- I am not defending the current processes at the border.

It has to change.

And people who are critical of it are right, but to think that that's more important than the protection of democracy is simply wrong.

[upbeat music] - Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer and we have talked a fair bit about US-Mexico relations on this show, but it's actually been a while since we've dug into immigration.

So today we are tackling America's border crisis head on.

And by the way, things have gotten so bad in recent years that both Republicans and Democrats alike are now acknowledging that the influx of migrants is indeed a crisis.

In December alone, US border patrols tallied a record high 250,000 arrests and not all of the same person, up 13% from the previous record set in December 2022.

Today I'm talking to House members from both sides of the aisle about what needs to be done and about the remarkable bipartisan border deal that now seems dead.

First, I'll sit down with Republican Congresswoman Victoria Spartz of Indiana, and later I'll be joined by Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of California.

Both serve on the immigration subcommittee in the house.

Don't worry, I've also got your Puppet Regime.

- It seems like Republicans in US finally seem to get it, that border is big problem.

- But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Presenter] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Announcer] Every day all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Presenter] And by, - [Announcer] Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at Cox.career/news.

- [Presenter] Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead.

Carnegie Corporation of New York and... [bright music] - [Ian Bremmer] The US is a country of multiple realities.

The economy is booming, everything is expensive.

Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, Donald Trump is the leader of the GOP.

Taylor Swift is a pop icon, Taylor Swift is a deep state asset.

And then there's immigration.

- The US Senate is nearing a vote on a bipartisan immigration and border deal, but its prospects in the House remain uncertain.

- In one reality, Democrats and Republicans have come together on legislation to secure the southern border at a time when bipartisanship in Washington is all but unheard of.

But in another reality, none of that matters because the bill will never become law.

So how did we get to this point and why won't anything come of it?

The answer to the first question starts with Ukraine.

Late last summer, US funding for Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion, talk about a border crisis, it was drying up and for the first time since the war began, it was looking like Republicans were not going to approve more money until their key national security issue was addressed.

- Before we even talk about Ukraine, I am gonna tell the president what I'm telling all of you and we've told the American people, border, border, border.

We have to secure our own border before we talk about doing anything else.

- By the end of September, Congress failed to approve more Ukraine aid on time and Democrats freaked out.

Though Congress managed to pass more funding alongside Israeli aid, the spigot was quickly running dry.

And then President Biden did something truly unexpected, he said, "Okay."

Biden agreed to tie Ukraine aid to border security and for the rest of 2023, White House representatives met near daily with a trio of senators, GOP Senator James Lankford, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, and independent Senator Krysten Sinema to hash out a deal.

And on February 4th, Senate Democrats released a 118.3 billion emergency national security bill that would provide additional aid to Ukraine and Israel, including some humanitarian aid for Palestinians, and proposed three main changes to US border security.

Make it harder for people to claim asylum, expand the capacity of detention facilities, and limit the number of people who can cross the border each day.

Keep in mind, it wasn't just President Biden's support for Ukraine that pushed him to make this deal.

The southern border crisis has increasingly become a political albatross for Biden who enjoys a whopping 38% approval rating on immigration.

That same Harvard poll found that nearly six in 10 Americans preferred Trump's immigration policies to Biden's.

And that my friends, is the answer to the second question I posed, why this bipartisan bill will never become law.

- This horrible open borders betrayal of America, it's not gonna happen.

I'd rather have no bill than a bad bill.

- Trump, the GOP's presidential nominee in all but name, has zero political incentive to give Biden an election year win on immigration and quickly called the version of the bill released by the Senate a "death wish."

Whether or not a border deal is good for the country is in that regard, frankly irrelevant.

And since Trump controls the GOP, the moment he puts the kibosh on the deal, any bipartisan bill is dead on arrival.

"We don't wanna do anything to undermine Trump," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly admitted in a closed-door meeting late last month.

"We're in a quandary."

So too is the country.

Illegal border crossings reached a record high this winter.

Sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago are buckling under the weight of bused in migrants and Texas Governor Greg Abbott is in a Supreme Court standoff with the Biden administration over concertina wire.

Oh, and House Republicans failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the situation.

In the meantime, desperate migrants will keep braving deserts, rivers and barbed wire to get into the country and Ukraine may miss out on billions of dollars in military aid.

