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Border & Immigration

Roundtable Tackles Migrant Crisis, Congressional Politics, For-Profit Colleges

Roundtable Tackles Migrant Crisis, Congressional Politics, For-Profit Colleges
Migrants, 52nd Congressional, California v. University of Phoenix HOST: Mark SauerGUESTS: Jill Replogle, KPBS News Liam Dillon, Voice of San Diego Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

MARK SAUER: Joining me today on the Roundtable are Jill Replogle of KPBS News, Tony Perry, San Diego Bureau Chief at the Los Angeles Times, and Liam Dillon from Voice of San Diego. The weeks immigration crisis moved from the border to Washington DC this week, President Obama wanted $3.7 billion to add more resources to deal with tens of thousands of kids and families arriving from Central America. The Senate authored about 2 billion, and House Republicans countered with 600 million or so, and pulled even that amount off of the table. Jill, there are many moving parts with the story and it seems like the administration is not going to get any money and anymore resources, let us start there. JILL REPLOGLE: It doesn't look like that, the house is supposed to vote on an even more conservative version of a bill that they failed to pass yesterday, and they want to get rid of the 2008 and I trafficking law and allow kids to be ported within seven days, they obviously are not giving as much funding as the president wanted, and they also want to couple this with getting rid of the DACA program for immigrant kids who went to high school and grew up here, and not a lot of budget to expand that. They're looking at a more political of what Obama wanted, which was just a funding bill. MARK SAUER: And they would have to reconcile all of that with what the Senate has passed, $2 billion, but they're all of these political aspects. JILL REPLOGLE: The Senate wanted to pass a bill much more in line with what the administration wanted, which is to provide more immigration judges, or detention space for families, and more resources to take care of the kids while they are here. Again with the idea to speed up the legal process without taking away any of the rights and privileges that the children have now to get immigration proceedings. MARK SAUER: If we don't get a deal and we don't get reconciliation on this between the house and the Senate, of course with the Senate being run by Democrats and the house being run by Republicans, were looking at a five-week recess, and we're off to fall for anything is done before the fall election. JILL REPLOGLE: The border authority says that they're going to run out of money soon. It's unclear at this point what happened then. In the meantime, immigration cases are getting even further backlogged, Obama has already said that they are trying to speed up these children's cases and but them at the front of DACA, that means everyone else who has been waiting five, six, seven years to get to immigration court. An immigration judge told me the other day, the weak cases benefit from this. If you are likely to get eventually deported you get to stay here longer. On the other hand if you have a very good case for staying, trying to get a green card or refugee status, well, you are stuck in legal limbo for even longer while the case goes through. MARK SAUER: There were some ideas proposed this week, in spite of the fact that they are not agreeing on anything, that maybe we could go into these countries. Remind us which countries we're talking about in Central America. JILL REPLOGLE: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. There was an idea floated at the end of last week by the administration, and we know that they are discussing this, to process the kids in the countries themselves. We have done this before in Haiti, Cuba, Vietnam, treating them as refugees and starting the refugee processing there. Saying hey, if you fear persecution in your home country and you need to leave, you can come and we will give you an initial screening and start the process there and transport you safely to the US. This would avoid kids making the dangerous journey through Mexico, but the humans rights committee is split on whether or not this is a good idea. In the past, this has been used in conjunction with very strict strategies to not let people come to the border and apply for asylum. I talked to one anti-immigration guy who also thinks it's a terrible idea, he thinks it would just open the floodgates and allow more people to apply and come to the US and have relatives here to send money back to Central America and bring more people. MARK SAUER: There's obviously no easy, simple solution. Tony? TONY PERRY: And there's no difficult solution, for that matter. However we locally? Did the example of Murietta and Escondido scare off the border patrol folks from bringing people here? Or are they bringing folks here and not telling us about it, and doing a stealth program? JILL REPLOGLE: I don't think so. I think the numbers dropped and it is still unclear why they dropped. It could be the train that brings refugees from Mexico has been derailed for a couple of weeks, I talked to one of the border patrol union guys and he thinks that is one of the reasons the numbers have dropped. It's a really hot in South Texas, and it's possible that people have gotten the message that this is not a great idea, I think that is the bigger reason why they stopped transporting people. The numbers of the kids in Ventura, it's about half of what it was a month ago. MARK SAUER: We spoke about the three countries of origin that were talking about, and there's an interesting story about Nicaragua, which is a very poor country, yet we are relatively seeing no one coming from that country, explain what you found. JILL REPLOGLE: All of these countries have similar history. MARK SAUER: They are in close proximity to each other. JILL REPLOGLE: Close proximity, revolutionary are people in the 1970s and 1980s, Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America by some measures. MARK SAUER: You would think people would be coming to escape poverty. JILL REPLOGLE: You would think, if that is the main reason people are coming, you would think that