this is "nightline." >> tonight, the border battle for the american dream. a surge of migrants seeking asylum and left in limbo. now the biden administration under fire, urging patience. >> we are not saying don't come. we are saying, don't come now. >> but with desperation mounting, will help come in time? plus dumpster fire. a con man behind the biggest scam on the beach. >> did you knowingly con the investors to get their backing? >> what dylan mcfarlane learned behind bars after dreams of a music festival backfired. and the furry friend at your service. up at 2:00am again?

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♪ good evening. thank you for joining us. it's a vexing issue confronting all new presidents. immigration. what to do with the thousands of people, families, that come knocking on the door of the american dream? the problems are real, and so too are the people who risk it all. here's abc's matt gutman.

>> reporter: for two years, jonathan gutierrez has been staring directly at his dream. just on the other side of that river lies the possibility of what the 23-year-old father says could be a new life. safety. asylum for his growing family. sa 4-year-o enrique. 2-year-old, rebecca. 1-month-old. they've been waiting in a sprawling camp. the risks outweigh their suffering here, he says, going back to central america is not a choice.

the family's been left in limbo alongside hundreds of other migrants here. this transit camp housing just a fraction of the nearly 25,000 asylum seekers forced to, quote, remain in mexico. pushed to a foreign country under the trump-era immigration policy called migrant protection protocols. >> asylum seekers are being told to wait in northern mexicos mon away. >> president biden will sign an executive order that will review but not cancel the trump administration's migrant protection protocol. >> reporter: homeland security secretary all han i don't mallorca laying out an ambitious plan to slowly allow asylum

seekers to make their claim in the united states. >> what we are seeing now at the border is the immediate result of the dismantlement of the system and the time that it takes to rebuild it virtually from scratch. >> reporter: but first sending a message to asylum seekers. >> we are not saying, don't come. we are saying, don't come now. because we will be able to deliver a safe and orderly process to them as quickly as possible. >> the administration says that this is not a crisis, they call it a challenge. the numbers tell a completely different story. just look at the month of january alone. border patrol agents encountered more than 78,000 migrants at the border in january. we're seeing an average of 200 kids a day crossing the border without their parents, getting apprehended by the border patrol. >> reporter: just this week, we witnessed as migrants continued to cross illegally, many of them

eager just to find safety. entire families taking the risk together. helicopters flying low. there are a number of vans here to pick up a group of migrants that apparently smuggled across the border, hunkered down inside this orchard somewhere. >> reporter: on this day, border patrol telling us they weren't permitted to speak with the media. but seen why are dhs officials told abc news there has been, quote, a significant surge along the u.s. border with mexico. in january, crossing attempts were up more than two-fold compared to last year, the highest for the month of january in at least a decade. these are some of the high grants and possible asylum seekers they've pulled out of this orchard over the past couple of minutes. you can hear the helicopter to my right. they've loaded up a group of them. they're now probably taking them to a border patrol station. now the administration coming under fire for housing migrant children in the very same tent facilities democrats criticized

the trump administration for using. >> i feel like this is the same thing and that you're still detaining kids at the border. and it's not meaningfully different than what trump was doing. >> it's absolutely not the same thing, we are not ripping children from the arms of their parents. that is horrible and immoral, and something we saw in the last administration. >> reporter: last month, democrats unveiled one of the most ambitious immigration reform bills in decades, which includes funding to help streamline the backlog of asylum seekers and increased security at ports of entry. >> he wants to provide legalization for the 11 million undocumented immigrants who currently live in this country. here's the reality check on that right now. there is no appetite for this. they've got to get others on board if they want to pass something like this. >> reporter: as the gears churn in washington, thousands of families are still waiting to make their asylum plea. for months forced to live in the land of extremes. many migrants here seeing snow for the first time.

their flimsy blankets and tents freezing overnight. families burning what they could just to keep warm. >> reporter: the couple reaching a point of desperation in january. just before president biden took office, blanca, 8 months pregnant, says she jum it the u.s.children. her water broke once there. soon blanca welcomed her son, jonathan jr. the youngest of the three siblings is now a u.s. citizen. but she says within three days they were expelled back to mexico.

