The Truth with Lisa Boothe: Assessing Trump’s Policies and the Future of U.S. Borders with Mark Krikorian

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show Episode: The Truth with Lisa Booth: Assessing Trump’s Policies and the Future of U.S. Borders with Mark Krikorian
Release Date: June 19, 2025
Host: Lisa Booth
Guest: Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies

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Introduction

In this episode of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, host Lisa Booth engages in a comprehensive discussion with Mark Krikorian, the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies. The primary focus revolves around former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, their effectiveness, and the broader implications for the future of U.S. borders. The conversation delves into topics such as border enforcement, self-deportation strategies, labor market impacts, and the fundamental issue of American sovereignty in immigration policy.

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Trump's Immigration Policies: An Assessment

Lisa Booth opens the discussion by highlighting the significant changes brought about by Trump's reelection and his administration's efforts to secure the U.S. border. She asks Krikorian to grade Trump's immigration efforts.

Mark Krikorian gives an "A minus," noting, “the first job, of course, is they have to shut the border down. And that happened, like, right away” (03:59). He praises the immediate and sustained border shutdown, emphasizing its effectiveness compared to previous administrations.

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Self-Deportation Strategies and Enforcement

A significant portion of the conversation centers on the administration’s strategy to encourage self-deportation among illegal immigrants. Krikorian explains the rationale behind this approach:

“It's a multiplier effect for enforcement. So it is essential that you pursue a self-deportation strategy, whether you call it that or not” (08:11).

He draws parallels to historical efforts, citing Eisenhower’s deportation initiatives in the 1950s and post-9/11 programs, illustrating how combined enforcement and incentives can lead to significant reductions in illegal immigration.

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Impact on Labor Markets and Wages

Booth references recent reports indicating that approximately a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March, alongside accelerated hourly wage increases. She inquires about the implications of these trends.

Krikorian responds by linking the tightening labor market to rising wages:

“When the labor market tightens, then wages go up... employers have to offer more money” (16:32).

He argues that reduced competition for jobs empowers workers, thereby enhancing their bargaining power and leading to better wage conditions.

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Immigration and American Sovereignty

A recurring theme in the discussion is the concept of American sovereignty and the right to enforce immigration laws. Booth points out public sentiments surrounding sovereignty, especially amid protests and political rhetoric.

Krikorian emphasizes, “Do the American people have the right to make laws? Can they govern themselves and enforce those laws?” (38:00). He criticizes the left for rejecting American sovereignty over immigration, arguing that the administration's approach undermines the nation's ability to regulate its borders effectively.

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Recent Policy Reversals and Their Implications

Booth brings up Trump's temporary pause on workplace raids in agriculture and hospitality sectors, followed by a swift reversal of this policy. She asks Krikorian to analyze the factors leading to these changes.

Krikorian attributes the initial pause to lobbying by business interests and the practical challenges businesses face in filling seasonal positions:

“He was like, okay, yeah, we'll go easy on some of these employers. And almost instantly he got pushback... and he came to the right conclusion” (26:08).

He acknowledges the pressures from both the administration and Trump's base, ultimately supporting the reversal as a necessary move to maintain immigration enforcement credibility.

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Future Prospects and Conclusions

In the concluding segments, Booth and Krikorian discuss the long-term prospects of Trump's immigration policies. Booth expresses frustration over perceived common-sense policies being hindered by previous administrations.

Krikorian remains optimistic, asserting that while the problem is substantial, it is not insurmountable:

“I actually think they're making good progress and we're going in the right direction” (32:48).

He outlines necessary steps, such as making E-Verify mandatory for all new hires and tightening access to driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, to further bolster immigration enforcement efforts.

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Notable Quotes

• Mark Krikorian: “It's a multiplier effect for enforcement. So it is essential that you pursue a self-deportation strategy, whether you call it that or not.” (08:11)

• Lisa Booth: “At the heart of this issue is really just sovereignty. Are we a sovereign nation or not?” (39:23)

• Mark Krikorian: “Do the American people have the right to make laws? Can they govern themselves and enforce those laws?” (38:00)

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Conclusion

This episode provides an in-depth analysis of Trump’s immigration policies and their impact on the U.S. border situation. Mark Krikorian offers a favorable assessment of the administration’s efforts, highlighting both the successes and areas needing improvement. The discussion underscores the importance of enforcement strategies, the interplay between immigration and labor markets, and the critical issue of national sovereignty in shaping effective immigration policy.

