Anna Giaritelli joins the podcast this week to discuss the end of Title 42—the statute put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic that allowed border agents to quickly return migrants over the southern border—and what it means for us today. We discuss the latest border data, the reaction from governors and Members of Congress, and the policies that can protect our borders, offer opportunity, reward hard work and merit, and honor the rule of law.

Anna Giaritelli joined the Washington Examiner in 2015 and focuses on homeland securityimmigration, and border issues. Anna has traveled to the border on more than 40 occasions since 2018 and has covered human smuggling, the evolution of the war on drugs, domestic terrorism, and migration trends. She is currently based in Austin, Texas.


TRANSCRIPT

Beverly Hallberg:

And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg. And on today’s episode, we explore the end of Title 42, and that is the statute in effect during the COVID-19 pandemic that allowed border agents to quickly return migrants over the southern border. So we’re going to talk about what that means today. We’re also going to discuss the latest data on the border, the current reaction from governors and members of Congress, and the policies that can help protect our borders, offer opportunity, reward hard work, and merit and honor the rule of law. And the person who’s going to break it all down for us is Anna Giaritelli.

Anna Giaritelli joined the Washington Examiner in 2015, and she focuses on homeland security, immigration, and border issues. Anna has traveled to the border on more than 40 occasions since 2018 and has covered human smuggling, the evolution of the war on drugs, domestic terrorism and migration trend. She’s currently based in Austin, Texas. And Anna, it’s a pleasure to have you with us today.

Anna Giaritelli:

Definitely. Thank you so much.

Beverly Hallberg:

And before I get into my first question, I do want to let our listeners and watchers know that IWF is both pro-immigration and pro border security. We think it’s a false choice that you have to choose one over the other, but we also want to let people know that we do have a petition that you can sign if you want safe borders. If you think the Biden administration should act now in securing our border, please go to iwf.org and sign the Safe Borders Petition.

Now, Anna, to you, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on this episode today is because you were on the border, you covered this issue from the border. Can you tell us about your experience in doing so?

Anna Giaritelli:

Yeah. And I think a really unique perspective too is being a woman on the border brings a whole different view of things. So I’ve been covering the border since about 2018. This is year six now over 50 trips down to Southern border, Puerto Rico, California, both different coasts and the Canadian border as well. And really the biggest takeaway in that time is I think the demoralization of border patrol. There’s 19,000 agents nationwide. Most of them are based on the southern border. And what we’ve seen the last two years with President Joe Biden in office, I mean it’s objectively, effectively, factually true, more people attempting to cross over the border from Mexico than any time in border patrols, 99 year history. So that’s where we’re at two years in, nothing’s changed under President Biden for the most part. And that’s the situation that I’m seeing every time I go down the last two years.

Beverly Hallberg:

And I’m glad you brought up the border patrol because we got news recently that US Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz is set to retire at the end of June. He seems to be tying that to the end of Title 42. I guess seeing that through, what do you make of the significance of this, if any?

Anna Giaritelli:

Yeah. So I actually broke the story last night. He announced yesterday in a call with some senior officials in Washington. So Raul Ortiz has been in the job a little less than two years. He’s a 32 year border patrol agent, which is the longest I’ve ever heard of. Normally it’s about 25 is when you’re going to get kicked out for retirement. He did, one of the things he wanted to do internally, he was telling people was make it through Title 42, this policy that’s been on the books for three years under COVID and coming out on the other side now. We used to see border patrol chiefs. It’s a non-political position, unlike the Secretary of Homeland Security. Biden doesn’t pick the chief, it’s actually the secretary of DHS who taps the person for the job. We used to see them last four, a little more than that years. And now we saw Rodney Scott for a year and a half or so, the previous chief and Raul Ortiz, the current chief, he’s going to have been in there for 22 months when he retires.

So we’re transitioning into under a new leader, just talking with agents every single day. Even weekends, I haven’t met a single agent who’s happy with how he performed. They viewed or teased as not standing up for them and the job they believe they’re supposed to be carrying out at the border, more so catching and releasing people into the country than catching and removing people. And that’s due to a whole number of issues. But the messages I’ve been getting overnight from agents is that they’re very happy that Raul Ortiz is retiring. Of course, that opens them up to who is going to be the next chief. And it doesn’t have to be a border patrol official. It could be totally random person.