they would be coming too. They are not for a couple of reasons. Crime is much lower in Nicaragua. They have a very effective community policing strategy and they have done a really good job of keeping kids out of gangs and getting them on the right path. Some would say that is politically motivated and sort of aligned with a Cuban style of social control program, but the fact is the violence is way lower. Another reason is, a lot of Nicaraguans go to Costa Rica, it is closer, they have strong family types there, Costa Rica has a much higher standard of living the Nicaragua. MARK SAUER: Costa Rica has a lot of service jobs and a lot of work. JILL REPLOGLE: There are more Nicaraguans in this country here legally than from other countries. They have not had the same cycle of having parents being deported or kids deported, and sort of trying to get back. There have not brought the same kind of getting problems back to the countries, that these other countries. They have different outcomes than the way that we have treated Nicaragua and immigrants here. MARK SAUER: Now I wanted to get to this clip from Governor Jerry Brown, of course he is a Democrat. This week he urged a compassionate approach to dealing with migrants and children fleeing violence, let's see what he had to say: [AUDIO FILE PLAYING] JERRY BROWN: I want to give utmost consideration to what is in the best interest of those children. Not what is in the best interest of politicians who like to exploit this particular topic. [ END AUDIO FILE ] MARK SAUER: In the same week, we had Governor Rick Perry with Texas sending the National Guard down to the border. Somebody said, why don't you send the Dallas Cowboys as well? A different approach, it is that in a nutshell the difference between Democrats and Republicans on this issue? TONY PERRY: A bit, but the California National Guard guard has been on the border as well not doing arrests, but doing logistics and freeing up border patrol units to make arrests. We are not St. Francis of a sissy here. If you look at the long-term, as we have said before in San Diego county we have seen this in different iterations. This is a bit new, but we have seen others. Generally speaking, the state government does not play a role at all. It just says gee that is a problem, communities try to do something and they can't legally, and then the federal government is usually pretty ineffectual. It seems we're playing this out once again, we have three levels of government who can't seem to get a handle on a common problem. MARK SAUER: I'm sure will be doing a lot more, and I know Jill will be doing more reporting on that issue. We've run out of time on that segment. Women should retain the right to choose, climate change is real, and same-sex couples deserve the right to marry. If you thought this with you positions of the Democrat running in the San Diego's fifty-second congressional district, you would be right. But they are also the position of the Republican candidate Carl DeMaio. Liam, is Carl DeMaio a Republican in name only, as that may suggest? LIAM DILLON: He has been a Republican more than half of his life, working with Republicans at the highest levels in the Republican party for more than half of his life. That speaks to the fact that yes indeed he is in fact a Republican. It's interesting here, understanding what he means in the national context, understanding what his whole life has been about. He has been sincere member of the party working as a member of the party and on behalf of the party at the highest levels, it also means what he would mean from a national perspective. Certainly this position has put him out of step with what national Republicans believe, but it has put him in line with a lot of Republicans here believe. The Mayor of San Diego feels the same way, basically every high-profile Republican in San Diego county feels the same way. You look at his history, he worked for Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, the House Majority Leader, he worked with Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He has a long history of being involved in Republican causes for most of his life. MARK SAUER: He has a tight rope to walk and federal office he is going after. The federal party, the Republican Party has a platform and we have said how he has to verged from that platform. But he has got to get elected here. TONY PERRY: He is running on the promise of going back and changing the United States Congress from his seat. MARK SAUER: With 435 members. JILL REPLOGLE: I think it's interesting, apparently this morning or maybe yesterday, he said that he thought the Boehner lawsuit against Obama was a waste of time and he was not going to do that. I'm curious whether that will resonate. TONY PERRY: The incumbent Scott Peters fighting for a second term, he is going to try to pitch Carl as a tea party Republican, and a Koch brothers acolyte. Is that going to stick? LIAM DILLON: Well they certainly will try to brand him that way. I think of call is anything he is a master marketer of himself and his ideas. I think anything peters throws at him he will be well-positioned to handle. I think at the same time, we're talking different contexts locally here. That position that DeMaio had against Boehner's lawsuit is probably shared by the most of the Republicans living in San Diego, same with same-sex marriage issues. Yes he is out of step with positions with the party nationally, but he is in line with the party here. TONY PERRY: What I find interesting, we are electing a man for the future, but yet it seems a lot of the campaign on both sides will be about what happened in the past when each was on the city council. Carl will say Scott nearly bankrupted the city with that crazy pension scheme twelve years ago, and Peters will say that Carl was just so divisive, who could work with him? We're going to be discussing things from a decade ago, all we are going to go to sleep once they do that? LIAM DILLON: Well, obviously I think there is some relevance to talking about how people were before, and how they will behave going forward, certainly. But yes, I think it is going to be hard to get bored, because money is going to be thrown into this