- What is really happening with the surge of migrants at the southern border and what to do about it?

This week on "Firing Line."

- I have seen this crisis go from bad to worse, and it's tragic in so many ways.

- [Margaret] He represents the district with the longest stretch of US-Mexico border, spanning 823 miles, which places Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales at the forefront of the border crisis amid a record migrant surge.

- There is no southern border.

It's pure chaos.

- [Margaret] Gonzales has welcomed both Republicans and Democrats to Texas' 23rd Congressional District, seeking pragmatic solutions to solve the border crisis.

- Congress, as well as the administration, must come together and reform immigration and secure our southern border.

- [Margaret] But his bipartisan stance on several issues has led to his censure by the Texas GOP, setting the stage for a challenging primary battle this March.

In full disclosure, Gonzales has received support from American Unity PAC, a political organization supporting Republicans who advance LGBT equality.

I am a board member of American Unity PAC.

- We're out here.

You know, some of the barriers have got holes in them.

- [Margaret] But I wanted to speak to Gonzales because of his firsthand knowledge of the border.

- There's a lot of work to do.

- [Margaret] How the crisis is impacting Americans, and the legislative challenges as Congress struggles to find a political solution.

- I'm frustrated.

What do we have to do before some action takes place?

- [Margaret] What does Congressman Tony Gonzales say now?

- [Narrator] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, the Asness Family Foundation, the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, the McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, and by the Pritzker Military Foundation, on behalf of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, the Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Damon Button, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Roger and Susan Hertog, Cheryl Cohen Effron and Blair Effron, Al and Kathy Hubbard.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc., and by Pfizer Inc. - Representative Tony Gonzalez, welcome to "Firing Line."

- Yeah.

Thank you for having me, Margaret.

- You are a member of Congress that represents 823 miles of Texas along the US-Mexico border.

That's more than 40% of the US-Mexican border in total.

- Yes.

- You spend an enormous amount of time on the border, handling the border crisis.

What are you seeing?

- I have seen this crisis go from bad to worse, and it's tragic in so many ways, and while the crisis may start in Eagle Pass or Del Rio or El Paso, it doesn't end there, and we're seeing that exactly happening now, where it's going to New York City and Chicago and Denver.

There is no end in sight.

So I worry this is what year three looks like.

What does year four, five, six look like if we don't tackle this?

- You have brought more than 100 lawmakers down to the border, Republicans and Democrats.

Why is it important, in your view, for them to see the border and the crisis with their own eyes?

- Once you see it, you can't unsee it, and I've tried everything.

I've hosted 22 different congressional delegations and nearly 200 members now.

You know, just last week, I hosted Speaker Johnson and 63 of my colleagues.

So, out of these nearly 200 people, most of them have been Republicans.

There's only been four Democrats that have taken me up on it, but I want them to see it unfiltered, untapped, unspun as best as possible.

I won't put you in a spot that's gonna hurt you politically.

I just want you to hear from the mayors, the judges, the first responders, the ranchers, you know, the people that live there.

They will tell you the story, and regardless of what their politics are, it is all the same.

It's absolutely gut wrenching, some of these stories, and some of the daily turmoil that they have to deal with.

- What kinds of things are you seeing?

- Thanksgiving weekend, there were 14 migrants that drowned that weekend.

So it's absolutely, you know, I've seen this number go from one a month to one a week, and now 14 in a weekend.

- The number of people dying as they cross the border.

- The number of people dying, exactly, and they don't realize that water is very swift, and it takes a lot of people away.

Well, the other piece to it is somebody has to find those bodies.

Somebody has to pull those bodies out of the water.

Well, that somebody is the Eagle Pass Fire Department.

So I met with some of these first responders, and they just are exhausted.

They're completely exhausted, but I also see this young woman, probably in her early 20s, and she has a little boy, three or four years old, and this little boy is holding his mother's hand just as tight as can be, and I'm just thinking, "What kind of hell did they get to to get to this point?"

And I always think, like, what about them?

They're not gonna qualify.

9 out of 10 people will not qualify for asylum because they're not fleeing religious or political persecution.