For listeners seeking a nuanced understanding of current immigration debates and policies, this episode delivers valuable insights backed by expertise and informed perspectives.

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Note: Timestamps correspond to the transcript provided, enhancing the context of quoted statements.

Transcript

[Lisa Booth]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Lisa Booth]

Lisa Booth where we cut through the noise to try to get to the heart of the issues that matter to you. So today we're tackling the immigration firestorm head on. Did you know that there is an estimated 15.4 million illegal aliens in the United States? So what do we do about them? President Trump's been pushing for self deportation. It's working. He's been cracking down on sanctuary cities, and the stakes really couldn't be higher. So today we're gonna have Mark Krikorian on the show. He is the executive director of the center for Immigration Studies to unpack the latest moves from workplace raids to travel bans and so much more. So get ready to dive into the truth and to get some answers on what we're supposed to do about 15.4 million illegal aliens. Stay tuned for Mark Krikorian. Well, Mark, it's great to have you on the show again. Obviously, since the last time I've had you on, everything's changed. President Trump won reelection and basically the border has been shut down. If you kind of had to assess, sort of like, what grade would you give the president so far in his immigration efforts? How is the Trump administration doing so far?

[Mark Krikorian]

I give the president an A minus on immigration. And the minus is only really because there's, there are things that they need to get moving on, like new personnel that have been slow to, you know, get appointed or confirmed by the Senate. But what they've done so far is outstanding. The first job, of course, is they have to shut the border down. And that happened, like, right away. It didn't take new laws as the Biden people and the Democrats in Congress had insisted it just took a new president. And it wasn't just a matter of a kind of immediate drop because smugglers were afraid of the bad orange man. It's persisted for months. And so, in fact, recently the Tom Homan, the immigration czar where the borders are, announced that there was a night, an entire day where only something like 95 people attempted to cross the entire 2000 mile border and that no one, not a single person, had been released by the border patrol. So, you know, it's not as though illegal immigration across the border is now zero and never going to come back. It's a challenge that's always going to remain, but, boy, is it under control in a way that we've never seen before, not Even in the 60s when the numbers were a lot lower. I mean, it's, it's really remarkable what they've done at the border. The second challenge, and the bigger one is trying to unwind the Biden administration's disaster on immigration. And not just the illegals who came in under Biden, but the illegals from before as well. And that's where there's been significant obviously opposition both in the courts at the local level. But you know, they're, you know, they're, they're pushing back against it. They knew there was going to be lawfare and actually the one point on lawfare, I'm happy to talk about anything you want, but the one thing that really struck me is the lawfare so far has been about like individual illegal aliens or handfuls of people. So the anti border side is spending all of this time and effort trying to keep one, you know, Maryland man, illegal alien from being deported while the administration is rushing thousands out, you know, out the door at the same time. So I don't think it's a strategy on the part of the administration, but the, they seem to be doing a two track thing, pursuing these high profile lawsuits while for individual illegal aliens, while moving people out wholesale at the same time. So it seems to be working pretty well. And you know, I have high hopes for the next three and a half years.

[Lisa Booth]

I mean, but Joe Biden told us that it would take Congress and he couldn't do it alone. I love that line from President Trump's joint address to Congress of like all you needed is a new president. It is sort of funny though seeing them sort of lay down on the sword for the Maryland man from El Salvador who, you know, allegedly beat his wife and allegedly was part of murdering a rival gang mother or gang member's mother and you know, alien smuggler too.

[Mark Krikorian]

Humans.

[Lisa Booth]

Right. It just really seems to be the kind of guy you'd want to get behind. You know what's interesting too is this administration has really encouraged self deportation and we're finding out that it's working. And you know, they've done so by sort of changing the CB1 app into CB Home and or CBP Home or CB Home and then also offering money to try to get people to self deport. You know. Why do you think they've chosen that option? Just probably because it's path of least resistance or the messages getting out or kind of. What do you attribute that to?