Beverly Hallberg:

So I was hoping you could take us through that process of what border patrol agents experience on a day-to-day basis. You just mentioned it there, it’s what they had done under Title 42 is hopefully capture and then send back to where they came from. But you’re talking about capturing and releasing into the country. How do they determine who they release? What are the certain policies in place that force them to make certain decisions?

Anna Giaritelli:

Yeah. That’s a million dollar question. I would need a whiteboard to get through everything. And in simple terms, it depends a lot about who you’re coming with. If you’re an adult or a child, if you’re coming with a family member, what country you’re coming from, what the circumstances are, if you get caught or not. At this point, under Title 42, which is the pandemic policy, it was the CDC saying, to the border patrol, “Hey, we’re giving you permission and we recommend you don’t take anybody who crosses the border illegally into custody because it could lead to the spread of coronavirus further in our federal facilities.” So border patrol, instead of apprehending you on the border, I see you crossing, taking you into custody and taking you to a station to be processed and such. They were able to literally take someone in their vehicle, go back to a port of entry where you or I would drive across and say, “Okay. You’re going back to Mexico.”

So what we’re seeing now is every person who crosses for the most part is having to be taken into custody. That means the facilities we have where people are supposed to be in and out in 72 hours, they’re overwhelmed with people coming into custody. And for, say, a Guatemalan woman who’s crossing by herself, who’s adult, she’s probably going to be returned on a flight back to Guatemala. The biggest change we’ve seen over the last few years since COVID has been going on and ended, is people from all over the world. We’ve always seen people from all over the world crossing the border. Republicans are always very quick to say, people are crossing from 150 plus countries now. We’re just seeing that now at a much higher rate. So whereas you might’ve seen 100 Chinese in one month, 10 years ago, we’re seeing 100 Chinese in just one area and there’s other areas that they’re crossing.

Beverly Hallberg:

So how many do you really think are true asylum seekers percentage wise?

Anna Giaritelli:

By anecdotal experience, I would say not many. And generically, I always explain to people there’s so many different legal terms for people coming across the border. Legally speaking, legal alien is the term. Alien refers to someone who’s outside the country and how they might be getting in. Immigrant is a legal term that refers to someone who’s going through a legal process to get here. But now we typically refer to people coming into the country undocumented illegal, authorized, those sort of things.

Beverly Hallberg:

And out of curiosity, let’s say somebody coming from China, let’s say, what is the likelihood they are going to be released into the country? Is it a pretty sure bet for them?

Anna Giaritelli:

It depends on a lot of different things. And every part of the border operates by slightly different protocol. So the chief of, say the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas might say, we don’t have the means to be as nitpicky as we want to be because we have so many people coming into custody, we need to release people. So they might be slightly less stringent than say, over in Tucson, Arizona where they have more manpower or time. Everybody is getting vetted. So if you do have a terrorist, a national security background, you’re a convicted criminal in the US, that is going to come up. But we don’t know criminal records for people outside the US.

So for one of the things that Republicans have been concerned about is people coming from Venezuela in record high numbers. How do we know these people who are covered in tattoos? A lot of young men are not gang affiliated down there. And we have no way of knowing here because they have never been in the country before, but we are seeing more Chinese. And again, a lot of them are because those COVID travel restrictions have gone down over the past year in China. People are finally able to leave and a lot of people in China want to leave and want to seek refuge somewhere else. So it’s very difficult for the government to be able to discern is this a legitimate person seeking asylum or is this someone who’s trying to get in and is coming on behalf of the CCP?

Beverly Hallberg:

And you talk about everybody being vetted who goes through these border checks. What is the process like once they’ve been released into the country, how often is there a check with somebody in law enforcement, et cetera to make sure that they’re following whatever rules have been laid out for them?

