conservatives to respond. at 10:00 p.m. easterna journalist examines the future of work and explores how to better align workplace culture with the needs of american workers in her book "overworked." connie chung shares her self-titled memoir about her life and career in journalism, serving as the first woman to cohost the cbs evening news at 11 at 5 p.m. eastern -- 11:00 p.m. eastern. watch online anytime at booktv.org. >> the house will be in order. >> this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we have been your primary source for capitol hill, with balanced unfiltered

coverage of government, taking you to are the policies are debated and decided with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting, powered by cable. the america first policy institute, he serves of the executive director for the center of homeland security and immigration with the former acting homeland security secretary in the trump administration from 2019 the 2021. welcome back to the program. guest: thanks for having me. host: a little bit about the institute itself, what is it and how is it funded? guest: the america first policy institute is a 501-c3 institution, we are a think tank and we started in 2021 shortly after the end of the trump administration. we've been going on for 3.5 years with about 16 different policy centers. we talk about all of the public policy facing the country today from national security to homeland security to health

care, education, tax policy, and everything in between. we talked about the america first approach that was practiced under president trump's first term, and so we do events, speaker series, white papers. talk to members of congress and their staff about legislation and things of that nature. it's been going well. we continue to grow year after year and i think we are having a pretty sizable impact for just being organization that is about 3.5 years old. host: to what degree is that an extension of the current trump campaign or a transition team if that takes place? guest: well, we've got folks that have been working on different policies over the last 3.5 years, that i'm sure the campaign has taken a look at to see how you would govern, what policies you would do in grabs a second trump administration as well.

there are certainly folks down there working hard on president trump's transition. host: how does that inform your current position on immigration and what is best practices to you when it comes to immigration and border policy? guest: all of my positions and all of my views on border security and immigration enforcement and then on the legal immigration side are obviously influenced by my time at dhs. i served at the department all four years of the trump administration and in the interim served as acting secretary for the past 14 or 15 months. so my views are impacted by the discussions, the interactions and my experiences with border patrol agents, and all of those in the department and the outside of the department, interacting with those at the department of justice, state department and others on what we did during four years.

so my view and how i talk about these issues come from my experience, on the ground experience in helping to run the department and trying to execute its primary mission or one of its primary missions, and that is border security. host: what were the drivers of illegal immigration specifically during the trump administration and how do you see those today? guest: a lot of the drivers are what be called incentive factors. a lot of loopholes in immigration law that we saw with the cartels and the smugglers taking advantage of time and time again. so we were to close those loopholes. we tried to work with congress to pass laws that the close those loopholes and when that didn't materialize we used executive authority and executive action to take action and to put new policies in place that would try to close those loopholes, hold people accountable, try to render asylum protections in many cases

to those that needed it quicker in the process. so just trying to execute the law as it was written by congress. we worked pretty steadily to make some process at of the chaos we saw on that border. host: if you want to call and talk to our guest, the numbers are (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 four democrats. independent, (202) 748-8002. if you want to ask questions, you should know that at 9:00 the house of representatives is expected to come in for a pro forma session. there's usually just take a few minutes. we will go to that when it does take place but when we are done with that session, we will continue our interview with chad wolf. go ahead and start calling in, we will take those calls as soon as we can. as you look at the almost four

years of the biden administration, how would you judge its practices when it comes to immigration, what they've done and what they should have done? guest: unfairly critical of the biden harris administration with their actions along that border. you see the worst border crisis we've ever experienced over the last four years and it's primarily because of policy decisions made by this administration, really from day one. in the first hundred days, they took 94 executive actions on immigration that really tore down a a lot of to be successful policies of the trump administration and really didn't put anything in its place. so what you saw, use of the traffickers, cartel members and others taken van into that. they reinstituted a catch and release policy which is detrimental to americans and american communities, and so it goes down the board. the data, much of which is on the dhs website just proves this

point. you seen encounters reach astronomically high numbers, using national security threats, noon suspected terrorist encounters reach astronomically high numbers. if you go down the board and look at all of these different measures into different factors, they are all trending in the wrong direction under this administration because of policy decisions. it's not because of a lack of resources or a lack of money, it's not because congress didn't pass a bill. those policy decisions have consequences that unfortunately the american people are having to deal with. host: the vice president appeared on 60 minutes last night and part of it she did talk about immigration efforts by the biden administration and their approach. i want to play you a little bit and then get your response to it. >> there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants the first three years of your administration. as a matter of fact, it

