more is streaming live on our website, including a confirmation hearing for the nominees picked to lead the civil rights division and natural resources division at the justice department. at the same time, agriculture secretary tom vilsack testifies before a house appropriations subcommittee about the president's 2022 budget request. and a senate armed services subcommittee on cyber security threats. next up is the politics editor for the washington times. with us to talk about border issues and in particular immigration and border issues. guest: good morning. host: the nori -- the story we noted about the border last week. he reported the dhs may restart border wall construction to plug "gaps." tell us the policy so far when

it comes to the border wall with mexico. guest: at the end of the trump administration, the administration constructed about 460 miles of border wall system over the four years. much of that paid for through defense department money through some emergency orders and other changes siphoning from pentagon accounts to go to border wall funding. president biden immediately revoked that declaration and restored or cut off that siphoning of money from the pentagon for portable construction. so it took at a large swath of the funding that president trump had expected to continue to use to build maybe 300 more miles in the planning pipeline. president biden cut off that money and paused a different set of money congress allocated to

go to border wall construction. in essence it was an across-the-board halt on construction. construction crews were allowed to tie down to cover up dangerous holes and whatnot and then walk away from the sites. a fairly clean break with construction. president biden i believe late last year probably after he was elected, before he took office, said he would not build one more foot of border wall on his watch. now the administration is struggling to figure out whether he can live up to that promise. host: i guess under the adage of shows we spend your money where your values are printed that regard, the current funding, of the special funding ended or halted that, what about going forward going into the 2022 budget.

guest: they are unlikely to put money into their budget for wall construction. the key issue the fiscal year 2021 which we are currently in, there is about $1.4 billion put into that appropriation bill that president trump signed late last year. there is money in that bill for border wall construction. so the debate right now is does president biden have to continue to spend that money on the wall or can he rearrange that money and use it on other things. what the homeland security secretary said during the virtual town hall is there are some gaps that were left in the wall when that stop work order came through. there were gaps in the wall they may have to fill.

i've done other reporting in southern arizona, they are about -- there are about four miles of land with a built a high-speed road. the wall is a system, if the actual physical barrier. some border patrol agents think the road is more important than the wall and then there is technology to detect incursions. that's why the trumpet mr. schumer talk about the wall system could there are about four miles in arizona at least in arizona where they've built the road but didn't she finish the wall and the sheriff in southeast arizona said we just built a highway for the smugglers. they can come across those gaps and then get on to the road and suddenly they can get where they are going faster into the interior of the u.s..

where the homeland security secretary suggested they may actually have to build one more foot of wall essentially challenging the president. host: clearly the trump administration building the wall was a successful political message during the campaign and during his presidency. how about at the end of his presidency in terms of a practical immigration deterrent success? has the additional wall proved to be a deterrent and was he able to convert other politicians, democrats included, into his view maybe we need more border wall. guest: those are to complete the different questions and they are fascinating in the directions they go. the message is still very heatedly debated. every border patrol agent of talked with said absolutely walls work in this new instruction did work. the reason why is it's not to

block every single crossing, the point is to impede, to delay crossing where people do cross. when you can shape where people are crossing and how they are crossing and you have the road you can place agents to get to them, you can interdict those. that's what the agents say is successful. the folks on the other side say if you're talking about drugs, most drugs are still coming through the ports of entry, of the official border crossing, of wall doesn't change that. i've done reporting on a symbol for the walled does good drones are common for flying drugs over the wall. people use drones. literally putting drugs on catapults and firing them over the wall. so there are ways folks are adapting to the wall. we will see how long that lasts. the other question you ask is a

good one about support. if you look back before president trump took office, support for the wall was on party lines. in 2006, 2007, you would then senator obama, biden and 20 or so other democrats joining with republicans in voting for 700 miles of border fencing the obama administration actually completed the construction of that border fencing. president trump took office and you can track the public polling. support will president trump -- while president trump was in office drop below a majority. now that he's out of office, support for the wall is back up to a majority position. it is interesting what president trump's effect was on public

policy polling on a number of issues and it appears on the wall he sort of poisoned it in the public mind and now without him there, it suddenly more popular. they could also be because of the surge we are seeing and folks saying maybe the wall will help. host: let's get to the issue getting the most attention recently regarding the border. covid prevalent in shelters holding illegal immigrant children. how many children are currently in shelters along the border elsewhere in the united states since the beginning of the biden presidency? guest: there are two different types of custody that the government has of these children . when they come across there apprehended by border patrol and occasionally they come through to present themselves. most cases often want to be

caught because the government actually will help them pay to complete their trip into the u.s.. in some cases they will walk up to a border patrol car and they want to be caught. just slightly more than 3000 those children still in customs and border protection custody at the border. under current policy they're supposed to be transferred within 72 hours. there are more than 70 shelters thereof the country that are to care for these unaccompanied children. as of sunday the rate children within those shelters.

