This Past Weekend with Theo Von - E486 Border Patrol Chief Chris Clem

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00:01:00.060 We've added a second show in St. Louis on April 19th at the fabulous Fox Theater. Tickets are

00:01:06.440 on sale now. We also have tickets remaining in Atlanta on April 5th. Get all your tickets at

00:01:11.860 Theovan.com slash T-O-U-R. Also, I want to let you know that one of my favorite hoodies that we've ever

00:01:19.120 made. The template of the hoodie that they use is back. And I'm really excited about it. You can

00:01:27.360 check these out now at TheovanStore.com. Thank you so much for the support. Today's guest is a retired

00:01:35.220 Border Patrol chief who spent more than 27 years on the job, most recently in Yuma, Arizona and El Paso,

00:01:43.300 Texas. And he really got a firsthand look at what's going on with America's border. That's

00:01:49.940 what we want to talk about. And we will. And a lot more. Today's guest is Border Patrol chief

00:01:56.540 Chris Clem.

00:01:58.540 Shine that light on me. I'll sit and tell you my stories. Shine on me. And I will find a song I've been singing.

00:02:18.320 I'm going to stay.

00:02:19.180 The funny thing is I run into my friend yesterday. He's a chef and he's like, dude, I think your guests

00:02:33.420 are staying at our hotel. And I was like, really? That's awesome. Yeah, it was. I haven't even been

00:02:38.020 there yet. Yeah, it's a nice hotel. Um, I had never, you know, what's how really small of a world

00:02:43.920 this is. So I'm flying up here direct from Phoenix to Nashville. And we're talking with Chris Clem here

00:02:50.020 today, 27 and a half years as a Border Patrol agent. Yes. Yes. Now I'm glad to be here. I was

00:02:56.680 just, you know, saying I flew in from Phoenix last night and the lady sitting next to me was staying

00:03:01.700 at the same hotel. She'd never been in Nashville. It's been six years since I've been in Nashville

00:03:04.740 and she's asking if anything, you know, what are you, what are you going to do? I said, well,

00:03:09.320 I got some business I'm dealing with. She says, you know, where are you staying? I said,

00:03:12.720 well, I'm staying at this hotel. She's like, that's where we're staying. It was a, there's

00:03:15.300 a whole party of people, uh, that she was with. There's like one of their girlfriends

00:03:18.380 was having a birthday party. And so they all came up here. I'm yeah. I'm like, well, I'm

00:03:22.520 avoiding that crowd tonight, but it was a great, great place. Uh, last night, very comfortable

00:03:27.100 and a super, super nice hotel. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for coming in, man. And yeah, thanks for making

00:03:32.800 the effort. Really appreciate it. You know, you just always hear so much stuff like about

00:03:36.520 the border, you know, it's like the border and immigration and like the effects of

00:03:41.840 it. And I'm always just curious about like, what's going on, you know, like what's the truth,

00:03:45.420 what's the reality. Um, so you're recently retired from, uh, your work as a border agent.

00:03:51.380 Yes. And where did you finish up at? I was the chief patrol agent in Yuma, Arizona, which was

00:03:57.780 pretty much ground zero in 21 and 22 for the immigration and border security crisis we've been

00:04:04.100 dealing with. Yeah. Yeah. And when you say like, well, like what is our current, uh, immigration

00:04:09.840 policy? Yeah. So a couple of things we want to talk about, right? So immigration and border

00:04:15.760 security are actually two separate, you know, they're not, they're, they're, they're closely

00:04:20.840 related, but this is where the problem comes in. We conflate immigration and border security

00:04:25.620 and we really need to kind of separate those. So I'll, I'll talk like my expertise, my wheelhouse

00:04:31.160 is border security. Immigration is a, a, a longstanding process that's going on and going on in this

00:04:37.980 country for hundreds of years, right? You have visas, you have people that come in, uh, you know,

00:04:42.680 through the ports of entry, they apply on the front end. So there's that immigration process.

00:04:47.040 You have non-immigrants and you have immigrants, intended immigrants, you have residents. It's a,

00:04:51.380 it's very, very convoluted, but what happens is so many people are coming in illegally and we don't

00:05:00.500 have the right fix for that mass of humanity. I mean, the, the laws and the books do it, but when

00:05:05.600 you're dealing with volumes and volumes of people, it's very challenging. So what I'd like to do is,

00:05:10.320 is in what I do is talk strictly about more of the border security piece. Okay. But, but, but it's

00:05:16.920 not lost that you have to have the right mix because we have proven through history, go back

00:05:23.020 50, 60 years with good lawful programs in place. A Bracero program is a prime example where they brought

00:05:31.340 in guest workers specifically to work in the fields. The Bracero program. Bracero program. Yes.

00:05:37.200 That actually was where farmers could hire people for those seasons. And there was a drastic,

00:05:44.720 like immigrant, illegal entry dropped because there was a more clear and lawful pathway for those that

00:05:51.720 just wanted to come work. There was a plan. Yeah. They just wanted to come work. Right. And they

00:05:55.560 were willing to go back after the season. And that actually, we saw a drop historically in the

00:06:02.160 number of illegal entries. So these are, I mean, we have proven it in the past that we can work and

00:06:08.320 make things work. In 1942, Bracero program, an executive order called the Mexican farm labor program

00:06:13.640 established the Bracero program in 1942. This series of diplomatic accords between Mexico and the U.S.

00:06:19.900 permitted millions of Mexican men to work legally in the U.S. on short-term labor contracts.

00:06:24.560 These agreements addressed a national agriculture labor shortage during the war, World War II. And

00:06:33.020 implicitly, they redressed previous Depression era deportations. During World War II, the U.S.

00:06:37.400 sought labor from millions of Braceros who would return to their country of origin after the work

00:06:42.500 permit expired. Right. Okay. So that was like, so you're saying there was a drop then and if there

00:06:47.180 was a, cause it was a plan in place. Right. I mean, it was strictly, you know, for a lot of seasonal

00:06:51.760 agriculture work. And then of course, when the plant, when they concluded the program,

00:06:55.480 obviously people were still wanting to come back. And so we saw an uptick in illegal entry.

00:07:01.540 They'll, there, there's some, you know, some nuances and stories about that program. Like,

00:07:05.640 you know, unions got involved and things like that. Then it became, you know, you know,

00:07:09.400 you priced out the farmer. So, Hey, you know what? I can't pay this kind of stuff, but it's an example

00:07:14.560 that you can go back, you know, from 1942 for another 20 years to the sixties that, Hey, you had

00:07:20.920 a supply and demand. You had, you had plenty of agricultural work. You had a demand for workers

00:07:25.180 and it, it can, it can make sense, right? We've done that with H1 visas and things like that over,

00:07:30.720 over time. We need to fix the leak in the boat, right? Instead of, you know, just, you know,

00:07:39.600 bailing out water, we need to fix the leak. And that's the border security apparatus. That's

00:07:43.940 the, what I like to talk about is like, Hey, we really need Americans deserve to have a safe

00:07:49.220 and, and, and, and secure border. Yeah. And, and then we need to, you know, actually figure out

00:07:55.680 better lawful, even short-term pathways for those that want to come work tall fences and wide gates.