quadrupled from the last year of president trump. was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did? >> it's a long-standing problem and solutions are at hand and from day one literally we have been offering solutions. >> what i was asking was was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place? >> the policies that we have been proposing are about fixing the problem, not promoting the problem. >> but numbers did quadrupled. >> and the numbers today because of what we have done, we have cut the flow of illegal immigration by half. we have cut the flow of fentanyl by half, but we need congress to be able to act to actually fix a problem. host: mr. wolf, what is your

response? guest: i've got a lot of thoughts there. i don't know that the vice president will be answer the question. the question was over the last three years before 2024, why did you institute the policies that you did that caused the border crisis to ask load in the way in which it has? she didn't answer that. she did mention proposing different policies. again, this administration has been in power. the american people to want proposals, they want action. the president has an immense amount of authority here. the dhs secretary has an immense amount of authority to take action so it's unclear to me why she keeps saying proposing. she's been the vice president for three and a half years, it's time to start doing. and that her last comment talking about how they've cut border crossings and half is simply not the case. there's a lot of data on the america first policy website. the border patrol encounters are going down at the number of

encounters at ports of entry are skyrocketing and the numbers of parole that they created from the program skyrocketing. and if you take all three of those numbers, the number of illegal aliens coming into the country today has remained steady over these last three and a half to four years. the numbers are not going down. host: we saw the biden administration make some changes to asylum policy. in september, around 54,000 arrests took place. when you see those numbers out of that relate to what you just said? guest: they talk about that number going down and they are able to say well, our border numbers are cut in half. but what they don't tell you are at ports of entry, but they created in this administration,

fly here into the united states, if you look at all three of those together, the numbers remain around 150 to 200 thousand encounters or it admissible aliens into the united states, and so that gives you the full picture of what is going on. if he didn't have that program, these individuals would still be trying to cross the border because of the policies, because of catch and release and other things the biden administration is doing. it a little bit of sleight-of-hand they are using and in my mind they are not being honest with the american public to say border patrol encounters may have gone down, but here is what is continuing to happen along that border. host: there was an expansion the asylum policy saying the u.s. could restrict asylum access between official border crossings saying that the daily numbers at an average of 1500 per day, the daily numbers now

have to be below 1600 for nearly a month before restrictions can be listed. what does that suggest to you as far as a policy that was previously put in place? guest: so many different procedures or restrictions on it, so many different loopholes if you actually read the policy. so many different ways they are able to exempt individuals out of that that it makes it almost meaningless. the actual impact of that is having very little impact because of the way in which they have structured that. if you traveled through third country where you could have sought asylum, you are ineligible to see it here in the united states. we didn't have a threshold

number that you had to reach. it makes it very complex directly administer on a day by day, week by week and month by month basis were border patrol agent along that border. host: this is chad wolf. kansas, democrats line. you are on with our guest. caller: yes, i was calling about the phrase america first and exactly what it means for your group today. i know that it was first coined by charles lindbergh back in the 30's, 40's. but the meaning of that term and what your group intends to do, are they similar or can you explain the difference between the america first movement today and the america first movement that was in lindbergh's time? guest: that's a good question. to be honest, i haven't looked

at what lindbergh and how he used that term. the manner in which we use it today, the same way that ronald reagan used the term. when they institute public policy, whether it is national security, border security, education, making sure we are looking after americans first. one is in the best interest of americans, then we look at the best interest of our overseas partners and elsewhere, and i think that is what our view is, and how we look at a variety of different perspectives. you saw that championed during four years of president trump's tenure, and you talk about policies that were very prosperous, whether it is an economic policy, the national security, the border security.

i will give you one example. only talk about border security, i talk about what can we do alone that border to make sure we are protecting americans and american communities? i think for the most part when you hear the biden harrison mr. risch and talk about water security, almost always it is what is best for the illegal alien. that is how you approach the issue and what you keep in mind is your endgame. host: glen, pennsylvania, republican line. you are on, go ahead. caller: yeah, i'd like to congratulate mr. wolf for being in the best administration. in 10 years you going to learn how great trump was and how much of a joke the biden administration was. but the border is open. they are flying people in.

