MISSION, TEXAS — Our SUV rumbles down generally deserted roads away from the Rio Grande as House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul talks about the border crisis in his home state of Texas and what officials on the U.S. side of the border are doing — or not doing — in response. Among his concerns: dangerous cartels using drones to surveil Border Patrol and the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Editor's Note: For part one of Townhall's one-on-one interview with Chairman McCaul along the border, see here.
McCaul tells me that — among other details he and the bipartisan delegation he brought to the border over the weekend gleaned from briefings with border officials in South Texas — "this sector, Rio Grande Valley, they have 20 drones."
"That's unacceptable," McCaul says. "They're cheap, they're effective — it's cost-effective — and they're the eyes of the skies. The fact is cartels outman and outpower us when it comes to surveillance and eyes in the sky," he explains.
Earlier in the weekend, cartel drones were reported several times in a short window during a nighttime visit to the border wall in Hidalgo with National Border Patrol Council Vice President Chris Cabrera.
"I remember a time when they were running in, trying to avoid Border Patrol," says McCaul. "Well, what do they do now because the cartels instruct them how to get political asylum? They literally turn themselves in," he says answering his own question. "Border Patrol has no choice but to take them, temporarily detain them, and because we don't have the space, release them into society," McCaul succinctly summarizes of the catch-and-release formula employed by the Biden administration.
"It's not rocket science," McCaul says of the incentive for illegal immigration — driving demand (and profits) for cartel smugglers in Mexico — created by catch-and-release. "You know, they've always fought more detention space, they've always fought more immigration judges," he notes of the Biden administration's reluctance to do anything that would cut down on the need for and number of illegal immigrants released into the U.S. interior.
"We need a system with judges and detention space," McCaul emphasizes. "But if we could change that one policy, you know, I'm not sure you would even need all that," he posits of the positive changes that could follow the end of catch-and-release.
Another way the Biden administration has ramped up its releases — regardless of whether an illegal immigrant would normally be eligible — is its abuse of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) One app used to schedule an appointment for surrendering to border agents at selected ports of entry including in Eagle Pass and Hidalgo.
McCaul says the government needs to "do away with the app" and calls it a "Trojan horse."
Like the rest of Biden's open-border agenda, it's a fast track to being caught and released in a slightly more official manner, but a process that's indistinguishable in practice from the way illegal immigrants enter across the open border and turn themselves in to the first border agent they can find.
"It's a failure, it's a joke," McCaul adds of the app that other House committees discovered has been abused by the Biden administration to release more than 95 percent of "inadmissible aliens" into the U.S. interior. "Yet they tout it as some cosmetic fix to the problem," McCaul says of the government's use of the CBP One app.
Instead, McCaul reiterates that the Biden administration must be "willing to deal with the political asylum issue and the catch-and-release issue." But they're not, and the cartels continue to exploit and profit off of Biden's border crisis as a result. "They knew we were open for business," McCaul explains. "I mean, why do you think eight million people tried to get in since this guy- president- was elected?"
In addition to his other policy prescriptions to enhance border security and cut down on the number of illegal immigrants turning up at the border or even attempting to answer the Biden administration's incentive to make the dangerous, cartel-enriching journey, McCaul suggests moving the processing and detention process south of the U.S. border.
Like other steps McCaul has pursued during his time in the House or helped previous administrations implement, McCaul says he talked to the Trump administration about this idea. "We could build a detention facility just north of Guatemala, on the Mexican side," he says of his theoretical "choke point" some 700+ miles away from the borderlands we're driving through. There, rather than inside the U.S. along the border, individuals seeking permission to enter the U.S. would have to be processed. "They would be detained there, and we would have a system that can move things expeditiously through virtual court proceedings," McCaul adds.
As McCaul explains it, the Biden administration's border policies benefit cartels in Mexico and make it virtually impossible for American border officials to do their job. With each executive action or piece of policy guidance issued by Biden, the draw for illegal immigrants has increased. The following surges of illegal immigrants — setting records again in December 2023 — then see no help from the Biden administration. Whether it be processing and detention facilities or manpower, Biden doesn't do anything to help. Instead, he expands the use of government tools such as the CBP One app to further abuse the system to make it more attractive and easier for would-be illegal immigrants to venture to the U.S. As a direct result, cartels are raking in money, and continue to be able to "outman and outpower" American border agents who are hogtied and overwhelmed without help from the federal government.
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