00:08:03.040 Tall fences is, is something that look, it was actually Senator Fred Thompson, the late Senator Fred

00:08:07.820 Thompson from Tennessee that talked about that kind of phrase back in 2008. And I said, man,

00:08:12.600 that resonated with me. So I, I'd kind of built off of that and said, look, if we secure our border

00:08:18.080 where it makes sense, where we need it, the way, the way the border patrol says, Hey, this is the

00:08:21.960 requirement. And we build out a wide gate. That's the lawful pathways, the ports of entries, programs

00:08:27.920 like Bracero and other visa programs. Cause so many of the migrants that I've talked to and people I

00:08:33.980 know talk to, they just want to come work. They're not really wanting to come here and live here for very

00:08:37.560 long or immigrate here. They just want to come work and eventually go back. We've got to make

00:08:42.460 that better. And they're, they're using that influx of people all the time. I mean, even when I worked

00:08:46.620 in, uh, in farming, there was, we always had some dude sleeping above me or next to me or, you know,

00:08:52.400 separate beds, but yeah, same room. And, um, he was Mexican and we would lay there at night and try

00:08:58.420 to say stuff to each other and we couldn't, and then we would just go to sleep. Yeah. But, um,

00:09:03.040 yeah, but yeah, you have to have a plan. It's like, you got to have a plan. Um, when did that

00:09:08.860 start to change? So they had the Bracero program. So that was working for a while. Um, when did it

00:09:14.040 start to change where things got out of control with the amount of people coming in? So, you know,

00:09:20.620 we're going to fast forward, we're gonna take a big leap because a lot of this stuff happened

00:09:23.240 before I was even born. Right. So you, you, you, in the seventies, you, you know, there was,

00:09:27.240 it was steady, mainly Mexican adult men coming to work, doing seasonal work in the eighties,

00:09:34.920 the same thing, right? The same thing. They all came in, they were looking for work. Even,

00:09:38.460 even our farm and labor had not been, you know, industrialized so much, you know,

00:09:43.440 we were still handpicking things. Right. Um, so we've always had that steady flow, uh, throughout

00:09:49.060 history in the eighties in 1986, there was a, a lot of, uh, illegal immigrants here and, uh,

00:09:55.840 but president Reagan did an amnesty. That was, that's always the fix all politically. We'll do

00:09:59.900 an amnesty. We're going to, we're going to clean the slate and we're going to really start doing

00:10:03.080 some things. Like you get grandfathered in. What is an amnesty? That's basically saying you've,

00:10:06.940 you've been grandfathered in. You're here, you're here illegally. You, you, we're going to let you

00:10:10.380 stay. You made it like you're safe. It's almost like the guy in baseball, the referee saying you're

00:10:13.600 safe. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, you're already here. We're not going to, we're not going to

00:10:17.340 deport you. Go ahead and try to start going through a legalization process. You're here to work.

00:10:21.940 And, and that's a huge pull factor because oftentimes the migrants know, Hey, if we can

00:10:27.960 just get here and we lay low, eventually we may get some kind of amnesty. So that, that began again

00:10:36.020 in the eighties. I came in, in 1995, I joined the board patrol in 1995. Okay. Um, it's, it's very

00:10:43.340 interesting, especially in today's political times. I think it was 1994, may have been early 95,

00:10:49.220 but then president Clinton spoke at a state of the union and he talked about the crime

00:10:55.340 bill, the 1994 crime bill, which is prevalent today because we know we have president Biden

00:10:59.020 who was a Senator back then in that speech, Clinton says, we're going to put 5,000 more

00:11:04.340 police officers on the street to include border guards. I was one of those 5,000 hires

00:11:09.580 in 1995. And it was based on some of the things that, uh, then, uh, Barbara Jordan had, had

00:11:16.440 really spoken about, we have to secure our border. We can't, we can't just have illegal

00:11:22.100 immigration constantly, you know, threatening our, our, our businesses and everything else.

00:11:26.520 So was the crime bill started because they needed to secure the border? It was just a

00:11:30.420 general bill. Like we need more protection. We want to put more people on the streets.

00:11:34.480 So if you think about the crime bill, it had to do with gun control, had to do with police

00:11:39.760 reforms, had a lot of do with, you know, jail sentencing. So it wasn't the best bill,

00:11:44.900 but it certainly got more police officers and I got hired under it. So I, so I was in favor.

00:11:49.120 So, but it was a general policy. It wasn't just about the board.

00:11:51.540 No. Okay. Got it. Right. So it was more police officers.

00:11:54.100 Um, it is the largest crime bill in the history of the United States and consisted of 356 pages

00:11:58.740 that provided for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons, which were

00:12:05.720 designed with significant input from experienced police officers. Okay. Yeah. So the a hundred thousand,

00:12:10.340 I think that was probably an end game and probably included jailers and everything, but it specifically

00:12:14.220 talked about 5,000 on the streets right away. Um, so that's how you get started. That's how I get

00:12:19.240 started. And we were still, when I started in a town, it's really, you know, I grew up from New

00:12:23.880 Orleans. Uh, I grew up in Houston. Um, and I'll, we can talk about some of my journeys over the,

00:12:29.240 my career, but what's interesting is I had over 3000 people in my high school. I went to an after

00:12:36.160 college and I joined the board patrol. I went to a town of Lordsburg, New Mexico, and the whole

00:12:39.940 county had maybe 3000 people. It was, it, it was crazy. Right. The, the, the cultural shift

00:12:45.400 from, you know, big urban life in Houston to, to the country. But I, but I, man, I'll tell

00:12:49.840 you what, I fell in love with it. And, um, but I went almost 10 days before we made our

00:12:55.120 first illegal alien arrest. I mean, it wasn't, things was just weren't that busy. And, and

00:13:00.020 it was mainly again, single adult Mexican nationals. Occasionally you would get people

00:13:06.200 from like farmhands. Yeah. That's pretty much what, and, and, and kind of like what you were

00:13:10.280 talking about earlier, we lived out on a ranch when we were there and, and the, the landlord

00:13:14.660 or landowner, he was like, yeah, you know, they just, they come through here. Yeah. I've,

00:13:18.020 I've watched them over generations and, and over time you would catch the same group every

00:13:22.600 season because in New Mexico it was big green, a lot of green chili. So they were all a lot

00:13:26.540 of chili picking and you would see these people. And, uh, it was a cat mouse game. It was

00:13:30.220 fun. And you saw them, you know, a couple of times a year cause you'd remove them and

00:13:33.460 they'd come back and sometimes they get away. And people would probably leave water and food

00:13:37.140 out for them at that point, because there was a, probably I'm sure when things are comfortable,

00:13:41.660 there's a level of like sharing and caring that's able to be, uh, offered. I feel like

00:13:47.280 when you're not operating from a place of fear. Yeah. You're exactly right. Because look, a lot

00:13:51.880 of these folks would come through and they would, they would muck a stall. They, they, uh, men

00:13:56.740 defense for food and a place to sleep and then to continue on their journey. That was just

00:14:00.800 the way of life. And it wasn't, it really wasn't until the late nineties. So I'd been

00:14:05.240 in a couple of years in the early two thousands that we start seeing a change in aggression

00:14:11.760 and more of a demanding mindset from the migrants. So, you know, even our culture in our society,

00:14:18.400 we were getting a little bit more, our, our, our youth was a little bit more, you know, kind

00:14:22.840 of rambunctious. And so we saw that transition even with the migrants. So then they were demanding

00:14:28.640 that you feed them or stealing stuff. We were seeing that change, which, you know,

00:14:33.460 that was, I think just naturally occurring across society. It wasn't specific to the migrant. It

00:14:38.760 was just, we had rebellion in our own streets, you know? Um, that's interesting. Yeah. Cause we,

00:14:43.920 cause we, they wouldn't fight back then. Then all of a sudden they started fighting and resisting.

00:14:47.060 You're like, okay, what's this all about? This never happened. I wonder if it was like,

00:14:50.980 cause of like music influenced that, or I don't know. I'm sure they would probably listen

00:14:54.800 to different music. It's just interesting that that kind of, that's a big change.