They're fleeing economic persecution.

So what we're doing is we're sending them down a dead-end route.

- US Customs and Border Protection has encountered more than 300,000 migrants near the southern border in the last month.

That's twice the amount seen in the worst month of the Trump administration.

- Yes.

- What, Representative Gonzalez, do you think is causing the surge now?

- Yeah, it's very easy.

Words mean nothing.

It's all about actions.

I mean, December is normally a month, historically has been a month, where the numbers go down, and you see 300,000 people coming over.

I think back to December 20th.

December 20th, I'm in Eagle Pass.

There are 6,000 people under the bridge.

I visited the Firefly Facility, the soft-sided facility there in Eagle Pass.

It can house a little over a thousand people.

That day, there were 6,000 people in there.

I've been there two dozen times.

I'd never seen it in that porous a condition.

The Border Patrol was processing 4,000 people a day.

This is an astronomical number, and it still wasn't enough.

There was no end in sight.

- So what's causing it now?

- Two things.

One is everything is controlled by the criminal organizations on the other side.

They're pulling the levers.

They're the ones controlling where the traffic is going.

You want to get to the root cause?

The root cause of this crisis is the cartels.

The cartels determine all of it, and this is where we have to put pressure on them, and the other piece of it, too, the Biden administration may be saying some of the right things, but they're not doing some of the right things, and until they start doing some of the right things, this crisis is only going to continue to boil up.

- What about the four million that President Biden's administration has deported, expelled, sent back to their home countries?

- This is where the devil's in the details.

So let's say someone has traveled from Venezuela, okay?

And they've made this dangerous trek to Texas, and the Biden administration sends them back to Mexico.

Well, if you send them ten miles away when they've already made a thousands of miles trek, they're only gonna try again and again and again.

They're not gonna go, "Oh, well, you know, I made it this far, time to give up."

You have to send them back to their country of origin.

- In 2023, so last year, a majority of the migrants that were encountered at the southern border came from countries beyond what we have previously seen, Mexico and Central America.

There are growing numbers of migrants crossing the southern border from China and from India.

- Yes.

- How does what you're seeing now compare to previous surges?

- It's unlike anything before, and anyone in the national security space or border security space or has lived along the border will tell you the exact same thing.

It has never been in this manner before.

I visited Mexico City several months back, and I sat with President Lopez Obrador, and I asked him for one thing in particular.

I said, "Look, you know all these people from all over the country are getting humanitarian and tourist visas through Mexico, from China, from Africa, from Europe, from all these places, to come visit Mexico City.

They are not there to see the pyramids.

They are there to legally transit through Mexico to get to the United States, and then they dump all that documentation and then they enter our country illegally."

These are some of the tangible things that I've asked.

You know, cut back on some of these- - Tourist visas.

- Some of these visas, because that is a pull factor that's allowing people from all over the world to get here.

- You spend a lot of time discussing the dynamics of this problem with all of the constituents.

You talk to border patrol agents.

You talk to local law enforcement, ranchers, farmers, small business owners.

What are you hearing?

- I'm hearing from first-generation Americans that are going, "These people are not like what we came over for."

You know, and it's- - How are they different?

- They're different because, one, they're coming from all over the world, right?

And before, in many cases in my district, predominantly Mexican nationals coming over for work and for opportunity, and you have a lot of folks coming from very difficult environments.

I mean, let me give you an example, Venezuela, that's a tough country, and if you're gonna survive in that country, you have to be pretty hardened, right?

So a lot of folks coming over, it's a more aggressive manner than before, and they're demanding things and they're causing a lot of property damage, and what I've started to see is that more and more people that were reasonable, right?

I mean, I'm talking first-generation Americans that are going, hey, look- - Who themselves had immigrated to the United States.

- Yeah, exactly, very recently, and before, you would see these migrants and, you know, you would see your grandparents in their eyes or your great grandparents.

They no longer see it that way.

They see them as you're the reason why there's high-speed chases and my school is going into lockdown.

So more and more people have a direct story to the crisis, and they've had enough.

- One way the direct story has spread across the country is through fentanyl.

- Yes.

