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00:02:58.000Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:03:00.000Thrilled to be joined today with Brandon Darby from Breitbart.com.
00:03:05.000He's the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart, Texas, and he co-founded Breitbart, Texas Cartel Chronicles project with Il Defenseo Ortiz and Senior Breitbart Management.
00:03:16.000Brandon, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:03:18.000Hey, thank you for having me on, Charlie.
00:03:20.000So you are covering what is happening on the southern border more so than anybody else.
00:03:29.000The cartels do not think very highly of you.
00:03:31.000That means you're doing amazing work and you understand the issue in particular of sex trafficking and child trafficking.
00:03:39.000Can you just first, just from a basis starting point, can you tell us about the southern border, about how children are being sex trafficked, about how women are being exploited?
00:03:50.000Tell us some first person stories and also just the enormity of this unspeakable practice that's happening just a couple hundred miles to the southern border.
00:04:01.000Yeah, well, you know, so a lot of people don't realize this, but Breitbart's border effort started definitely from a humanitarian perspective.
00:04:12.000I used to have a home near Austin, a large home, and I used the home as a shelter for trafficking victims.
00:04:20.000And most of the people who were in that home were people who did not speak English.
00:04:25.000They were people who had attempted to come into the U.S. illegally, right?
00:04:30.000And in the process of that, they got caught up by really bad groups of people who exploited them.
00:04:35.000Some were women who were exploited, some were men who were exploited for work, and were put into situations where they were basically slaves.
00:04:43.000Well, then what happens is those people are given a particular type of visa because they're going to testify against the bad guys who put them there.
00:04:53.000And one of the things I noticed when I ran that shelter and when I dealt with that is that most of the people who were getting in trouble and who were getting prosecuted were low-level people.
00:05:05.000They weren't the big guys who were behind it all, right?
00:05:10.000And that's what led Breitbart to the border.
00:05:12.000And that's where our border coverage started.
00:05:13.000So the issue of human trafficking and sex trafficking, which is definitely a humanitarian issue, was really what was behind what we did.
00:05:24.000So back in those days, I guess it was 2011 and 12, what you saw was that the FBI and that the U.S. government really wasn't going after sex traffickers and human traffickers.
00:05:37.000There were some cases here and there, but there weren't a lot of cases.
00:05:41.000And there were a lot of reasons behind that, right?
00:05:44.000It wasn't that the government just didn't care or somebody didn't care.
00:05:48.000They're really complicated investigations, you know, and very expensive investigations for agencies to carry out.
00:05:57.000But that's really what got us into it: we came at it from that angle.
00:06:02.000Contrary to, like, if you look at left media or mainstream media or legacy media, they have a lot of criticisms of Breitbart and our border coverage.
00:06:10.000But our border coverage is really good.
00:06:12.000And I think part of the reason it's really good is because we have the support and the admiration of law enforcement officials on the U.S. side.
00:06:20.000And we also have the support of humanitarian groups on the Mexican side, right?
00:06:27.000Who understand that we have a long history in combating sex trafficking and human trafficking as a company and both as a company and me as an individual.
00:06:38.000So how do more relaxed immigration enforcement of our immigration laws contribute to the increase in human trafficking?
00:06:49.000So it's a little bit complex, but to simplify it, right?
00:06:54.000And there is nuance and you could go down a bunch of rabbit trails.
00:06:57.000But the bottom line is that what's happened in Mexico is many of the transnational criminal groups along our southern border began to realize that they could make more money from human smuggling, right?
00:07:13.000Which is different than human trafficking, even though it's often interrelated.
00:07:16.000They could make more money from human smuggling than they could from narcotics for a lot of groups, not all groups, because some groups have a lot of access to the manufacture of different chemicals.
00:07:28.000Some groups are primarily, you know, cartels, for instance, are primarily, they're just traffickers.
00:07:34.000They're not manufacturers per se for the most part, right?
