The crisis at our southern border is growing more concerning as the days pass. The Associated Press is now reporting those Haitian migrants that were in Del Rio, Texas are being released into America. Very few have been sent back to Haiti as the Biden administration has advertised. My first guest today is Dennis Michael Lynch, who has been covering the border and illegal immigration since 2010. He has produced four films on the topic, with a fifth about to be released.
00:00:00.440Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.780Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:15.120The crisis at our southern border is growing more concerning as the days pass.
00:00:20.220Associated Press is now reporting those Haitian migrants that were in Del Rio, Texas, are being released into America.
00:00:26.980Very few have been sent back to Haiti as the Biden administration advertised.
00:00:31.840They want us to believe they've got all these folks on planes going back home.
00:00:34.320It's not true. Only a handful have been.
00:00:37.100My first guest today is Dennis Michael Lynch.
00:00:39.860He is the host of the Dennis Michael Lynch podcast and founder of the DML News app.
00:00:45.360And he's been covering the border and illegal immigration since 2010.
00:00:49.440He's produced four films on the topic with a fifth about to be released.
00:00:53.560Dennis, so great to see you again. How are you?
00:00:55.240Megan, it's great to be with you. It's been too long.
00:00:57.740It's crazy what's happening now at the southern border.
00:01:00.060And you're the perfect person to talk to this about.
00:01:02.140Your documentary films, They Come to America, we used to feature them on Fox, on The Kelly File, on America Live before that.
00:01:08.600And so, you know, unlike most of us, you've been down there repeatedly and you understand this region and this problem acutely and truly on an expert level.
00:01:27.540It was only 2,000 the year before that.
00:01:29.160OK, so we are way the hell up just to kick things off before we got to this crisis with the bridge.
00:01:34.480Down under this bridge in Del Rio, Texas, started off with 400 of these migrants, then up to 4,000 very quickly, then 10,000, then 16,000, which people who watch this area say is unprecedented.
00:01:47.500This is not some media invented story.
00:02:03.180And now we learn, Dennis, it's not true that only a handful have been put on the planes back to Haiti, and the rest have been released into the good old U.S. of A.
00:02:11.900with a little notice saying, okay, can't wait to see you at your asylum hearing.
00:03:17.280Here, you and I talk about immigration.
00:03:19.220We used to be with all the big cameras.
00:03:21.060Now we do it because technology lets us do it through computer screens on my end.
00:03:25.420Everything in this country has made an advancement at some point except for the border.
00:03:30.120The border is the only thing that we could always look at and say, why does it continue to get worse?
00:03:34.800And the reason why it gets worse, whether it's Haitians or somebody else, is because there is no will to stop these people from coming into our country.
00:03:55.780Because, you know, I'm nowhere near as close to it as you are, but my feeling is Trump did a lot more to prevent illegal immigration and crack down on those crossing our border unlawfully, certainly than Obama before him or Biden after him.
00:04:29.520Trump's books that he had written prior to actually winning the presidency, if you go back and you look at all the speeches he gave on illegal immigration, take out the great chant of build the wall.
00:04:41.320What you heard this president say before he was the president was that he was going to put in a multifaceted approach.
00:04:50.780But as an expert, I know that the wall is like putting a Band-Aid on cancer.
00:04:55.260Until you create a system to where there is no longer the availability for an illegal alien to get a job, you are going to continue to see this flow come in.
00:05:06.720Now, in his books, Trump said that a wall would not do it alone.
00:05:10.940You had to put tariffs on Mexico, and you had to put in mandatory E-Verify.
00:05:15.000You had to hold the employers accountable.
00:05:18.660Stephen Miller, in all of his smarts, never, ever, ever was there one tweet from Donald J.
00:05:26.900Trump, of all the tweets, never was there any one tweet about E-Verify.
00:05:31.960And when he did say tariffs, Megan, and I think this may be the most important thing I say in the program here today.
00:06:24.220At the end of the day, those Haitians don't need to be underneath that bridge.
00:06:28.800They shouldn't be underneath that bridge.
00:06:30.880Those Haitians are just one visual, Megan.
00:06:33.220We're getting about 5,000 people right now per day, if not 7,000 people per day coming through.
00:06:39.920In addition to the Haitians, those people should have never gotten past the border in southern Mexico, but they do.