- And fentanyl seizures at the border have increased 480% since 2020.

What does the surge in fentanyl trafficking say about the state of border security?

- To me, that should be what unites Democrats and Republicans, because when fentanyl kills, it doesn't care, you know, what state you're from or what age you are or what ethnicity or what your voting registration is.

It just kills Americans, and I think this is something that the president and others have failed to do is how do you unite us on this issue?

These are things that are preventable.

- There's a growing sense that this really is a bipartisan problem.

Democratic mayors of New York City, of Chicago, of Denver, as you referenced, have all publicly called for more federal support to respond to the influx of migrants in their cities.

Talk about the financial toll this plays on municipalities.

- It's like the Hotel California.

You can enter, but you can never leave.

So, once you get in the migrant business, you're stuck in there, and all of a sudden, all your city resources are devoted towards that.

You get consumed by it and there's no end in sight, so there is no amount of money that can get you out of this.

If all you're doing is reimbursing these cities for their cost, this will never end, because only more and more people will go there and more and more services.

There has to be an enforcement piece.

I've been a proponent of legal immigration.

There has to be a legal route for either work visas or legitimate asylum claims.

I've fought very hard, you know, against my party and others to make sure that happens, but when 9 out of 10 people are circumventing the system, there has to be repercussions for those people.

There is no amount of money that will end this crisis, because the amount of cities that are impacted are only gonna double and triple.

- FBI Director Christopher Wray said the threat of terrorists crossing the southern border is a cause for concern.

In your capacity as a member of Congress, have you yourself seen evidence that this is a real threat?

- I have, and I won't speak to it, but it is what keeps me up at night, and at the very beginning of this and throughout, I always felt that maybe that was the nexus that could unite us, because once again, when a terrorist action happens, it kills all Americans.

They're just trying to kill Americans, not Republicans or Democrats or any of these other things.

- So you've received information in confidential briefings that gives you pause about the security at the southern border from terrorists crossing.

- Absolutely, absolutely, and then in public hearings, you know, the director himself is saying every light is blinking red.

I mean, he is jumping up and down and going, "Hey, look, if we don't do something about it, something bad is gonna happen."

- You have spent enough time at the border that you actually think this is a problem that is eminently solvable were it not for the politics.

So if we were just to divorce politics from the solutions, just in plain terms, what does it take to fix the problem?

- I mean, it's pretty simple to fix it, and I can give you the list of ideas that have been proven to work, but it's pretty simple.

The secret sauce to solving this problem is political courage.

We need political courage at all levels to be able to go, "You know what?

Enough is enough."

- I've heard you use a formulation that suggests you need some infrastructure, like a wall.

You need some manpower, like more human resources at the border, and that you need technology.

- That's it.

- And that this is a solvable problem.

- [Tony] Yes.

- Is it really that simple?

- It is.

It depends on, you know, the infrastructure.

You can't put infrastructure in West Texas when it's wide open and there's this beautiful area there.

- There are some places that a wall just, it doesn't work.

- Doesn't make sense, but there's other places that it absolutely does make sense, and then the technology piece, that's where you fill in a lot of the gaps where- - Why hasn't that worked in the past?

- Why hasn't it worked is- - There have been some real failures along- - Yeah, it's because, you know, they throw a little bit of money and then they they walk away, and, you know, there's 10 different programs doing the same thing instead of layering it and building upon it, and then the other piece of it, too, is immigration judges.

This is America, right?

I don't envision just rounding people up, and, you know, this is America.

You get your day in court, but if you do not qualify for asylum, it shouldn't take you seven years.

- To be adjudicated.

- It should take days, right?

If you qualify, great.

You know, we wanna be that warm, welcoming country that we've always been, but if you do not qualify, you get sent back to your country of origin.

- You've advocated for ending catch and release, increasing deportations, designating cartels as terrorist organizations, bolstering the funding for border patrol and ICE operations, and you've introduced bills addressing fentanyl distribution, asylum standards, work visas.

If you could wave a magic wand and just get one of those passed, what to you would be the most important?

- I think it's the deportation flights, because this is what I saw in Del Rio.