00:07:37.000Well, a lot of those groups, like the Gulf Cartel, different factions of the Gulf Cartel, different networks in Los Etas, they began to make as much or more from asylum claimants, right?
00:07:49.000Who were coming here to seek asylum and get into the U.S., they began to make as much or more from that as they were making from cocaine and from heroin and from methamphetamine and marijuana.
00:07:59.000So these organizations became, in fact, asylum cartels, right?
00:08:04.000And so if someone came up and they were a very attractive female, they'd have a very different experience than someone who was an older male, right?
00:08:13.000Who was an agricultural worker, the agricultural worker, they'd say, okay, you're going to pay us $10,000 to get you across.
00:08:19.000We're going to tell you what to say and we're going to help you get across into the U.S.
00:08:24.000But when they catch you, here's what you're going to say.
00:08:26.000You're going to say that you're fleeing violence, you're what have you.
00:08:30.000And then you're going to wire us back money every two weeks for however long it takes you to pay off the $10,000.
00:08:37.000If you don't, we have people who live in the village where your town where your family's from, and we're going to kill you.
00:08:44.000We're going to kill them or we're going to rape your sister.
00:09:04.000So here's what you can do in order to get into the U.S. and pay it off.
00:09:09.000And now we have a sex trafficking situation.
00:09:11.000And now we have a girl who's being coerced.
00:09:14.000And so when we have policies that allow people to come here, and I'm very sympathetic to those people who come here, very sympathetic.
00:09:23.000But when we have policies that allow them to come here in this current context without even considering the impacts to U.S. workers or what have you, just talking about the well-being of the migrants, right?
00:09:35.000The people who are trying to get here.
00:09:37.000When we have policies like this, we are in fact, what we think is kind is actually fueling the very systems of oppression and violence that people are trying to get away from in the first place.
00:09:50.000It's fueling the very systems that prevent there from being economic growth in their countries to begin with.
00:09:58.000So what so many people think is helping other people is actually further poisoning.
00:10:04.000It's kind of like all of us who have kids, we feed our kids sugar and then we educate ourselves about sugar and go, wait a minute, maybe this isn't so good that I'm giving so much sugar to my kids.
00:10:13.000I thought I was being nice, but I'm really poisoning them, right?
00:10:37.000Well, clearly that isn't the case, right?
00:10:39.000So as rude as Trump can be sometimes, you know, he actually is, you know, he is actually, I think, paving the way for the best humanitarian circumstance that we've had on our border in many decades.
00:10:53.000So can you dive deeper into the part you talked about where some of these women who want to come across the border that might be younger, these coyotes or these traffickers, they look at them as potential sex-trafficked objects.
00:11:17.000It is ultimately what you are supporting unintentionally, probably.
00:11:23.000I don't think that people, I think the vast majority of people who support open borders, A, they think they don't support open borders, but they do because they're ignorant and they don't understand the facts and how policies impact things and what a de facto policy is, right?
00:11:38.000And two, I think that they really believe they're doing the most loving thing.
00:11:43.000But yes, ultimately, if you support the status quo on our border, you support the exploitation of foreign labor, you support you're supporting something that leads to the sex trafficking of many young women.
00:11:54.000You know, sex trafficking and human trafficking is very different.
00:11:59.000So we have a lot of runaways in the United States who end up teenage runaways who end up in situations like this that would be defined as sex trafficked.
00:12:09.000If you were in San Francisco, probably the majority of the people who are being sex trafficked are being sex trafficked by Chinese or Asian gangs.
00:12:18.000If you were in certain places in the Northeast, there's a lot of Russians, Asians, and what have you.
00:12:22.000But when you talk about the majority of the border, of our southern border, for instance, you're talking about primarily Latin American, Central Americans, Mexicans, people who are being sex trafficked.
00:12:34.000And a lot of them, you know, I've heard all kinds of things.