race and the viciousness of both candidates, they have proven in the past they are both take no prisoners kind of guys. Believe me, you will know that this is a race that is going on if you turn on the television, the radio, anything. TONY PERRY: Did Carl DeMaio save the city from bankruptcy? LIAM DILLON: No. No, absolutely not. He was certainly a big part of pushing some of the major reforms that happened in San Diego over the past decade. But without him, certainly it is unclear with the city would have gone bankrupt if he wasn't around. TONY PERRY: And Peters, was he so in bed with the employee labor unions that he was willing to shovel money at them? LIAM DILLON: I think his problem, some people would say this is worse, a problem of ignorance rather than a problem of commission. He admitted this, he did not take the time to understand the gravity of what he was doing with some of those votes. TONY PERRY: Was he anymore culpable than the rest of them? LIAM DILLON: He is certainly someone who was seen as a leader on the council, I think you saw this later on when he became the first Council President. MARK SAUER: He was at the present at that time, he was one of eight council members. LIAM DILLON: And at that time, the Mayor was on the council as well. I think the extent that you blame people you expect to be better, then others, sure he had the wherewithal, he is a lawyer, he had the wherewithal to understand things better than others. TONY PERRY: Are we going to have political celebrities coming to town, maybe the president of the United States? LIAM DILLON: This is one of the top three, or top five races in the country. I think if we saw Obama in the San Diego Mayor's race, it's not out of the question that we would see him here too. But it's unclear whether or not Peters wants him here. TONY PERRY: In the district, a third, a third, a third. MARK SAUER: Let's talk about the district for a moment. It is seen as very close, but even rookie Congressman Peters has only been there for two years. Of course they have to run every two years. Have the demographic changed up there, or is it split as tight as it looks? LIAM DILLON: I think it is less about the district make up changing and more about who was going to show up to vote. Certainly in 2012, there was a wave that not only got Peters elected, it got Filner elected, Dave Roberts, that drove a lot of people to the polls that you would not necessarily see at the polls. We saw in the special election for the Mayor's race, that was by and large about who would show up to vote. The same Democrats who showed up in 2012 did not show up for David Alvarez in this there's election. The question is going to be, this turnout will be in the middle. It's not going to be as high as 2012 for as low as the special election for mayor, the closer it is to 2012 the better it is for Peters, the lower will turn out better for Carl DeMaio. MARK SAUER: Turnout will be the big issue, because be on this race, as we said there will be a lot of national money and attention, because there are so few congressional districts that are even competitive across the country. LIAM DILLON: And these are such strong candidates. MARK SAUER: There is a not a lot on the ballot this time around though, not a lot of sexy propositions, no legalize marijuana for example this time. TONY PERRY: Carl is virtually and incumbent. He is no longer in office, but he has been around so strongly, and handles himself like an incumbent. It seems we have a real incumbent and a quasi-incumbent. LIAM DILLON: To your point, the problem with a lot of challenges is that they are not as well-known as incumbents, but we all know Carl. MARK SAUER: We have done a lot on this program, a lot of reporting that you folks have done on Carl DeMaio whether he should have jumped into the special Mayor's election, the Republican establishment, and the kingmakers here said no, we will go after the guy who is now in office, Kevin Faulconer. If he loses this, is this the double whammy? Man, I could have gone to the Mayor's office, I could have gone to Congress. LIAM DILLON: I think once you lose twice, I think Nathan Fletcher realized this, losing twice for the Mayor's election, it is hard. If Carl loses, he would be in the position of losing twice, once you get that loser's stink on you, it is hard to return. TONY PERRY: I think if Carl had stayed in the Mayor's race, I think Todd Gloria would have jumped in, David Alvarez would have been a stronger candidate. LIAM DILLON: More people may have one Fletcher instead. MARK SAUER: Okay, we will certainly see how this plays out through November. Veterans have returned from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have the G.I. Bill to help in getting education and launching a career in civilian life. But state and federal regulators are finding that much taxpayer dollars are going to for-profit colleges that are illegally targeting veterans. This week, state officials cited the San Diego campus of the University of Phoenix, and they were the focus of the Center for Investigative Reporting's story of misuse of G.I. Bill funding. Here is a clip from reporter Aaron Glantz's story, which starts with April Gorman, Political Director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America [AUDIO FILE PLAYING] APRIL GORMAN: Many veterans are simply being aggressively and deceptively recruited by some bad actors in the for-profit school sector. AARON GLANTZ: She says thousands of veterans are being left with worthless degrees, and few job prospects. APRIL GORMAN: We're not getting the investment that we wanted when we sent these men and women to school. AARON GLANTZ: In California alone, the Center for investigative reporting found nearly 300 schools banned from receiving state financial aid, that still got G.I. Bill money. Even schools with no academic accreditation at all, beauty schools, auto repair programs and dog training academies. Together, more than $600 million. The biggest beneficiary is the for-profit University of Phoenix, which fails to graduate most students according to the US Department of Education. Nationally, it took in nearly $1 billion from the G.I. Bill over the last five years. [ END AUDIO FILE ] MARK