as of late last week it was only 16,000. they transferred over the last three or four days or so they've managed transfer 2000 children out of border patrol custody into the shelters. those are basically dormitory style. some are more tense. but they are better than the border patrol facilities which are holding cells. they are holding cells with is no possibility of social distancing and they are really packed in. the goal is to get them out of that custody and into the shelters where they can find sponsors. host: what do government officials say is the main reason for the large increase in children of the border. guest: the increase in particular is twofold.

the biden administration says there is pent-up demand from the tough trump policies that sort of it squelched the crossings over the last year and a half in particular. for the children, it was the changes the biden administration made. they'd been expelling under a pandemic, centers for disease control that shut down the border. under that, anybody across the border could be returned back across the border immediately spat -- expelled back to mexico. hundreds of thousands of people were expelled under that order. the biden administration said we will do that for single adults and try and do that for families. but for children, those who came without parents and presumably have made this really difficult

journey, that's unfair and inhumane to expel them back to new -- back to mexico. that's what we saw in march with nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children in march alone, by far a record. the u.s. treats unaccompanied juveniles who show up for mexico and canada, contiguous countries differently. they can be immediately returned. but if you show up from under us, under u.s. policy you have two process the health department. but we are really talking about central american. chiefly those three countries over the last several years or so. tens of thousands of children

showing up unaccompanied. host: you probably saw the story. mexico, honduras, guatemala to deploy troops to lower migration. the biden administration struck an agreement with mexico, honduras and guatemala to temporarily surge security forces in an effort to reduce the tide of migration. guest: the trump administration saw a similar surge not so much of children, but a massive surge of families showing up beginning in 2018 and really peeking in the late spring of 2019 as the trump administration, president trump threatened to slap major tariffs on mexican goods unless mexico did more to stop the

territory. mexico said we will deploy troops. immediately expel back across the border. the president managed to stop that crisis. in some respect that similar to what they have done here. mexico is leaving those national guard troops that it had deployed. it's leaving those of the border to guard there. they will forward deploy police to try and hinder the process the progress of folks. very much so, it is sort of a

trend in u.s. policy because the way our laws and policies exist so we will ask other countries to stop them in their territory instead. host: talking about biden administration policies on border security. for republicans the line is 202-748-8001. democrats call 202-748-8000. independents and all others call 202-748-8002. you can send us a text and you can also tweet us. question from lizzie on twitter on the border wall. since the wall construction was under contract, are we still living to pay even though the building has stopped? guest: the answers we will have to according to the former acting commissioner of customs and border protection. he says the administration will be on the hook for billions of

dollars in payments for the contract that won't be paid out. he estimates there are thousands of tons of steel that were procured to build the wall that are sitting around and the government has to figure out what to do with that. that question is very astute. there are issues the administration will have to work through to cancel those contracts. host: here is some of what the latest administration has set on the wall. we will hear that and hear your thoughts. @cspanwj --[video clip] >> dhs secretary is looking to fill some gaps in the wall at the southern border. >> wall construction remains caused. to the extent permitted by law. some has already been funded through congressional authorization and funding allocation. but as agencies develop -- it is

paused while agencies develop a plan for the president on the management of the federal fund. when the administration took office, the funds had been diverted from military construction projects and other appropriated purposes towards building the wall. wall construction was being challenged multiple lawsuits. for much of the wall. due to environmental and safety issues. under those, federal agencies are reviewing wall funds. it is paused, there is some limited construction that has been funded and allocated but it is otherwise paused. host: largely reading a statement there. but they are still in the midst of developing a plan when it comes to wall construction. guest: a very, gated answer that boils down to what i was talking about earlier. the defense department money is no longer being siphoned.