Here to talk about the border crisis and the deal that will not be are two House members from either side of the aisle.

First up, House Immigration Subcommittee member and Ukrainian immigrant Victoria Spartz.

I spoke to Spartz and Lofgren moments before the Mayorkas vote, which ultimately failed.

Congresswoman Victoria Spartz, thanks so much for joining us on "GZERO World."

- Thank you for having me.

- So I wanna start with some sort of breaking news because in very short order, like in about an hour, you're gonna cast your vote for impeachment or not of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Now I'm assuming you plan to vote for impeachment, but I don't know that for certain.

Can walk us through why you're gonna vote the way you're gonna vote?

- Listen, I always believe that ultimate responsibility always lays in the top executive, but I think as even head of agency, you actually give an oath to your office and if you don't believe you get the right orders from your top executive, you really should probably resign.

And I think unfortunately what's happening in the border, it was very conscious decision by Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden not to enforce the laws, which are really significant national security risk.

And I think we don't do it very often, but on these issues like that, considering how material it is, we really need to send the message that we cannot allow executives not to do their duty to the public.

- This would be the first cabinet secretary to be impeached in modern times.

Are you just happy to be a part of history here?

- I'm not getting excited about that.

Unfortunately that is not very good situation.

I'm actually very concerned seriously what's happening in the border and I hope it will kind of bring some message and actions from administration to do something.

But I'm not sure if politics is gonna be prevailing this year again, unfortunately.

- Yeah, when it comes to the border, I think politics prevailing is one thing that we can be relatively certain on.

Another thing to get you on the record, do you support the Senate's 118 plus billion dollar bipartisan national security bill?

I know 60 billion plus in Ukraine aid, which I know you care about, there's 10 billion in Israeli and humanitarian aid.

How do you feel about that piece of legislation?

- I don't think that piece of legislation is really addressing important issues and strategies that we have to deal with.

I don't think it's really addressing our border situation.

It's just kind of putting lipstick on the pig and I think it was President Obama who said that it's still a pig.

It's not really dealing with that.

It's not really looking how can do better with our actions and strategy in the very serious one, Ukraine, that I've been very critical of President, but I try to really work with administration and I try to put pressure on them as a lot of my colleagues on a bipartisan basis to really make sure that we can more deterrents in much faster and more agile in this war.

I don't think it's still giving a lot of money without proper strategies.

So I think these issues have to be discussed and also supporting our ally Israel.

I know it became politicized everything now and I think Senate right now just want to move something on the table that they can do messaging for their reelection campaigns but this is all serious issues, so I'm not supporting in this form.

- What do you think the Americans need to do and how can it be done quickly to help the Ukrainians defend themselves?

- I think it's a very difficult situation now because unfortunately we let Russia to be able to regroup.

We let Russia now, they put their industry into military mode, they really dig in now and getting ready for very long war.

And I think we unfortunately, it was a missed opportunity for us to put pressure on Russia.

Now it's gonna be very difficult war and I think we have to now rethink, but I think it's very important to put pressure on Europeans too.

And our strategy needs to be very, very clear, but it also back up with actions, not just talk because this is a very serious war and as I said a couple years ago, if we don't deal with it, we'll have more wars.

Unfortunately we have more wars and if we don't deal, we can have even more wars and it really can destabilize the whole world and we'll be really dragged in in very material wars and very serious situations so I think we have to be smarter on this.

- So let's move on to the border and migration.

I'm wondering, do you have a quick suggestion of what Congress needs to do right now in terms of the migrant crisis, as well as the millions and millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States?

- First of all, we need to deter cartels from taking advantage of the situation using poor desperate people, pretty much enslaving them, taking advantage of them to make a lot of money.

And if we actually tighten our asylum standards, to more likely than not, which is slightly more than 50%, it will deter them from abusing the system.

We need to have better adjudication processes at the border, tighten parole authority that have actually been abused by President and give more tools to Border Patrol where people are not legitimate, they would not be just getting into the country, but also we'll have a process for people to wait for that.

What we had before, Remain in Mexico policy, it was actually very good because if you know that you are legitimate, you'll stay in Mexico, but if you know that you're abusing the system, very likely you are not.

So I think we need to give more actual tools to the Border Patrol and tighten the legal framework.