If you remember, the Haitians under the bridge in Del Rio, maybe a year and a half, two years ago, thousands of Haitians under a bridge, and then, all of a sudden, it went away.

- What happened?

- And so what happened is they started to send Haitians back to Haiti.

They increased the number of ICE flights, and immediately once they started doing that, it stopped.

Many of these Haitians are going, "Wait a second here.

I don't even live in Haiti anymore.

I'm really from, you know, Chile."

Too bad, buddy.

You told me you were from Haiti.

You're going back to Haiti.

So, as soon as the word got out on that, I mean, it immediately stopped.

So if there was- - So there was a deterrence factor that was effective, is what you're saying?

- Yes.

It doesn't even take that much either.

You just start enforcing that law and you start deporting people that, once again, that do not qualify for asylum, that are here in the country illegally.

You start doing that, the word spreads like wildfire, and the spigot is immediately turned off.

- Do you sense that, in your conference in the House of Representatives, you have colleagues who are sincere in their interest to pass an immigration reform, any kind of immigration reform bill in this upcoming supplemental negotiation?

- I do.

I've also, you know, in three years now tackling this issue, I have quickly found there are not that many genuine actors that want to see this problem get solved because it is very lucrative politically to just, you know, blame one another for everything that's wrong, and it's all fun and games when it's somebody else's district or somebody else's state, but what has happened is now it's in their backyard and it is their state, and they're hearing from parents that lost children to fentanyl, and they're seeing these influx of migrants come over and consume their city resources.

So I am seeing a growing number of colleagues on both sides of the aisle that are starting to go, "Hey, Tony, talk to me a little bit about your plan on how we fix this."

- The House Republicans have proposed immigration legislation entitled H.R.2, with the stated intention of addressing the border crisis.

I think there are aspects, if I understand your position correctly, that you like about H.R.2, but you have some critiques of it as well.

What is your approach and how does it differ from H.R.2?

- So when H.R.2 was being crafted, when we were making the sausage, if you will, I was very engaged.

So I made sure that the things that I thought were detrimental to H.R.2- - Like what?

- You know, some of these banning all asylum claims.

You know, just banning all immigrants.

You can't put somebody that's fleeing the Taliban, legitimately has been an interpreter with us and is fleeing, their family's gonna die if they don't get refuge, in the same category as, you know, somebody who is circumventing the system.

There are legitimate folks that are fleeing, and those are the ones I want to protect, and so I fought very hard to pull some of that rhetoric out of it.

I wanted to make H.R.2 as realistic as possible with real solutions in there, and I've also been working very hard with the senators that are building their package to once again make sure their package has real, tangible solutions.

It may not be everything.

I've been arguing House Republicans should be fighting for a down payment in 2024, and we come back for the rest when we win the White House in '25.

- So if I hear a member of the Freedom Caucus say that that member is in favor of H.R.2, and that's why they're in favor of immigration, should I be skeptical?

I mean, if you are for H.R.2 or nothing, does that really mean you're for nothing?

- You know what?

There's so many people in this town that wanna see nothing, and if they give absolutes, that tells you exactly where they stand.

On one hand, you'll say, "Unless you give us amnesty, I'm out."

Well, guess what?

You're not gonna get amnesty.

"Unless you ban anyone from coming in, I'm out."

And I've said "You know what, take your vote."

Take your vote and step aside.

It's time for Republicans to govern, bring this country together, find real, tangible solutions.

I'm against amnesty.

I'm also against banning the universal ban of, you know, protecting people that are legitimately fleeing these political and religious persecutions.

- And you're for creating a system that offers a legal opportunity to more people to come to the United States.

- Yes, yeah.

- Right now, as Senate negotiators are negotiating, are you optimistic about this moment in terms of passing some kind of immigration reform?

- I'm very optimistic about it.

- Why?

- At least on the Senate side.

I mean, we've got a ways to go, but, because why?

I mean, I speak with senators on a daily basis.

- So it feels like it's moving in a positive direction.

- It is.

It no doubt is moving in a positive direction, and I do believe there is so much political pressure from all these places all over the country that are now starting to see it.

I mean, this thing is spreading.