they think they've got 15 million people that registered democrat, and the last thing is i see kamala's husband worked at mcdonald's for two years. that's where they got their mcdonald's story. host: what did you think of some of those claims when it comes to what is happening with immigration? guest: again, what we've been experiencing over these last three and a half, four years has been dramatic for the country. not only the fact that you have all these folks breaking u.s. law, it's also the downstream effects that american communities are suffering today. we can talk about the fentanyl and the games in the public safety threat and the national security threats, hope you can also talk about the children. over 500,000 children trafficked into this country. they go into our public

education system and that has not been planned for. english is usually not their first language. what does that do to teach your resources in these public education systems and our public health systems, public safety systems? when you have this influx of individuals largely being released, it's going to have downstream effects on the u.s. economy and some of our social safety net systems. i think that it's really not being understood and0 i'm also concerned about that. host: former president trump would suggest that mass deportation to be an option. what would that look like? guest: absolutely. removing individuals, whether you call it removal, repatriation, deportation, the ability to remove people from the country is an integral part of any sane country immigration system. countries around the world or do this each and every day, they remove people who don't have a legal right to be here.

so i think president trump should get a lot of credit for talking about this. this ministration hunter biden and harris, the two don't mix well together. you can't have those two and have a functioning immigration system. i think we need to allow our ice removal officers. we need to allow them to do this. 600,008 hundred thousand illegal alien criminals. you need to get at it because it is hard doesn't mean you shouldn't try. individuals know that if they break the law, they come here. if they do certain things in the fall out of status, they will be removed from the country. that's going to have a deterrent

effect and you will see more and more folks start to follow the law. host: you said ice officers, to what extent that extend to using local police force or other means if a mass deportation is going to take place? guest: dhss partner with local law enforcement officers in the past, a very specific program that has been utilized at ice under previous administrations. and so you have sheriffs, law enforcement officers around the country that want to help, that want to remove criminal aliens from their community and they are looking for a little help from their federal government to do that. there is a partnership there that can be accomplished but again, you are going to have to target these individuals and i think all of that is important. it's not going to happen overnight but you can start to build and you can start to remove criminal aliens, other national and public safety threats that are in american

communities and i think that is what americans want to start seeing. they want to see the folks in the community that are a public threat removed if they are here illegally. host: virginia, democrats line. caller: i just have a quick question. i degree, i think the biden administration probably could have done some things a little bit faster. but i guess the question is that the house has been controlled by the gop for the last two years. they actually get a pass for not passing anything. how is that fair that they get off by not passing laws? they make the laws. we let the house not pass anything. nothing was passed, they asked the senate if they were going to do anything. then they went back to the drawing board. i've never understood government where you have a situation where it was a crisis, you have

lawmakers, i hope you feel it is worth it that you are running on this. i don't understand why you are on here, i agree with some of the things you're saying as far as with the biden administration should have done, but you are not saying anything about the gop as far as what they have not done. host: on the senate side, there was a bipartisan bill that came forward. guest: i think it's important, but if you go back even before the senate bill, you can go back to a hanceville that was passed at this point over 14 months ago. the house did pass a border security bill that talks about some of what i'm talking about but it obviously goes further as

well. they sent it over to the senate for the senate to either pass it or obviously to debate it, make changes to it. that bill sat on senator schumer's death for the last 14 or 15 months, they've not acted on it. instead they decided to go a different approach in the senate with a different bill. there's also bipartisan opposition as well. i took a look at it, it was not operationally effective. it did not implement anything that would curb the crisis. one that the house passed and one that the senate did. let's go back to the root of the crisis itself. congress didn't pass a law that created this crisis in 2021. it was the administration that took certain actions. it's always been baffling to me a little bit that the administration turns to congress and says you guys fix it.

when instead, there are certain executive actions that can be taken, certain policies that can be taken and put into place that can start to curb this crisis pretty extensively. they've just chosen not to do that. i understand the need and desire to talk about legislation, that is what congress does, and i think there is an legislation they be passed. at the end of the day, congress didn't cause this. it is up to you guys to fix. we washed our hands of this matter, we can't do anything more, and so we need you to pass more laws that we probably won't enforce because we are not enforcing the ones today. i think it's more of a good talking point that an actual solution to the problem. host: republican live in virginia, this is for john. good morning. caller: chad, thank you, great response to that last caller.