00:12:36.000People say, well, they shouldn't have tried to come here illegally in the first, brother, like a 13-year-old girl trying to get here, right, does not obviously does not justify her being sex trafficked by drug cartels.
00:12:56.000But it is exactly as you say, with a little bit, I would probably add a few caveats, but yes, if you support the status quo, and you defend the status quo, you are in fact defending all of the implications and the consequences of the status quo.
00:13:11.000And if people had more education about this issue, we'd be in a lot better spot.
00:13:16.000And I think the migrants would be in a lot better spot.
00:13:19.000And I think that the nations of origin of those migrants would be in a lot better position.
00:13:23.000So you cover the border better than anyone else.
00:13:26.000And the president has talked about building the wall.
00:13:30.000And there are parts of the border that the wall has been erected.
00:13:34.000And we're waiting for more parts of the wall to continue to be built.
00:13:38.000Has that slowed down the flow of the illegal border crossings in our country?
00:13:42.000Have you seen the parts with the wall play any sort of impact?
00:13:45.000I think the biggest impact that the two biggest impacts that Trump has had, I think the first one is getting focus on the border and making it a conversation that isn't just Brandon and a few other people at Breitbart yelling about it, but now it's a national discussion.
00:14:02.000Now we have the vast majority of news outlets have immigration and border reporters where they didn't before.
00:14:10.000And I think the second thing he's done is with policy and discouraging, you know, stopping the pull factors that bring people here that play a role in why people come.
00:14:20.000So I think his policies of not allowing people to stay has played a big role.
00:14:24.000But as far as the wall and the effectiveness of the wall, I think the most effective way to discuss that and to point this out is let's look at the last three decades of coverage from the left, whether it be from ProPublica, whether it be from NPR, whether it be from the New York Times, whether it be from Mother Jones, all have articles saying that the U.S. government, when they built walls in the urban areas along the border, that they funneled migrants to their death, right?
00:14:52.000They said that the walls funneled migrants into these remote areas where they could cross to their death.
00:14:59.000That's what they said for three decades now, since we've put up fencing and barriers in the urban areas and not in between those urban areas.
00:15:08.000So according to them and the implications of their reporting for three decades, walls do work.
00:15:36.000A lot of people say to me, Brandon, it's so racist, so why don't you want a wall with Canada?
00:15:40.000I'm like, well, that's actually quite ignorant, but I'll answer the question.
00:15:43.000But the reason is because we have an economy that is similar to Canada's economy.
00:15:48.000We don't have a massive disparity of wealth, and we don't have territory north of the Canadian border that is controlled by paramilitary organized crime groups, right?
00:15:59.000In Mexico and most places on our border, when there's a law enforcement action that needs to happen, the government can't send in police to engage in that police action.
00:16:23.000So when we talk about building a wall, and this is one of my biggest criticisms of the Trump administration, and I used to have this argument with Bannon when I worked for him for many years.
00:16:33.000One of my biggest criticisms is the way they describe it.
00:16:38.000To me, I talk about the border in humanitarian terms.
00:16:41.000I present the humanitarian argument for border security under the current circumstances that we exist under with Mexico.
00:16:49.000And by not doing that, I think they've left a lot of room for the left to come at them and attack them in angles they couldn't have.
00:16:56.000If they had come out and said, hey, you know, all of these decades of reporting from the left said that not having walls in the middle of the desert were killing people, we're going to finish that off to protect their lives, right?
00:17:10.000I think they would have had much more success building the wall and not as many lawsuits.
00:17:16.000I think there's a lot of wisdom there.
00:17:17.000And so immigration and illegal immigration, those were the top two issues before the pandemic, before the Chinese coronavirus.
00:17:28.000We haven't heard that much about border crossings.
00:17:30.000Have you seen the virus impact that at all?
00:17:32.000What are you seeing on the border post-the Chinese coronavirus?
00:17:36.000I don't really think the virus is that impactful on border crossings.