00:06:47.440And the reason why they do, Megan, time and time again is because the cartels are making billions of dollars off this.
00:06:54.380The government, the corrupt government of Mexico are making billions of dollars off this.
00:06:58.700The politicians in this country who are getting donations from big companies who are making a fortune off this, that's why it continues to go.
00:07:07.320The Haitians right now are just a page in a big, huge book of illegal immigration into this country.
00:14:51.640Had Trump taken that time period where he was in April, where it was 10,000, 15,000 people coming and put in E-Verify and put in the tariffs and crack down, this problem would be over.
00:15:14.600But you're not making those numbers up of five to seven thousand a day crossing the border.
00:15:19.100Now, that's documented by the Biden administration.
00:15:22.340In July, it was over 200,000 who tried to get in.
00:15:25.200In two in August, it was over 200,000 again.
00:15:27.880And only half of those at best were sent back down across the southern border under the covid rule saying we don't have to give you any sort of a hearing because of covid.
00:15:38.000And so even by Biden's numbers, they only sent back half.
00:15:40.900So that's 100,000 in 60 days that came across the border that they let stay in the United States, who are supposedly, again, all going to show up for this asylum hearing, which they're all either going to blow off or they're going to show up to.
00:15:54.920Or they'll show up, too, because 15 percent of the judges will say, OK, you you get you get asylum.
00:16:00.400But for the 85 percent who don't get it, then they're just released.
00:16:03.320They're not put on a plane and sent back home.
00:16:05.240So we're talking about hundreds of thousands coming across the southern border month to month that we're doing nothing about.
00:16:11.600With all due respect, you're shortchanging the number, because even if you take Title 42, which is what pushes them back because of covid, or you take the remain in Mexico policy that they had.
00:16:21.740Do you think that these people are just going back and be like, oh, all right, I'll wait for my appointment?
00:17:20.640The people who are coming in that don't want asylum, that don't want to be apprehended because they've got criminal records and very, very bad intentions for this country.
00:17:30.480Whether it's the sex trafficker, the human trafficker, right?
00:17:34.240The drug trafficker, MS-13, or even worse, the terrorist.
00:17:38.280You're going to go through the normal channels of running away from the border patrol.
00:17:43.120Another thing I learned in my movies, my last one, it's They Come to America 4.
00:17:47.060It starts off where I'm in San Diego and I'm talking to one of the best border patrol agents we've ever had.
00:17:53.940And he said, Dennis, we have disbanded our CBET team, which is basically the coastal team.
00:17:59.480So what happens now is that people who want to come in here, Chinese, Iranians, Hezbollah, whoever it is, will pay up to one hundred thousand dollars to the cartels to be brought in through the waterways with guaranteed passage to get through.
00:18:17.080The other thing that nobody ever talks about, and this is why I was never a big wall guy to begin with, in Florida, you know how they call everything a sector, right?
00:19:36.420And Kamala Harris, you know, our our immigration czar, she's paid absolutely no attention to what's happening down at the southern border, in particular with this latest crisis.
00:19:43.380Until we had this what turns out to be a bogus news story about the border patrol agents whipping the Haitian migrants with whips.
00:20:36.600In this exclusive clip from his most recent offering, They Come to America 5, we see how one local farmer's land in Arizona is used to traffic millions in drugs.
00:20:48.460I started making my films in 2010, and each and every year I would always visit the Ladd Ranch in Cochise County, Arizona.
00:20:57.980Ranter John Ladd had shown me just about everything, but it got to its fever pitch in 2014.
00:21:05.840In the last 22 months, we've had 43 full-size trucks full of marijuana come across this border cutting the wall.
00:21:13.520They cut it at ground level, lays it on the ground, they drive trucks in.
00:21:33.160This is absolutely the worst it's been for 23 years.
00:21:35.960This is one of the reasons, Dennis, why you say the wall's a joke.
00:21:40.220Like this is, you'll take it, but it's not the main solution.
00:21:43.840And just to add a couple of numbers to the numbers there, 26 Republican governors have now written demanding a meeting with President Biden to address this crisis, saying your policies have created an international humanitarian crisis.
00:21:56.380They say border apprehensions are up almost 500 percent compared to last year, and almost 10,000 of those apprehended have prior criminal convictions.