[Mark Krikorian]

Well, there's a lot of illegal aliens and you can't take them all into custody and remove them. I mean that's just, it's a huge problem. And so what you need is to, is to kind of leverage the regular enforcement that the agents are carrying out in order to kind of, you know, have a multiplier effect because for instance, back during, in the 50s when Eisenhower had a big illegal immigration deportation effort, they ended up physically taking into custody and removing about 100,000 illegal immigrants. But about a million people are estimated to have left. So There was a 10 to 1 ratio there. Likewise, in after 911 there was a program called NSEERS. It's a security kind of a registration program for foreigners from countries that were of concern for terrorism. And Pakistanis were like the biggest number. And this program nabbed about 1500 Pakistani illegal aliens. But about 15,000 are estimated to have hightailed it back to Pakistan on their own self deported. Now I don't think you're going to get a 10 to 1 ratio now necessarily, but it's free to the taxpayer. Completely apart from this issue of, you know, they're paying these bonuses if you go home and you know, through this CBP1 or CBP Home app. But people who just go on their own, they sort of figure, oh my God, I don't want to get arrested. I'm kind of thinking about going home anyway. And so, you know, Maria, pack up the kids and we're going to head back two steps ahead of the law. That doesn't cost us anything. And it, you know, it's a, it's kind of a, it's a multiplier effect for enforcement. So it is essential that you pursue a self deportation strategy, whether you call it that or not. And the one of the reasons that can work, it's not as though, like I said, it's not as though they, they've thought up this idea on their own. The one of the reasons it can work is there's always some illegal aliens leaving anyway because there's always churn in the illegal population. So the key to attrition of the illegal population is fewer people coming in and more people going out. I mean it's pretty, you know, pretty basic arithmetic. And the way you get more people to leave, again, some people are always going to be leaving. The way you get more people to leave is you make clear that you're enforcing the law. And a key point here is that self deportation cannot work if it's just about arrest, if the enforcement side of it is just about arresting criminals. Because most illegal immigrants, I mean they've almost all committed some significant federal crimes, but most of them are related to immigration, tax fraud, Social Security fraud, ID fraud, that kind of stuff. As far as violent crimes or drug dealing or what have you. Most illegal aliens don't do that stuff. They're just working stiffs like anybody else. And if the enforcement is only against criminals and not at work sites and what have you, then, you know, an ordinary schmo who's not raping anybody and not selling drugs will figure well he doesn't have anything to worry about. That's why you have to do both going after the criminals and and going after regular illegal aliens in order to get self deportation to work.

[Lisa Booth]

We've got to take a quick commercial break. More with Mark on the other side. If you like what you're hearing, please share on social media or maybe send it to a friend.

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[Lisa Booth]

You know it's interesting because one of your colleagues in the New York Post wrote about the nearly million people who self deported and you know, but the an article from the Washington Post talking about how a million foreign born workers have exited the workforce since March. However, also noting in the article that hourly wages have accelerated at the same time. What message does that send you? That despite, you know, foreign born workers leaving the exit or exiting the workforce and being told that that's going to weaken the labor supply but yet hourly wages have accelerated at the same time. Like what message does that send you? What do you draw from that?

[Mark Krikorian]

That's not a coincidence. I mean when the labor market tightens, then wages go up. In other words, if there are fewer people, within reason, obviously. But if there are, if there are fewer people for looking for jobs and employers have to, you know, sort of hustle to find workers, they're going to respond in a bunch of ways. One of which is they're going to offer more money. So it's not coincidental that the foreign some there's been significant exit of Foreign born workers from the workforce. And at the same time wages, especially hourly wages, have gone up. Those are actually related phenomenon. That's kind of the whole point or part of the point, and I wish the administration were making that argument better. Maybe that's part of my reason. It's a minus and not a plus, is that they had this great news that their enforcement efforts are actually bearing fruit for regular workers. In other words, it's not just the, you know, rapists and what have you that they're getting out, which is obviously beneficial for everybody. We don't want those people here at all. Nobody does. But immigration enforcement is also supposed to help workers, ordinary workers, especially less skilled people, and to increase their bargaining power because there's fewer people competing with them and they actually have, you know, they've got a success they can point to. And the, you know, in that announcement about the hourly, about the wages, increase in wages for hourly workers, they didn't make the connection. It was from the Treasury Department, I think. And so I'm not sure one hand knows what the other is doing, but they've got a victory there and they should have been talking about it because part of the point of immigration enforcement is to increase the bargaining power of less skilled workers. Because most government policies, at least in this economic area, immigration and a lot of others are going to have one of two effects. Either they're going to make it easier for employers to find workers or easier for workers to find jobs, one or the other. A loose labor market helps employers because it means that workers have to hustle to find jobs. A tight labor market means that workers don't have to hustle to find the jobs as much. Employers have to hustle to find the workers. And you know, obviously there's a lot of moving parts to anything, but all of the things being equal, I think it is, and this is a normative judgment, you could have a different conclusion. But I think that the balance of kind of interest should be on making it possible, making it necessary for employers to hustle to find workers by offering more money, different benefits, different working conditions, whatever it is, rather than forcing workers to hustle to find jobs, you know.