It doesn't need to be very broad.

And then we can talk about the funding, but unfortunately if we do not have more enforcement mechanism, all the money won't go to the right places no matter how much money we're giving right now.

- You did say in September you accused President Biden of playing politics with Ukraine aid, and I understand why you said that.

Is it also fair to say that Trump is playing politics with the border right now, given what's happening in the House and what he's said in the last few days publicly?

- Well listen, unfortunately that's why I was trying to push a lot of issue.

This year is going to be, generally everything will be consumed with politics, but I will take responsibility on President Biden because he is in charge.

He's a top executive.

Trump, President Trump is campaigning to be president, so I'll judge him if he's the president, I think he will likely might be and I think he needs to make his case, but ultimately, responsibility of executive regardless what it is, is actually to govern.

And he needs to be held accountable for that and not running for reelection or be afraid of that.

He needs to do his duty to the people and his duties should be working with Congress to be able to protect the American people but right now he's getting so much pressure from his liberal side of his party that he's not willing, even to deal with issues with some people in his own party complaining about.

So I think that is very dangerous politics because he has an authority to make this border secure and he's not doing that.

- You're right, campaigning is a lot easier, no question about that, but Congresswoman Victoria Spartz, I wanna thank you so much for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me.

[rhythmic music] - And now to my conversation with former Chair of the House Judiciary Immigration and Citizenship subcommittee, California Representative Zoe Lofgren.

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, thanks so much for joining us today.

- You bet.

- Well, I want to talk to you about the policy news going on right now, and I know that in very short order you're gonna cast your vote in the House impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas.

I assume it's safe for me to assume that you're going to vote against.

I'm wondering if you could tell me what this says about the priorities of the House right now.

- Well, the House Republicans are known as the Chaos Caucus.

They can't really do anything.

Impeaching Mayorkas, I think it'll be the only second time in history that a cabinet officer was impeached if they can get the votes.

And there's no basis for it, as you know.

The basis for impeachment is treason, bribery, or high crime and misdemeanor.

I've been participant in quite a number of impeachments and I actually have on my website a report done during the Nixon administration when I was on staff that goes through the history of the impeachment clause, what it means, what is a high crime and misdemeanor.

Even if the Republicans don't like Mayorkas, it has nothing to do with meeting the constitutional standards.

It's a complete waste of time.

- So can we say impeachment is kind of broken as a process now for the Congress as a check on executive power?

- Well, I don't know.

The Senate clearly is not gonna take this up.

They know it's just a sham.

I would hope that if we have an officer of the United States that has committed treason, bribery, or a high crime and misdemeanor, that we could respond in an appropriate way, not only impeaching but convicting so we'll see.

- Well, we haven't seen that in recent times, so I'll just throw that out there.

- Or ever, actually.

Even Johnson was not convicted.

- Indeed, indeed.

So in terms of bills that are working their way through Congress, if this bipartisan support 118 billion for Ukraine, for the border deal, for Israel reaches the House floor, as unlikely as that seems, will you support it?

- Well, it's not going to.

It's just blown up in the Senate.

So we're back to ground zero.

We have an urgent need for funding for Ukraine, urgent.

And if we don't, we will I believe, be seeing American troops fighting Russian troops in Europe.

This is totally irresponsible.

I look at some of my colleagues and it's like the communist wing of the Republican party.

They're ditching Taiwan to China, ditching Ukraine to the Russians.

It's really unbelievable.

- What kind of a bill do you want to see?

What do you think needs to happen on these two issues?

Should they be brought together, given the fact that different parties are calling for different things here?

- There's no reason to have them together.

But having said that, I think there is a need for changes in asylum.

The immigration system is broken and that includes the current asylum system.

It was a situation and legal structure that worked at one time, but it is no longer working effectively and we need change.

When you look at it, we've got around 4 million backlog cases in immigration court.

It was intentional that we have a wide net for people seeking asylum and then we would sort it out promptly after that in immigration court.

The problem is that that can't happen now.

So you've got people who are meeting a lower threshold for possibility of asylum who will be admitted for a hearing that will maybe never happen.

So we've gotta change the way we're doing, this is not working.

- That sounds pretty urgent, pretty dire.

- There are problems throughout.