00:22:07.520To your point, the ones who are just trying to sneak across, these are not all like we see the sad families and they try to tug at our heartstrings.
00:22:14.720Thousands and thousands of these folks coming across the border are criminals, criminals, dangerous criminals.
00:22:19.420And on the drug front, they say more fentanyl has been seized this fiscal year than the last three years combined fentanyl, which is a disgusting drug that's really corrupting lives coast to coast in this country.
00:22:36.600I mean, you know, there's a couple of things I want to pack in here for a second.
00:22:39.640As far as the wall goes, and I don't want to focus too much on the wall because that's almost old news, right?
00:22:43.880But when you look at the wall, first of all, half the illegal immigration into this country has historically been, and I say historically because I think this year is going to turn that upside down, but historically it has been people who come in on visas.
00:22:57.200So you come in legally on an airplane or a boat or, you know, across Canadian border, and then you stay.
00:23:33.920Trump was trying to do the best he could, and he was surrounded by people who didn't know how to fix this problem.
00:23:39.080Now, going back to what you were saying here two seconds ago, you've got the president telling me, I've got to jab my kid, that I've got to wear a mask, that I've got to do social distancing, that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
00:23:51.320And I know that, you know, you got vaccinated.
00:24:06.880I have a problem with the fact that he has a super spreader at the border every single last month, letting these people go through, just not tested, not.
00:24:16.080Why are we giving the people the Haitians right now?
00:24:18.060Why aren't we giving them all COVID shots?
00:24:19.540Why are we sending this stuff all over the country?
00:24:21.240Why aren't we just jabbing them right now?
00:24:46.800Maybe we don't have it here, but we do have it.
00:24:48.540OK, stand by and listen about what's going on at the border.
00:24:51.040Is somebody asking the foreign nationals who are walking into Del Rio, Texas and setting up camps on this side of the border for proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test?
00:25:02.840Well, first of all, I can readdress for you or re-talk you through what steps we take.
00:25:08.900That is the policy for people who fly into the country.
00:25:11.700So if somebody walks into the country right across the river, does somebody ask them to see their vaccination card?
00:25:19.120Well, let me explain to you again, Peter, how our process works as individuals, as individuals come across the border and they are both assessed for whether they have any symptoms.
00:38:42.780The same thing, even Rand Paul has had a couple of his posts on masks and other things taken down because it didn't, you know, comport with what Facebook says is, quote, the truth.
00:38:51.340I will say this to your point about the politics of it.
00:38:54.920Dallas Morning News, University of Texas, Tyler, just came out with a poll.
00:38:57.6201100 plus registered voters, including the Texas Latino voters, Texas Latino voters disapprove of Joe Biden.
00:39:07.220They disapprove of his policies as president.
00:39:09.460And they really disapprove of his policies when it comes to immigration.
00:39:13.100They say 54 percent of Latino voters in Texas disapprove of the job Biden's doing.
00:39:31.420Latinos and non-Latinos alike do not like the way this is being handled.
00:39:37.120And you can understand why, to your point a minute ago, Dennis, about the way people have gotten into this country lawfully, the way they've had to wait, the hoops they've had to jump through.
00:39:46.660I got to run, but I want to give you the last word.
00:39:49.160Look, you know, I learned a lot of things over the past 10 years.
00:39:51.580And one of the things that I learned is that the Latino people in this country are hardworking.
00:39:56.760And a lot of times they're held guilty by association and it pisses them off because they did the things the right way.
00:40:01.800Until we get, last word is this, until there is a will to stop this problem, it will continue.
00:40:07.700It is the number one problem in this country, except for the media.
00:40:11.280And until we get somebody in there who has the will in the spine to cut off the jobs and cut off the incentives and just say the party is fucking over, we're getting nowhere.
00:40:27.580You know what this is reminding me of?
00:40:28.600So when I used to have you on The Kelly File and my shows before that, Debbie Murphy, who's still my producer, she would she'd get in a panic because she'd see the look come over my eyes like, oh, my God, this is amazing.
00:40:40.640And I would be sucked into the Dennis Michael Lynch just performance.
00:41:08.760The one thing I remember you saying one thing.
00:41:10.380I was on studio with you one day and it was a commercial going off and you said, my producer just whispered into my ear, Dennis is mesmerizing you again.