00:14:58.380 Yeah. Cause we saw, I started seeing a younger crowd coming in and the younger, uh, I call them

00:15:03.580 kids were a little more resistant than the, the older field farm workers. They, they kind of knew

00:15:08.640 like, all right, if I just give, you know, don't run from the border patrol, uh, they'll feed me and

00:15:13.720 they'll, I'll be back in Mexico in a couple hours and I can start, you know, a couple more days and

00:15:17.680 come and you, you would catch sometimes, uh, I, we can talk stories here later, but, but they started

00:15:22.400 getting more aggressive, people started getting more aggressive. Maybe they were listening to

00:15:26.380 like easy E or something or easy A. It could have been, you know? Yeah. Um, it was, uh, it was

00:15:32.680 interesting, right? We started seeing, uh, a change in a lot more of cartel control on the

00:15:39.120 Southern, on the South, uh, the Mexican side. So that kind of started pushing some of the influence

00:15:43.740 of where they were going to come through. And then, you know, we, we noticed that the price

00:15:47.980 to cross started increasing in the late nineties, early two thousands. And I think that adds

00:15:53.000 to the aggressiveness because they're dealing with, you know, bad actors, right? The cartel

00:15:57.260 is, is, is, you know, you want to cross to here, you're going to have to pay.

00:16:00.160 Right. So now there's a, yeah, there's a different energy coming over. It's not just a guy coming

00:16:03.760 over to pick peaches or to be a part of, um, like kind of share cropping, I guess, type of

00:16:08.880 vibes. Uh, it's somebody who's paid a cartel. Can you expound a little bit more on that?

00:16:14.160 Like the cartels start to, uh, they start to recognize there's a business in letting

00:16:20.520 people cross through the land on the Mexican side. Is that, is that what you're talking

00:16:24.720 about? Yeah. So, so people were, were still coming to look for work, right? Still going

00:16:29.460 to do some of that, you know, field work, but now they had to pay somebody to cross.

00:16:35.000 So now they're like, Hey, I don't want to lose the, the, the thousand bucks I paid to come

00:16:39.800 through this area. Now I'm going to be a run. So I think that kind of increased some

00:16:43.340 of the aggressiveness because look, they, you know, or they may have been threatened.

00:16:47.020 And so now it's like, Hey, that, that, the, I just paid to come through here. Now, now

00:16:53.060 border patrol is about to arrest me. I'm running or I'm fighting because if I have to go back,

00:16:57.340 then I'm not to pay again. We started seeing that dynamic. And I think that may have been

00:17:01.520 aside from just youth in general across the world. Yeah. We're getting a little more, you

00:17:06.560 know, you had more TV, you had more shows, you know, we had still hadn't had the onset of

00:17:10.740 internet and things like that yet. But I think that was the shift. And then, you know, obviously

00:17:15.280 we'd talk about the cartel because that is, that is a big business. Yeah. But just to interject,

00:17:19.380 so that was because the, when you say that people were having to pay to come, they were having to

00:17:23.020 pay a cartel. Yes. Yeah. There was a plaza boss in every area along the border, right? It's run by

00:17:28.860 the, the, the bigger cartels. So, you know, if you want to cross near Palomas, Mexico, which was near

00:17:35.020 my area, um, you're going to have to pay a plaza boss. So if you're going to come through here

00:17:39.560 to, to work your way to, you know, a small farming community in New Mexico, and you had to pay,

00:17:47.240 you don't want to have, you don't want to have to go back because you're going to pay again.

00:17:50.680 Now you got skin in the game. Yeah. Or, or even worse, if you didn't pay and you snuck in around

00:17:56.780 the plaza boss and you get returned back, the plaza boss is going to say, Hey, wait a second. I don't

00:18:03.020 remember you paying me. Yeah. And that could, that could cost them their lives because, you know,

00:18:06.980 the cartel is pretty ruthless, you know? So I think that combined with just change overall in

00:18:12.740 general of society across the world, you know, just kind of bumped it up. And it was in the late

00:18:17.220 nineties and early two thousands. And, you know, on top of all that, we started a little bit more

00:18:21.900 forward deployment and posture of the enforcement side. So it became a little bit more difficult to

00:18:27.460 get across. So there was a, it's a combination of several things and it kind of plays into the,

00:18:31.920 the overall story where we are today. Wow. Yeah.

00:18:35.120 It's really interesting, man. So, um, what is the current immigration policy? Is that a fair

00:18:41.220 question? So it depends on, so again, it's so vast, like, are you coming over here as a tourist?

00:18:45.840 Then you get a visa for six months. So, yeah. Okay. So if you're coming here to, you know,

00:18:49.780 coming to work, you got to get a work, you got to have a passport and a worker visa. I think what we

00:18:53.800 want to talk about is like, Hey, what's happening at the border right now? And why are we in this mess?

00:18:57.980 Right. And I think we can, we can kind of walk through that because, because I think it's important

00:19:01.980 for you and the audience to know, like to come to the United States, you have to have permission.

00:19:07.660 And that's starts with a passport and a visa. Now there are so many types of visas from, you know,

00:19:14.580 from entertainment to family, to work. And it really just depends on what it is you're after.

00:19:20.860 If you're coming here and you have a valid passport and you have a, you want to be a tourist for six

00:19:26.560 months, you get a tourist visa. Um, and you, you get it stamped and you fly in or drive in,

00:19:32.220 you come to the port of entry and you're free to move out the country for six months. If you

00:19:35.680 overstay, then you could be deported, but most tourist visas are for six months. And in that

00:19:40.900 window, you, you come and go. So why do people not want to use the pathways, uh, the legal pathways

00:19:46.700 to immigration? Like it takes too much time. It's it's the line so long. And that's when you hear

00:19:53.020 people say the system is broken. It's because there's so many people in the system and the line

00:19:58.160 to come in the right way is so long. I mean, for example, if, if you're a small business owner

00:20:03.880 and you can't find the workforce you need to maintain your business, it would take you probably

00:20:10.380 two years, about $10,000. You got to deal with about four federal agencies to try to get those

00:20:17.460 employees. Meanwhile, if you're just a startup and you're trying to, to start things up,

00:20:23.020 you could, you could lose business, lose that opportunity. It's so it's cause it's so convoluted

00:20:28.100 and so, uh, uh, so long to wait. I know if you need biz, if you need employees from right out of

00:20:35.140 country anywhere. Oh, from anywhere out of country. Yeah. Anywhere. Okay. Uh, and so it de-incentivizes

00:20:40.640 because I'm, you know, for a small company to say, I got to spend this money and I may have to

00:20:44.420 wait years to even get those employees, but I can hire this guy off the street now. And nobody's

00:20:48.620 asked any questions. That's why we've got to really clean up this mess, right?

00:20:52.220 I see what you're saying. Let's there's, we, there's people that like, they call it the

00:20:55.540 death visa. They've waited for so long, like literally 20 or 30 years to get over here that

00:21:01.640 they'll, it just, they, they've got to really work on that. And I do believe that if we can

00:21:07.680 come up with that wide gate, that clear pathway that will to some extent, reduce the humanity

00:21:14.840 that's coming in illegally, that's causing our security vulnerabilities. Yeah. And when you say

00:21:20.240 like, uh, people to being, uh, being hired and businesses having to wait a long time, most of

00:21:25.420 those businesses, we're just thinking like, uh, labor type of work. Is that what we're saying?

00:21:30.560 Probably. Yeah. In most cases, but you still have, you still have, you know, STEM type, uh,

00:21:34.480 businesses where, um, you know, people have to, you know, there's, there, there was work visas

00:21:39.960 established, I think in the late sixties, about 144,000 of non-immigrant work visas, a certain

00:21:46.440 criteria. And that's not a lot of, a lot of visas for people from, and in every country has

00:21:51.660 a bite at that 144,000, I think is the number. And that's still all we have. Yeah. They haven't

00:21:56.720 changed it. It's 2024. Why are, I mean, and, and that I think is where the frustration lies when

00:22:01.860 you see. Is that true? That's how many work visas can you? Non-immigrant, non-immigrant visas. Uh,

00:22:05.940 there is, uh, uh, it's, I think it's around 140,000, something thousand. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And what

00:22:11.560 does that mean? Non-immigrant visas? They're not coming here to immigrate and stay. They're just here to work.

