Welcome to Beg to Differ, the Bullworks Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon, indicated columnist and policy editor at the Bullwork and I'm joined by our regulars,

Damon Linker of the Week and Linda Chavez of the Niskanin Center.

Bill Galston is off this week. Our special guest is New York Times

columnist Brett Stevens. So in anticipation of complaints that we may hear I'm just

going to acknowledge right up front that this

week our panel does range only from center to center right and not from center left.

So but we'll compensate for that in future episodes and I'm eager to dig right into the infrastructure bill and the other issues that we have on our plate but before we turn to that I'd like to just ask Linda who has been

our roving correspondent this week to give us an update about her recent visit to

the border. Well I'm in Tucson, Arizona and I decided I could not be that

close to the border with Mexico without going down and seeing first-hand what is

going on. So I went to Nagales, crossed over into Mexico on foot.

Spent an hour at the Kino Border Initiative, which is a nonprofit that's run by the Jesuits and some other Catholic

charities.

It's a U.S. and Mexican effort, and essentially they take in the people who show up at the border and are turned back,

who are apprehended and detained and then sent back, and they provide them with a shower, with hot meals, they provide

the children with toys and playing material.

I understand that pre-Covid, they could house about 100 people a day with sleeping facilities.

They cannot do that now because of COVID.

So I was there yesterday. There were upwards of over 100 people there.

I had to think about our former President Donald Trump's comments that the people who are coming to the United States

will ruin America.

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