00:41:21.920So congratulations on all your success.
00:41:24.340And I need to tell you that aside from my children and my wife, I would say that I've lived one of the most incredible lives a man could live.
00:41:32.180If somebody said to me, if you had one chance to live something over again, I would say I'd want to go back and do the Kelly File, the whole thing that we used to do.
00:41:39.240Nobody has ever matched what you were able to create in that room.
00:41:44.560It is simply the best television show that has ever been on cable news and it is sorely missed.
00:41:50.420I hope your podcast is as successful as that.
00:41:53.600And I'd love to be back with you again.
00:41:55.260And if I don't get the chance, God bless you, Doug, who I met on the train that day.
00:42:17.800OK, we're not done because up next, we're going to be joined by a Texas rancher who's going to tell us what it's like to live near the border amid the migrant invasion.
00:42:24.560And the measures that her family has had to take to feel safe on their own property.
00:42:35.560Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show, everyone.
00:42:37.420In just the last few minutes, we have learned that the border agents seen allegedly whipping Haitian migrants.
00:42:48.580In Del Rio have been reassigned now to desk duty while an investigation is conducted.
00:42:54.960The DHS secretary, Mayorkas, is testifying today before the Homeland Security Committee and saying those agents, quote, do not reflect who we are as a country and that his agency will investigate this with, quote, tremendous force.
00:43:08.860This same tremendous force has not been present in the administration's dealing with close to 16,000 migrants entering our country, about which they've shown absolutely no outrage.
00:43:21.060Joining me now is Texas rancher Stephanie Crisp Canales.
00:43:25.300Stephanie's here to share what it's actually like to live with the border crisis every day and how it's affecting her livelihood and family.
00:43:30.480Stephanie, thank you so much for being here.
00:43:47.340And I say, how long have you been living in Manhattan?
00:43:49.740You don't know anything about what we're talking about.
00:43:51.120When we talk about immigration, we're not talking about what happened 100 years ago that filled America with a melting pot of people that gave us exposure to diverse cultures and so on.
00:43:59.540We're talking about something very different right now.
00:44:01.280And they've spent absolutely no time along the southern border or northern border, for that matter.
00:44:52.260And I want to point out during, you know, there's always been people coming through our property as long as I've been alive.
00:45:00.900Obviously, people have always been illegally crossing the Rio Grande, coming over here for a better life.
00:45:07.320But during when President Trump was in office, during his entire time in office, we did not physically lay eyes on not one illegal alien the entire time.
00:45:22.220Two weeks after the current administration took office, we started seeing people just coming over here.
00:45:32.340You can sit in our, you know, dining room table and look out into the back yard and you can see them running.
00:45:38.560Is it wonderful families holding hands, skipping through your fields?
00:45:41.600Or, I mean, do we have reason to be concerned about who's crossing in?
00:45:46.000All of the ones that we have seen come through our property, they are all young males.
00:45:50.460They dress in all black, big backpacks or all camouflage with big backpacks.
00:45:56.740And they do not want to be caught because our local Border Patrol will tell us the majority of them, when the ones that they catch and they run them, they are wanted for murder, rape, just awful things.
00:46:11.060The number of crimes that have already been committed by a lot of these folks is stunning.
00:46:15.300And then we've seen from the stats that many of them go on to commit crimes inside the United States.
00:46:21.140This has just been a super short block because we want to get another break in.
00:46:24.160But we're going to come right back with Stephanie Crisp Canales and what she's had to do now with her teenage daughters to help keep her family safe.
00:46:31.880If you think this isn't affecting Americans, you're wrong.
00:46:35.520This is not all people who just want to live in America and do right and work and obey our laws.
00:46:44.000Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:46:51.540We are talking about the border today, the southern border in particular, and there's a lot to cover.
00:46:56.160Texas rancher Stephanie Crisp Canales is here with me to share her experience of what it's like living with this border crisis every day in a way few of us have to.
00:47:05.820If you are a rancher or someone who has been affected by the border crisis, you can weigh in, too.
00:47:11.300You can give us a call at 833-44-MEGYN, M-E-G-Y-N.
00:47:32.400You know, just a few days ago, there were seven of them.