00:17:43.000I think our policies are very impactful on border crossings, but we are beginning to see a number of places where the numbers are kicking up again, right?
00:17:53.000Different regions of Texas, different sectors on the Texas border, the numbers are kicking up again.
00:17:58.000And what we're seeing, instead of people coming across and turning themselves into border patrol agents, we're beginning to see people come across and try to run from the border patrol agents again, which is quite meaningful if you think about what that means.
00:18:13.000But what's significant is when you don't have 15 border patrol agents from one zone in the sector having to deal with a number of children who came across the border see when they're not having to do that because the policies discourage it, then those agents are able to physically go after the people who are running and trying to sneak in, which is very significant.
00:18:57.000I don't think anyone's fought harder for that in the media fund at least than I have.
00:19:02.000But at the same time, I don't share everyone's views on the right or most people's views about migrants.
00:19:10.000I don't think we can allow most people to stay here.
00:19:13.000I don't think that's fair to American citizens.
00:19:16.000But at the same time, they're not my enemy.
00:19:19.000My enemy are cartels, and my enemy are the politicians who are putting constant press releases, demonizing migrants, because they want us to focus on the migrants instead of focus on the policies that these politicians have allowed to exist for decades that encourage migrants to come.
00:19:36.000So, you have these politicians who, and I'm talking about Republicans who take the strongest stance on the border.
00:19:43.000But when you really look at their policies, what they've done is they're the ones that helped create this situation in the first place, you know.
00:19:49.000And so, they would love us to focus on the migrant as our enemy.
00:19:54.000And I don't think that person is my enemy.
00:19:56.000I completely understand when people want a better life.
00:19:59.000Again, I understand why we want to protect what we have and we can't accept the whole world here, but I understand why they come.
00:20:06.000And in their circumstance, I might come myself, right?
00:20:11.000But it is interesting to me that the demonization, like everyone wants us to focus on those people when really they're such a small part of the overall problems that we're dealing with.
00:20:25.000The overall problems have to do with policies, the overall problems have to do with economic situations in Mexico and our State Department consistently encouraging and allowing and accepting a level of corruption and violence from the Mexican government that we wouldn't accept from anyone else.
00:20:46.000Can you help make sense for me and for some of our listeners the power that these cartels have?
00:20:53.000I don't even have clarity on how they're organized, the jurisdictions they oversee.
00:20:59.000What is the best way that you can describe the power of the cartels or an analogy to it?
00:21:05.000Some people use the description that they're basically more powerful than the Mexican government in certain places.
00:21:31.000Just a brief explainer: what you're referring to is the Sinaloa cartel, and the Sinaloa cartel leads the Sinaloa Federation, right?
00:21:41.000So, in the Sinaloa Federation are countless various cartels.
00:21:46.000Like, for instance, Arizona is all Sinaloa, right?
00:21:51.000But it's a group called Los Mimos, and it's another group called Los Salas Arnueva Gente.
00:21:57.000Well, both of those groups are at war with each other, both part of the Sinaloa Federation, but they're at war with each other.
00:22:03.000And so, one of the newer cartels really isn't a newer cartel, it's just Cartel Jalisco.
00:22:08.000They decided they were part of the Sinaloa Federation and they decided to break away and become their own cartel, right?
00:22:13.000Various criminal groups who operate under the banner of cartels.
00:22:17.000Like, if you were to go from the Gulf of Mexico, right, all the way to California, you start and you have the Matamortis faction of the Gulf Cartel, and then you have the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel.
00:22:29.000And then, as you get to about Zapata, Texas, it becomes Los Zetas, which recently changed their name to CDN, but they're really Los Zetas, right?
00:22:36.000And then they kind of control all the way up to a little bit past Nueva Laredo, Laredo, Texas.
00:22:42.000And then, somewhere after that, it gets a little dicey.
00:22:45.000And then it's Los Zetas again until you get to Ciedado Cunha, which is Texas.
00:22:52.000And then, after that, much become Sinaloa-aligned groups until you get all the way to El Paso.
