally, that alone is not a priority for removal.”

That’s crazy. They’ve broken the law. If they don’t qualify for asylum, they
should be a priority for removal. They shouldn’t be here. They have no legal right to be here, so let’s remove them. You’ve got to let ICE law enforcement officers do their job and start to remove individuals.

Removing or repatriating individuals has somehow become a dirty phrase, but it’s an integral part of immigration law in our country. You have to be able to pick people up that don’t have a legal right to be here and to remove them. That is the deterrence in the system.

The Biden administration has taken that deterrent away for the most part. Now, they’re turning people back around under Title 42, and they’re removing some, but the overall percentage is very, very low considering the number of folks coming into the country.

Mr. Jekielek:
How many people are in the country? What are the estimates?

Mr. Wolf:
That’s a tough question. In the Obama administration, the figure was around 11 million, and that was several years ago. Then, of course, we have what we have. My guess is that it’s north of 20 million. The question is, “What do you do with those individuals?”

Mr. Jekielek:
If you’re talking about deportation, that would be quite a large operation.

Mr. Wolf:
Yes, it would be a tough job. But just because it’s tough doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. You have to get at it on day one, and continue to build on it as the days and the months and the years go by. You put priorities in place, you get forced multipliers in, and you incentivize folks to leave early, what we call voluntary departure. These are individuals that are here illegally, but if they voluntarily depart, then they can come back into the country legally.

If they don’t leave voluntarily and you have to remove them, then they’re barred from coming back into the country legally for either five or ten years. It depends on the circumstances. Is there an incentive structure that we can put in place that says, “If you came here illegally, you need to leave. Then you need to apply to come here legally and come into the country the right way.” There’s a variety of different things that should be tried and can be done. They’re all hard, and they’re not easy. Otherwise, they would have been done already. But we should get to work at it.

Mr. Jekielek:
Then sorting through the actual asylum cases, the U.S. has always been a leader in taking people in who need asylum.

Mr. Wolf:
I certainly was on the receiving end of this during the Trump administration, where we were called all sorts of names and told that we hated migrants. That’s just not true. There were on average a million green cards that the U.S. government gave out every single year. We are a very welcoming country, more so than any other country in the world. My view is that you just have to come in the legal way.

It’s the illegal immigration that I have the most concerns about because of the illegal narcotics and the effect on U.S. communities. Most Americans have a basic sense of fairness. They say, “Look, I’m playing by the rules. I’m paying my bills. If people want to come to the country, they should do it the legal way.” They see this influx of folks coming in illegally.

Again, the people that are coming in today are very different from what we saw maybe a decade or two ago. They feel very entitled. They’re asking where their plane ticket is. They’re asking where their hotel is. We’re getting a different type of migrant here in the U.S. which will impact what we see in the years to come.

Mr. Jekielek:
Recently, there was someone who beat up New York police officers and was released very quickly, then proceeded to treat everybody with contempt.

Mr. Wolf:
Yes. There are these unfortunate incidents like with Lincoln Riley in Georgia. Migrants are coming in, committing crimes, particularly in sanctuary cities, then getting released very quickly only to commit crimes elsewhere in the country. That’s unfortunate, but that’s what we’re seeing today. Every crime committed by an illegal alien is preventable, because in theory, they shouldn’t even be here in the first place.

The law says if you’re coming across that border and you claim asylum, you either need to be detained during the pendency of your court proceedings, or you need to wait in another country. That’s what we did with Remain in Mexico. All of what we did was based on U.S. law.
There are different ways to accomplish the end goal, which is making sure that people have access to the asylum system and are getting the protections that they need. This idea of just releasing everyone into the country, not understanding who they are, and figuring it out on the back end is not the way that our immigration enforcement policy should be run.

Mr. Jekielek:
We’ve been getting anecdotal reports of increased illegal immigration.
Have you heard about this?

Mr. Wolf:
I’m certainly seeing that and hearing about that as well. You are paroling upwards to 380,000 folks from four countries, Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. These countries are obviously poor and have a lot of crime.

Mr. Jekielek:
Is it true that Venezuela was actually sending prisoners?

Mr. Wolf:
I don’t have any specific information on that, but undoubtedly they are. Some of these prisoners are in that parole population that is coming into the United States. That’s why you see the increase of certain cells that are popping up in New York, like MS-13, which has more of an El Salvadorian origin. But you’re also seeing these other gangs that are more Venezuelan-based.