00:47:35.480One afternoon, we find remnants of them.
00:47:38.920A lot of them move at night because it is cooler.
00:47:41.860So when you go through the pastures, you can find their backpacks, their clothes, everything that they left behind when the smugglers pick them up.
00:48:07.620They are, you know, the bailouts that that happen.
00:48:11.440They drive these vehicles, drive up and down our road.
00:48:14.140And we live on a on a dead end, little dirt road.
00:48:17.640And, you know, all hours of the night you see a vehicle going past and you know that there are people out there going to jump in those vehicles.
00:48:24.400And it's, you know, when you don't know who is on your property at any given time, it is so unnerving that it's an invasion.
00:48:35.360Do you have any reason to believe that they have drugs or illegal contraband weapons, anything like that on them?
00:48:41.780Our local border patrol have told us that they do carry weapons of some sort and they will tell us, you know, don't approach them.
00:48:51.800You know, if they come to your door, do not answer the door.
00:48:55.560Just consider them armed and armed and dangerous.
00:49:08.280So I read an interview, I think it was him who is saying he found some ammo on your on your property, some sort of like hollow point bullets.
00:49:19.880And that's also very unnerving, you know, because that's where we live.
00:49:24.040And we no longer, you know, walk around outside.
00:49:29.260We if we leave our house, we have a gun on us.
00:49:32.880We are constantly vigilant, even if we're just going outside to, you know, feed the animals, whatever it may be.
00:49:40.140We are constantly watching our surroundings because they they have been known to, you know, approach ranchers and take over their vehicles and take off.
00:49:52.460And this is another this is another thing that I try to explain to my friends in New York who are, for the most part, very anti gun and want all sorts of restrictions on guns.
00:50:03.900And I say it's wonderful for you living in your high rise building with your doorman and several layers between you and any potential bad guys to take that position.
00:50:11.940But imagine if you didn't have a police force that would come in two seconds.
00:50:22.340It's it's not an accident that a lot of folks who live in these more red states that are more rural and have to deal with these issues are not only opposed to this kind of immigration and want crackdowns, but are also pro gun.
00:51:10.500The Border Patrol told him, we can't, I can't send anybody to you because all of my agents are in the neighboring county processing people.
00:51:21.880Is Del Rio where that is, that's close to you?
00:51:34.840And so tell us what you've done to try to ensure their safety.
00:51:39.380Well, we've had several discussions with them.
00:51:42.820And of course, I'm being raised on, you know, on a ranch.
00:51:45.980They are well versed with weapons, gun safety, things like that.
00:51:51.140And, you know, as a, as a parent, you obviously will do anything to protect your children.
00:51:56.640You know, you, you kill somebody, you, you will protect your children.
00:51:59.700But when you have to have that talk with your kids about, you know, they may have to take somebody's life to protect their own.
00:52:07.220And that was a really hard conversation to have with them.
00:52:10.820And I never want them to be faced with that.
00:52:13.120But the way it stands currently right now, we have to, we have to do that.
00:52:18.980We have to have those conversations because like I said, nobody's going to come when, when we call for help.
00:52:23.780Unless it's a neighboring rancher, which is what we, what we do.
00:52:28.880When you see somebody like Kamala Harris basically ignoring this, she didn't go down to the border.
00:52:34.020She actually went and threw the coin toss at the Howard University football game.
00:52:38.640Our president was in Rehoboth Beach, which is a very, very lovely area of Delaware, enjoying himself on a bike ride this weekend.
00:52:45.580Um, they weren't down there and they decide to weigh in.
00:52:50.100She, Kamala Harris weighs in by saying how horrific the footage was of the border agents allegedly whipping the migrants, which again is not supported by the, the videotape that has been released so far.
00:53:01.700And I should mention as well that the, um, uh, here's National Border Patrol Council slammed the Biden administration for, for condemning these images without understanding the situation.
00:53:11.820They said they don't know what happened.
00:53:13.240This is a legitimate law enforcement action.
00:53:15.920This was meant to protect the migrants coming across.
00:53:18.580They say, um, this is from the John Solomon reports podcast where they had the, the National Border Patrol Council on there.
00:53:24.140They said they, the, they swing the reins around to keep the migrants from getting too close to the horse and getting trampled.