[Lisa Booth]

Because obviously the whole argument from the left and some on the right as well as, well, we need these people for, you know, these jobs, whether it's in the field or what have you. And you know, we're not going to get Americans to fill these jobs. You know, that's always sort of the argument for, you know, pro mass immigration. Right, right.

[Mark Krikorian]

Yep. Yeah, it's the. I even had a hashtag back when they still use hashtags. Jawd jobs Americans won't do. And you know, there's sort of a kernel of truth there, but not very much. The fact is that almost all occupations that the census bureau tracks because they slice and dice all the jobs in the country into, I don't know, several hundred, 400, 500 different occupations. And almost all of them are majority native born, not even just legal workers. So you include native born and legal immigrants. The majority in almost every job category is native born. And there's only one job category where more than 60% of the workers are immigrants. And again, that's not illegal. That's just any kind of immigrants, even if they're US citizens and that's manicurists and whatever, you know, nail people working in nail shops or whatever it is. That's it. Even in things like, you know, office cleaning, janitorial work, all of that stuff, the majority are native born. So you can't say that a job where, say, even if it's only 50% of the people who do it are native born, you can't say that's a job Americans won't do because half of the people doing the job are Americans. The only place that argument holds any water is in certain narrow farming occupations like the harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables, because that has become completely foreignized. But even there, first of all, there's an unlimited guest worker program. So we don't need illegal immigration to do that. It's just that farmers need to follow the rules. And there's rules about pay and housing and transportation, which many farmers don't want to have to bother with. But the other thing is, many of those jobs shouldn't exist in a modern society. The United Farm Workers puts out a video around Thanksgiving. They do this all the time. But they make a big push before Thanksgiving to say that, you know, farm workers, or why you have food on your table, this kind of thing. And they show these videos of people doing farm work and they're hard working people and I'm sure they're fine people doing this work. But the one that really stuck in my mind was a guy kneeling in the dirt pulling radishes out by hand and then rubber banding them in bunches and going on to the next one. He was incredible dexterity, working really hard. And, and why on earth is a modern society, you know, have to feed itself by bringing in foreign workers to kneel in the dirt and pull things out of the ground with their Hands. It's medieval. And so, you know, mechanization can solve, if not all, almost all of these problems. And. But what interest is there on the part of a farmer to invest the money in mechanization or even a farm equipment company from researching and building machines? If you've got 17 illegal aliens fighting for each job, that's just cheaper and easier. So one of the reasons we need enforcement is not just because illegality is bad, but also to spur mechanization, labor saving technology, and by definition, productivity increases in farming. So, no, this whole job Americans won't do thing is a canard and it's just an excuse. Again, you're right. People on the left and the right, libertarian and corporate right at least used to justify not enforcing immigration laws.

[Lisa Booth]

Although it is sort of interesting because you would think the people who are so pro immigrant and pro human rights would want more protection for those workers, so.

[Mark Krikorian]

Well, it was like that. Yeah, it was like that in the old days. Cesar Chavez, who started United Farm Workers and now is some kind of icon for the left and for the racial chauvinists among the Hispanics. He was a regular union guy. First of all, he wasn't a one of these La Raza chauvinists. He thought that was a racist, actually. He explicitly said that this La Raza thing is just the Nazi concept. He literally used that language. But he also, in the economic sense, believed in limiting access to the country through immigration enforcement in order to improve the lot of the workers who were here. And he used to complain, the Border Patrol isn't arresting these people. And he, I've sent them lists of where they are and they won't go and arrest them because the big employers and the politicians don't want the law, didn't want the law enforced. So, you know, we can use a lot more Caesar Chavez, real Caesar Chavez in the fields today. Not the kind of fake Caesar Chavez's that the lefties are retailing now.

[Lisa Booth]

Well, it's interesting we've seen from President Trump recently, just in a span of a few days, sort of this reversal on the workplace raids, you know, particularly in agriculture and hospitality. And on June 12, he sort of indicated this pause on raids at like farms and hotels and restaurants. And then by June 16, he reversed that guidance, resuming these enforcement at these work sites. You know, what do you think led to that sort of initial kind of like pause? And then why do you think he's since reversed it and sort of, what do you make of that whole ordeal?