Anna Giaritelli:

I just want to say in everything I’m saying, it’s like the watered down version because this is such just an incredible process. There is no one way that everything happens. And that’s part of the chaos of it all. In New York, for example, we’re seeing people wait 10 years, so crossing the border illegally, I’m getting released by border patrol. They’re typically releasing to nonprofits, churches that work with migrants rather than onto the street directly. They’re saying here, we’re dropping you off. The church will help you make arrangements. They’re not necessarily paying for your travel, but they’re helping you figure out, I have family in New York. Let me go there. And then people are being released in New York, you’re waiting 10 years before you appear in an immigration court before a judge should talk about why you crossed illegally.

Beverly Hallberg:

10 years?

Anna Giaritelli:

10 years. We’re seeing an average right now of five to 10 years of immigration courts nationwide. There’s 2 million cases pending before 600 judges nationwide right now. And the Biden administration has been able to hire more judges and cut back down on that a little bit. But it’s just an endless addition to those dockets. And technically anybody who’s not… You have any time in that process to seek asylum. So you don’t need to come across the board or exam seeking asylum. And I would say most people who do cross the border and are released into the United States have not sought asylum. But at any point in that process, they’re allowed to… And anecdotally, as I was saying earlier, most of the people I speak with migrants on the border, I ask them, “Are you seeking asylum?” And one woman who went to Atlanta, she just said, “I don’t need to.” And I said, what do you mean? She said, “They’re not going to come for me.” And that was pretty telling.

Beverly Hallberg:

Yeah. Well, you also talked to earlier about the border patrol agents having low morale. I think I’ve even seen some really horrific statistics about high suicide rates for those who are on border patrol. Tell me, when you talk to them, what do you hear from them, do they feel like President Biden is doing anything to help them?

Anna Giaritelli:

Yeah, and here’s why. The laws haven’t changed. It’s how they’re enforcing them. So their view is all these agents, 19,000 nationwide, should be out on the border doing their jobs, looking for people, taking them into custody and delivering. It’s not their consequence to deliver, but ensuring they’re in the line to see justice. Because we’ve had over one and a half million people caught and then released into the United States. Their view is that they’re not fulfilling their job to protect the country because on top of those one and a half million who got released, there’s also a thing called getaways. So that’s the people that are observed on cameras, in infrared cameras, sensors, all different types of technology on the border.

So they know for sure there are six people on this camera we see crossing. We don’t have a guy out there or a woman to go apprehend them. So they’re just going to disappear with community and then go on from wherever they want in the country. I would say early on in the Biden administration, when the numbers spiked to from 60,000 people apprehended in a month at the southern border to over 150,000 in a month, they were really upset. They were demoralized. We’ve entered the last year or so, a zombie phase, and a lot of times, I don’t know how to describe it because they’re just… One agent said, and this I think encapsulates it. “I just feel dead inside.” They don’t feel like they’re doing anything. They don’t want to be thanked for their service because they’re thinking, “Yeah, but we’re letting all these other people just into the country. We don’t know who’s getting away.”

So they can’t just quit. It’s not like you or I, if we wanted to quit our jobs, we could walk out tomorrow if we wanted. Probably not get a recommendation. They’re federal agents, they can’t just quit. So a lot of them are just struggling to get through. And like you said, suicides are at very high rates right now.

Beverly Hallberg:

And it’s got to be so discouraging to not see the end in sight. And I wanted to talk about where things are, especially with the end of Title 42. Are we expecting there to be more crossings now because of that?

Anna Giaritelli:

Yeah. Republicans have been adamant for two years that we got to end, or we got to continue Title 42 because in their mind it was we can immediately expel people instead of bringing them into custody. Personally, I’ll share my view from a factual perspective, Title 42 allowed you to return people immediately, but there’s no consequence, which means you can keep trying to enter the US again and again and again. And we saw high recidivism with the same person getting caught, sent back. Next day, tried again, caught by a different agent, tried again. They didn’t get caught this time. They must admit it into the US. So the issue with Title 42 was you didn’t have a way to deter people from crossing. There was no, why wouldn’t you try again?

With Title 42 ending, Republicans had, and even Democrats had worried, we’re going to see the surge of people that’s been waiting to come into the country since before COVID. What we actually saw was Title 42 ended on May 11th in the lead up. We were seeing 11,000 people per day apprehended at the border. For context under the Obama administration, one of his top officials at DHS had said, “1,000 apprehensions a day was a bad day.” So 11,000 I think really puts that into perspective. Since Title 42 ended, we’ve seen 11,000 a day drop to 3000 people a day. It’s actually the lowest numbers since Biden took office.