00:53:29.820The fraternal order of police also came out and said, anybody with two brain cells knows that agents use split reins down there.
00:53:36.780They do use them as a whip on the horses.
00:53:39.000This helps get a quicker response from the horse to move out when needed.
00:53:41.740Um, they were trying to keep people safe.
00:53:45.000They say these accusations are motivated by ignorance and unhinged emotions.
00:53:49.600I mean, you, I'm sure you've ridden a horse on your ranch.
00:53:52.180Are you familiar with split reins and how they look and work?
00:54:00.960Any, any cowboy will tell you they did nothing wrong.
00:54:03.980And that's what, but that's what Kamala Harris is outraged about.
00:54:07.540That's what she wants an investigation into.
00:54:09.140Not how we got 16,000 migrants sitting two hours from you as random people run through your, you know, your ranch during the middle of the day.
00:54:17.360And your girls are sitting there wondering if they're going to have to fire a gun to protect their lives.
00:54:24.380We have been, um, and I speak for our neighboring, our neighbor, neighboring ranches when I say that we truly, we have been, um, ignored, forgotten, um, by our current administration.
00:54:38.460And what, can you talk to me about something called the bailout?
00:54:41.540Cause I know you've said that multiple bailout vehicles, uh, cross your ranch as well.
00:54:46.000And they've been in your town because I've been seeing the news reports since April talking about how they're increasing and there's warnings from the sheriff's office to protect your kids.
00:54:53.520They're seeing a lot more immigration, illegal immigration and bailouts.
00:54:59.880That is a, um, a stolen vehicle that's driven by a U S citizen.
00:55:04.360They come down, uh, to the border and they pick up as many illegals as they can.
00:55:11.320And they load up and they head North and, um, inevitably, you know, law enforcement will get behind them because they're driving a stolen vehicle with stolen tags.
00:55:19.720As soon as the law enforcement, um, officer tries to pull them over, they will take off, uh, mainly because the driver who is a U S citizen does not want to get caught because that's possible federal prison time.
00:55:32.880So they will go off the main road and they will go through our fences onto our property.
00:55:39.640They will crash when they, when the vehicle comes to a stop, everybody in the vehicle will bail out and run.
00:55:45.960And they all run in different directions because, you know, it's, it's harder to catch 20 people if they're all running in different directions.
00:55:52.360Um, and then, so then as ranchers, we are left with broken fences, broken gates.
00:55:58.100We have to make those repairs ourselves.
00:57:00.140You know, schools, when you let out at the end of the day, you're, you're constantly, the teachers are, have to be vigilant.
00:57:06.940And they, they do a great job of that, but it's, it's scary that we have to live this way.
00:57:12.660And to the media that continues to refuse to use the word crisis to describe what's happening at the Southern border, what's your message?
00:57:20.020I would invite them to come down here because until you, until you come down here and experience it firsthand with your own eyes, you're, you're not going to understand.
00:57:28.500And, and either they don't, or they don't care.
00:59:40.000And as we move west along the border, the cartels there seem to be a lot more mature.
00:59:46.080They have older people and leadership.
00:59:48.380And they make decisions not only to make money today, but to make money tomorrow.
00:59:52.500They want to have long-term profits coming in.
00:59:55.580But as we move into the Texas border and we look at two groups, the Gulf Cartel and Los Etos,
01:00:00.980what we find is that they don't really care if what they're doing today brings a lot more law enforcement presence and cameras.
01:00:10.560They know that it's going to hurt their business tomorrow, but they don't care.
01:00:14.040And that's why we see most of the people who come here illegally or for asylum, the people, whether you call them migrants or illegal aliens,
01:00:21.260whatever terminology you want to use, there's a mixture of all of that.
01:00:26.000That's why they come to these very specific areas.
01:00:28.620It's because the particular factions of the particular cartels who control that territory there have decided that they want to embrace asylum seekers and illegal immigrants and migrants and refugee seekers and all of these things.
01:00:44.340They want to embrace them as a business model.
01:00:48.440So when we look at South of Texas and McAllen.
01:00:54.620Okay, so what they do is they go into Central America, specifically the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel.
01:01:02.280They go into Central America and they encourage people to come and they say, look, you know, I know you don't have the money to come right now, but you don't have to have it.