00:22:15.540 Oh my gosh. That's so few. Yeah. Yeah. When you, when you put that in perspective,

00:22:19.240 how many people are getting caught and released into the country and they're looking at, oh, well,

00:22:23.420 we want to give them work opportunities while they're waiting on their hearing. But yet

00:22:26.040 you've had an, a quota established for over 50 years and you haven't willing to change that.

00:22:31.800 What about the poor people that have been waiting in line to get that work visa? What about the

00:22:35.520 business owner that has been waiting his turn to, to hire people? So these are the people from

00:22:41.180 wanting to do it legally at a certain point. Spot on, spot on. Why, why would

00:22:45.520 they want to change the work visa? Why wouldn't they want to add more? Has it become,

00:22:51.540 man, I think if I could answer that question, you know, we would solve a lot of problems and it's

00:22:55.600 Congress, it's Congress. And, and, and this is one of my, one of when people, we talk about the

00:23:00.600 problem and, and, um, you know, it's, it's, we don't need the bureaucrats and the elected officials

00:23:08.500 in Washington making these decisions. We need them to go to, we, the people go talk to the business

00:23:14.380 owners, talk to the community leaders, talk to the hospital staff, talk to the mayors,

00:23:18.900 the county commissioners say, what is it that you need to attract and attain the best and brightest

00:23:23.940 to come over here? What is it that you need to maintain your lifestyle in your community as an

00:23:28.840 elected official, you know, or, you know, that's where those decisions get rolled up. And then

00:23:34.500 Congress, you know, passes a bill that says, this is what we're going to do. If we're just relying on

00:23:39.400 bureaucrats and elected officials that are in Washington, they're just doing it because of

00:23:43.920 interest, you know, lobbyists, get back to the people who says, you know, because think about

00:23:49.880 if you're, you're, if you're in a community that says, Hey, I'm trying to, you know, build this.

00:23:53.420 I need some, I need fresh employee workforce. I don't have it here locally, but somebody from

00:23:59.020 another representative from another part of the country makes a bill that doesn't impact you

00:24:02.980 or impacts you and negatively that's not representative. So we really, we really need

00:24:08.360 we, the people represented. And I know that's, that's kind of a very naive approach, but it is

00:24:13.080 what is necessary, especially if you want to solve this immigration issue. We, we know we have labor

00:24:19.200 shortages. We know that there are people that want to come over here and provide or, and do good.

00:24:24.080 Let's, let's hear from the experts and that's the, that's the, the, the academic world. That's the

00:24:29.500 business world. That's your, your farm and, and, and ranch world. The people that make this country

00:24:35.220 tick, they're the ones that need to come up with the solutions and Congress needs to support it.

00:24:40.340 That unfortunately it just seems like everything gets done in a, in a circle inside the beltway.

00:24:44.940 Today's episode is brought to you by better help. That's right. Uh, if you've had an issue in your

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00:26:54.220 safety information. And we thank blue chew for sponsoring the podcast. Were things getting worse

00:27:00.640 in Mexico? That was all, was that also a reason? Like, was there something happening in Mexico that

00:27:05.580 we don't know that people were like, okay, we have to get out of here that was causing more people to

00:27:09.900 come? No, no. And in fact, uh, there's been a, there's been an evolution, uh, and change in,

00:27:15.780 and I don't know if evolution is the right word, but a change in demographics over the last

00:27:19.620 decade or more. Again, when I first started, it was mainly single adult Mexican nationals. We started

00:27:24.740 seeing an influx. Yeah. A guy with some sandwiches and water coming to work. I mean, it's what it was,

00:27:30.380 right. Um, then we started seeing, uh, an uptick in central Americans, you know, the Northern

00:27:35.940 triangle, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala. Um, we started seeing that show up in the, you know,

00:27:41.740 they were always coming, but it was what we started seeing uptick in the mid two thousands

00:27:45.580 in the 2000 teens, really 2012, 13, we started seeing a big change of family units and unaccompanied

00:27:55.900 children and mainly central Americans in the last five or six years. It's been a world problem.

00:28:05.760 I was the chief of Yuma from December of 2020 to December 31st, 2022. So just over two years as

00:28:13.800 the chief of that sector, rarely did Mexico or central American countries make my top 10 daily

00:28:22.300 or weekly numbers. It was all over the world. I led. And so that's been the phenomena that's

00:28:28.020 changed over the last few years is, and that's another misnomer that most people think it's a

00:28:35.040 Mexican problem or it's central America. No, it's not. It's, it's a, it's a people from all over the

00:28:41.300 world coming in to this country. Yeah. Here's an article right here. It says Chinese migrants

00:28:45.960 pouring across Southern border spark national security concerns. More than 20,000 Chinese nationals

00:28:51.720 have illegally crossed since the new fiscal year began on October 1st. Yeah. Is that true?

00:28:56.120 Yes. Yes. There was a, uh, uh, today's Wednesday. So I think Tuesday, Monday or Tuesday, there was

00:29:01.960 two, almost 270 in San Diego alone. 270 Chinese people. Yeah. Chinese, where are they coming from?

00:29:07.340 China? Coming from China to Mexico and up the gut to, into the United States. So that, that's,

00:29:11.240 that's since October 20,000. And here's the other thing too. A lot of these Chinese nationals and a lot

00:29:17.620 of the people that we're catching and we're seeing down there are a single adult men, like 18 to 45

00:29:23.420 year old range. I was, I was in, uh, uh, Eagle Pass, Texas, uh, right before Christmas. And I was

00:29:28.380 down in Lukeville, Arizona, right before Christmas, when those places were really popping and there'd be

00:29:33.680 a thousand people on the ground there, 800 be single adult men. Wow. And the other 200 be families and

00:29:38.740 some kids. So is that mean that it's getting back to the traditional like element that you're talking

00:29:42.900 about? Oh, no, it's that's that don't. These are, these are people, a traditional element would

00:29:47.260 have been a single adult Mexican national. These are single adults from Mauritania, from, uh, New

00:29:52.240 Guinea, from West African countries, from China, from, you know, uh, um, just you, you name it.

00:29:58.260 They were coming from all over the world. And, and, and it's also important though, this is,

00:30:02.220 this is how they get here. They, they fly in to Mexico city or Cancun on a tourist visa. And then

00:30:10.840 at least in, when I was in, uh, in Yuma, they would fly from Mexico city to Baja, California

00:30:18.320 on that same tourist visa. And then they would take a shuttle bus to the border, uh, 45 minutes

00:30:23.780 away and then come across. Um, uh, they're still doing that and they're just coming up different,

00:30:28.980 different locations. So they, they fly from all over the world, uh, into Mexico city. There is still

00:30:33.720 a lots of groups that will fly into South America and go up through the Darien gap into Panama and into,

00:30:40.620 um, Central America and work their way, the traditional migrant route. But a lot of them

00:30:45.780 are flying in and they're, they're really crossing the desert for 45 minutes, maybe.

00:30:50.000 Oh, they're not yet. Nobody wants to work anymore. I mean, nobody, yeah. It's like,

00:30:53.920 even when it comes to migration here, but he's just cutting corners or like taking the easy route,

00:30:59.440 I guess. But, um, so that's unbelievable to me that it's so diverse. Yeah. So what are all these

00:31:06.520 guys doing? Like, are they like, are these people whose families have been here and they couldn't

00:31:13.640 get here to them who have been waiting for a visa? Are these people who are, um, need a job and they

00:31:19.820 have a skillset that they, something has happened in their country, like religiously or, uh, like, um,

00:31:28.000 like, uh, with a change in government or something and they don't have, like, or is it bad people?

