Glenn took some time this morning to talk about disturbing news from the U.S./Mexico border: the White House plans to shut down several Border Patrol stations in four different states. With violence on the border on the rise, Glenn saw this as a huge mistake.
Fox News reported:
The Obama administration is moving to shut down nine Border Patrol stations across four states, triggering a backlash from local law enforcement, members of Congress and Border Patrol agents themselves.Critics of the move warn the closures will undercut efforts to intercept drug and human traffickers in well-traveled corridors north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Though the affected stations are scattered throughout northern and central Texas, and three other states, the coverage areas still see plenty of illegal immigrant activity -- one soon-to-be-shuttered station in Amarillo, Texas, is right in the middle of the I-40 corridor; another in Riverside, Calif., is outside Los Angeles.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it's closing the stations in order to reassign agents to high-priority areas closer to the border.
In response to the news, Glenn pulled out his new book Cowards which has a whole section dedicated to the violence on the border.
Glenn focused specifically on "spillover violence" (p.113), and how people cannot agree on how much violence is actually happening because it is a battle between statistics and anecdotal evidence. Glenn pointed out that there isn't even a universal definition for spillover violence, and the one used by Homeland Security ignores any crimes in the U.S. that fall under the category of trafficker-on-trafficker violence. This means criminal on criminal border crime is ignored. Glenn used the example that if one cartel member beheads another cartel member in Seattle, they won't count that as spillover crime from the border.
"Napolitano has manipulated statistics to say that the overall crime is down 30% at the border. That's only true if you look at big city border," Glenn said. "Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security are cowards because they hide behind the dire numbers instead of acknowledging how dire the numbers are."
Glenn cautioned that he was not anti-immigration, but that he was only anti-illegal immigration.
"Einstein was an immigrant. It's good. It's all good. It's good for them. It's good for us. And that's how we should frame this topic from here on out," Glenn said.
"Yes we want immigrants to legally immigrate. That's our stance," he added. "We are for legal immigration. They make us better. That's the winning target. Stop letting them paint you in a corner. They're a joke. They're over. The left has been exposed. The progressive movement has been exposed."