the congressionally appropriated money, they need to figure out what they are going to do with that. the secretary said customs and border protection the minute the plan for what should be done with that money. so as far as that plan is now sitting with him. another interesting aspect to this. this pause we are under right now, there are congressional republicans who've asked the government accountability office for a legal review of whether the pause is legal because congress allocated the money and said this must be spent on border wall construction. republicans say by tossing that -- pausing that money the president is violating congress's power of the purse. this is the same law that was used -- that snared president trump in some ways, of the government accountability office found he broke the law by

clogging that ukrainian assistance money in the summer of 2019, part of what led to the first impeachment proceeding against president trump and there well begins made that explicit comparison saying if he was paying for that after congress as you need to spend it isn't this the same situation. there's no suggestion of quid pro quo and the other thing that led to a impeachment. but there shall active the administration stopping or holding funding that congress and you must spend is a real legal question. the gao agreed to investigate and offer. host: we will go to larry in maryland. caller: joe biden's plan is a joke. he is a transnational globalist. he said come on in to the united states, open border. 24 years they found jackets of

farsi and arabic. they are filing in -- they are flying in from central america -- to central america. host: how much of that is correct? guest: there's a lot there i will probably leave alone. the one thing he did raise on the question of whether biden is responsible for children. that's a real question. they would argue it's inhumane not to admit the children, to return them back to mexico, the country they just crossed on sometimes very dangerous journey. this something to that. at the same time there is that sense they crated that incentive to make that journey. but there is no doubt the journey is rough. i've reported in the past when

teenage girls begin this journey from central america some begin to take birth control because of the danger, the prevalence of being raped during that journey. those conditions they are starting that journey knowing they might face and they go on the journey anyway which tells you something about their desperation and the conditions they are traveling through. it is a very complex issue and it is for much smarter people than me to figure out where the equity lies. there are more people coming and they have a more lenient policy. >> in the washington times you are writing about the health issues related to the surge. health official because migrant search unprecedented. sidney runs the office of refugee resettlement of health and human services. she said they've open the

shelters to the care they are giving is a crisis standard of care. you write that the biden team has fiercely denied calls to call it a crisis. why is this such a big deal to call this a crisis? guest: it's a good question. i went into this thinking i wasn't quite sure why there was such a focus on that. some of the folks on the border, one sheriff made this exact analogy and said -- the homeland security secretary said it's a challenge that a crisis and the sheriff said if you're in school and facing a challenge, that means you need tutoring. if you're in school you and you have a crisis that means your failing a class and needs major changes. his point is if you're labeling it a challenge, you don't understand what you're facing right now. from the other perspective, they

really are putting a lot of resources into this and so it doesn't matter what they are calling it if the solutions are the correct ones and they managed to change the flow and the condition the children are in right now in the border facilities. the children are getting -- the unaccompanied children are getting a lot of attention. we seen the numbers slacking for the arrival of children in the last week or so. the latest numbers of the last five or six days adjusted closer to 400. what i am expecting though is families, the parents will arrive with children and in particular young children. those numbers are likely to go up. right now they are not close to what they were during the peak

of the 2019 surge under president trump. but they increased dramatically from february to march. that's a crisis or challenge in the coming months is families showing up. host: on twitter, how much of these border children costing us? guest: we do not have complete figures but we know the base in the hhs shelters is pretty expensive. hundreds of dollars a day. republican senators again back to the border wall reported $800 per bed per day in one of these facilities. i reported last week health and human services in order to try and get these children to get sponsors to collect the children fast -- that can get out of federal custody. they are paying for the sponsors to fly in and collect children.

we don't have a total dollar amount partially because we don't how many we have. but it's a lot of money. the biden administration so far has resisted the notion it will come to congress and ask for an emergency infusion of money in order to accommodate the levels we are talking about. folks on capitol hill from both parties think they will have to do that. that's when they may have to acknowledge what folks on capitol hill want them to acknowledge that it is a crisis. host: this is joe from alabama. caller: well you show is not long enough to talk about all the problems biden has created. we've got this thing called radar.

you have on trucks and jeeps. drones and light aircraft. now, because of trump -- people on the wall, but if biden does it, it is good as sliced bread. host: we will hear from linda in southaven, mississippi. the independent line. linda, make sure you mute your volume there and go ahead with your comment. caller: with all the children crossing the border, with all of the mental illness on teenagers and young people in the united states, how do they plan on dealing with middle illness from the crossings of this long journey?

