ICE Age

Dec 20, 2023

By Myah Ward, Lauren Egan and Benjamin Johansen

Presented by

Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from producer Raymond Rapada.

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off next week for the holidays but back to our normal schedule on Tuesday, Jan. 2. We hope absence makes the heart grow fonder.

After the holidays, Senate negotiators and the White House will return to the table to take another stab at a border deal.

The talks, so far, have proved to be incredibly complicated. And as they drag on, the chorus of critics is growing louder. Experts across the immigration space are not only complaining about the nature of the policies under consideration, but warning they won’t actually do anything to bring down migration numbers.

West Wing Playbook called one of those experts: JASON HOUSER, former chief of staff for Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President JOE BIDEN. This conversation has been edited for length.

The border issue has really been a stressor for this administration since the beginning.

I must admit in those early days, we were scared at 4,200-a-day at the border. When I hear numbers today, how they’re at 11,000-a-day, you’re talking about a situation where law enforcement, ICE, CBP, they’re trying to deal with a problem that they’ve already lost.

So, a big gripe with the policies on the table is that they’re not going to actually address the border problem?

The immigration continuum doesn’t start at the border. It starts when a migrant makes the decision that they could die or their family could die, and they make that trek north. Just fixating on these policies that Sen. [James] Lankford and others want are not going to lead to any less encounters.

Let’s just say we’re still at 10,000 today at the border, and it’s a mix of Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, and you create another Title 42 expulsion program. OK, we just had that for two years. Did numbers go down? No. And in actuality, in some of those nationality subsets, it created recidivists.

You’ve said these policies could create “Hurricane Katrina level catastrophe” across border sectors. What does that mean?

Look at some of what Republicans are pushing: mandatory detention by CBP and ICE. So, your time in custody is gonna go up and the number of migrants in those detention centers and in hold areas of CBP is gonna go up. Traffickers will see that. They’ll then flow more migrants into those areas, overwhelming them. Then CBP will have to either call assistance from other law enforcement or they’ll have to cut people loose. You’re going to have hundreds of thousands of people in custody. Do we have enough medical care? Do we have enough people to do Covid testing? Do we have enough clothing, food, water, sanitation? No.

What about Republicans’ warnings about an overwhelmed border, and the national security risk this poses?

Just operationally, if you say to ICE, “you mandatorily must oversee just this expedited removal process,” then they are not going to be focused on the public safety and national security threats — the rapists, the murders, the gang leaders.

Have current border officials you stay in touch with expressed concern about this?

I have a lot of former friends, they’re very concerned. But they also understand the complexities of the negotiations.

At the same time, if this is the moment politically, the president can’t now just give the Republicans what they want without also going on the offense and gaining what could really solve the problem, like more pathways, more resourcing for non-detained custody.

Are you surprised the White House has gone as far as it has?

The challenge that I always saw is that it’s either looking at it as a border and not an immigration problem or just trying to solve the problem of the day. It immediately jettisons up into the White House to the political space. It goes directly from strategic politics in the White House to operations within DHS.

There’s no tactical-level planning or design to implement that grander strategy.

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A message from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids:

President Biden, you can’t conquer cancer without standing up to Big Tobacco. Eliminating menthol cigarettes advances your Cancer Moonshot more than any other action. Your Administration knows smoking is the “biggest single driver of cancer deaths,” causing 30% of these deaths. Banning menthols will prevent cancer and save Black lives, closing the racial gap in lung cancer deaths within 5 years. Issue the final menthol rule this year. Delays cost lives, especially Black lives. Learn more.

POTUS PUZZLER

Which president banned Christmas trees from the White House during his presidency?

(Answer at bottom.)

The Oval

A LITTLE COUP DABBLING: Biden said Wednesday that there was no question that former president DONALD TRUMP was responsible for leading an insurrection, but he declined to weigh in on the legal argument unleashed by the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that barred Trump from the state’s ballot, our ELENA SCHNEIDER, MYAH WARD, EUGENE DANIELS and HOLLY OTTERBEIN report.

“It’s self-evident. You saw it all. Now whether the 14th Amendment applies, I’ll let the court make that decision,” the president said during a trip to Wisconsin. “But he certainly supported an insurrection. No question about it. None. Zero.”

Despite Biden’s comments — which were in response to shouted questions from reporters on the airport tarmac — the White House was careful not to wade too deep into the discussion. Press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE told reporters traveling on Air Force One that she could not comment on an ongoing legal process, citing Hatch Act implications.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by Bloomberg’s KATIA DMITRIEVA about new data published Wednesday showing U.S. consumer confidence rising in December, hitting the highest rating since early 2021. The Conference Board index increased to 110.7 in December, up from 101 last month. Consumers’ expectations for a recession over the next year fell to its lowest rate since 2020.

The White House was on it. Like, extremely on it. Communications director BEN LABOLT, deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES, campaign spokesperson KEVIN MUNOZ and senior communications adviser for economics messaging ROB FRIEDLANDER shared the piece on X.

If the message wasn’t clear enough, Council of Economic Advisers chair JARED BERNSTEIN chimed in, touting the data in a statement: “Consumer confidence shot up this month as more Americans start to feel President Biden’s progress lowering inflation while maintaining a strong job market.”