SAUER: The news this week was, the San Diego campus of the University of Phoenix, state regulators blocked these guys from enrolling GIs right now. TONY PERRY: As we said many times, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are centered to the community because of the Navy and the Marine Corps. The aftermath of those wars are also center here now. If nationwide, but it is also very centric here. University of Phoenix, San Diego campus, part of a national Corporation publicly traded, it's a big player in this, $95 million in G.I. Bill money in the last several years. They got shut down, no enrollment and seven of their programs, management, technology, law enforcement, that kind of thing. They have been shut down for violating a Korean war era rule. You can't have more than 84.9% of the students on the G.I. Bill, because the thought was back in the Korean War, it would create these mills grinding out classes of little use, and that is still the accusation. The state comes in and says no more, that's a complex thing having to deal with the Veterans Affairs federally and state. State says no more, the University of Phoenix says we are working with this to change things, and indeed the state official who helped these investigative reporting folks in the report by giving them a report, says they will probably be back in compliance. This is nationwide. Congress, the Department of Justice, the SEC, they are all and the idea of these for-profit schools, are they worth it or are we just pouring money down the drain? MARK SAUER: How do we know that? That is one thing that is so curious about reading the stories and Congress does not seem to have any oversight. The lobbyists are so good at blocking any mechanism where we can say you graduating? Are these legitimate courses we are paying for? TONY PERRY: The University folks have spent $5 million in the last few years on lobbying, they speak loudly in Sacramento and Washington. There is no requirement for the G.I. Bill money to show graduation requirements, graduation rate, how many of them get jobs. They are for state aid, and a lot of these for-profits lose the ability to get state aid, because they fall below certain percentages. But, the big dog at the trough is the G.I. bill, enhanced in recent years to help the Afghanistan and Iraq veterans coming home, mustering out of military service to a very bad economy, not much out there you don't really have the skill that fits the economy. $90,000 a year maximum, that is a lot of bread that you can lay out, or the federal government can lay out on your behalf. While there have been investigations, enrollment has actually gone down, but is still huge nationwide. Several hundred thousand veterans at any given time, about $1.7 billion a year go to for-profit institutions. MARK SAUER: And just not enough control and how it is being spent. TONY PERRY: As the spokeswoman for the veterans group said on the clip, she used the word investment. Individuals are investing time, but the money is public money. It does come back to the question, what we owe to the veterans? What is the nature of our commitment to them, how much money can we afford, and how should we manage it? JILL REPLOGLE: I find it amazing that part of the G.I. Bill wouldn't be to track how many people are getting jobs and graduating, there are so many questions about the story. Who is advising these veterans? Shouldn't there be somebody from the military, from peers advising them on their options? Why are they going to community colleges? Are those programs not good, are they full? And why are they not choosing to go to four-year universities? Is it not worth their time to get jobs? TONY PERRY: I don't think it's immediate. You can go to UC San Diego and study Pope versus Dryden or study 18th-century Persian architecture, and that would be lovely. But can you get a job really quickly? But the private universities, University of Phoenix, they offer something in theory, they do a lot of marketing, you can walk right up to a good job. A lot of the military folks, they are not into spending four years on campus and going to football games, they are adults, they want to get on with their lives, maybe they're married with children, let's get a skill and get out and get productive. These are very targeted advertising, according to the allegations. That's what the Korean War provision wanted to avoid, targeting these folks what they G.I. Bill in their back pocket. JILL REPLOGLE: It also think if they are not working, people aren't getting jobs, they would stop buying into the programs, but they still are, clearly. TONY PERRY: It has gone down somewhat, but yes, it has gone down, and their investigations going on all over the country, Department of Justice, SEC, Congress is on to it. LIAM DILLON: I wonder to what extent there is an identified a failure in the system. There is a market that has been created, and the existing universities and many colleges are not taking advantage of the flexibility, things that these for-profits offer, that we are not taking care of them with what we already have. TONY PERRY: I understand that for-profits can move more quickly, they can get up teach a class geared toward a certain skill. Try starting a new discipline at the University of California, once you get through the faculty Senate, that is ten years, or even the community colleges. They move quickly, and is very seductive to veterans getting out and wanting to get a skill, get into the economy, and start being a civilian again. JILL REPLOGLE: Community colleges have had funding cut so drastically in recent years. I wonder how much that plays into it. Some of the local colleges have really tried to step up programs for veterans and things like biotech. TONY PERRY: San Diego State University here, one of the best. MARK SAUER: I am sure we will look forward to more in-depth reporting on this as we move forward on this complex and fascinating story. That wraps up another week of stories at the KPBS Roundtable. I would like to thank my guests. A reminder, all of the stories we talked about they are available on our website at KPBS.org. I am Mark Sauer, thanks for joining us today on the Roundtable. [ END SEGMENT ]