the u.s. has long struggled to balance welcoming refugees and enforcing security at the southern border. >> nature and the fence. those are the weapons of "operation gatekeeper." beefing up the border control on california's frontier with mexico in an effort to slow down the number of illegal immigrants crossing into the united states. >> we are a nation of immigrants. but we are also a nation of laws. it is wrong to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it. >> the "secure fence act" authorizes the construction of hundreds of miles of additional fencing along our southern border. we're modernizing the southern border of the united states so we can assure the american

people we're doing our job of securing the border. >> the immediate crisis, that flood of children arriving here alone. thousands of them now sleeping on the floor at detention centers. >> a humanitarian crisis congress is now being asked to help end. >> i want to make something clear. fixing our broken immigration system is one more big thing that we have to do and that we will do. >> reporter: but for president trump, the issue became a rallying cry. a lightning rod. >> the biggest loophole drawing illegal aliens to our borders is the use of fraudulent or meritless asylum claims to gain entry into our great country. >> reporter: for y series of controversial policies aimed at slowing the number of migrants coming to the united states. >> they're limiting artificially the number of people who can cross. >> it's called metering and has spawned migrant camps in tijuana south of san diego. >> reporter: >> reporter: in 2018 we saw the first impacts of that metering

program right here. with the remain in mexico policy that once-small encampment ballooned. it's here that we met melissa, husband armando, and their then 9-year-old daughter. they asked us not to use their real names. they said they spent three months living there, just a stone's throw from the u.s. border. melissa was one of 18 pregnant women named in a complaint filed by the aclu against the department of homeland security over the remain in mexico policy. the family was eventually allowed to enter the country, settling in ohio, while their asylum claim is considered. melissa's baby boy, born in the u.s., will turn 1 later this month. >> one of the worst things that i think happened with the trump

administration is not just the policies they enacted, but the narrative that came out of that administration. dehumanizing immigrants. i think the biden administration has done a very good job of changing the narrative. but it's going to need to continue to do that, and it's also going to need to change the culture within the agencies to make it clear that seeking asylum is not breaking the law. >> reporter: back at the border, jonathan and his wife getting a glimpse of hope. the family given a wristband. and after two years of waiting in mexico, they are allowed to enter the country. today the family on an airplane for the first time in their lives. boston will now be home as their asylum case makes its way through the courts.

>> our thanks to matt. coming up, fire failure. how one ambitious dream head of the this con man burned. ♪ now here we go ♪ ♪ i can't help it if i'm poppin' see them watch like ♪ ♪ who that girl ♪ ♪ it's outrageous how this flavour got em shook like ♪ ♪ hold up ♪ ♪ work work work it out ♪ ♪ ah ha ♪ ♪ i hit it back with a brand new style ♪ ♪ like woah ♪ ♪ bring it up into the fold get wild ♪ ♪ we turning up all the way on the dial ♪ ♪ like woah ♪ ♪ baby i'm fabulous so come on ♪ limitless possibilities. the boldly new 2021 nissan kicks. ♪ i'm morgan, and there's more to me than hiv. more love,... more adventure,... more community. but with my hiv treatment,... there's not more medicines in my pill. i talked to my doctor... and switched to... fewer medicines with dovato.

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xfinity. the future of awesome. ♪ it's been called the greatest party that never happened. the fyre festival. tonight the jailhouse interview and stunning admission from the man behind all the hype. here's "nightline's" ashan singh.

♪ >> reporter: it was supposed to be the hottest event of the year. an ultra music festival set on the island of great exuma with supermodels and opulent villas. the plan for the much-anticipated fire festival went up in flames. >> what is this? oh, jesus! >> reporter: guests who paid thousands of dollars for that getaway were instead met with storm-soaked tents, soggy cheese sandwiches, and canceled musical acts. >> welcome to the crazy [ bleep ]. i am stranded in the bahamas amidst hundreds of other extremely unlucky festivalgoers. >> this call is from a federal prison. >> william mcfarland. >> reporter: now, nearly four years later, the man behind all that well-documented chaos, 25-year-old billy mcfarland, is

