The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | January 25th, 2025: The Border Crackdown Has Already Begun & Trump Cleans House in DC
Sat, 25 Jan 2025
In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: President Trump begins his second term with sweeping actions on the southern border, including executive orders to restart the border wall and reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy. Mark Krikorian from the Center for Immigration Studies joins us to break it all down. In the national security realm, President Trump removes General Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and revokes security clearances for 51 intelligence officials, signaling a major shake-up in Washington. Steve Yates from The Heritage Foundation joins us in unpacking the implications. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What actions did President Trump take on immigration in his first days back?
Well, a lot has changed. That's what really needed to get done was change. Trump ended the Biden policy of catch and release, where illegal aliens crossed over, turned themselves in, and then Biden let them go. He ended these mass parole programs, parole in an immigration sense, which is basically just letting people into the country who have no right to be here, inadmissible aliens.
And there was like 2,000, 2,500 a day. They were just letting them schedule their illegal immigration. either at the Mexican border or flying into the interior and they'd let them go and they had work permits. It was just, it was crazy. So that's stuff they've just ended. The question is, of course, how much are they going to be able to unwind of what Biden did?
And that's the kind of thing that's going to be, we're going to see how that works out. One of the big issues there is what are they going to do with all these Venezuelans? Because Mexico takes its own people back. Central American countries are going to take their own people back. We don't have any relations with Venezuela. We don't even have air travel there.
That's going to be a harder nut to crack in the next few weeks and months.
Well, I mean, I think it's, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not really just Venezuela. It's Haiti. It's Cuba. We've got other places where it's going to be impossible. China, to return some of these individuals back to their own countries is going to be, as you pointed out, almost impossible.
Well, they're thinking outside the box. First of all, inside the box, there's a provision in the law that says, if a country isn't taking back its own people, we're supposed to stop issuing new visas. And that's the kind of thing that will get the CHICOM's attention.
If we say, okay, well, we're not all, you know, no more student visas starting today until you start taking your people back, that'll get their attention. The interesting thing is they are thinking outside the box, too. And they apparently have a deal or are working on a deal with Mexico to deport the Venezuelans to Mexico
and then pay Mexico to deport them to Venezuela because they have relations with Venezuela. We don't. And so, that would be interesting. I hadn't thought of that. Somebody's thinking outside the box. And the Mexicans are willing to go along because next year, that free trade agreement we have with them is up for renegotiation.
And that's way more important to them than a bunch of Venezuelan scumbags protecting them. They couldn't care less about that.
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Chapter 2: How did Trump change the approach to deportations?
Again, I don't know who opposes that. But They essentially were trying to argue that, look, okay, fine, it's the first few days of the Trump administration, the much vaunted deportation of the sweeps through the urban centers to pick up some of these folks. But their argument was, nothing's really changed. The numbers are still the same in terms of deportations.
The Biden administration was on board with this and they were working hard to deport people. Do we know how many individuals were actually deported during the course of the Biden administration?
It was less than four years of Trump, although it depends on how you count who was deported. And I don't mean to get into the weeds, but remember, there was something called Title 42 during COVID, where the border patrol could just bounce people back. Didn't matter whether you said asylum, schm-asylum, it didn't matter, they just threw you out.
those bulked up the numbers for Trump, I mean, for Biden, frankly. So, we're going to see significant numbers of people, but it's not just numbers, it's who's getting deported. Because they're starting, they're pursuing a worst first policy, you know, the gangbangers and what have you. But most illegal immigrants aren't gangbangers, they're just regular working students. Right.
Those people have to go, too. And that's going to happen once they start doing worksite enforcement, rains on factories and what have you. And that's coming. Oman said it's coming.
Now, let me ask you about that, because, look, I live out west in an agricultural state, and the reality is, Two things can be true at one time. You can argue that we need to deal with this problem, meaning that something has to be done. Deportation has to take place, as it has with previous administrations. I think I read that during Obama's administration, 3 million deportations took place.
So this is not something new. But the other side of that coin is, It will be very disruptive to a number of sectors in the US, including the agricultural sector. So, where do we go with that? How do you envision this taking place? It's one thing to say you're going to remove the 700,000 or so illegal immigrants with criminal convictions. Again, everybody should be able to get on board with that.
And as with the 1.4 million or so illegal immigrants who have already been adjudicated for deportation, when you start going after the others, I guess that's what I'm trying to drill down here and I'm not doing it very eloquently, but Mark, can you talk to me about that process? How you envision that happening? What sort of pushback are we going to get? What's the reality of it?
There's one thing to say we're going to do it, but what do you imagine will actually be the reality?