Jerry Brown: Refugees A Humanitarian Issue

When California Gov. Jerry Brown was asked about the refugees from Central America while on a trade mission to Mexico this week, he made clear that he viewed the influx of children into this country as a humanitarian issue requiring compassion and aid. It was not, he said, a political or security issue requiring the National Guard.

The aid may be long in coming. As of Thursday, the House of Representatives had failed to pass a bill to allow any funding to deal with the crisis.

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Other questions around this issue concern why children in Nicaragua, the poorest nation in Central America, are not fleeing en masse to the United States — as they are in the neighboring countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. In addition, Nicaragua has a very low crime rate.

DeMaio: A Republican Who Likes Some Democratic Stands

Women should retain the right to choose. Climate change is real. And same sex couples deserve the right to marry.

If you thought those were the positions of Democratic Rep. Scott Peters, you'd be right. But they also the stands of Carl DeMaio, his Republican challenger in the 52nd District.

So is DeMaio a Republican in name only?

California Grounds University Of Phoenix

The state of California has cracked down on the San Diego campus of the University of Phoenix, a for-profit school where 55 percent of the students receive GI Bill benefits.

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The story is a follow-up to a piece Aaron Glantz of the Center for Investigative Reporting did in June.

This week, the state said the campus may not enroll veterans in seven popular programs because the school improperly targeted veterans, violating a federal rule in place since the end of Korean War. It would need to get a federal waiver to open enrollment again.

The university's parent company, Apollo Education Group Inc., issued a statement this week saying that California auditors gave the school high marks, except in one area involving what's called an 85/15 rule.

The rule says schools can't receive GI Bill funds for programs in which more than 85 percent of the students get the benefit.

The 2024 primary election is March 5. Find in-depth reporting on each race to help you understand what's on your ballot.