resources as migrants overwhelm the border there. here's the state's lieutenant governor on fox. >> we were in good shape on the border bill before biden got elected. we were in good shape. the protocols were working, keeping the asylum seekers in mexico. this is not a crisis. this is a full blown disaster that they've created. this is the worst high. we've had higher peaks. this is the worst. what really makes it bad is that there's no end in sight. >> john: in a moment, we'll talk with the mayor of one texas town who was told to tell his residents to raise hell to get more help. >> sandra: first to william la jeunesse. he's at the border in southern california. william? >> reporter: agents tell me they are so busy processing children, unlike a quick covid turn back, which takes minutes. they are not on the line and incenterivizing struggling organizations since they don't have the man power. there's a cost associated to all the images you are seeing beyond the food and shelter that we're providing but a long term cost to tax payers. the less educated a migrant is, the more benefits and welfare they receive, the less they pay in taxes. 57% of illegal immigrants caught at the border have basically an elementary school education or less. 27% high school. 16% some college. here's how it affects taxpayers over time, meaning how much they pay in taxes, less or minus the benefits received. 173,000 are lost with those with a grade school education or less. $70,000 lost for those with high school educations and a net positive for those that attend college. >> the average illegal border crosser in their life time will create a net fiscal drain of about $75,000. all the taxes they pay and all the services they use. >> reporter: so the costs come in a variety of state and federal welfare programs, cash, food, medical, education. advocates and some economists argue any working environment adds more to the economy and their off put off sets any costs. >> my colleagues on the other side have had no qualms of using immigrants as political footballs. in spite of the fact that immigrants put food on our tables, look after our health, take care of our homes and run our small businesses. >> reporter: they've got a 61% increase in unaccompanied minors here. one of the problems is identifying who their parents are and who they might be with because they're not unaccompanied the entire trip, but only when they actually cross the border. >> sandra: huge challenges there. thank you, william. >> john: let's bring in don mclaughlin jr., the mayor of yuvaldi texas. mayor, back in 2019 i remember yuvaldi had really big problems, problems big enough that prompted you to come here to washington, d.c. and seek help from congress. compared to 2019, what is the situation like there now? >> well, 2019 is going to seem like a cake walk. we're getting inundated. we're having 10, 12 high speed chases through our community a week now. we have never seen this before. >> john: when you say 10 to 12 high speed chases, are you talking about car chases through the town? >> car chases running from 95 to 105 miles an hour. with human smugglers bringing immigrants through. they couldn't come through the other way because many are criminal records. >> john: i heard you on a podcast yesterday saying break-ins are up as well. >> they are. we had a lady two weeks ago was at her house that keeps her grand kids. they tried to break into her house. when the alarm went off, they ran. later that evening we found them breaking into another house. this past weekend she had her grand kids again. four men started running to her house. luckily there was a farmer there that was able to come to her aid before we got the border patrol there. there was a time when these immigrants were docile. these are more aggressive. lot of them have criminal records. sexual predators are up 4400% in our region. >> john: we should point out we are seeing pictures from your town up on the screen along with pictures of you and me. the white house still hasn't acknowledged that this is a crisis. they continue to use the word challenge. i guess it's becoming a moot point how you describe it when we see the numbers exploding. in about an hour, we're expected to see customs and border protections say there were 1441 encounters along the southwest border, which would be a new record for february. the white house, at the very least, is acknowledging they have a problem. listen to what the press secretary said yesterday. >> we've been very clear that there is an increase, that there are more children coming across the border than we have facilities for at this point in time. >> john: mr. mayor, who and what is at fault here? >> the federal government. we need to shut our border down. there's a legal way to come across the border and there's a way that needs to be followed. you talk about a covid process. they're telling you 1% is testing positive? it's more like 40%. we are trying to get over a pandemic in our own county, our own country. we are just flooding the gates with these people. the federal government needs to shut this border down and we need to make people come in the right way. >> john: shutting the border down is a sentiment you share with dan patrick. he said the same thing this morning. it does not appear to be the strategy of the biden administration. don mclaughlin jr., good luck with handling this crisis. we'll keep checking in with you. appreciate it. >> thank you very much. i appreciate it. >> john: we will be talking more at the top of next hour about all of this as well. >> sandra: really remarkable hearing the struggles at the local level from that one mayor, john. really good interview. tough stuff. now to the push to get kids back into the classroom, john. we talk about immigration problem happening there. not only are they dealing with this immigration problem, they're dealing with the pandemic. they're dealing with the fact that there are still some kids that are not back in school. this is just the complexity of the issues that some of these small towns are dealing with. you heard the struggle from him. all right. we're told this briefing at the white house has now begun. really important information is going to be provided on the situation at the southern border from the white house in this briefing. let's dip in and listen here. >> -- violence, exacerbationed by climate change. we will address the causes that compel individuals to migrate including providing a foundation for economic and economic opportunity, strengthening civilian security and the rule of law. working across the whole of