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Chapter 3: What is the role of the military at the southern border?
And when we're talking about the immigration policy, this idea that they're going to move, I'm fascinated by this idea that they're going to move from, at some point, going after the immigrants with criminal convictions or that have been adjudicated for deportation already, and that would be about 2.1 million if you look at some of the statistics, it varies a little bit.
But then moving on to the six or seven million possibly other illegal immigrants in the country, I guess what I'm imagining is the inability to get that done because of how Washington works. And I guess what I'm, I keep kind of coming back to the same question, looking for you to help me out with this.
Are they setting themselves up for a problem by sort of ramping up their base, getting their base to imagine that this is going to happen when in reality, the dysfunction of Washington, D.C. and the way that politics works there means that it may all just get stalled?
Yeah, I mean, it's not all going to get stalled, but I think your basic point is that maybe they've raised expectations too high is valid. That could be a problem. But, you know, as JD said, I think it was after the election or maybe even during the campaign, he said, look, let's deport the first million and then we'll work on the second million and then we'll work on the third million.
In other words, one thing at a time. But yes, I think the presidents may have raised expectations higher than is realistic, but it's not even so much that there's Washington dysfunction and paralysis and all that. There is some to that. It's just that you know, how many people can you deport at one time?
I mean, this isn't, you know, a Cecil B. DeMille movie with Ten Commandments and everybody's, you know, masses of people crossing the Red Sea or something. I mean, this takes work. Yeah. And you know, a significant number will leave on their own because that's the insight is you have fewer people coming in and more people going out and so the number shrinks. Shrinkage
In other words, it's the vector, it's the direction things are going is the key thing to look at. And will they deport everybody by the end of this term? No, they're not going to. In fact, they're probably never going to be deporting everybody because I'm kind of a squish on amnesty eventually. They need to restore control, they need to squeeze the number down.
get the enforcement systems in place, not just the commitment, but the systems, like E-Verify, like a proper check-in, check-out system for visitors. They have to get sanctuary cities under control. Once that happens, I'm willing to talk. But that's not something that should even be on the agenda now. That's like the second term of the JD Vance administration. We talk about that.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of ending catch and release?
Yeah, I think that's very logical. You've raised a really important point that somehow gets overlooked, right? Which is the idea of, I don't know what you would call it, diminishing returns or whatever. But if you do successfully create and maintain border security, then you have limited and dropped that number. That number now starts decreasing about who's coming across the border illegally.
And that seems to get lost in the wash sometimes because people just imagine, well, okay, it's all about just kicking everybody out.
You enforce the law, the illegal population shrinks through attrition. It's not going to get to zero, but nothing's perfect in the world. You know what I mean? You deal with reality as it is. And the main thing I'm looking for is that four years from now, the illegal population is smaller than it is now. No, no, that makes perfect sense.
Let's switch just slightly, still staying on immigration policies. Birthright citizenship.
Talk to me about that. Well, Trump said, you know, I will end it by, you know, executive order. He can't really end it on his own, but what he can do is start the litigation that will end it. Now, birthright citizenship means anybody born here, literally anybody, even frankly to foreign diplomats, let alone tourists and students and illegal aliens, automatically a kid's a U.S. citizen.
Every developed country in the world except Canada that had that policy has now ended it. Because in the modern world, it just is not sustainable. In the old days, you couldn't take a three-week vacation in another country because it took you three weeks just to get to the next, your next village. I mean, it was just different back then.
We need to end it so that only kids born to US citizens and green card holders, permanent residents, I get automatic citizenship. But I like the way Australia did it. What they did is that's what they did, they changed the law but said if the kid lives his first 10 years of his life without interruption in Australia, then he gets to be a citizen. In other words, like a statute of limitations.
It makes sense. We got to get to that point, but nothing's going to happen until we start the ball rolling. And that's what the president did with an executive order this week to say, federal agencies should no longer treat newborns automatically as U.S. citizens unless they can prove that they have at least one U.S. citizen or green card parent.
And where that plays out is the Social Security Administration and the State Department. In other words, don't issue passports And don't issue social security numbers to newborns unless, you know, one parent at least is a citizen or a legal resident. That's on hold. The judge just enjoined that or temporarily stalled it, which is fine, which is the way it should be.
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Chapter 5: How does the Biden administration compare in terms of deportations?
But that's for passing it on. If you're a US citizen and have a kid abroad, and then that kid abroad as a kid, what we're talking about here is- That's right. born in the US, two foreigners, which ones get to be citizens and which ones don't? Yeah.
