On Friday afternoon, CNN's senior national security analyst, Juliette Kayyem, preemptively tried to undermine President-elect Donald Trump from being able to take credit for lower border numbers after he takes office as the ex-Barack Obama administration member and former Democrat politician suggested that President Joe Biden had already fixed the problem, and that Trump would only be taking credit for low numbers that already exist.
As Kayyem and CNN News Central host Brianna Keilar discussed the Senate confirmation hearings for Homeland Security Secretary-designate Kristi Noem, Kayyem asserted that "the immigration agenda has nothing to do with enforcement anymore. The numbers are down -- the Southern border numbers are down." She then seemed to assume there would be no significant improvement in border crossing numbers as she predicted:
Trump will do two things. He will do these sort of "shock and awe" actions and then take credit for the fact that the border is, by all accounts, our reporting, the numbers -- is relatively quiet right now. And so that's basically what we should anticipate in the first couple of months -- is these big pronouncements, shock and awe, go after blue cities and blue states, and then the numbers will probably remain relatively low and he gets credit for it. That's, I think, a sort of safe way to analyze the next couple of weeks and months.
As Keilar had set up the segment, she had also hinted that there is no longer a border security problem as she recounted: "Noem vowed to aggressively implement Trump's border policies, and, despite migrant crossings at the U.S. Southern border plummeting last year, she described the situation there as a 'war zone.'"
And after CNN reporter Priscilla Alvarez was brought on to further discuss the issue, a graph that only showed the plummeting numbers for the past year was shown on screen as Alvarez declared: "The other part of this is the border. You mentioned it there. The border is relatively quiet right now. The numbers are very low, but, all of the same, the Trump team is planning executive actions to get at clamping down on the U.S. Southern border."
But according to the numbers on the website of Customs and Border Protection, Trump had managed to achieve lower border crossing numbers in 2020 by the time he left office than Biden. In December 2020, apprehensions stood at 73,994, compared to 96,048 this past December.
But the numbers had been above 100,000 for every month in Biden's presidency since February 2021 through October 2024, and only dipped below that level this past November and December. By contrast, under Trump, the numbers had only surpassed 100,000 a month between March and June of 2019.
Transcript follows:
CNN News Central
January 17, 2024
2:11 p.m. Eastern
BRIANNA KEILAR: Today, President-elect Trump's pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, facing questions from Senators at her confirmation hearing. Noem vowed to aggressively implement Trump's border policies, and, despite migrant crossings at the U.S. Southern border plummeting last year, she described the situation there as a "war zone."
(...)
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ: The other part of this is the border. You mentioned it there. The border is relatively quiet right now. The numbers are very low, but, all of the same, the Trump team is planning executive actions to get at clamping down on the U.S. Southern border.
(...)
JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: She seems -- I mean, she didn't seem very interested in the major issues. It's an odd pick in the sense like, you know, South Dakota is not a border state. It doesn't have the kind of threats that, you know, national security threats -- cyber, terrorism, climate, and climate disasters -- that other states have.
I think she'll get in, but I think her sort of lack of interest in the subject matter at hand and the department she's going to run is actually proof of where Homeland Security is going to be run, which is not out of the Department of Homeland Security, but out of the White House as our reporting shows -- that the immigration agenda has nothing to do with enforcement anymore. The numbers are down -- the Southern border numbers are down.
Trump will do two things. He will do these sort of "shock and awe" actions and then take credit for the fact that the border is, by all accounts, our reporting, the numbers -- is relatively quiet right now. And so that's basically what we should anticipate in the first couple of months -- is these big pronouncements, shock and awe, go after blue cities and blue states, and then the numbers will probably remain relatively low and he gets credit for it. That's, I think, a sort of safe way to analyze the next couple of weeks and months.