So DHS at this point is waiting to see, “We have this big rushed before it ended,” and maybe now that we’re saying, “Hey, if you get caught, we’re sending you back to your country.” There’s not a good chance you’re going to get released into the United States. We have these other lawful pathways to come instead of crossing illegally, maybe it is actually working. And I think Republicans are also just waiting to see, the impeached mayor is, you’re not hearing that the last few weeks. It’s because like, “This actually might be working as Biden reinstate, including some Trump policies that he had ended initially.”

Beverly Hallberg:

So, it’s a wait and see right now. And I know that some governors in certain states have spoken up and have wanted to help out. You had on Tuesday of this week, Governor Kim Reynolds announced that about a hundred Iowa National Guard troops and 30 public safety officers were going to be sent to the border. On Wednesday of this week, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin announced the state is sending National Guard troops to the southern border. We’ve seen, of course, governors and border states take some action as well. Do you feel that states do need to take control of this on their own because they don’t think the Biden administration is doing enough?

Anna Giaritelli:

Yeah. I think Texas was the big one to watch. They took up more than half of the border, 2000 miles. They’re on 1,250 miles of it. They’ve seen the most people crossing. And Republican Governor Greg Abbott, he’s in his third term now, he declared this operation Lone Star sent over 10,000 National Guard soldiers and state police and local police also to shift from their normal duties down to the border and beyond the highways to look for human smuggling, which they’ve seen thousands and thousands of cars pulled over for that. They’ve arrested more than 370,000 people who got past border patrol and were detained temporarily by National Guard. They can’t make the arrest and then were transferred over to state police and border patrol.

So I think for Texas, they’ve needed so much help had they had a few more states helping out with police and National Guard in 2021. But those states initially pulled all their resources back because they said, “We can’t continue to fund this indefinitely.” Abbott asked last week for more states to send their resources back in and help them. It’s interesting because we’re seeing those border apprehensions decline, and yet Texas is saying we need more help. So I’m not really sure what’s going on there, what the thought is happening now. Abbott was pushed to declare an invasion. It’s a legal procedure in which he could take a lot bolder action. And he has said he doesn’t think it’s right legally that we’re not upon that. So some Republicans from the further right have been really frustrated with Abbots approaching. He’s not doing enough.

Beverly Hallberg:

And I’m just curious from you, you talk about we have laws on the books, whether or not they’re being enforced. What do you think are the best policies that we do have to help secure our border and also to help getaways from coming in?

Anna Giaritelli:

So, if you are being apprehended at the border, you need to get before an immigration judge. When we talk about the system’s broken, I mean everybody says it’s broken, but ask someone the next time, not you, but in general, ask lawmakers what is broken about the system. They don’t seem to know. I would say the system, what it does well is you’re supposed to appear before a judge. That judge is going to say, “Hey, you don’t have a reason to be here, so we’re going to put you on a plane back to X country.” We only have so many judges. We don’t have a way for everybody in custody to immediately go before a judge. Some of the things that make that difficult are court ruling in 2015 that children can’t be detained more than 20 days at any point by the government. We saw under Obama, and again under Trump, and now, so, many families crossing, because if you have a child, they’re not going to hold you. They have to release you in 20 days, and then eventually you’re going to go to court.

Beverly Hallberg:

I just want to jump in here. So that would be the kids with cages narrative that we heard for a while, which is why they set that limit. Is that correct?

Anna Giaritelli:

So, kids with cages was more so one facility, just random facility that went up under Obama that instead of physical walls inside for rooms, they had chain fences. So it was lawmakers touring that facility who saw that and said, there’s kids being held in cages. But in general, kids get released out of border Patrol custody. If they’re by themselves, instead to the Department of Health and Human Services who will then hold them for about a month because they’re allowed to hold for over 20 days and then release the child to an adult sponsor of the country. I think the system is, it works. It just can’t be handled in this capacity. We didn’t see people beyond Mexico really coming to the country when these laws were made decades ago. We didn’t see people beyond Central America coming or people who weren’t just adult men. So it just flexes the system. And it’s weird because it won’t ever break, but it is already broken, if that makes sense.