No, that makes sense. Now, I think it will face, as will probably a number of these executive orders, will face a variety of legal disputes. So, I agree with you. I don't think the federal judge who said that the birthright citizenship executive order was unconstitutional, that was probably expected all the way.
Well, no, he didn't rule on it. He just said it needs to be enjoined temporarily until we litigate it. So, he didn't even rule.
Okay. I think he commented that he thought it was unconstitutional, but I think it was, but that was outside of his legal move on that.
Right.
It's the Supreme Court's decision. Right. Exactly. If... All things being equal, if you look at the executive orders done so far and realizing that inauguration day was Monday, when it comes to immigration policies, which one do you consider to be the most important so far that's been put in place?
I gotta say the end of catch and release where instructing the border patrol that they are not to be letting people go, period. You know, there are things that follow from that. They need enough detention space to detain people, but that's the fundamental thing is not letting people go once you have them in custody. Because if you do, it's game over.
They'll send their selfies home and say, La Migra let us go, come on up, and they'll let you go too. So, that's the single most important thing to end right away.
And to your point, that's one of those actions that can actually stop the flow of incoming illegal crossers or immigrants.
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Chapter 6: What challenges does the Trump administration face with immigration?
And the rationale from Biden was, well, this is how we reduce illegal crossings at the border. Well, sure, if you just let everybody in, there's no more illegal immigration. It was crazy. So that stopped right away. I mean, they stopped that at, you know, 12.01 on Monday afternoon.
Wait a minute. Is that accurate? Is that what they said was why CBP1 was important?
Yeah, no, that was their rationale. Was this how we reduce illegal border crossings by just letting people line up and come through the ports of entry and schedule their illegal immigration? It's bananas. All right, so that's been kicked to the curb.
And then the policy that was in place for Haiti and Venezuela, Cuba... Yeah, that's one of them.
That's one of the two uses of CBP-1 was this Cuba-Haiti-Nicaragua-Venezuela program where they didn't even have to go to the border. They just were able to fly over the border into the United States and They didn't have to come from Haiti or Venezuela. We actually got, we had to submit a Freedom of Information Act request.
There were people flying in, they were nationals of those countries, but they were living in Fiji and France and Vietnam. And I mean, it's like, well, then why did they need to come here? They already were someplace, you know, not their own country. Yeah.
Whatever happened to that concept that when you were seeking asylum, asylum was the first safe haven that you landed in or you arrived in?
Yeah. That never, unfortunately, never really existed. It should exist, obviously. But no, we got people passing under Biden. We had people passing through 8, 10, 12 countries before they got to the U.S. border and they let him in anyway. It's insane. I mean, no one who gets to the U.S. border should even be allowed to apply for asylum.
because they've, by definition, asked through other countries.
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Chapter 7: What is the current status of birthright citizenship policy?
Chapter 8: How are agricultural sectors affected by immigration policies?
There's two ways they used it, either at the Mexican border, like your footage is showing here, or people who flew over the border and came to airports. It's over a million people because there's different pieces of it, but it's well over a million people came in that way. And they got work permits too. They were paroled in. It's astonishing.
And the rationale from Biden was, well, this is how we reduce illegal crossings at the border. Well, sure, if you just let everybody in, there's no more illegal immigration. It was crazy. So that stopped right away. I mean, they stopped that at, you know, 12.01 on Monday afternoon.
Wait a minute. Is that accurate? Is that what they said was why CBP1 was important?
Yeah, no, that was their rationale. Was this how we reduce illegal border crossings by just letting people line up and come through the ports of entry and schedule their illegal immigration? It's bananas. All right, so that's been kicked to the curb.
And then the policy that was in place for Haiti and Venezuela, Cuba... Yeah, that's one of them.
That's one of the two uses of CBP-1 was this Cuba-Haiti-Nicaragua-Venezuela program where they didn't even have to go to the border. They just were able to fly over the border into the United States and They didn't have to come from Haiti or Venezuela. We actually got, we had to submit a Freedom of Information Act request.
There were people flying in, they were nationals of those countries, but they were living in Fiji and France and Vietnam. And I mean, it's like, well, then why did they need to come here? They already were someplace, you know, not their own country. Yeah.
Whatever happened to that concept that when you were seeking asylum, asylum was the first safe haven that you landed in or you arrived in?
Yeah. That never, unfortunately, never really existed. It should exist, obviously. But no, we got people passing under Biden. We had people passing through 8, 10, 12 countries before they got to the U.S. border and they let him in anyway. It's insane. I mean, no one who gets to the U.S. border should even be allowed to apply for asylum.
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