You may not be impacted today, but I guarantee you you will be impacted by it tomorrow, and a lot of folks are starting to realize that and they wanna get ahead of the problem.

So I am optimistic.

- This program, "Firing Line," was hosted by William F. Buckley Jr for 33 years, and in 1979, he interviewed the head of INS, Immigration and Naturalization Services, and they talked about a hypothetical scenario which was the subject of a novel, and it was this scenario where an unprecedented number of undocumented immigrants show up at the border.

What is the country to do?

Take a look.

- What will happen when, symbolically, this third world simply says, "Here I am.

Either shoot me down or absorb me."

What do you do if 150,000 or 200,000 undernourished Mexicans simply get up and say, "We're coming in"?

What, in fact, do you do?

- I don't know what we'd do if a huge, huge number came.

I do know that it's more and more likely because it's cheaper now to travel.

People have great communications throughout the world.

They know what's happening.

They have great communications, great transportation, and so I would even expect that in 10 years, we'll see a lot of Africans coming here because it will be possible to travel.

- I mean, that's 1979, a description of the situation we now face in 2024.

- Yeah.

We're there.

- He had no idea, admittedly, how the country would handle, how INS would handle that sort of event, but it is going to require a global response, isn't it?

- It is, and you know what?

At the very beginning of this crisis, the vice president started talking about root causes, and I give her a lot of credit for that because there is some truth to those root causes, and they visited Guatemala and they visited Honduras, and they started down that kind of expanding beyond the United States solution, but there's been no visits since then.

I just visited with the president of Guatemala, and I go, "When was the last time that you met with the vice president or anyone?

And the answer is, "Tony, they visited us one time several years ago."

- You met this week with the president of Guatemala, as you mentioned, Alejandro Giammattei.

What was the nature of your conversation?

What kind of help do they need?

- You know, they need help.

They want to deport people out.

They need help determining who these people are that are transiting through their country, but the biggest thing is they just wanna be a partner in this.

When you start meeting, I've met with so many of these ambassadors, and everyone feels as if the United States has turned a blind eye to our backyard.

- Your district includes Uvalde, Texas.

Uvalde, of course, is where 19 children were murdered after a school shooting in 2022.

You are the only member of the House of Representatives from Texas to support bipartisan gun reform legislation that was signed by President Biden.

You have been censured by the Texas GOP, both for supporting gun restrictions and also for voting for same-sex marriage.

You believe that the 2020 election wasn't stolen, and you are being primaried by more extreme Republicans in a close partisan primary for having taken this stance that some would say were quite politically courageous.

In full disclosure, I am involved with an organization that has endorsed you in your reelection because of your support for same-sex marriage.

Donald Trump won your district by seven points in 2020 over President Biden.

How difficult is it for you politically to be a leader when it puts you politically at real risk?

- You know, I don't view the world through a political lens yet.

I hope I never get to that point.

I think back to my 20 years in the military.

I've been in Iraq.

I've been in Afghanistan.

I don't scare easy, you know?

I'm not just gonna cower when the political winds pressure put on you, and I do think we need more members that can view through the lens of how do we just do the right thing?

How do we get our country on track?

How do we find meaningful legislation that encompasses everybody, not just my tribe against your tribe, but against everybody?

And I think the country is very desperate for that.

So I think it's time.

It's long time for lawmakers to get out of your corners and sit together.

If people think differently, that's okay.

Sit down and find meaningful solutions, and I'll never back down from that.

I mean, those are the same votes that, you know, may have upset people.

I'd take those votes again today if they came up.

- You would?

- I would, absolutely.

- Representative Tony Gonzalez, for elevating this crisis at the border.

Thank you for your time.

- Thank you, Margaret.

- [Narrator] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, the Asness Family Foundation, the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, the McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, and by the Pritzker Military Foundation, on behalf of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, the Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Damon Button, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Roger and Susan Hertog, Cheryl Cohen Effron and Blair Effron, Al and Kathy Hubbard.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc., and by Pfizer Inc. [lively theme music] [lively theme music continues] [bright music] [gentle music] - [Announcer] You're watching PBS.