[Mark Krikorian]

He was, there's two Things first, he was heavily lobbied by business interests and specifically by the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, who is kind of the lobbyist for the ag industry in the government, rather than the government's representative to the ag industry. And, you know, there's the distractions of the LA riots and the war in the Middle east. And, and the other thing is the President's businessman and he, you know, he's used seasonal workers and he realizes that it is, in fact, a headache sometimes for businesses to fill a lot of these jobs. And that's, that's true enough. There's no question, it's not a reason not to do immigration enforcement, but the headache can be real. And so you put those things together. He was like, okay, yeah, we'll go easy on some of these employers. And almost instantly he got pushback, both from his base people saying, look, we voted you for you to enforce immigration laws. What are you talking about? And from within the administration. I mean, this just led to an explosion inside the admin. And it's to their credit that you didn't have a lot of people leaking to the media criticizing this. They kept the fight inside, which is where it belongs, but they waged it. And I don't know, you know, if there were people threatening to resign, high profile people, if he didn't go back on it again, I'm not being coy here, I really don't know, but I suspect there may have been those kind of threats because this is, this would have been if they stuck with it and exempted all restaurants, farms, meat packers and hotels from the immigration law. That would have been a torpedo below the waterline for the President's credibility on his, you know, marquee issue. So the temptation to do this was always there and frankly will continue, I'm afraid. But the President, I guess the way to put it is he passed the test. He initially failed it, but it was, you know, in other words, where he caved into business concerns. But that wasn't a final decision. And in the end he came to the right conclusion. So, you know, maybe that's another reason I'd have the A for the grade rather than an A plus, but it's still an A because they, you know, he did the right thing. And they have literally just within days said, no, no, everybody's, you know, liable to immigration enforcement. Nobody gets a special pass or a special exemption. And that's the way it should be.

[Lisa Booth]

Quick break. More with Mark. Hey, guys, it's Lisa Booth.

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[Lisa Booth]

You know it's interesting because your organization, the center for Immigration Studies estimates that we have about 15.4 million illegal aliens. I think you mentioned that before in the conversation as well. Obviously that's a lot of people. You know, even just that million number for self deportations doesn't get the job done. Even the deportations that he's trying to do doesn't get the job done. So like what do you do about this massive illegal population?

[Mark Krikorian]

Well look, it's a process, it's not an event. I mean the administration's only been around for what is it, four months or something? Five months? You know, it's going to take time. And the issue is not, you know, have they solved the problem today? If we could, you know, if they, if they've been able to engineer a million self deportations, you figure over the next three and a half years another, I don't know, let's 5 million maybe people leave on their own, 6 million and they actually deport another couple million or 3 million. I don't know. We'll see that you're taking a huge chunk out of this illegal immigrant, illegal immigration problem. So I think it's too much to expect that even just in one term they're going to solve the whole problem overnight. They're making real progress and so they just need to keep at it. You keep the enforcement of physically taking people into custody and removing them. You combine that with increasing efforts to spur self deportation. So there's other things they need to do there. For instance, we need to have E verify mandated for all new hires. That's an online system, free online system the government runs so that when an employer hires somebody and submits the regular payroll information, Social Security and irs, they also go to another website. It should be integrated, frankly, but maybe it will be at some point. But they now go to another website and you just put in their name, social and date of birth and it tells you whether it matches their records. Is this person, is this person authorized to work? It's not perfect, but it works pretty well for a government program. We've been using it for years. The problem is it's not mandatory. Only about half of new hires go through this system and there are ways to fool it, but it's hard, it's not easy to fool and it needs to be mandatory for all new hires everywhere to, you know, to have any meaning as far to, to be able to prompt and spur more self deportation. And there's a whole bunch of other things they need to do. For instance, it needs to be, and this is a Treasury Department thing, it needs to be impossible for illegal aliens to open bank accounts. Under Obama. They actually explicitly made it lawful to the of the forms of ID you have to present. They made it lawful to use forms of ID that only illegal aliens bother to get like consular ID cards from foreign governments. They need to make it increasingly difficult for illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses. And there's a whole bunch of other areas that they need to, you know, tighten up on. But this is, they're making real progress. This is the idea that, you know, it's, the problem hasn't been solved yet and it's, you know, there's still some illegal aliens left even after four years, which there will be. It doesn't mean that they're not solving the problem. I mean, and you know, knock on wood, if there's say a J.D. vance administration, they would continue it. And you know, I think we've got, we actually can solve this problem. That's one of the reasons you mentioned our number 15 something million. And again we acknowledge that's probably almost certainly an undercount. It's probably 16, maybe 17 million when you add it all together again a lot of people. But that's why I think the idea of some people sort of on the restrictionist side that who scoff at that number as too low. And they say no, there's 25, 30 million, there's a 50 million, illegally 100 million. I mean it's ludicrous. If there really were 50 million illegal immigrants, then I'm not sure we could solve the problem. I mean, we might have to just throw our hands up at amnesty people and start over again. The problem we have is big enough, but it's not too big that it can't be, you know, can't be solved. So I actually think they're making good progress and we're going in the right direction.