back with a new venture. speaking out in a new episode of abc's "the con." >> what the [ bleep ] was i thinking? >> reporter: for the first time on television, since being sent to prison for defrauding investors out of millions. >> are we rolling? >> reporter: billy and some partners recently started a podcast, appropriately titled "dumpster fire." he promises his share of any profits will be going back to paying the victims of his failed festival. >> i hurt many people. and i'm aware of the pain and suffering that i've caused. not only did it harm people financially, i know that it violated their trust. i let them down. and i'm truly sorry about that. >> reporter: but this is a legit rehab tour? or just another scheme? >> billy's 100% a con artist. >> he's a narcissist. but he's all of that and a con artist. >> reporter: billy started out as an entrepreneur, launching multiple high-profile ventures. eventually leading to his most-ambitious idea yet, fyre

festival. but the reality was a far cry from the cultural experience mcfarland and his team sold on social media. >> it wouldn't have worked without instagram. it wouldn't have worked without all of these celebrity photos and endorsements. >> it's luxury, it's once in a lifetime, it's the first ever. that was basically how they pitched it and that's how it was sold. that's why i bought it, that's why it seems everybody else did too. >> reporter: just weeks before the festival was set to take place, nothing was ready. mcfarland's half-baked idea spiraling out of control. >> i had five weeks to try to build this luxury music festival with zero infrastructure. with a new team. >> essentially wanted to build this city out of nothing. but i couldn't be told no. >> reporter: as the money starts to run out, the extravagant accommodations mcfarland had promised don't materialize. >> every night when i turn and said, billy, we probably need to pull the plug. wie three weeks out, this is not

going to work. he'd say, tell me what we need to fix, we'll fix it, throw money at it, we'll make it work. >> reporter: less than 24 hours before the first band is supposed to take the stage, a storm lays the site to waste. >> when the rain came, everything was drenched. this whole entire property was a mess. billy said to me, get more people, let's just get more people, we've got to get this done. >> reporter: but it's too late. plane after plane filled with festivalgoers descend on great ex exuma, finding themselves in the midst of an epic disaster. >> opposite of everything we were promised. >> no electricity, no showers no bathrooms, no running water. >> they basically abducted us. >> take me back to the day when everyone arrived on the island. >> the biggest wrong decision i made was trying to improve the festival site by sending people away from it the whole day and having them arrive at night.

couldn't handle that when they all arrived at the same time. that was a day-of decision that probably altered the whole course of the festival. >> reporter: the fallout for mcfarland was swift. with a $100 million class-action suit filed against him on behalf of festival workers and attendees. >> billy mcfarland was gaslighting everyone by claiming that nothing was going wrong and this was what was planned. which shows kind of how insidious what billy and people like billy do. >> he duped us. he screwed us over big-time. >> reporter: federal officials then arrested mcfarland, charging him with wire and bank fraud, charges he'd later plead guilty to. you let down so many people, what do you say to people who would call you a con man? >> when i think about the mistakes that were made and what happened, there's no way i can describe it other than what the [ bleep ] was i thinking? i think that applies to so many

people and decisions that i made. >> did you knowingly con the investors to get their backing? >> i knowingly lied to them to raise money for the festival, yes. >> reporter: he's been ordered to pay investors back the entire $26 million he bamboozled them out of and isn't scheduled to be released from prison until 2023. >> i could pretty much guarantee you he's going to come up with another get rich quick scheme and try to sell that to the public. >> reporter: in fact, billy has come up with many ideas since he's been in prison. like a phone calling card for inmates. >> my overall concept really put together in jail, to get as many people as i can around the world -- >> reporter: whether or not this is a real attempt to make a fresh start, for now, only billy knows. >> what's your greatest regret, 20/20 hindsight? >> why people would put their trust in me.

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finally tonight, a helping paw. it may not look like work, but this 2-year-old furry friend is on a very important mission. bob the therapy dog is a full-time employee with tufts medical center in boston, comforting patients and staff at the hospital. sharing sunshine as only a golden doodle can. good boy, and a good friend. that's "nightline" for this evening. catch our full episodes on hulu. we'll see you right back here visible is wireless that doesn't play games. it's powered by verizon for as little as $25 a month.