government, we will look at access to international protection and refugee resettlement and rethinking asylum processes to ensure fair and faster consideration. only by addressing those root causes can we break the cycle of inspiration and provide hope for families who clearly would prefer to stay in their countries and provide a better future for their children. president biden, when he was vice president, visited the region many times and is clear eyed about the challenge. he insists now, as he did then, that governments commit to being true partners in creating the conditions for growth and security. i want to emphasize the funds we're asking for from congress don't go to government leaders. they go to communities, to training, to climate mitigation, violence prevention, anti-gang programs. in other words, they go to the people who otherwise migrate in search of hope. they will have to have the participation of the private sectors in those countries who for too long have evaded taxes, underpaid workers and fail to be part of the solution to creating safe prospers in democratic countries. we have begun to undo the previous administration's policies and to advance a new vision of immigration. we have ended the so called migrant protection protocols which sent people back to mexico to wait, sometimes for years for a chance to present their asylum claims. working with the government of the mexico we have safely admitted 1400 migrants and closed the most dangerous migrants camp. today we are restarting the central american minors program to be reunited with a parent legally in the united states. this program was ended abruptly by the previous administration, leaving around 3,000 children already approved for travel stranded. in phase 2, we will be working to improve the camp program to expand safe and legal avenues to the united states. i want to be clear. neither this announcement nor any of the other measures suggest that anyone, especially children and families with young children, should make the dangerous trip to try and enter the u.s. in an eur rel fashion. the border is not open. going forward, we will continue to look for ways to provide legal avenues in the region for people needing protection while we continue to enforce our laws. this is a process. we have a great deal to do but this administration has made significant progress and we will continue to do so. it reflects who we are as americans, putting our values at the center of our policy. >> thank you. this money the administration is seeking, are you seeking it as part of a larger package or stand alone bill? >> what you'll see, that $4 billion in central american, northern american triangle will be part of our foreign assistance request and will focus on the things we know that work. obviously, it's not our first rodeo. the vice president and president when he was vice president worked on these issues. we know how to get money to communities that are most likely to send migrants, but also that are suffering the greatest effect, two hurricanes this season, etc. it will be part of our foreign assistance package. in the meantime, we are focused on getting humanitarian assistance to these countries after the hurricanes. in that sense, it's part of a larger plan. obviously, there are parts of this that will be on the domestic side as well to fix the whole extent of our immigration processing. >> what is the administration doing right now to work with these home countries to send the message to people, don't come here, don't send your children here? >> i think one of the most important things is to make sure that we get communications right and the message right. i'm happy to repeat that. i think it's also important that we work with the international organizations that have very credible voices and have very good networks among migrants sending communities to disspell the myth and misinformation that smugglers are using. right? when we talk about the border not being open and the ways in which we are trying to disuade people from making that track, the smugglers are conveying the exact opposite to people. we need to get that message out. we also need to be looking at things like the camp program, the central american minors program. how we can make that eligibility greater. but the next step is to look at solutions in the region. right? what more can we do to process people legally, who do require protection so they don't have to make that journey? we're looking at all of those things. >> you said this isn't your first rodeo. shouldn't the administration have been better prepared to handle this influx of children before it changed the policy allowing them to stay in the country? >> i think there's a couple things. i think what we're doing right now is making a difference the home countries, beginning to work with governments. that couldn't start until january 20th. there is one government at a time. you can't start changing processes of government, building facilities. all of this is part of the plan as quickly as possible to make sure that our domestic processes work more smoothly, more quickly, but also to work with foreign governments, and you can't do that obviously until january 20th when you take over. there have been multiple engagements with the government of mexico at very high level with the government of guatemala, with the hondouran government. i think we have gotten off to a big start, fast start in that engagement. >> on honduras how is the administration finding cooperation from that government? particularly, prosecutors who are saying they are trying to flood the u.s. with cocaine? >> one of the things i made in my opening comments is none of the money we are looking to get from congress, from the taxpayers of the united states, goes to government leaders. i don't think that means presidents are unimportant in these countries, but i do think that it's important to understand that we will be working with civil society with international organizations and international ngo's on the ground. we will work with officials that we can work with, but we also think it's important that these countries make commitments really explicit commitments to advancing anti-corruption and in some places that will be hard to do if you've got officials for whom there is a cloud. i think we need to work with the organizations that we can in countries. in some places, we will work with religious organization, ngo's, etc. it is a challenge in countries that have confronted serious corruption risk. >> what mechanism is in place? how do you properly safe guard that funding to make sure it