[Lisa Booth]

Well, I'm sure too it's frustrating because I feel like so much of public policy is Just common sense. Like even just executive orders imposing travel bans from countries where we can't vet them. Like that makes sense. Not letting people in on visas who hate our country. That makes sense. If you secure your border, you're going to not have illegal immigration. Like that makes. Right. Like so much of this is just common sense. Yet, you know, which, you know, really just indicates that what we saw under the Biden administration was intentional, because it's almost too easy to solve if you really want to.

[Mark Krikorian]

The intentional nature of what the Biden people did is real, but it's not. I take issue with a lot of our, you know, friends and allies who say, you know, they're importing these people to import voters or to influence the census count so they get more seats in the house in 20, 30 or even.

[Lisa Booth]

Definitely said that.

[Mark Krikorian]

Yeah. I mean, those are real impacts.

[Lisa Booth]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Krikorian]

But my, but my point is, I don't think that's what the immigration people in the administration were actually thinking. In other words, it wasn't a strategy. They do not, did not and still do not believe that immigration limits are morally defensible. They think immigration law as such is Jim Crow, and therefore anybody who shows up at the border has to be let in. Period. You see what I mean? In other words, it's an ideological concern that has the benefits that I mentioned for them. Sure. But what drove the Biden immigration people, whether it's mayorkas or all of the, you know, the DHS secretary or all the others, is that they do not think that the American people have the right to say no to any foreigner who wants to come in. And once that word got out, they all started coming in.

[Lisa Booth]

And before we go, I think, you know, when we see sort of the protests in L. A and you listen to Mayor Karen Bass, it seems like basically what they're saying to your point of what you're just saying now, like, surrender your country to illegal aliens. And so I think at the heart of this issue is really just sovereignty. Like, are we. Are like, are we a sovereign nation or not? And, you know, that just seems to be the crux of the issue to me.

[Mark Krikorian]

Absolutely. I mean, that's now the litmus test issue on the left, that they reject the. They reject American sovereignty. I mean, it's as simple as that. They're like the libertarians who were ostensibly still on the right, but really are now part of the left coalition, the Cato Institute people, and the rest of them are because of immigration, actually, and this whole issue of sovereignty and self determination, they are they're part of the left. And that is the key issue. This isn't about whether how, you know, some visa program works or what's the best way to promote, you know, better cooperation with law enforcement or whatever it is. Those are for, for the left and the libertarians, those are secondary issues. They reject the concept of American sovereignty over immigration. And so anybody who gets in has a right to come in and a right to stay if they want to. We have no right, literally have no right to let them leave. I mean, to make them leave. And so that is the key issue. Are we, do we is basically is do the American people have a right to make laws? Can they govern? Can we govern ourselves and make laws and enforce those laws? And the answer, not just on immigration, but immigration is where you see it most in most stark contrast, the answer of those, and this is a mainstream democratic position now, is no, American people do not have the right to limit immigration. Period. And we're seeing everything else flows from that, whether it's Los Angeles or, you.

[Lisa Booth]

Know, and anything else that's insane. Mark Krikorian, executive director of center for Immigration Studies, appreciate your time. Interesting stuff. Thank you very much.

[Mark Krikorian]

Thank you.

[Lisa Booth]

That was Mark Krikorian, executive director of the immigration. That was Mark Krikorian, executive director of the center for Immigration Studies. Appreciate him for making the time to come on the show. Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week. Until next time.

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