also, do they think they can take teenage boys and throw them into fields with lettuce, and apples, and picking vegetables? is that not slave labor? host: thoughts? guest: there are couple interesting things there. there is very much a realization that children who go on this journey, particularly unaccompanied children on this journey, many are suffering trauma. the impact of these children after they are released, there released to sponsors, and in most cases, those sponsors are emily, often parents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, grandparents here in the united states themselves, illegally here in the united states, and it is a major devastation for those children. fairfax county, montgomery county, the county surrounding washington, are among the top 10

destinations for where those children end up being placed because there is such a large central american community already here and the children are being placed, and the school systems have to deal with on only the trauma but the new numbers and challenges of the english learners. they have been dealing with that since 2014, the first of the surges under the obama administration, first of these child surges, but it is a real issue that they are facing. i have reporting coming out later this week hopefully on the older male teenage migrants present to their own problem. for one thing, we saw this in the 2014-2015 and 2019 sarge, they turn out to be a prime recruiting ground for ms 13 and other gangs.

i have a list of cases where children who cross as unaccompanied juveniles or part of a family unit as teenagers were quickly recruited. sometimes they come over already as ms 13 members but were recruited from ms 13 and joined gangs and are now stand accused of horrific crimes through those gangs. so there is real danger of fueling ms 13 numbers through this surge. that is sort of a dark part of this. host: there is a headline from tucson weekly, bite into nominate chris magnus as head of border patrol. what we know about chief magnus, and why did the president select him? guest: he has been chief in tucson and also in a city in michigan and in the bay area, i think richmond, california. he is known as a progressive law enforcement official. he has been critical of the border wall, for example, and

many trump policies. he was picked because he has that proximity, from tucson, about 70 to 80 miles north, and that proximity gives him the ability to say hey, i deal with the flow of the folks coming through my community. not up against the border, but i deal with the flow coming through my community, so i have a familiarity. and he matches the president's progressive approach to immigration in terms of opposing much of what the trump administration did. host: let's go to akron, ohio. terry on the independent line. caller: i was wondering, what is the definition of an unaccompanied minor? and it's strange, how does a seven or eight-year-old get from central america all the way up to the border of the united states? do they have an adult bringing them there, then dropping them

off? when they get there, and they are handed over to the authorities in the united states, is -- do they have parents that are illegal, they try to get them into the united states? could you comment on that a little more? guest: those are all really good questions. unaccompanied minor is a juvenile, someone who shows up who is 17 or younger. there is some question as to how strictly the government is able to probe them. border patrol agents tell me there are a large number of folks who claim to be 16 and 17, disproportionate numbers, and they wonder how many of them are actually 18 or older and are lying about their age. there is some question about the checks that go through, but they are supposed to be 17 or younger , and they are supposed to show up without a parent when they are crossing. in some cases, the caller is right, there is a parent -- we have seen cases where a family is showing up, they are

getting return under the cdc expulsion order, and the parents will send the child alone to cross, knowing that crossing will be accepted by the border authorities at this point. in terms of how they come up, it is pretty much often as the caller describes, a parent will pay for a chain of smugglers to shepherd the child north from the central american countries. they are often times -- we have seen a large number of what i call many caravans, groups of 100 room -- minicaravans, groups of 100 own more, and i think the southern part of texas have seen groups and groups of those. those will have maybe -- maybe 5060 of those groups will be families with parents and children. another 20 will be unaccompanied children. so in some ways, they are on to a broader group of people and caravaning up.

not always, we have seen horrible incidents of young children crossed alone by smugglers, and in some cases, we saw the case recently in the last couple weeks, where they were dropped from the border wall or left stranded on islands in the rio grande. it can be really rough conditions, and you can understand, for the earlier caller, that trauma we can talk about. the final thing, what happens to them, they are transferred from order protection to the health department. 90% of them will meet up with sponsors. usually they are family members here already, and in many cases here illegally. health and human services said they will not question the legal set of -- legal status of folks to encourage folks to come and collect their children. the other 10% that do not end up with sponsors, they either go through their court proceedings,

and an health and human services custody for years until their immigration cases heard, or they turn 18, in which they are returned -- released into other settings. host: i've heard federal reporting from the government that they have asked for volunteers to serve time on the border to help with the crisis down there. how accurate is that? how many volunteers do they need? guest: that is accurate. there are two different calls for volunteers. homeland security department issued a call within its own department saying if you are a tsa, uscis, legal immigration division, can you come down and help process and care for the children? there is a much broader -- the office of personnel management put out a government-wide call for volunteers. last i checked, from homeland security alone, i think they had 1000 different people who had offered to go down. i do not know the numbers for the broader government call.