00:31:32.820 Is it okay? Or is it good? Is it all, who is it? It's, it's, it's, it's really a potpourri of all

00:31:39.080 of this, right? Um, so you hear the term asylum seeker thrown out a lot. Many of these people are

00:31:44.300 not seeking asylum. Okay. And what does that mean asylum seeker? So that has been a narrative change

00:31:49.700 that, uh, uh, a lot of people on the progressive side, open border mindsets is everybody's here

00:31:54.840 trying to seek asylum. They want a better life. Well, we all want a better life, but there, there are

00:31:58.700 certain standards to meet asylum. Asylum means you are, uh, you are pretty much being persecuted for,

00:32:04.200 you know, your, uh, uh, uh, gender, your, uh, religion, your political affiliation, you know,

00:32:11.480 living in a bad neighborhood, not finding a job, getting beat up by a gang is not asylum. It may be

00:32:15.380 a rough life, but they're right. That's Jacksonville. So they'll, they'll just basically say

00:32:20.400 everybody is asylum. That's not true. Okay. They, and, and by the way, there are two types of asylum,

00:32:27.240 I mean, this is, I'm going to get too much into this, but there's an affirmative claim where you

00:32:32.040 are leaving your country because of you're being persecuted for these reasons. And you fill out,

00:32:38.920 like I am seeking asylum. Like I am filling out a, I think it's a five 95 form and I fill it out

00:32:44.780 to the, I need asylum because I'm being threatened for this, that, and the other thing. And, and that's

00:32:50.580 an affirmative, somebody outwardly seeking. Let's, for example, you are, and there's a piece in that

00:32:55.540 asylum, uh, affirmative claim. It says, regardless of your status at entry, in other words, regardless

00:33:01.800 if you're here legally or not, you can affirmative seek asylum. If you meet a criteria that, for example,

00:33:08.100 let's say you're a student on a visa, you're a student from the Ukraine and the semester's out

00:33:14.460 and you, your visa is about to expire, but you, you're, you want to go home for the summer. Um,

00:33:20.480 but there's a war breaking out in your country. I mean, your neighborhood's been destroyed.

00:33:25.360 So you can apply for asylum.

00:33:26.980 And let's say your visa expired, right? Because you're waiting to get your plane ticket and now

00:33:31.800 you've out of status. So you're here illegally, but because of situation, you can affirm the claim

00:33:37.740 for asylum because you have, there's nothing there.

00:33:40.860 So that's a way that is by seems like the way the law should be used.

00:33:45.220 Yes, absolutely.

00:33:45.840 Way to do it.

00:33:46.480 Something's changed. You, you, yes, you are out of status now, but you can't go back to your country.

00:33:51.320 Your government's in shambles. I need to stay here. I need to stay in. That's perfect. That's,

00:33:56.560 that's what the laws are for.

00:33:57.860 Right. Your government's killing women. Your government's killing gays. Your government,

00:34:01.120 there's a war.

00:34:01.880 Right. And I, and I can't go back, you know,

00:34:04.200 but people, but, but people are abusing that.

00:34:06.020 Right. So, well, that one, not so much. The other one where I was going is the defensive claim,

00:34:11.140 and that's under a credible fear claim. So you cross the border illegally. You are arrested by

00:34:18.080 border patrol. Border patrol process you for removal during the process and removal is deportation.

00:34:24.480 So you're going to get your hearing in front of the judge. We ask you if you have credible fear of

00:34:29.560 return to your country. Well, most of them say yes, because then we ask a few other questions and

00:34:37.320 they get to go have a credible fear screening. Now, nine out of 10 people do not meet the criteria

00:34:45.400 for credible fear, but it gives them an extra bite at the apple anytime during the process,

00:34:51.060 because they're just coming to look for work. They're from a bad neighborhood or they had an

00:34:55.020 abusive relationship. That's not asylum, but they can use credible fear and asylum as a defensive

00:35:01.220 claim. And that's what the majority of these people that we're encountering are using that as a,

00:35:06.660 as a credible fear asylum claim. Um, and also on asylum, just in general is you're supposed to

00:35:13.960 seek asylum, asylum in the first asylum country you step foot in. So if you, it would be Mexico,

00:35:20.240 it would be Mexico, which is why the policy of the remain in Mexico, the migrant protection protocol.

00:35:25.960 So many people were coming into the United States after passing through multiple countries that were

00:35:30.400 asylum countries, but they were claiming it. Oh, I want it here. Can you send people back based on that?

00:35:36.660 Or can you reject people based on that? Like, so what we did under the, under the, uh, the Trump

00:35:42.000 administration is we created the migrant protection protocol and said, all right, you're here. You

00:35:46.740 passed New Mexico. You, you want asylum. Um, you should have claimed at Mexico. We would send them

00:35:51.820 back to Mexico to wait for their hearing here. When that happened, the numbers just dropped. People

00:35:56.100 realize we just closed that loophole because they didn't want to wait in Mexico. Cause they,

00:35:59.380 because they, if you were really seeking asylum, if you were being persecuted,

00:36:02.140 you take refuge in the first place you could seek refuge. Okay. And some people are flying

00:36:07.140 through multiple countries. Look, if you, if you were from Pakistan and you were, uh, targeted

00:36:15.340 because your religion and you got on a plane and flew to Germany, asylum country, you flew from

00:36:20.820 Germany, the UK, asylum country, you flew from UK to Mexico. Oh, asylum country. You crossed the border

00:36:26.120 illegally in the United States. Oh no, I want asylum. Okay. You're playing a game here, man. Yeah. It may be

00:36:31.560 the better place of all those countries, but if you're using asylum, right. You should have got

00:36:36.200 off the plane in Germany and said, I need help. I need to seek refuge. And then, and then again,

00:36:40.560 and that's, that's the loopholes that some of the policies that we had in place close and the

00:36:45.660 numbers. And I'm going to tell you the numbers, cause you can see where all this, where all this

00:36:49.920 works. Let me, let me, let me just take this here. And so once people can just say, I'm here to seek

00:36:54.740 asylum, does that limit the border patrol agents? Do you then have to follow a script? Like there's

00:36:59.900 no, like once somebody says a certain thing, like, do you then have to go by a script and there's

00:37:06.080 nothing else you can do? Yeah. So the great question. And so we're processing somebody for

00:37:11.880 what we usually call a notice to appear. And in other words, you're being, you're being processed

00:37:16.240 for an appearance in front of a judge to be removed or make your claim is, and we ask them if you claim

00:37:22.760 fear. If they say no, it's just check a box. No. And you continue to process and you would turn them

00:37:29.520 over to immigration and customs enforcement for detention. If there's spaces to hold them.

00:37:34.660 If they say yes, it is five additional questions for us that we have to answer. And I don't recall

00:37:41.320 the questions anymore. They used to getting it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if they say, yes, I have fear.

00:37:45.720 Yeah. I fear. I want asylum. We asked these five questions and there's a form that we put on there.

00:37:51.740 And so that case goes into a credible hearing process. In other words, they're going to get

00:37:57.900 in front of an asylum officer to go through that. And again, that just gives them an opportunity to

00:38:04.620 stay a little bit longer until that asylum officer decides, yeah, you meet the basic criteria and then

00:38:10.260 you'll get in front of a judge, you know, at a later date. But yeah, absolutely. When somebody claims

00:38:15.480 fear or claims they want asylum, we have a protocol, an extra form that we fill out and we,

00:38:21.380 we take care of that. Yeah. So that's, that's another thing that was always kind of a misnomer.

