Texas immigration law will reduce illegal crossings 'exponentially': Judd | On Balance

The Supreme Court may be the only branch of government actually doing its job these days. It is voted to keep in place a Texas law that allows law enforcement to arrest, detain and deport illegal immigrants. That is Texas state law enforcement. Brandon Judd is here, president of the National Border Patrol Council, just so people understand sort of the very basics. In the past, if Texas state troopers, members of Operation Lone Star came into contact with illegal immigrants, we saw this when we were down on the border, they had to deliver them to Border Patrol for processing. This means now that they can be charged under state law and directly deported by the state of Texas. Do you have any idea yet, now just a few hours old, how this is going to work? As far as how it's going to work for the Border Patrol, it's going to be a huge multiplier in allowing us to deploy our resources. As far as how Texas is going to implement this actual law, they've been in preparation for months now. They've known exactly what has to be done. Texas DPS has been trained on what they're going to do. And so what's going to happen is when people enter Texas from Mexico, they're going to charge them with a state trespassing law. They're not going to charge them with an immigration law. It's going to be a state trespassing law. And that's a large reason why I do believe the Supreme Court overturned Judge Ezra's stay on this particular law. And when they take these individuals into custody, they're going to prosecute them for violating a trespassing law. That alone is going to drop illegal immigration in the state of Texas exponentially. Any time you actually apply a consequence to a law, you can expect that that law is not going to be violated. But what we're going to see is we're just going to see a shift where they're going to go to New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Excuse me for one second. I was just looking at something that's coming in. This now crossing the wire in the past couple of seconds. Mexico's government said Tuesday it would not accept the return of migrants. The Texas orders to leave the United States after the Supreme Court allowed the state to enforce a strict new immigration law signed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott. Look, obviously you have Mexico doing the White House's bidding in terms of wanting chaos on the border, which is sort of par for the course. To that sense, though, in a way, has the administration now end run the Texas law? They say there's going to be chaos. This seems to indicate exactly that. No. In fact, this isn't going to affect it in any way, shape, or form. Because these individuals that cross our borders illegally, they're not going to want a criminal conviction on their record. And if they trespass, they're still going to be prosecuted for that criminal trespassing. Once Mexico refuses to take them back, then these individuals are going to be handed over to the Border Patrol or to ICE ERO. So the effect is still going to be the same. They're still going to be a consequence, and that's going to be a criminal conviction on their record. These individuals don't want that. The vast majority of people that cross our borders illegally are ultimately one day hoping to get a legal pathway, whether that's a citizenship or a lawful permanent resident alien card. That's what they're hoping. And when you have a criminal conviction, that's going to become exponentially more difficult. And that's why I do not believe that even the deportation is, you know, the fact that Mexico isn't going to take these people back, I don't think that's going to affect anything as far as the deterrent, because there is going to be a consequence for the criminal trespass. All right. CBP access to criminal history, Border Patrol has little access to the criminal history of migrants. Ten percent of countries in the world report that data to the United States. During the last two years, before COVID and Title 42, ICE had removed 261,000 people per year on average. Last year, ICE deported 142,000 people, 45 percent decrease and obviously an enormous increase in the number of crossings. In the end, if the White House doesn't change policies as it relates to the border, does this Texas law actually change anything? It does for Texas, not for Arizona, New Mexico and California. That's what we're going to see the shift. We've already seen a huge shift. The total numbers across the southwest border have not dropped ever since Texas took over Shelby Park, but the numbers in Shelby Park dropped exponentially. We just saw a shift. So yes, we can expect to see the cartels shift and change their operations and move it to New Mexico, Arizona and California. So no, overall, it's not going to do anything across the entire southwest border. For Texas, it's going to be huge.