Southern border braces for migrant surge as Title 42 ends

We're in a situation now where those 1500 people at the border, they're not there to enforce the law. They're there to free up the border agents that need to be on the border. And we're having another 1,000 people coming in, or asylum judges to make judgments, to move things along. I've asked this Congress for help in terms of what they need at the border. They need more agents. They need more people to clear people. They need more action to, for example, we need these farm workers.

They're badly needed. There has to be a legal pathway to citizenship. I asked President Biden about the border. In our interview on Friday, he's taken a lot of heat from both sides as a pandemic era restriction known as Title 42 is set to expire on Thursday. Meanwhile, the White House says Biden would veto a Republican-led immigration bill if it reaches its desk. The bill would add 22,000 border patrol agents and force the administration to resume work on Donald Trump's border wall. Joining me now to discuss Victoria de Francesco Soto, the Dean of the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas and an MSNBC political analyst and former Republican Congressman and CIA officer Will Hurd, who is from the state of Texas.

Congressman, we've been hearing a lot about this migrant surge. We know that the president gets pressure from the left about the humanity issue around this and from the right saying he is not putting American interests first and from employers big and small who are saying we need to fix immigration because we've got a labor shortage. Yet all of these three separate groups who are complaining, it's not making anything get done in Congress. Is there any chance something will happen? Look, I think the possibility for something in Congress getting done is very low. I think the likelihood, if anything would have passed, would probably start in the Senate. But there's a few things that could happen that doesn't need a congressional approval. We can stop treating everybody who comes to the United States of America illegally as an asylum seeker.

Asylum is very specific thing. You have to be part of a protected class. You've got to demonstrate that your government is prosecuting you because you're part of that protected class. Now, I want to make sure when people are in our custody, we treat them humanely. But allowing and fueling human traffickers to bring 6.5 million people into this country illegally is not humane. So that's something that can be done.

You don't need Title 40T to do that. People have been deporting folks for a long time. And that's something that can be done now. We can making sure our diplomats and our State Department is engaged in this effort to address some of the root causes in these countries, particularly the Northern Triangle, which historically has been, has what's caused illegal, has fueled illegal immigration to the United States. Those are just some of the things that can be done right now. Oh, and by the way, let's make dismantling human smugglers a national intelligence priority and use those resources to stop the 25 million dollars that was that was earned by human smugglers in Mexico just last year alone. Victoria? So we definitely need to address the root causes, right, in terms of the issues of the sending countries and what the American government could do to try to ameliorate that rather on the political front or the economic front.

But in addition to that, I want to zero in on the infrastructure of the State Department on the infrastructure of Homeland Security in terms of how do we process these people? The reason we have surges at the border is because folks are desperate to get in and there isn't the infrastructure to process their asylum claims. What President Biden has proposed is to establish a network of regional processing centers across Latin America to stem that flow and to the congressman's point, really address the issue of human smugglers. Because if we have an efficient and effective regional processing system across Latin America, people who need to leave their country, whether for humanitarian reasons or to seek farm work here in the United States, cut out that middleman, which is incredibly dangerous. I think what I'm really looking at here is that infrastructure that the administration can put into place. I agree with the congressman, any chance of immigration reform in Congress is nil, but I think the administration does have a lot of power in terms of implementation to address what happens with immigration post Title 42. Congressman, another issue the country, but really Texas is grappling with tonight is guns. It was the scene of multiple mass shootings over the last few weeks.

What are people throughout Texas saying? Well, people throughout Texas are frustrated. They're sad. The fact that there's moms and dads that have to be in the Capitol trying to advocate to make sure things don't happen to other people's kids. You know, they want to see something done. They didn't elect people to just, they elected people to actually solve problems and simple things, right? Like increasing the age of buy a long gun to 221. This is something that a majority of Americans believe in. A majority of law abiding gun owners actually believe they want to see some of these things change.

Universal background checks, that seems like a no-brainer. I think your earlier panel when they discussed about how social media is being used to radicalize people and how some of these tools are being allowed to propagate, people want to see some of those things change. And ultimately, if we want to see that change and we know that the public cares about these issues, we need to get more people voting in primaries because oftentimes you have better choices there and folks need to need to stand up and say enough is enough. Could things be changing though in Texas? Victoria, today at the Texas State Capitol, two Republicans voted to advance a gun safety bill. It's unlikely to become law, but is that something you ever thought you would see in the state of Texas? This is heartening, Stephanie. For decades, Texas has been going in the direction of loosening gun law. So in the last couple of years, they allowed for open carry on college campuses.

They allowed for open carry. And the trend was going in the opposite direction. And this is small. It got out of committee and it's probably going to die in the body. But the fact that it got out of committee that two Republicans cross party lines is a very big deal because this change is going to be incremental. I wish I could say that one more shooting and the tide is going to change. It's not.

But this is for me a light. This is the frustration of folks in Texas that they are putting pressure on their elected officials. And to the point earlier also, this has to be reflected in the voting booth. So this is an important first step, regardless of what happened. It got out of committee. One ray of light, it drowns out the dark. It's got to start somewhere.

Victoria, Defrancisco Soto, we'll heard. Thank you both for being here.

Stephanie Ruhle