00:38:25.280 It's like, Oh, border agents are making those decisions. No, we're not. I say it's five extra

00:38:29.340 questions. It's really easy for us. Yeah. It says right here. Unfortunately, a growing number of

00:38:33.660 asylum seekers are well-versed in our laws and more importantly, what they need to say in order to get

00:38:38.460 a foot beyond the first asylum hearing. As a result, many individuals claim credible fear of

00:38:43.500 persecution in the hopes of being released or allowed to remain in the U S this creates several

00:38:47.560 significant problems. Improper claims clog the system and deny legitimate asylum seekers, a swift

00:38:53.280 adjudication, adjudication, thanks of their claims. Uh, to the U S government must devote valuable

00:39:01.000 resources to the care, shelter, and processing of large numbers of people who likely will not be

00:39:05.980 ruled eligible for asylum or similar, similar protections. And a number three, the longer the

00:39:10.900 asylum loophole exists, there will be human traffickers and false asylum seekers who will

00:39:15.880 abuse the system and put their own lives at risk too. Yep. That's, that's, that's, what does that

00:39:20.560 mean? So they're coached that this is the marketing piece of, so the cartel, and I'll use the cartel

00:39:29.540 and smuggling organization interchangeable. I mean, cartel is the hierarchy. They're the ones,

00:39:32.820 the big boss, and each one of them have their commodity neutral, whether it's people or things,

00:39:36.980 they're going to smuggle it and pay for it, whatever. Okay. And they own, they own kind of

00:39:40.400 plaza space along the, what'd you call it? The plaza boss was somebody that owned like the area

00:39:45.120 near the crossings where people are going to cross. And they may not own the land, but they,

00:39:48.640 they're the mafia there. Yeah. That's basically it. Okay. Differences is, you know, it's the cartel

00:39:54.680 really has got huge influence over the, so much, but to, to those bullets. Right. It's a real mafia,

00:40:00.100 not like our mafia. It was like, yeah, a couple of guys. So I used to kind of compare the two,

00:40:03.400 but you know you, the, the, the mafia back in the day here in the United States, you know,

00:40:11.460 you wouldn't need a military to take it out where the cartel is, is well, well armed and well

00:40:18.240 financed to handle things. And, you know, a police officers are not going to go take out the cartel.

00:40:22.460 Right. Right. But those, those three bullets in kind of paraphrasing that is number one,

00:40:28.440 the, the rhetoric that goes on in our political and media sphere in the United States.

00:40:32.640 When you say rhetoric, what do you mean? Oh, they're asylum seekers. We need to do this. We

00:40:36.220 need to, you know, you know, the false choices of either for border security or you're anti-immigrant

00:40:40.680 or you're, you're, you're, you're for immigration. That means you're an open border person. No.

00:40:45.440 So the bad guys are listening to all this, right? So, so they hear this, oh, asylum seeker. Okay.

00:40:52.200 This is going to be our marketing point. I'm going to charge you whatever I charge you.

00:40:55.980 I'll give you the information. I'll tell you how, what the things to answer and say.

00:40:58.860 And then you clog the system up. And since there's no room at the end, in other words,

00:41:03.620 there's no place to detain them. Once we've caught them, they get released. And that's what

00:41:08.780 they want because they're going to, they're, they're in the United States. They are going to

00:41:13.580 find work. Generally that's going to be below board. That other, that third bullet is the one

00:41:20.040 that should concern every one of us. If we're really going to make this a humanitarian issue,

00:41:23.820 which it really is, is the human traffickers because it's so real. So many people do not

00:41:32.700 realize they are in this trafficking vortex until it's too late. There are stories out there and we

00:41:40.100 don't need to even go that way today. But I can just tell you that it is real. It's what I'm pretty

00:41:46.400 much dedicated my life to now, looking for solutions. And we can talk about some of that

00:41:51.300 down the road here, but let me just say this. So many people, well, let's just get this cut to

00:41:58.240 the chase here. So these people are, are, are looking, are being sold a bill of goods that

00:42:03.520 they're going to be able to come over here and live the American dream. All right. It's so controlled

00:42:07.960 by cartels and trafficking organizations that you have, you know it's, they were charging anywhere

00:42:14.860 from 5,000 to $15,000 a person to come across. People don't have that kind of money. So they're

00:42:20.060 going to have to pay that off indentured servitude, whether it's going to be put them in forced labor

00:42:24.620 or prostitution, things like that, uh, narcotics smuggling, all that. So people are paying that

00:42:30.220 they're good. They'll say you'll do it in trade. Yes. Wow. Or they don't know that like, Hey,

00:42:34.640 yeah, give me, give me your 20,000 for the four of us to come across. Well, I'll have 20,000. Okay.

00:42:40.340 Well, give me, give me what you got. And I know where you live and I'll get you, I'll put you to work

00:42:45.360 when you get there and you can pay off your debt. Sounds like a great deal until they realize what

00:42:48.740 they have to do. If what was real, this is real. You'd have families show up at the border in Mexico.

00:42:57.580 They're still in Mexico through the cartel organization, the smuggling organization,

00:43:01.740 trafficking organization say, okay, this husband and this husband are going to swap wives.

00:43:07.920 This kid's going to go with this single adult, and that's going to be a family.

00:43:11.120 You two are now a family. You two are now a family. You're going to cross in California.

00:43:16.660 You're going to cross in Arizona. And then when you get released, you play the script. When you get

00:43:22.160 released, y'all can be reunited. Now. And that made it because if they were families, they faced a

00:43:27.300 different, they would be released. God, we weren't detaining family units. So they combine people.

00:43:31.560 And by the way, it would just be released. Yeah. The process, there's no place to hold family units.

00:43:36.480 So, so if things were full and you were a family and you came across and you guys caught them,

00:43:40.760 we'd process them and we released them and just release them into America, into America to the

00:43:45.100 nonprofits and the nonprofits would facilitate. So here's what happens. So now, so if that was my

00:43:50.780 wife with some other guy being pushed across someplace else, a hundred miles away, I'm going

00:43:55.840 to do whatever it takes to ensure her safety, which means I'm going to play that script. I'm

00:44:01.400 going to pay that debt and pray that I get to reunite with her in the next few days. Right.

00:44:06.260 That's, that's the, the mental trauma. And by the way, my kids are involved in this.

00:44:11.680 So I'm hoping that I at least got my kid with me or she's got a kid, but they'll separate those

00:44:17.240 families on the South side of the border to control and manipulate. So I won't say a word

00:44:22.880 because number one, you know where I'm from, you know where I'm going, you've got my family.

00:44:28.900 So I'm just going to keep my mouth shut and I'm just going to play the game. And I'm going to just

00:44:34.600 try to get through this without being discovered by border patrol, that this isn't really my family.

00:44:39.920 We catch those afraid they're going to be ratted out. Is that what you're saying? Like what,

00:44:43.160 why would they? No, the cartels really aren't worried about being ratted out.

00:44:46.240 Well, I'm just, I'm curious, but they, they, they've tell the migrants, if you rat me out,

00:44:51.960 if you squeal, they're not going to get paid. So we're going to take it out on you. So it's,

00:44:57.680 it is completely mental and emotional human exploitation.