Beverly Hallberg:

Yeah. And it sounds like the main thing that’s broken about is there’s no way to withstand all the people that are coming here from a logistical standpoint of getting them through the court system. So they just basically buy time and end up staying here regardless. And I want to talk to you about some of the people that you’ve spoken to that have crossed the border. We have, of course have heard horrible reports about women and girls being sexually assaulted. Of course there’s crime as far as you have people helping them come over here. So many of these people go through in order to come to our border. Is it usually pretty scary and fraught with issues?

Anna Giaritelli:

Yeah. Even if you’re a man making a journey to the United States from any country, if you’re involved with the cartels or doing it on your own, which it’s extremely rare, you’re putting yourself through help. It’s something that Americans, frankly, say 99% can’t imagine. I would never subject myself to it just because of what I’ve heard is. So no matter where you’re coming from, the risk you open yourself up to. It’s just the cartels throughout Mexico, even if you’re not with them being smuggled, the Mexican government, immigration officials, there’s so much extortion involved throughout the entire process coming through. Women and girls, we always hear it in our congressional testimony and hearings on the hill. Girls are put on birth control if they’re double digits in age, 10 years and up just to be safe. And it’s an expected thing. That’s something’s going to happen.

There’s a lot of shelters in El Paso, I should say El Paso in Juarez, which is the Mexican city over the border from El Paso, where women can have abortions, even girls can have abortions if something’s they’ve been raped on their journey North. There’s some pro-life ones. There’s one pro-life one I’m aware of. And most of them are just shelters that deal with medical treatments to abort babies. Yeah, it is very real. It’s hard to put into words. Truly unimaginable circumstances that they’re very unique, but then they’re the same thing at the end of the day.

Beverly Hallberg:

And what has it meant for border communities? Now, of course, we know that you have people who cross the border and are sent all over the country. It’s not just in border cities that they go to or border states. What has this meant though, for Texas and New Mexico and Arizona, for example, for so many people to be crossing into their state?

Anna Giaritelli:

So for Texas in particular, South Padre Island, probably heard of it, it’s by Brownsville, Rio Grande Valley. That’s a pretty populated area. About a million people in that little 100 mile region of Texas. So they have better resources. They have Catholic charities, a very large organization that takes  in migrants, helps them get settled. Here’s some food, here’s some room for the night. And then you’re on your way to New York City or wherever you want to go tomorrow. For other communities like Eagle Pass, Del Rio, places you’ve never heard of, except for in reference to the horse scandal maybe. Those cities like Eagle Pass there’s no Greyhound bus to get the hour and a half, two hour drive to San Antonio, the next largest city. There’s no airport in Eagle Pass.

So for migrants, over the past two years, Eagle Pass was seeing over a thousand people release into the city every day at some points. So there’s only one NGO, nonprofit organization there. So they’re supposed to be helping people in the community. And they had to shift to we’re just going to help migrants. So you hear people in the community saying, “There’s people walking in the streets, living on the streets, just roaming. It’s chaos”. Is that really true? It is true.

It doesn’t mean people are out there robbing others. Certainly, when there’s people in desperate situations, some of them are going to take whatever means necessary. But the biggest issue is states like Texas and Arizona with the most people crossing illegally have seen are we have all these people, Eagle Pass’s 30,000 residents, 1,000 coming in every day. So you’re seeing that town population every month come in. How do you get them to San Antonio? So with the busing initiative that Arizona and Texas have put forth, that’s allowing people say hey, you have a sister in, I keep going to New York, but say New York, you want to get there. You could have your sister buy you a bus ticket for you to get there from San Antonio, and you find a way to get San Antonio. Or we have this free bus where we’ll get you and whoever wants to go to New York. You don’t have to worry about paying. And it just alleviates some of the pressure.

