Díaz and Boas: Has Biden solved key problems at the border amid Lukeville reopening?
Download mp3 (14.45 MB)Federal officials reopened the Lukeville Port of Entry on Arizona's southern border late last week.
The move came a month after Customs and Border Protection closed the port — and enraged leaders on both sides of the aisle in Arizona. The closure cut off the main route between Arizona and Rocky Point, Arizona’s beach and it created economic waves with our largest trading partner.
So, now that the port is open — has President Joe Biden solved some of the key problems at the border? Not according to Elvia Díaz, editorial page editor of the Arizona Republic, and columnist Phil Boas. The Show spoke with them for more.
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning to you both.
ELVIA DÍAZ: Good morning.
GILGER: So Elvia, I want to start with you on the border was closing Lukeville a mistake in your opinion as so many people seem to agree it was.
DÍAZ: Well, yes, of course. And I'm not the only one saying it that it was, you know, it illustrates the biggest problem that the White House has at the moment. I mean, for people like me, we had advocated to yes, you know, try to fix the border but not close it. I mean, that's one of the things that, you know, we were angry with the former president for essentially shutting down immigration at the, at the U.S.-Mexican border. But in this case, you know, it's not only to asylum seekers and migrants, you know, desperate to come to the country but, you know, causing a major border crossing to legal immigration and to trade it's a huge mistake.
GILGER: So you interviewed Marco Lopez about this, who is an interesting leader who has history, both as mayor of Nogales and also in the border patrol administration himself, about his take on the border and what the Biden administration should do there. What did he have to say? What did you learn from that conversation?
DÍAZ: Well, I wanted to interview people like him because they are not just the anti-immigrant or anti-Trump or anti-Republicans, you know, but, but people who are actually thinking whole-headed about what can be done. And you know, one of the issues that Arizona and other border states have been talking about is using the National Guard at the border. And he agrees to do that to our security. But also, which is very interesting to me, he was also saying that local authorities could help with some security at the border. So the immigration officials can focus themselves to process the asylum seekers. Because remember that, that's how we got to this point that, you know, the border was closed because there are so many immigrants showing that immigration officials just couldn't handle the sheer number of them. And so they wanted those resources to focus on processing them. So he said local resources, the sheriff's police and what have you could help with some security so immigration officials could focus just on the migrants. But you know, clearly he didn't have a black and white fix. No one does.
GILGER: No one does. All right. So Phil, let's turn to you. You write about immigration a lot and you recently wrote about sort of the other side of this discussion which, which is what's happening in Washington when it comes to lawmakers tackling immigration reform, something they have failed to do for decades. And Arizona independent now, Senator Kyrsten Sinema is of course, in the middle of these discussions. What are you watching for here? What's your take on this?
PHIL BOAS: Well, with the immigration reform, it has been a long standing rule that you should never try to do this in an election year, that it's absolutely impossible. And this year is different and it's different because there is enormous pressure now on the Democratic administration to get a handle on the, the tremendous flows of people that are coming over the U.S.-Mexico border right now. This is a global problem and it gets to the changing nature of immigration, which really began to change about 2010. It used to be that most of our immigrants coming up from the South were from Mexico. Many of them were seasonal workers and they would return home, they would come and go. That began to change and we began to see people from the northern triangle countries of Central America. And today we're even seeing, we're seeing them and South Americans were seeing people from the Caribbean and China and North Africa, the Middle East, enormous numbers of migrants that are all part of the, the push from the global south. And this is happening all all around the world. And so we're having to manage a, a problem that has changed in its nature and there's tremendous pressure on the Democrats to do something. And in the middle of all, this is lo and behold Kyrsten Sinema, our eccentric senator in only her first term who just seems to be always at the center of the important discussions in Washington. And now may be essential to help save Joe Biden from this problem. And a lot of Democratic mayors of big cities who are really unable to manage the influx of immigrants that are coming into their large cities like Chicago and Denver and Boston and New York.
GILGER: Yeah. The landscape has shifted so much both politically and just in the global pushes and pulls that are happening here as you outlined. I want to ask about the politics at play there as well, right? Because what you're getting at is that the Democrats who have been very upset with Kysten Sinema for a long time now for leaving the party high and dry essentially really need her, you think.
BOAS: I think Kyrsten Sinema is one of the great under told stories in American politics. She's such an amazing story. You, you have this one-time Green Party operation, pink radical who becomes a liberal and centrist democrat. And here she is at the center of every important discussion in Washington, a key player in negotiations. She delivered the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. She was essential to the breakthrough on guns, you know, the first substantial gun legislation in almost 30 years. And she does it by moving against the headwinds of all of this division and anger in the country. She's working for bipartisanship. She's a revolutionary in her own way and she's absolutely hated for it by what was her old party. She's now an independent, but it's just an amazing story that here she is after being shunned from the party, she's back in the center of negotiations trying to bring Republicans to the table in a way that would really help Democrats if they could move this off the table for the 2024 election.
GILGER: Right, so let's talk about that. Let me ask you Elvia about that forward looking pick, right? Which is that right now, immigration is a big problem for Joe Biden heading into a 2024 election poll after poll is showing that. Do you think that if Sinema, if Republicans and Democrats can come together and pass something substantial, which as we mentioned has not happened in decades in Washington, and address immigration in a real way? Do you think that will help Biden enough?
DÍAZ: No, it won't and I disagree with Phil that, you know, this would be incredibly significant for, for Biden. And I also disagree that that Kyrsten Sinema is the one that is gonna fix the border. She will not not this time and not in the near future only because the talks that we're talking about that she's talking about in Washington are not really an immigration reform is the opposite the total opposite, which is, which is a nonstarter for a lot of Democrats. You know, a sense what is at the table is some of the proposals from the hard line Republicans that are holding aid to Ukraine hostage in exchange for border security. So she's talking not just her, but you know that the talks that are happening in Washington is about mass deportations internally, not just at the border. No, they're talking about essentially gutting the asylum system. They're also talking about dire removal of everyone who shows up at the border. That's not immigration reform, Lauren, that's essentially cave to some of the hard liners and and making a lot more difficult for migrants to ask asylum, which they are entitled to do not entitled to get it but entitled to ask for that. So, unfortunately, there's absolutely no talk about a massive immigration reform which we need a truly reform to the broken immigration system. So I'm not as optimistic as Phil is.
GILGER: Let me ask you about that, Phil before I let you both go, which is this idea that as Elvia is outlining there, like if something happens on immigration and the Biden administration is able to take some credit for it, it will be inevitably something that is more conservative than what probably most Democrats would have envisioned, you know, even a couple of years ago because the situation has changed so much. Are you going to create more political divides in that case?
BOAS: It's a great question. And I don't know. I will just say this, I only know what I read and I read the Biden friendly New York Times, and it's the New York Times that is telling us that there is a possible deal on the table and that the White House is talking like it is ready to make some serious concessions on border reform. So there is something at play and at work right now, I think the the chances of this happening are small just because it is an election year and it's very difficult to get things done in an election year, but there's a lot of anger coming from Democratic big cities right now. They're desperate for a solution. And Joe Biden, if you look at the collective polling on Biden, he has 30 points underwater. When you look at the American people and their trust in him to manage the border, he has a real problem on his hands and these pictures are not going to stop. They're going to continue through this election. They're going to be trouble for him if they, if he doesn't find some kind of solution and show that he's taking action on the border.
GILGER: All right, we'll leave it there for now. That is Phil Boas, columnist for the Arizona Republic, joining editorial page editor Elvia Díaz this morning. Thank you both for coming on. I appreciate it very much.
BOAS AND DÍAZ: Thank you.