00:45:03.460 So I guess I'm still confused and I don't know why they could have just been, I didn't sleep

00:45:07.060 much, but, um, so they'll mix and match the family and send them over control. You're going

00:45:15.440 to pay, Oh, you're going to pay me the money that I, that you owe me. Or if you want to be reunited

00:45:20.860 with your family and you can't pay, I'm putting her to work over here. Oh, wow. That's, that's the,

00:45:26.800 the mind control game that's happening. And so, so much of this was again, and we were caught up in

00:45:33.920 this as agents too, right? So you'd have, Oh, they're separating families or the families are

00:45:39.360 being separated and released. We didn't know we had, you catch a thousand people in, in, in eight

00:45:46.440 hours. You don't have all the time and the resources to, to dedicate, to ask every question that you

00:45:53.140 should be asking because you kind of pick up on things, right? When, why this, the, the, the, the,

00:45:58.540 the wife is not talking and the guy is giving all the instructions. I mean, when you have time, you

00:46:03.240 can pick up all that stuff, but when you have got so many people coming and you're overwhelmed,

00:46:07.740 we miss those things. And, and that's what I used to get asked, what would keep us, keep me up at

00:46:11.900 night chief. And I'd be like, well, my agents will be in, but then the people that we, we missed

00:46:16.920 because we know that was happening. And when you can't do anything, you can't say, Hey,

00:46:21.960 this seems suspect. If it does. Oh yeah, absolutely. We, and we would, we would bust up these fraud

00:46:26.580 families when we had the resources and the time to do it, when we weren't overwhelmed with, look,

00:46:32.260 Theo, the numbers, let me, let me tell you this, let's put this kind of in perspective, why this

00:46:35.680 becomes a challenge. In, I think it was 2019, we had a, just over 900,000 arrests in the Southwest

00:46:43.840 border. In 2020, that number dropped to 400, just over 400,000, because we put, we had wall

00:46:50.960 being built. We had technology being deployed. We had strong policies in place that were closing

00:46:55.480 loopholes. I mean, we reduced the number of illegal entries over half. Well, we had a change of

00:47:00.840 administrations and all that got basically put aside. We went from just over 400,000 arrests in

00:47:08.160 2020 to 1.66 million in 2021. Arrests. Arrests. 2.2 million in 2022. In 23, I think the number was

00:47:22.020 around 2.4. So, and we didn't increase border patrol agents. No way. So when you look at the

00:47:28.460 number of people, the number of people, it just becomes a math problem. I was, when I was chief

00:47:36.080 in Yuma, the, in 2020, the year that, that I got there. So federal fiscal year ended in September

00:47:45.000 30th, we had just over 8,800 arrests that year. I was like, this is going to be great. That's,

00:47:49.980 those are fun arrests for border patrol agents, right? Yeah. I was just, you know, I just, and not

00:47:54.040 to interrupt you, I guess I am, but I just saw this the other day and this was in the New York

00:47:59.920 Times, an immigration shift. And it had a graph in here. Can you go down?

00:48:09.640 Annual Southwestern border apprehensions. And it showed, yeah, in 2020, you were at less than half

00:48:17.820 a million. That's the 400,000 I was talking about. And then in 2022, up to 2.21 million.

00:48:26.660 And that's almost five times. That's almost five and a half times.

00:48:31.000 And that's only border patrol arrests because what they're doing now is they're playing numbers.

00:48:36.660 The, those that are illegally arriving at the ports are not included in that. So there's,

00:48:40.500 there's still another 500,000 that were released by the ports. But so let's, let's put that in

00:48:46.040 perspective. There's only 18,000 border patrol agents in the entire United States. Southern border

00:48:52.300 is about 16,000 than the rest of the Northern and the coastal. So you do that math and you look at

00:48:58.820 shift work, you look at days off. I mean, it's, you're really outnumbered 201 every day in certain

00:49:04.180 areas. So think about this in 2020, we had just over 8,800 arrests in Yuma with a little over 900

00:49:12.080 border patrol agents to include myself, right?

00:49:13.940 8,800 arrests.

00:49:15.120 Yep. And it went up to 114,000 in 2021. So we went from 8,800 to 114,000 arrests. And in 2022,

00:49:26.820 it went up to 310,000 arrests. And I still had the 950 more or less border patrol agents. So we didn't,

00:49:33.940 I mean, I was literally out there as chief, you know, I wasn't processing, but I would be out there

00:49:38.880 with the men and women. And I go out to the border and literally see 500 people at a time

00:49:43.380 walking through a hole in the wall, you know? And so-

00:49:47.220 And what can you do? Can sometimes you just have, or sometimes as a border patrol agent,

00:49:51.400 are you so outmanned and-

00:49:54.100 Yes.

00:49:54.480 And overwhelmed that all you can do is watch them go by?

00:49:57.900 Yeah. Well, so a lot of these people were given up.

00:49:59.940 Is that true?

00:50:00.360 Yeah. So a lot of these people, here's the thing, the cartel is controlling where they're

00:50:04.980 coming through, right? So they knew, they knew they were delivering 200 to 500 people

00:50:09.480 at a time.

00:50:09.820 And are they strategic about it?

00:50:10.720 Yes, absolutely.

00:50:11.960 Andy Reid over there.

00:50:12.500 Yes, yes, yeah, absolutely. Putting them right there. These people weren't running from us.

00:50:16.100 They were giving themselves up because they were wanting to come to the United States.

00:50:21.000 Here's the kicker. And that's fine. They weren't running. There was always going to be something

00:50:25.100 going on in that group. There's usually a sick person or there's maybe a woman in labor or,

00:50:29.900 you know, the agents had to respond. But while we're diverting our resources to handle that

00:50:35.360 group of 100, 200 to 500, what do you think's happening 10 miles the other way? The people we

00:50:40.740 really should be going after are jumping over the fence and taking off and running into the

00:50:45.500 neighborhoods and getting smuggled out. I mean, that's the kind of things that are happening

00:50:49.600 right now. And here's the other thing.

00:50:51.620 Like, let's send a hundred right here. And then in the meantime, let's send a thousand over there

00:50:55.680 when there's some response.

00:50:56.720 Yes. So we're going to put all our resources into that one.

00:50:59.340 The cartel was controlling our border operations that way. In other words,

00:51:04.100 Controlling, oh, they were manipulating the situation.

00:51:06.560 Yep. I'm going to send a couple hundred people here. That's going to get a response by border

00:51:11.060 patrol. Meanwhile, the 10 criminals that are, you know, either prior deports, potential terrorists,

00:51:17.000 drug runners, we're going to send them a mile the other direction because all the resources went

00:51:21.540 there. And that's how, you know, this is happening. Look, the gotaways, those are the gotaways that,

00:51:26.160 you know, people talk so much about. There's been a half a million gotaways every year.

00:51:29.340 The last few years. And we have no idea who they are.

00:51:32.240 And they're just in the country.

00:51:33.220 They're in the country.

00:51:34.020 See, that's the part, like, I am all for legal immigration.

00:51:39.780 Yep.

00:51:39.980 I'm all for, like, I don't think it's fair that I get to be born in a place that is like,

00:51:46.140 or that somebody has to be born in a place where they have to suffer or struggle or that they,

00:51:51.080 like, I feel like people should be able to go. But I do feel like we can have an organized plan

00:51:59.080 because if we don't, if you don't have an inventory, if you don't know what's on your

00:52:03.220 shelves, you can't, like, accurately offer aid. You can't accurately have teachers in a community.

00:52:11.320 You can't, you can't guarantee anybody's safety. It's like, to not have a fair inventory is,

00:52:18.480 you can't do anything. If I don't know if there's 20 cats in my house and I walk in and I have food

00:52:25.480 for one cat.

00:52:27.340 It goes back to your plan, right? And that's, that's all we're saying is come through the front

00:52:31.560 door so we can have the inventory so we can. And that goes back to what I was talking about going

00:52:37.780 to the community. You brought up teaching. My wife's a lifelong educator, right? So this,

00:52:41.720 this hits home. Let's think about some small town in the middle of America, right? Well,

00:52:47.800 let's, let's talk Covington, Louisiana. Yeah. All right. What if all of a sudden

00:52:53.220 a hundred Brazilian families who speak Portuguese showed up in Covington because in, is the Covington

00:53:00.040 school district, is St. Tammany Parish going to be able to have Portuguese speakers there because

00:53:05.180 we have an obligation to educate those children. Maybe there's one or two that could do it.

00:53:10.060 Maybe Linda Green, if she was the teacher, she was good.

