Elon Musk has his supporters and critics, but there is little debate that he is a genius when it comes to technology and space travel.
It turns out he’s pretty smart about illegal immigration as well.
Musk, President’s Trump’s point man for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), one of the richest men on the planet and the driving force behind Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX and other ventures, was a recent guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, the world’s most popular podcast.
For more than three hours, Musk and Rogan had a free-ranging discussion on topics including artificial intelligence, colonizing Mars and free speech.
When illegal immigration came up, Musk made a compelling case for securing America’s borders, while exposing the scam that is the anti-borders movement.
As the head of DOGE, Musk has turned Washington on its head, finding massive amounts of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government’s spending of taxpayer dollars.
In his interview with Rogan, he zeroed in on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which his team found has been spending tens of millions of dollars to place illegal aliens in New York City luxury hotels.
“They were sending that money even after President Trump signed an executive order saying it needs to stop,” he said. “They still pressed ‘send’ on $80 million to luxury hotels in New York. Your tax money went to pay for illegal aliens in luxury hotels in New York from an agency that is meant to help Americans in distress from natural disasters.”
This was particularly galling because the last few months have seen devastating fires in Southern California and a hurricane in rural North Carolina. In the latter case, then-Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to the impacted area and announced those victimized by the storm could apply for a paltry $750 in federal assistance.
Many later complained that their applications for even that small amount of aid were rejected. It is no exaggeration to say that FEMA treats foreign nationals who broke our immigration laws far better than U.S. citizens in desperate need of help.
Musk also lambasted Democrat politicians, saying their passionate defense of illegal immigration is self-serving.
“The basic incentive here is, the more illegals the Democrats can bring in, the more likely they are to win,” he said. “So that’s what they’re gonna do. That’s what they have been doing, and it worked in California. California is super-majority Dem … What’s actually happening is they are buying voters. That’s really what’s happening. It’s like a giant voter fraud scam. They’re importing voters.”
Just a year or two ago, anyone making such claims was accused of being a conspiracy theorist for daring to suggest American were being “replaced” with illegal aliens in elections. Today, the evidence of Musk’s claim is too overwhelming to ignore, and California is Exhibit A.
One of the biggest contributors to the problem, Musk said, is the lavish welfare benefits available to illegal aliens from the federal government and jurisdictions with sanctuary policies.
“Entitlements fraud for illegal aliens is what is serving as a gigantic magnetic force to pull people in from all around the world and keep them here,” he said. “If you pay people at a standard of living that is above 90 percent of Earth, then you have a very powerful incentive for 90 percent of Earth to come here, and to stay here. But if you end the illegal alien fraud, then you turn off that magnet and they leave. They stop coming and the ones that are here will simply leave.”
Exactly.
Rather than requiring a sweeping, bloated act of Congress, as Harris insisted on the campaign trail last fall, Trump has shown that the tools to secure our borders were in place all along.
Direct Border Patrol to take illegals into custody rather than catching and releasing. Cut off welfare benefits of all kinds to those here illegally. Apprehend illegal aliens and, once they have received their due process, promptly deport them to their home countries.
As soon as Team Trump started those practices on Jan. 20, the torrent of those crossing our borders under Joe Biden was reduced to a trickle.
Further work on election integrity and requiring ID to vote is still needed, but the template for achieving border security has been established.
The American people should demand nothing less going forward.
Brian Lonergan is director of communications at the Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington, D.C, and co-host of IRLI’s “No Border, No Country” podcast.
Image: Screen shot from X video.