Crisis at the Southern Border:
Facts, Trends, and Myths
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
NSF Hybrid Event
In-Person at our NEW VENUE!
Tamarack Casino
13101 S. Virginia St, Reno, NV
(Park and enter using Banquet Hall door on the north side of the building)
Breakfast served 8:15-9:00, Forum 9:00-10:00am
Virtual on Zoom
Forum 9:00-10:00am PST
Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pNHLuyx0TEGfDXiNRvVIMQ
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
EXPERT PANEL:
Elina Treyger, JD
RAND Corporation, Senior Political Scientist
Michael Kagan, JD
Joyce Mack Professor of Law / Director, UNLV Immigration Clinic
(Invited) Casey Keckler
DHS/IA Intelligence Officer – Northern Nevada
Welcome back to an exciting year of NSF events and expeditions! We have a lot in store to help you keep up with the rapidly changing national and global security situations in 2024. We will do our best to keep you informed about issues beyond the headlines and from multiple perspectives. Stay up to date on NSF programs by subscribing to our mailing list at: NSF Mailing List or better yet become a member at: Become a Member.
NSF is happy to be in our new venue, Tamarack Casino in South Reno. They have a newly renovated banquet hall with a separate entrance and excellent parking on the north side of the building. When you turn into the parking lot turn right and follow the signs for the “Banquet Room.” Park anywhere on the northside of the building and enter via the walkway into the reception hall for the banquet room. We will see you there!!! You can always email Kimberly at: [email protected] or me at: [email protected] if you have questions or need more information about the location.
And now for the details about our breakfast forum on 17 April…
“The volume of migrants arriving at the border without prior authorization—a historic high of 3.2 million encounters in fiscal year 2023—is indeed record-breaking. Migrants now hail from a greater diversity of countries than in the past and consist of more families and children.” (RAND Commentary 28 Feb 2024 available at: Crisis at the Border: A Primer for Confused Americans)
During our February forum, “The Year of Living Dangerously,” I bravely gave a short overview of the migration crisis at the Southern Border. You can see the slides or watch the video at: NSF Forum 21 Feb 2024 Not unexpectedly, I was inundated with your questions and resounding requests to schedule a NSF program dedicated to the topic with experts who could field many more questions than I. I heard you!
NSF is honored to welcome a panel of experts to guide us through facts, trends, and myths about the crisis at the border. Myths and disinformation abound on this topic. As always, NSF is here to help you navigate behind the headlines and provide you with information from reliable sources. Elina Treyger, senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, will open our program with an overview of the situation with a hard look at why it is so hard to get reliable statistics for who is crossing the border and why. Her RAND recent Research & Commentary Blog entitled “The Crisis at the Border: A Primer for Confused Americans” presents an excellent, understandable overview of the situation, available at: Crisis at the Border: A Primer for Confused Americans.
Michael Kagan, UNLV Professor of Law and Director the UNLV Immigration Clinic, will then give a short course on the asylum process – what the law says and how it works in practice nationally and here in Nevada.
Casey Keckler, DHS/IA Intelligence Officer for Northern Nevada, will join us in-person to provide insight into national security threats posed by the migration crisis at the southern border. Together, our panelists will distill the complex and rapidly evolving issues at the border into facts, figures and expert insight you think about this issue with a more nuanced eye and informed mind.
Other programs and events on our 2024 calendar include;
- 30 April – 01 May (MSTS hosted tour of NNSS and Creech AFB. Details and signup coming in future email)
- 23 May – NSF/WCSD Youth Security Forum at TMCC, “Civil Discourse: Getting Comfortable with Uncomfortable Conversations about the Israel-Hamas War” Volunteers and sponsors needed!
- 02-06 June – McCarthy invited to attend US Army War College, National Security Seminar, representing Nevada.
- July (TBD) – Joint NSF/MOAA program at the Chateau in Incline Village.
- Other programs and tours are in the works. We welcome your ideas, input and requests. Email me anytime at: [email protected]
Please join us for a very important and timely program and be ready to share your thoughts and questions with our speakers.
Elina Treyger is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and is also a lawyer, with wide-ranging interests in both international affairs and domestic policy. Elina’s work at RAND spans topics in three areas of research: homeland security, with a focus on migration and immigration enforcement policy; national security and defense, with a focus on Russia, great-power competition, and competition short of war; and justice policy, with a focus on technology and the law. Elina’s work relies on a range of social-science methodologies, including statistical analysis, historical and contemporary case studies, interviews, original data collection, text/content analysis, as well as standard tools of legal and policy research. Previously, Elina was an assistant professor at George Mason University’s Law School. She received a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University, where she studied comparative and international politics. In 2014-2015, Elina was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and in 2008-2009, she clerked for the then-Chief Judge Danny Boggs on the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Michael Kagan directs the UNLV Immigration Clinic and teaches administrative law, professional responsibility, and immigration law. He is one of the most widely cited immigration law scholars in the United States, and the author of an award-winning current events memoir, The Battle to Stay in America: Immigration’s Hidden Front Line (2020). Prof. Kagan has played a central role in expanding legal services to immigrant in Nevada. He led the establishment of the UNLV Immigration Clinic’s off-campus Community Advocacy Office, the first pro bono deportation defense center in Nevada. He established the clinic’s University Legal Services program, which provides free immigration legal services to students at universities and colleges in Nevada. He also helped create immigration law specialist positions at the offices of the Clark County Public Defender and the Washoe County Public Defender. Prof. Kagan has published leading works on the intersection of immigration law and free speech, Fourth Amendment problems in immigration enforcement, the application of Chevron deference in immigration adjudication, and empirical research on immigration litigation in federal circuit courts. He is frequently interviewed on immigration issues by local, national, and global news media. His Op-Ed writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Salon.com, The Daily Beast, The Nevada Independent and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Before coming to UNLV, Prof. Kagan wrote several of the most widely cited articles in the fields of international refugee and asylum law, which have been relied on by courts in multiple countries. Prof. Kagan spent 10 years building legal aid programs for refugees throughout the Middle East and Asia, and lived in London, Cairo, Beirut, and Jerusalem. He held previous teaching positions at Tel Aviv University and the American University in Cairo.
Casey Keckler currently serves as an Intelligence Officer within the Field Operations Division (FOD) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) based in Northern Nevada. Casey began his career in the Intelligence Community as a Counterterrorism Analyst in 2007. Over the course of his analytic career, Casey has represented the Department in Europe and the Middle East; served as an executive briefer for DHS leadership; and was selected to serve on an Executive Office Task Force for Guantanamo Bay Detainees. Prior to the start of his IC career, Casey was a Legislative Aide for a U.S. Senator who assigned him to his committee staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Earlier in his career, Casey served as a Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Department of Treasury and Law Enforcement Officer in northwest Ohio. Casey earned a B.S. in Political Science from Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio and a Master of Public Administration and International Affairs from Bowling Green State University. In 2009, Casey was awarded the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholarship and was the first I&A Intelligence Analyst chosen to attend the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Intelligence University on a full-time basis where he earned a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence.
The National Security Forum is a non-partisan, educational, nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering civil discourse and informed discussion about timely and important national security topics. We bring expert speakers from around the U.S. to talk about national and international security, domestic and foreign terrorism, economic and financial threats, the safety of our food and water supply, energy policy, electrical grid stability, and a variety of other topics that affect all Americans. The National Security Forum partners with the Washoe County School District to host an annual Youth Security Forum to encourage future generations national security leaders.
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