stays out of the hands of the corrupt politicians? >> one of the things that we've always done, always, in 31 years at the state department has done this, we do embassy monitoring. our embassies and the people that we work with are looked at before they are recipients of funds. we do checks. we look at what's being done with the fund. we also don't deliver money in those cases. we deliver training. we deliver new lighting facilities that reduce violence and crime. so a lot of what you do is not handing over blank checks. i think that's really important in this. >> thank you very much. you were talking about restarting cam, etc. reporting shows unaccompanied migrant children are being held in these border patrol facilities on average of 107 hours. that's up from i believe 77 hours on average last week. what is the biden administration doing right now to fix that? >> i think my part of this focus is much more on what we're doing at the end of this process in central america and mexico. i think all of us at every stage of this process are doing everything we can to make sure that children are well cared for and moved into facilities that are appropriate for them. i want to make a point again that it's really important that people not make the dangerous journey in the first place. that we provide them with the information on not making that journey. if i could emphasize that, it's really important that message get out. the perception is not the same as reality, in terms of the border not being open. we want to provide ways for some of these young people to be reunited with family members in the united states. [ speaking in foreign language ] >> you're telling them they should not come. would you describe what's happening on the border as a crisis, given how these numbers are spiking so much week by week? >> i'm not trying to be cute here, but i think the fact of the matter is we have to do what we do regardless of what anybody calls the situation. the fact is, we are all focused on improving the situation on changing to a more humane and efficient system and whatever you call it wouldn't change what we're doing because we have urgency from the president on down to fix our system and make sure that we are better at dealing with the hopes and the dreams of these migrants in their home countries. >> do you think it's a coincidence that as soon as trump and his immigration policy were out and biden and his administration were in, that this historic surge started? >> we've seen surges before. surges tend to respond to hope. there was a significant hope for a more humane policy after four years of pent up demand. so i don't know whether i would call that a coincidence but i would think a more humane policy may be in place may have driven people to make that decision. perhaps more importantly, it definitely drove smugglers to express disinformation, to spread disinformation about what was now possible. >> change in administration brought hope, from your perspective, is this surge good? >> i don't think that's what i just said. it's a reflection of how migrants feel at a particular time. i think what we are doing is making sure that we respond to that hope for people who need protection. we respond to that hope in a way that their cases can be adjudicated more quickly. i don't think anybody would say that coming to the united states in an irregular fashion is a good thing. that's why i have tried repeatedly to dissuade people from listening to those smuggler. we will try everything we can at each end in this, especially in central america and mexico, to ensure that we have safe, ordinarily and legal migration. >> president biden has been very active on working with the northern triangle countries. i was just wondering were there lessons you, he or others in this administration learned about how to deal with those countries or how to deal with foreign aid to them better informing how you're approaching things now? to follow up on what peter was asking. are you concerned of the mixed messaging? because you are offering this talk about a more humanitarian process, that people will not pay attention to the fact that they could apply from home, from their home country, that they could still come, they are still hopeful that there is a conflicting message from washington. >> on the first question, the question of learning things from when the vice president was leading our efforts in central america previously, i think, yes, a resounding yes. both the president and all of us who worked with him on that, for him on that, learned a great deal. i think that it's really important that we put that to use now. one of the things he thinks is so important is being really explicit with leadership in the countries from which migrants are coming about commitments that they need to make because overcoming the reasons people migrate is not going to be the united states job alone. right? if we realize that it's lack of good governance, economic opportunity and security issues our violence, some of those require commitments on anti-corruption, on transparency, on creating governments that function better to provide services for their countries. he's very clear on being sure that we get those. money is not a tap that gets turned on all at once. you have to continued to follow those issues. there are a lotted of things we learned. and ensuring that funds get to the communities that are in need, whether it's post hurricane or unrest or historic drought. i think when you look at the issue of mixed messages, it is difficult at times to convey both hope in the future and the danger that is now. that is what we're trying to do. i will certainly agree that we are trying to walk and crew gum at the same time. we will have legal processes in the future and we're standing those up as soon as we can. but at the same time, you cannot come through irregular means. it's dangerous and the majority of people will be sent out of the united states that is the truth of it. we are trying to send both messages and strugglers are only trying to send one message. that leads me to want to reiterate like we did before. >> can you talk about the private sector. you talk about being explicit with these countries. what can you do to affect change in those countries. >> in the end the implication is that we can't make the changes. we can encourage them. we can help support them with resources, technical assistance and funding, but we can't make those changes. changes have to come in the northern triangle of countries. my own experience is there are myriad of people trying to make those changes. part