00:23:01.000And then they control a little bit of New Mexico.
00:23:03.000And then after that, you get into the Sinaloa again, different factions, all the way until you get to about Mexicali, and somewhere between Mexicali and Tijuana.
00:23:16.000Then it becomes the Tijuana cartel, the Tijuana cartel.
00:23:18.000There's so many various cartels on our border.
00:23:20.000As you go further into Mexico, there's even more cartels, and some of them operate independently.
00:23:26.000I mean, it's a very complex environment in Mexico.
00:23:31.000But what is interesting is that some of those dominant criminal groups, transnational criminal groups in Mexico, control their local government very well.
00:23:41.000They control who the mayor, if you're the mayor and you don't do what they want, you die.
00:23:46.000They go to you and they say, hey, do you want silver or do you want lead?
00:24:17.000Mexico's past president was very connected to transnational criminal groups.
00:24:22.000Reporting in Mexico and our own reporting revealed that a lot of the money that went into his campaign came various cults from drug cartels.
00:24:42.000And out of Mexico's 32 states, over half of them are physically in territories where the Mexican military cannot go in without having to, well, be the military.
00:24:56.000They have to go in an armored convoys.
00:25:17.000That means that you went and contributed to cartels.
00:25:20.000That's what you did if you went to Mexico and vacationed.
00:25:22.000You contributed to the coffers of these transnational criminal groups that pump drugs into our country and kill untold numbers of Americans and who sex traffic little girls.
00:25:33.000Like that's what you supported when you go to Mexico.
00:25:37.000So, you know, it's very complex and complicated, but it is not, you know, the U.S. government treats Mexico like they're dealing with Canada or like they're dealing with the Netherlands or they're dealing with the United Kingdom or something.
00:25:50.000And it's just not, it's more akin to dealing with Pakistan or it's more, there's problems there that are far beyond the, if people just begin to look into and Google corruption Mexico, drug money Mexico, it will blow their minds to understand this isn't just a right-wing trope.
00:26:08.000This is reporting from across the board.
00:26:10.000We just focus on it more than most people, right?
00:26:26.000So as the final question, what would you say is the appropriate public policy approach to be able to solve a lot of these issues?
00:26:33.000The president either said he would or did, I can't remember, classify the cartels as a terror group.
00:26:42.000What would you say is the correct way to approach these transnational criminal organizations?
00:26:47.000Well, I mean, there's obviously it's a complex problem that requires a complex solution.
00:26:53.000But I think the biggest thing that we could do is, as a nation, is to look at it differently, is to call our State Department and say, I know that you have not only law enforcement and security priorities, but you also have economic priorities.
00:27:40.000I think we should make an example out of a couple of regional cartels out on the drug dealers.
00:27:44.000They'll go after all of the bankers, the lawyers, politicians, the industry leaders who are tied to them and whose money is tied to them.
00:27:51.000And I think that that would cause a ripple effect across Mexico.
00:27:54.000And I think that that would start to clean Mexico up.
00:27:56.000We need to understand, and this before I go, is that you have a circle of corruption, okay?
00:28:02.000One part of that circle is the drug cartel, right?
00:28:06.000But the rest of that circle, the lawyers, the politicians, the industry leaders, and et cetera, all of those people are part of that circle.
00:28:14.000And they're very happy that all we do is go after the drug kingpin, right?
00:28:18.000They're totally happy because they can replace that guy non-stop.
00:28:22.000We need to start going after the rest of the circle.
00:28:24.000We need to start going after Mexico's leadership who are engaging in these types of behaviors.
00:28:50.000I generally, you know, our minds are so caught into what we're doing with corruption and cartel violence that I don't pay attention to a lot of other mediums, but definitely Twitter is a good way to pay attention.
00:29:04.000Well, Brandon, thank you so much for joining us.
00:29:13.000What a great conversation that was at Brandon Darby.
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