It's not just that the asylum system needs reform, but we need, and we've got people married to American citizens, they should be getting their legal permanent residence and they can't get it.

That doesn't make any sense, including sons and daughters of American citizens that can't get their legal residence.

That doesn't make any sense.

We've got hotshot AI researchers with post doctorate degrees from fancy American universities that can't get their residence, they have to go to Canada.

So the whole thing is a mess.

It needs to be reformed and we need to do it all at once or piece by piece.

- I've watched for the last few months in Senate as Democrats and Republicans spent an awful lot of time arm twisting to try to get to a place where some of these issues could be addressed, at least patched over.

Is it Trump jumping in and saying, "I refuse to accept a border deal," is that what killed this or is it- - Yes, it's clearly that's what killed it.

Trump wants a political issue, he doesn't want a solution.

And some of my Republican colleagues basically said that out front, they don't wanna solve this problem.

They wanna have it as a political issue.

How shameful.

- There is a small number of minority of Republicans on the right that are holding the Speaker of the House hostage and are clearly acting as chaos agents.

But I assume there are also an awful lot of representatives, republican representatives of districts that aren't so different from you that would just like to see a solution.

Tell me what your conversations with the rank and file are like.

- I think the rank and file is supporting Mike Johnson and Mike Johnson is doing whatever Trump says, so they can't escape responsibility.

- Any difference that you've noticed between Speaker Johnson and Speaker McCarthy in terms of how they're conducting the business of the house?

- Well, certainly Johnson is less experienced.

He's more overtly kowtowing to Trump.

But he's cozying up to the right wing base to the detriment of the best interest of the United States.

Pretty sad.

- So even privately, you're not seeing an awful lot of regret, sympathy, efforts to see if there's anything that can be done?

- I talked just a short while ago to a Republican member and we discussed the lack of Ukraine funding and agreed that if we don't do something that Russia will be emboldened.

And ultimately, we will have American troops fighting Russian troops in Europe.

That's pretty dire.

We all see it and yet we're not getting the funding necessary.

They're running out of ammunition.

- It is certainly true the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition and it's very clear that they can't defend themselves the way they could when the Americans were leading the charge in providing them support.

But you brought up twice now this idea that the Americans are gonna be fighting Russia if there's no support.

That's a bold claim.

- If Putin sees that he can get away with this, we all believe he's going to next or soon invade a NATO country.

And then we have a treaty obligation just as they do to us to defend.

And unless we wanna blow up the world order that has kept democracy safe since World War II, we're gonna have an obligation to fight them.

And it's the height of irresponsibility for the American Congress to allow that to occur.

It's unbelievable.

I just keep thinking what has happened to the Republicans?

Why are they cozying up to the communists?

And it's not just Russia, they're about to ditch Taiwan to China.

There was funding for Taiwan in this package and they're gonna let Taiwan be adrift and vulnerable to Communist China.

A party that used to be defined by Ronald Reagan fighting communism, they are now helping communists.

It's unbelievable.

- And what do you say to those Americans that now are saying that the border issue is actually the number one issue out there?

It's not democracy, it's not the state of the economy, it is the border.

How do you respond to them?

- Well, I'll say this, I am not defending the current processes at the border, it has to change.

And people who are critical of it are right.

I think we need to take some additional steps, which I've been suggesting to the administration to bring order to the border.

But to think that that's more important than the protection of democracy is simply wrong.

If we lose our democracy, we don't have the capacity to deal with any of the other issues we face.

- Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, thanks so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

[rhythmic music] - And now for something just as dysfunctional as our immigration system, it is Puppet Regime.

- Oh look, it seems like Republicans in US finally seem to get it, that border is big problem.

There is an invasion, they say.

Yes, a big invasion!

And the border is not secure.

No, it's really not.

You must let American people know this.

Says terrorists will come in.

They already are coming in!

[record scratches] Wait a minute, which border are they talking about?

They're talking about Mexico border?

You want to hear a real border crisis?

Call me!

Or better yet, send me money or some nice new- ♪ Puppet regime ♪ - That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you've seen or even if you don't but you want your own border crisis at home, just cut it down the middle, why not check us out at Gzeromedia.com.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] [no audio] - [Presenter] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Announcer] Every day all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Presenter] And by, - [Announcer] Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at Cox.career/news.

- [Presenter] Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and: [bright music]