01:02:35.780But it but it all really is dependent on the specific cartels that we're talking about.
01:02:41.200So why would the people want to get caught?
01:02:44.580Why would they want to get detained and say, OK, I'm applying for asylum because it's a very low chance they're actually going to get asylum, though they'll be released into the United States?
01:02:56.240I realize the Haitian thing is an exception to this because Biden had a temporary program that said you can all you're all going to be allowed to stay temporarily given what's happening in Haiti.
01:03:07.440And so that was a major, major incentive, though you had to be here before July 29th, though a lot of people didn't get that memo, as it turns out.
01:03:13.680But my point is, in general, what would be the incentive to actually declare yourself and deal with Border Patrol as opposed to just sneaking in and trying to get a job?
01:03:21.800Well, you get to be here and you get to be here and it's a lot more likely that you're going to get to stay in the U.S.
01:03:29.680if you turn yourself in and request asylum and wait the years for your hearing while you're free in the U.S. working than it is if you get caught sneaking in.
01:03:39.480It's a very different situation. So if people step on our soil and they walk up to the first U.S. authority that they see and they say, hey, I want asylum.
01:03:47.900That's a very different situation. And they're much more likely to get to stay for a longer period of time and have what's called a successful migration attempt.
01:03:57.280Right. They're much more likely to get to stay if they do it that way.
01:04:01.960And, you know, Megan, a lot of people miss this and people ask me all the time.
01:04:08.180They say, well, is Biden responsible? I'm like, well, he's he's in part responsible.
01:04:11.580Right. A big part responsible. The administration is.
01:04:15.320But but what it is, is any time with illegal immigration or irregular migration or whatever you want to call it, you have to have push factors and pull factors.
01:04:23.840Right. So the push factor is that it's horrible to live wherever they're living for whatever reason.
01:04:28.800And the pull factor is if our policies encourage them to come, if our policies make them think that they're going to get to stay, then if you have those two factors together, it is inevitable that people are going to leave where it's bad and come where they think it's better.
01:04:45.880And that's what we have going on right now.
01:04:47.920So the cartels make money by basically extorting people.
01:04:51.780They say, we'll get you across. You're going to get a nice job in the United States and then you're going to send back money to, yes, your mom, but also us for the next 10 years.
01:05:01.120How else do they make money? Talk about the the drug factor.
01:05:04.400Well, you know, when you talk about cartels, it's a very interesting situation because in Mexico, you have to picture that there's like this big circle of corruption.
01:05:12.800OK, and the cartel is actually the drug cartel is actually just one small little slice of that pie.
01:05:19.540Right. You have politicians, you have previous presidents of Mexico who are verifiably had campaigns that were funded in part by drug cartel money.
01:05:28.700You have a lot of public corruption in Mexico. So the other piece of that pie are the politicians, the lawyers, the financiers, other industry leaders, and they're all part of that.
01:05:38.580So every time we take out a cartel boss, right, we're just really removing one replaceable part of that pie.
01:05:44.940And they just fill that in with someone else. And the rest of the circle is largely left alone.
01:05:49.320We saw that recently with Mexico's former defense minister who was arrested by the U.S. for his role in being really the chief architect of drugs coming into our country through Mexico.
01:06:02.100And then the U.S. government decided to let him go because of diplomatic pressure.
01:06:08.220So it's a gigantic mess that we're dealing with with them.
01:06:14.040You know, they make about like with the Gulf cartel, for instance, they make about a third of their money from illegal immigration or asylum claimants.
01:06:21.440They make about a third from drugs and then about another third from from other business ventures that they're into extortion, avocados like, you know, getting, you know, protection money, kidnapping, bank robbing, all these kind of things, all these other crimes.
01:06:38.320But about a third of their money comes from illegal immigration or asylum seekers.
01:06:44.080But if you go west on the border and you go to all the Sinaloa cartel factions, that's not true with them.
01:06:49.120They make most of their money from drugs. And it just depends on the reason that we're talking about.
01:06:54.520And when you say drugs, I mean, the cartels. So they're they have drugs and they're sending drugs.
01:06:59.700Their drug money is American drug money. They don't make all their drug money off of Mexicans.
01:07:04.600They make it off of us. They need to get it into the United States so that, you know, because we have money and we pay for it.