this is not new. the trump administration activated what was called the homeland security air force. they activated that themselves during their surge in 2019 as well. host: our line for border and state residents is (202) 748-8002 -- is (202) 748-8003. jerry is joining us from new mexico. caller: can the biden administration be brought up against crimes against humanity concerning the border fiasco there? guest: there are certainly folks who attempted to do similar things to the trump administration, raise broad human rights allegations and whatnot. i don't know where the venue would be for legal judgment on that, but certainly folks have leveled those charges against past presidents during these sort of searches. host: i want to ask about the resignation of roberta jackson, reporting here the washington free beacon, biden's orders are

to step down. he made the announcement friday, a week after vice president harris took over u.s. diplomatic efforts with mexico, honduras, guatemala, and el salvador. what is the vice president's role, now that she has been charged by the president to oversee the current border issues? guest: it is interesting. we had all had this brought impression that people started calling her the border czar. her role as a diplomatic relations with those central american companies. sort of the foreign policy aspect of this. the white house says she is not actually the border czar, not dealing with the actual crossings and issue of the children showing up. what is particularly interesting, the deals we talked about earlier with mexico in the central american companies to forward deploy their own law-enforcement resources to try to hinder those folks who would

be making this journey, the white house pointedly yesterday noted those negotiations have been going on during the ambassador's tenure. it was an interesting, hey, good work, ambassador, as she prepares to leave. caller: up next on the democrats line from pennsylvania. caller: hello. i noticed all these people seem to be heading north to united states. are any of these people heading south to the south american countries? because this is an international problem i believe. are there any other countries taking some of these people? i feel sorry for them, i wish we could take everybody in the world. let's go to nigeria, let's go to wakonda, bring everyone here. but we are going to lose our country if we bring in more and more people who we don't know who they are. host: kind of a related question from cory who sends us this

taxed. he says why are people like from -- exempt from the politics involving mass migration to the u.s.? guest: there are all really good questions. to the caller's question, there are some going into other countries, and there are a few, if you are in honduras, there are some who have settled say in mexico. in particular, folks being persecuted in central american companies who will go seek a safe space in one of the other neighboring countries. by and large, and this is not universal, by and large, the central american countries, the ones sending the most, they are coming for a first -- for a few reasons. first, the difference is income. if you are from guatemala and land in mexico, you can double your income. if you land in the u.s., you can increase your income by tenfold.

so many of them, and i mentioned this earlier, already have relatives living here. in many cases, this is family reunification. they will claim asylum, sometimes they do earn asylum and have valid cases, but in most instances, they do not have valid asylum cases and they are actually normal migrants but are using an asylum claim to gain a foothold in the u.s. here. so it is the family draw and economic draw. the conditions, the poverty, there have been several different natural disasters over recent years in recent months that some folks plane for the current surge. you have some folks say climate change is responsible for harming some of the farming communities there and causing flight from those areas as well. a whole bunch of different complex factors going into the flow -- you we call them the push factors, what causes them to leave the countries, and pull factories, -- pull factors, that

cause them to end up where they are. the pull factors, family and economic power are strong pull factors. host: let's hear from shirley in north carolina, a republican color. caller: yes. -- caller. caller: yes. since biden and harris do not want to go to the border, let's take all of the children and put them on the white house grounds. host: on visits to the border, you have written a number of stories about it over the years, stephen. how often do you get to view the situation yourself? guest: not since the pandemic, but at least once a year it used to be. it was sort of a favorite of mine because that is where i started going 20 years ago, and that was where ground zero was in the early bush years for this flow of people. part of the reason why i leave

two, part of the bush wall and vehicle area was built by that. there is a national pond he meant, a beautiful place in southern arizona that -- arizona. if you have a chance, please go. it is spectacular. for the late bush in early obama administration, the park was closed to the public because there was so much unauthorized traffic there. and the dangers of those encounters. as things calmed down during the middle part of the obama administration, they were able to open that park up. it is now still open, but the crossings, the folks in that area, are beginning to worry about an increase in the crossings again. those sorts of areas, they feel -- when i made my first trip to the border, it is a weird story, i came back and i was not able to write a story about it because i cannot figure out how to communicate to folks in a

broader audience what i had seen, because it was so different. we sat in a ranch house and watched massive groups of hundreds of people streaming across this ranch property. that was a completely different issue than what you see now with families and whatnot. that was mostly single adults, mexicans coming across. now, the chief sending are the central american countries. a lot has changed but the impact on the communities is something that we here in washington don't talk about as much as we should. host: our guest, stephen dinan, his politics editor with the washington times.