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This piece by CNN’s MJ LEE and KEVIN LIPTAK about how Biden has “privately flashed impatience to his senior advisers as his White House struggles to change public opinion on his economic record ahead of the 2024 election.”

“The president is said to have griped that even as he travels the country to tout historic pieces of legislation like the bipartisan infrastructure law, it could be years before the residents of some of the communities receiving federal funds see construction begin,” the pair write. “‘He wants this stuff now,’ is how one close ally of the White House put it simply.”

Perhaps the new consumer confidence data will put him in a better mood.

POTUS GOES COCO: Comedian and former late night host CONAN O’BRIEN released a podcast interview today with Biden. In the roughly 45-minute episode, the two talk about their Irish roots, their upbringings, leadership, cars, Russia, Ukraine and more.

Podcasts have increasingly become a go-to medium for the president. He recently sat down with ANDERSON COOPER for his podcast “All There Is” and he taped an interview over the summer with “On purpose with Jay Shetty.” Asked by a reporter traveling on Air Force One Wednesday whether the White House preferred the president engage with entertainers and non-journalists, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “we’re going to meet American people where they are and that’s going to take different platforms, different venues.” She said the O’Brien podcast gave Biden “the space to be candid.”

POOL REPORT SUBJECT LINES YOU NEVER THOUGHT YOU’D SEE: This one arrived in our inbox late this afternoon: “In-town pool report #4: Biden running early”

A message from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids:

THE BUREAUCRATS

FIRST IN WEST WING PLAYBOOK: NIK MARDA is departing the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he served as chief of staff of the tech division, our DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. He is being succeeded by MARY BEECH, who was most recently a senior policy adviser at OSTP and is a former chief of staff of the Employee Benefits Security Administration. JACKIE MCGUINNESS is also now communications director for OSTP. She most recently was press secretary at NASA and is a Biden campaign alum.

— RAFFI FREEDMAN-GURSPAN is now acting director of public engagement at the Department of Transportation, Lippman has also learned. Freedman-Gurspan most recently was deputy director of public engagement at DOT. LYNDA TRAN has left DOT where she was director of public engagement and a senior adviser to the secretary. She is joining the board of directors of infrastructure professional services firm STV.

— JAGIR PATEL is now an associate at Phillips and Cohen LLP. He most recently was a program examiner at OMB and is an alum of the Education Department.

— ANTOINETTE FLORES is now deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning, and innovation in the Office of Postsecondary Education at the Department of Education. She most recently was a senior policy adviser at DOE.

Agenda Setting

COULD GET DICEY: During a summit in San Francisco last month, Chinese President XI JINPING bluntly told President Biden that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with China, NBC’s KRISTEN WELKER, COURTNEY KUBE, CAROL E. LEE and ANDREA MITCHELL report. According to officials familiar with the conversation, Xi told Biden that China’s preference is to take Taiwan peacefully and not by force. Xi also told Biden that he had not set a time frame.

YEAH. LIKE THEY’LL ACTUALLY LAND THERE: During a National Space Council meeting on Wednesday, Vice President KAMALA HARRIS announced that before the end of the decade, NASA is hoping to send a group of astronauts to the moon, with one not being an American, our MATT BERG reports. The move comes as China has begun ramping up its space program in recent years, deploying a significant amount of resources to their space aspirations.

Harris made the announcement at the council meeting, speaking in front of 33 other countries that have signed onto NASA’s Artemis Accords, a framework outlining peaceful space practices.

SHOP LOCAL: On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced $600 million to distribute among 11 organizations to fund thousands of local environmental justice projects, Vice President Harris announced on a press call. The effort will aim to make it less difficult for smaller community-based environmental groups to get their hands on federal funding.

Rather than being distributed through the Environmental Protection Agency, the administration selected 11 community organizations to distribute the money. “These organizations will be able to review and approve grant applications faster — not with all the bureaucracy; not in years, but in months,” Harris said. “This means our investment will hit the streets more quickly.”

What We're Reading

‘Medicare for All’ bill becomes part of Dean Phillips’ presidential pitch (POLITICO’s Holly Otterbein)

Willow the Cat Tours White House Decorations With Jill Biden: ‘It’s Amazing.’ (People Magazine’s Virginia Chamlee)

Just How Rich Were the McCallisters in ‘Home Alone’? (NYT’s Amanda Holpuch)

POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER

In 1902, THEODORE ROOSEVELT began his GRINCH persona, banning Christmas trees from the White House due to “environmental concerns,” according to the Forest History Society. However, going against his father’s desires, one of his sons rebelled by placing a small tree in a sewing room closet.

Good for the kid. Teddy. What a buzzkill.

A CALL OUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it!

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.

A message from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids:

President Biden, you can’t conquer cancer without standing up to Big Tobacco. Eliminating menthol cigarettes advances your Cancer Moonshot more than any other action.

Your Administration knows smoking is the “biggest single driver of cancer deaths,” causing 30% of these deaths. Banning menthols will prevent cancer and save Black lives, closing the racial gap in lung cancer deaths within 5 years.

Issue the final menthol rule this year. Delays cost lives, especially Black lives.

Learn more.