01:07:10.200And we have a lot of people who want drugs here, fentanyl and otherwise.
01:07:13.680So, I mean, that's when we're talking about Mexican drug cartels pushing drugs or Mexican cartels pushing drugs, we're talking about pushing them to Americans, to Americans, to people in Western Europe.
01:07:24.140But but in this context, with our border, yes, men, we're talking about they push those drugs to Americans.
01:07:29.960And there's kind of a misnomer that that, you know, people will say, well, if the if the demand wasn't there in the U.S., these drugs, these drug cartels wouldn't exist.
01:07:39.000And that's partially true. But it's really not completely true, because what we saw, like with methamphetamine, for instance, was the drug cartels began to push methamphetamine.
01:07:48.760And then Americans started to have, you know, they started to focus on meth first, supplying it before Americans really had an appetite for it on a large scale.
01:07:58.860So it really just, you know, it really just depends.
01:08:03.400But when we're talking about the cartels, I really do think it's important that people understand the nuance between the various cartels.
01:08:11.700Like it is in primarily the Gulf cartel, one faction of the Gulf cartel that's been leading most of the asylum seekers and illegal immigration into our country.
01:08:20.660And recently we saw Los Etos decide, hey, wait a minute, we want to make some of that money, too.
01:08:25.820And that's a large and large part why we saw the Haitians show up where they showed up at a region of the border that wasn't prepared is because another cartel decided they wanted to adopt that business model that the Gulf cartel had been using.
01:08:38.300So, I mean, as a practical matter, what do they do?
01:08:40.460They run around the Haitians have been hanging out in Mexico for a long time now.
01:08:43.680I mean, since they say since 2010, this actually wasn't just in response to the earthquake or the assassination of their president.
01:09:17.880And then our last guest was a rancher talking to us about how she'd see an American come by in like a Jeep or a truck and pick up a bunch of these migrants who had crossed the border.
01:09:44.060You know, if we were talking about Arizona, for instance, in the Pet Canyon corridor where Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed or if we're talking, you know, in the Tucson sector, if we're talking about Texas, there's different ways that it manifests.
01:09:58.400But like like in Arizona, for instance, in the Tucson sector, what they have is they're very professional.
01:10:04.380They they generally avoid illegal immigration, even though that does happen.
01:10:08.540It's not on the scale that we see in Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley sector or the Del Rio sector or even the Laredo sector.
01:10:17.300But what they do is they have scout teams who cross our border.
01:10:24.880They have radios and then they monitor where all of our Border Patrol agents are and they guide the load through and they say, hey, don't come this way.
01:10:57.800Not not not in the Rio Grande Valley sector.
01:10:59.600But what they typically do to do there is, you know, women come from Central America, depending on whose estimate you listen to, whether it's Amnesty International or Doctors Without Borders, somewhere between 33 percent and 80 percent of all of the females who come through the Gulf Quartel territory from Central America.
01:11:20.380Are sexually assaulted on the way, sometimes multiple times.
01:11:24.880The expectation that that's going to occur is there.
01:11:58.920And that's why in Brooks County, Texas, if people were to research that, they'd see a lot of work that we've done in the Weather Channel and National Geographic.
01:12:09.280So many hundreds of migrants' bodies are found there because they're left.
01:12:15.780Once they can't make it anymore, they sprain an ankle or they're too dehydrated and the smugglers just leave them.
01:12:22.320And those smugglers are connected to the Gulf Cartel.
01:12:25.520And so it just depends on where we are.
01:12:28.380But I can tell you the issue is very complicated.
01:12:33.540There are ranchers like the nice woman that you had on before me, and her experiences are true.
01:12:40.380There are angel families who have lost their kids and their brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers to people who were here illegally.
01:12:47.880There are also people who were here illegally and they had kids and those kids became doctors or got their PhDs or became law enforcement officers or served in our military.
01:12:57.880All of these things are true at the same time.
01:13:00.380And one of the reasons we can't deal with it as a nation and actually address the problem, this complicated problem, is because we have one side telling one set of stories and we have another side telling another set of stories, which all of them are true.
01:13:14.620It's just that we can't reconcile in our head that they're all true together.
01:13:19.000And coming up with a solution that everyone can agree on would be a lot easier if we just kind of acknowledge the particulars.