Every time I fly out of San Antonio, even Austin Airport, Houston, Dallas, all these different actual border cities. Obviously Dallas isn’t on the border. My planes have migrants all over the place. People from all over the world who have been released, who are catching departing flights, going to destinations across the country. So that also has put a strain on the airlines because they don’t want to send a plane from New York down to say, McAllen, Texas if there’s no one who wants to go there. But there’s a whole plane ride for those who want to go the opposite direction. So it’s a number of different issues, but particularly with the public and private bus systems.

Beverly Hallberg:

So just to wrap this up, and correct me if I’m wrong on this, but I do feel like there’s an overwhelming sense of, from the border patrol agents, maybe even you as a reporter covering this, just a lot of despair. Seems like there’s not a lot of hope. It’s a bad situation. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be fixed very soon. Do you personally feel that way as you’re reporting, that it’s just a very sad thing? And of course there are going to be major consequences potentially of getaways coming in. We didn’t even talk about drugs today, the drug battle. What is your morale covering this?

Anna Giaritelli:

No one’s asked me that. And in this setting, I would be comfortable answering. It’s been really hard. Frankly, I’ve looked at leaving the media, I’ve looked at leaving this beat. I’ve covered it for five years, and it ebbs and flows emotionally and mentally, it’s been very difficult at times. Not just for a moment or a day, but periods of time where when the guys you talk to every single day they’re really, really down. I had a guy I know I commit suicide in Arizona and you think, “Am I becoming dead inside?” I’m seeing this every day, not just from border patrol, but hearing migrants stories.

There’s a couple I talk to still multiple times a week. They came from Russia. They actually sought asylum at the border. Their journey here is incredible. They brought their dog and their dog got taken from them and they got put in ice custody for a month. They reached out to me on Instagram and said, “Can you help us find our dog? We just got out of custody.” And that was incredible story. I talked to them. They’ve been living in… I’m not going to say part of the country, but for a year now. I still talk to them all the time. So it’s also that side of things. It’s seeing the deprivation.

My friend still says, “I cry almost every night because I’m never going to see my family again in Russia.” And then it’s also people who, like this 16 year old girl here in Austin who decide to take a couple of thousand bucks to smuggle people from the border into, I believe it was San Antonio, and crashed and died, had 11 people hidden in her vehicle. It’s the good and the bad. It’s thinking where is the end and thinking, do lawmakers really understand? It’s hard enough for me to explain the complexity of it. So how do the people who are making our laws fully, can they fully understand this? Can they actually put something forward that makes a dent in any of this, and where is the end?

And to wrap that up, I spoke with a CBP spokesman when I was in El Paso a couple of weeks ago. And of course what we say we don’t share, but he did say to me at one point, he had served overseas and he said, “There was a point in my tour where I felt like this thing was never going to end, not my tour, but the war that we were funding.” And he said, “Regardless of what you’re in for these Asians, it will end. There will be better processes, the numbers will go down. There is an end in sight, but it’s hard to keep that in mind.” So for the people who do the work covering it, media is a beast. But my job is to be, if everybody hates me, I’m doing my job at the end of the day.

Beverly Hallberg:

And correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like the undercurrent of all of this is we need to have good laws that are enforced well at the border. Correct?

Anna Giaritelli:

Yeah.

Beverly Hallberg:

That at the end of the day, that’s what it comes down to. And that’s why I want to let our listeners know that IWF does have a safe borders petition. You can go to iwf.org and it is that balance of how can we have a good legal immigration system, but also protect our border. And I just want to say, Anna to you, thank you for your hard work on this. As you laid out there so well, it’s you’re dealing with people from those who have crossed the border, some with asylum claims, some without the trauma that many of them go through. Then you have the border patrol agents.

And then it’s knowing what it’s like for people once they are released into the country and what potentially can mean for the communities and then the bad actors who are here. There’s so much that’s wrapped up in all of this from a human perspective. And I think one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is not only do you know the issue well, but you cover it so well. So thank you so much for your work on this issue and also for joining us on She Thinks. We appreciate it.

Anna Giaritelli:

Thank you, Beverly.

Beverly Hallberg:

And thank you all for listening to this week’s episode. If you did enjoy it, please do leave us a rating or review. It does help. And we’d love it if you shared this episode so your friends can know where they can find more She Thinks. From all of us here at Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for watching.