It’s not because it just happens to be like this. It’s because we’ve paroled over 100,000 Venezuelans into the country. If you parole that many individuals, you’re going to get bad actors and bad elements into the country as well, not to mention the gotaways who came through, the folks you don’t even know about.

Mr. Jekielek:
Texas has been trying to deal with the border using its own resources. That has actually caused the border entry points to shift west.

Mr. Wolf:
The governor of Texas is in a very difficult spot when the federal government is not doing its job and not deterring individuals and holding them accountable. From 2021 to 2023 there was an influx of individuals in South Texas along that river. The governor has a duty under the state of Texas Constitution to protect Texans and Texas communities. He is faced with a situation where the federal government is not doing that. They are fighting him.

Their goal is to process more and more migrants into the country. He said, “Fine, if you’re not going to do it, then I’m going to do it.” He uses maritime buoys, razor wire, SB4, and the laws passed by the legislature in Texas. The Biden administration says, “No, you can’t do anything. Preemptive federal law says that immigration law is passed by the federal government. Only we can do this.”

They’re suing him to say that you can’t do this because that’s our job.
Yet, they’re not doing their job. That’s his point, which is fine. They can stipulate that it is the federal government’s job to do this. But when they don’t do it, then he has a duty to protect his constituents there in the state of Texas.

That’s what he is doing. There are governors around the country that are sending resources and National Guardsmen to help them protect the state of Texas, because of the outsized number of border miles in the state.

Mr. Jekielek:
One of these cases made its way up to the Supreme Court. For the time being, they are allowed to apply this new law.

Mr. Wolf:
Yes, SB4. The Fifth Circuit actually stopped it again. It is going back to the Supreme Court very soon where they’ll eventually rule on the merits of the case. They’re back at square one, and can’t implement that law, which was to hold individuals accountable and to remove them back into Mexico. They shouldn’t have to do this. I agree. A lot of people say, “This is unprecedented. No one has ever done this before.” I would agree with that.

But we’ve never seen the federal government not do its job. Whether we look at Bush one, Clinton, Bush two, or Obama, everyone has taken steps to increase border security, some more than others. The Trump administration did a lot more than others. The Biden administration is the first administration that continues to take steps backwards to not secure that border. The American people are suffering as a result of that.

Mr. Jekielek:
What is the role of Congress here? There are comments on our articles related to the border asking, “What is Congress doing about this?”

Mr. Wolf:
There is a role for Congress, absolutely. There are things that could be reformed in Congress. In 2021, Congress didn’t pass a single law regarding immigration. They didn’t pass a single law during the Trump administration either. But in 2021, they didn’t do anything. Yet, the crisis arose in 2021. Why is that?

Because of the policy decisions of the Biden administration, they took 94 executive actions on immigration in the first 100 days. Not a lot of those were good and it caused the crisis. Congress didn’t create this crisis in 2021. Yet, the Biden administration is saying that they’re the only ones who can fix it. That’s just simply not the case.

The president and the secretary of DHS have a lot of inherent authority given to them by Congress over the years. They could put a number of policies in place today that would bring this crisis under control. They just choose not to. They choose not to implement some of these things.

Instead, they are passing the buck to Congress saying, “You guys make the hard decisions. You do what you can do and we will implement that,” instead of actually using the authority that they have. We used it during the Trump administration. Again, we didn’t get any new authority during the Trump administration. We looked at Congress and said, “Okay, they’re not going to pass anything. What can we do with our own authority that we already have?”

That’s when we came up with Remain in Mexico and other things. This administration needs to do its job. It needs to do the hard work and use the authority that it has to bring the crisis to a conclusion and stop blaming Congress. It has been this blame game for a while now.

If you have followed this narrative, they say that it was the Trump administration’s fault that more and more people were coming to the border. Then it was a seasonal problem. Then it was a cyclical problem. Then it was about the root causes of migration. Then it was the government of Mexico’s problem. It’s everybody’s fault but their own. The majority of Americans are seeing right through this.

Mr. Jekielek:
A final thought as we finish up?

Mr. Wolf:
This crisis is a humanitarian crisis. The migrants that are coming to that border that are being trafficked, that are being abused, that are being raped, and in some cases losing their life, are on a magnitude that we have never seen before. The immigration policies over the last three years of the Biden administration are perhaps the most inhumane policies that we have ever seen.

Mr. Jekielek:
Chad Wolf, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Mr. Wolf:
Thanks. I appreciate being here.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Chad Wolf and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.