Giaritelli has covered immigration, homeland security, and border issues for around six years. She is based in Austin, Texas.
Callers asked her questions about immigration as President Donald Trump promised sweeping changes to deal with the border crisis while on the campaign trail.
Saw no migrants cross border for the first time in about 60 trips
Giaritelli said she recently spent five hours with U.S. Border Patrol on land and on the river, but did not see anyone attempting to cross the border — a first in the 60 trips she has taken to the border.
“It was the first time in all those trips that I was with Border Patrol, five hours on the river and on land, we did not see a single migrant attempt to cross the river. We’ve never seen that in all my visits before,” she said.
She said the dramatically lower border crossing figures can be attributed to a “Trump effect.”
Education leaders have not seen deportations at schools
Giaritelli said she spoke with Los Angeles, California, education officials and the National Education Association, who told her they have not seen any children deported by ICE in school.
“All these organizations and school districts said we have not had a single student arrested in our schools, and the only thing we have seen is a parent who is dropping children off at school arrested by ICE.”
Biden administration used CBP One app as an immigration tool
The immigration reporter detailed how the Biden administration changed the CBP One app from being primarily used for commercial-related transit into the United States to being used by illegal immigrants to enter and remain in the U.S.
“What CBP did under Biden was added in a function at the administration’s request for people who are in Mexico to be able to request an appointment with a CBP officer at a port of entry to see if they could be paroled into the United States,” Giaritelli said. “The idea was that people, instead of crossing illegally and coming across, we don’t know where or when you’re coming, we hope we arrest you and find you and you don’t get into the country with without being arrested. By going to a port of entry, they could then review that and release you into the country.”
She added that “we saw 700,000 people enter into the country through this app.”
Have not ‘really seen any action’ on H-1B visa program
The H-1B Visa program took center stage in the political discussion in December, when Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy suggested that the U.S. utilize the program more to bring skilled workers into the country.
Many conservative activists adamantly opposed such a move.
“We have not seen any action really yet on the H-1B visa program. President Trump is really focused on the border. He certainly wants legal immigration to be merit-focused, skills-focused,” Giaritelli said. “I think in the next couple of months, maybe the next year or so, we could see President Trump really move on the H-1B program, overhauling that.”
DHS ‘can only do so much’ with available funding under budget
The Trump administration is hoping to follow through on one of the largest deportation operations ever, and the government has made progress on the lofty ambition. ICE is arresting and detaining about double to triple the amount of people per day than it did during much of the Biden administration.
TRACKING WHAT DOGE IS DOING ACROSS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Yet, there remain limitations surrounding the Department of Homeland Security’s budget, appropriated under the Biden administration.
“They are operating out of their 2024 budgets, which under the Biden administration, arrests and removals of illegal immigrants were significantly lower than they were at the rate that President Trump is going and so ICE can only do so much with the money it has left in its pocket, which isn’t much,” Giaritelli said.