there is such a need for education on both sides of the aisle and the way you just capture that is great because i think there's a lot of confusion where folks just don't understand the fact that we have two chambers in congress and have to go through both chambers to get voted into law. but my question really is just hitting on what you just brought up, the bill that the senate tried to pass the senator lankford and sinema. it just seems like president biden and kamala harris and tim walz just use that as a speaking point to say that that bill got passed, that would solve molar problems. president biden has said it time and time again and it seems like there is a lot from the media as well as on the debates when president trump was debating president biden and kamala harris, when jd vance was debating tim walz. seems like a huge opportunity just to share that. all you guys say is pass the bill, pass the bill. but it's not going to do

anything because you have 5000 border crossings a day. so at the end the day i guess my question is why are the republican party politicians, your argument has no merit. it's not holding any water. just pressing them on that. that would dissipate any type of argument they would have. guest: i do agree with you. the more you dig into that bill and explain that bill, the more it starts to fall apart. he stopped -- you start talking about how it doesn't end cajun release, it doesn't address asylum fraud and as you indicated, and to 1.8 million a year before that trigger is instituted, and then that trigger sunsets after three years. everything else in the bill states indefinitely. that makes no sense to me. i'm not sure how congress knows there will be a crisis for years from now and if it is, that

provision is no longer available to the department. so there's a lot of things wrong with that bill. in my mind there are a lot of new procedures and that bill, things that have never been tried on the border that members of the senate decided to put in there. and i love that this bipartisanship, i love it when you can have a bill passed by a republican and democrat but just because a republican senator and a democratic senator write a bill doesn't mean it is a good bill. neither one of those individuals has served for extended periods of time along that border, and so they don't know what it is really like. they don't know the procedures and have asked, he certainly would have offered up opinions. just because you can say it is bipartisan doesn't make it a good bill. it makes it a bipartisan bill but that does not mean it is an effective bill. when i had other folks that i worked with, operators look at it, they all said the same thing, that this bill is actually not going to solve the crisis. instead if you wanted to pass

legislation, you go back to either the trump administration, the obama or the bush administration and let's look at things that work and then codify that instead of coming up with entirely new system that are untested, unproven and you have no idea if they are going to work or not. host: about two minutes until the house comes in for its pro forma session. barbara, you're joining us from pennsylvania, independent line. go ahead. caller: yes, we've talked about what the democrats have not done. quickly, would you please tell me why trump didn't do this when he was in his administration? the wall didn't get completed. explain why he did not get rid of this problem of immigration. host: barbara in pennsylvania. guest: yeah, i don't know that is a problem you can ever get rid of, but you can always try to tackle it and try to address it in any form that it takes.

we talk about the border wall system that you indicated, we built over 450 miles, i think it was 453 miles of that water wall system mainly in california, arizona, parts of texas and others. another 250 we were looking at the biden administration obviously stopped and hasn't built any more physical infrastructure. if you speak with border patrol agents, they need those priority locations to stop that. the remaining mexico program, our asylum cooperative agreements. there's other enforcement programs that we have put in place in 2019 and 2020, and that's why you saw those illegal apprehensions or encounters start to follow some of the lowest numbers that we've ever seen. had the biden administration just kept those programs in place and operating today, you would still see those numbers low. but in the first 100 days, they repealed almost all of what we

had put in place in 2019 and 2020. in my mind it's unfair to say president trump didn't solve this problem. we had certain policies and procedures and tactics in place to address the issue, but if you remove those and you don't put anything in its place, you are going to see the problem started just explode and that is what we've seen over these last three and a half to four years. host: >> tonight, tim walz will talk to voters in nevada. on c-span2, and incumbent republican representative faces off agai his challenger to represent nebraska's second congressional district, underway at 9:00 eastern, follod a debate in the sixth district of

arizona, which includeth suburbs of tucson. that's live at 10:00 eastern on c-span2. yocan also watch on c-span now, or online at c-span.org. >> do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god? >> weeknights, watch our encore visitation of our american story tv series, congress investigates. authors and historians will tell stories and we will see historic footage and examine the impact and legacy of key congressional hearings. tonight, a special senate committee investigating the sinking of the titanic in 1912 heard from 82 witnesses about

ice warnings ignored, inadequate number of lifeboats and treatment of different classes of passengers. watch congress investigates tonight at 10:00 eastern on c-span. >> c-span's washington journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics and public policy. from washington and across the country. wednesday morning, we talk about the role of women voters in campaign 2024, first with the president for the national organization for women. than we continue the discussion with the president and ceo of concerned women for america. washington journal, join the conversation live wednesday morning on c-span, c-span now or online at c-span.org. >> c-span now is a free mobile

app featuring your unfiltered view of what's happening in washington live on demand. keep up with life streams of four proceedings, hearings, white house events, the courts, campaigns and more from the world of politics all at your fingertips. you can stay current with the latest episodes of washington journal and find scheduling information for c-span's tv networks and radio, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. c-span now is available in the apple store and google play. downloaded for free today or visit c-span.org. c-span now, your front row seat to washington anytime, anywhere. >> demratic representative is running for reelection in washington's third congressnal district. she faced her republican challenger in the debate that focused