00:53:12.400 Yeah. But, but think about all people.

00:53:14.020 Yeah. There was definitely some great ones.

00:53:15.420 People from all over the world speaking all these different languages, but that, those are

00:53:19.860 the type of things that we have to think about.

00:53:21.340 Right. You taxed the system. Now you have a, and now the students and the teachers in the

00:53:25.820 town probably feel bad that they can't help.

00:53:27.820 Right.

00:53:28.140 So their morale is low.

00:53:29.700 They don't know what to do. Now they're like, you know, teachers are up at night, like trying to learn

00:53:34.920 Portuguese online. Just, and it's a nightmare. And they've, and the Portuguese people are sitting

00:53:40.520 there like we, they probably feel bad. They don't know what to do.

00:53:43.580 It becomes a deprecating cycle that doesn't get better. If we just don't, we just want people

00:53:47.480 to come through the front door.

00:53:48.560 Yeah.

00:53:49.360 So we know who they are. They're invited guests. Right. And we should be, and that goes back to

00:53:52.820 the wide gates. We want to invite guests. I mean, I think charity starts at home. We need to clean up

00:53:58.420 our own backyard. We've got homeless children, veterans and all that stuff.

00:54:00.940 But we can certainly invite guests in if we can control it and know who they are, what

00:54:08.580 they're, you know, what the strengths and weaknesses are, where they're going. So we

00:54:12.400 can apply resources that way, because not only is it the educators, but the EMS and the first

00:54:17.840 responders, something happens and they don't speak these languages. It becomes a challenge

00:54:22.180 for everybody. So again, there, there is a, it can be fixed. It's complicated because it's

00:54:28.240 people, right? And if it was, if it was easy, we'd have fixed it years ago. It's, it becomes

00:54:33.300 vitriolic and political and it's complex because it's people. So that's why it's, it's a perpetual

00:54:40.340 cycle that keeps getting, the can keeps getting kicked, but we've got to figure out some way

00:54:45.240 to stop the leak on the security side. So we don't have mass people coming in illegally

00:54:50.020 and then figure out the human side of it to bring people into the front door and invite

00:54:57.560 those guests. So we can, so they can be proactive. They don't want to, I don't think

00:55:01.340 they just, not all, I mean, I don't want to broad brush anybody, but I think the majority

00:55:05.020 of them are trying, want to do good. I mean, there's still a, there's going to be a good

00:55:09.520 minority chunk of these people that are probably just not doing good. We've seen that in New

00:55:13.760 York city, right? Recently, the, the, the, the migrants that beat up the cops. I mean,

00:55:18.180 those, yeah, I mean that we got to get that dangerous. Goldilocks is up there just running

00:55:22.160 around in the house, eating the honey, able to just shoot the bears if they come in like

00:55:28.080 that, you know, and they don't, it's not even there, huh? Like there's, well, one thing

00:55:32.980 it does is, um, yeah, that's, yeah, this was the case, right? Yep. Brawl between migrants

00:55:39.220 and police in New York's Times Square touches off backlash. A video showing a group of migrants

00:55:44.400 brawling with police in Times Square has touched off a political furor and renewed

00:55:47.920 debate over a longstanding New York city policy that limits cooperation between local police

00:55:52.740 and federal immigration authorities. So those are sanctuary city laws where, um, you do not,

00:55:58.560 the certain cities will not cooperate with immigration and customs enforcement. In other

00:56:02.800 words, they, if they, if this person tells them they're a non U S citizen, uh, those cities,

00:56:09.620 uh, uh, pass policy that there are no obligation to report their immigration status to, uh, federal

00:56:15.920 officials. But can they detain them or no, they won't not because of not for immigration status.

00:56:20.860 I mean, that's the federal responsibility, but there used to be, we have what we call a detainer

00:56:25.180 program and what would typically happen and what still happens in non sanctuary cities. If they

00:56:30.880 encounter somebody and they ask them, what's your citizenship? And they say, well, I'm from,

00:56:35.380 you know, um, wherever name a country of Mexico or central America, Venezuela. Um, do you have any

00:56:42.240 documents to allow you to be here? No, that would be a call to federal immigration authorities. Hey,

00:56:47.960 I've got, I've got John Doe over here. Who's a illegal alien from Venezuela and they would put a

00:56:53.460 detainer on them. So ice would come pick him up after the state crime. Yeah. If they, if they weren't

00:56:58.520 charged him, but he was here illegally, it's a federal immigration. Those are the sanctuary city laws that

00:57:05.040 have been really pushed and shoved down, you know, uh, uh, uh, the past eight years and stuff. And what are

00:57:11.980 the benefits of the sanctuary city laws? Here's what it comes down to. There is this idea. What are the

00:57:17.180 benefits? The idea, sorry. The idea behind it is, well, they'll call if, if the migrants are, uh, have,

00:57:24.260 are witnesses of crimes or have been a victim of crime, they won't report it to the police or cooperate

00:57:32.580 if they feel that they could be deported. I see. So what they've said is you, you're not going to be

00:57:38.800 turned over to immigration if you report a crime. And because, so they're not cooperating with federal

00:57:44.720 immigration. I, I think that can probably be debunked because there are, there are visas we can

00:57:50.560 give people. If you are a victim, if you are going to be a witness on behalf of the state,

00:57:56.000 it took what was, they just politicized the whole thing, you know? Um, well, it's also seemed like

00:58:04.380 it's being used as a loophole in a way. It's like another way of like where somebody is like, um,

00:58:09.960 it's set up for a good reason, but it's taken advantage of. So many of our laws and policies

00:58:16.080 are that way, right? Well, it's just, it's like at a certain point, if you get so taken advantage of,

00:58:21.100 you have to start to adjust, um, the advantages you offer. Yeah. I just, it, it, it goes for

00:58:28.700 humans because at a certain point you're just, um, you've stressed yourself to, you've stressed

00:58:35.760 your population and your people where they don't feel safe anymore. Um, yeah, it's, and to, to have

00:58:42.580 people where they used to, they buy a piece of land or they buy a home, right. And they're raising a

00:58:46.800 family and they can't even go to bed at night without thinking if, if there's thousands of

00:58:53.600 people passing through their area and some of them are desperate. Um, and there's no rep, like

00:59:00.540 there's no, they're not going to face any, you don't even know if you can face any criminal charge.

00:59:05.640 You don't even know who they are. Right. Yeah. It's like, um, it's just very scary. It's not fair

00:59:09.700 that, uh, people should have to, um, live in fear. I think we have way too much ability,

00:59:16.380 you know, um, it just breaks my, I mean, it's just, you know, we send all this foreign aid. It's

00:59:22.400 just, it's time to take care of this country for a while. And it feels like it's just been sold out

00:59:28.260 to the highest bidder that, um, that the American dream was just auctioned off years ago. And it almost

00:59:35.240 feels like we're pretending sometimes the rest of us that still believe in it.

00:59:38.560 I call it the, uh, and I don't mean to sound dour and hopeless. I'm not there's, there is a true

00:59:44.580 erosion of empathy that's happening because of all the situations around the world and right here at

00:59:48.680 our border. When you are, when you are a multi-generational rancher who is, you know,

00:59:53.860 putting food on the table, but now you have to, uh, be armed to take your kids to the bus stop because

00:59:58.800 groups are coming in that are, that are evading arrest in certain parts and are, uh, are stealing your

01:00:04.340 cars, are breaking into your homes, uh, where a generation ago they were, Hey, can we get some

01:00:10.020 food and I'll clean you up your stall? I'm just trying to go look for some work. It's changed so

01:00:14.040 much. So Americans shouldn't have to live in fear. At the same time, the migrants shouldn't be living

01:00:18.780 in fear because they're being exploited just to try to get an opportunity. And that's, that's where,

01:00:23.420 you know, it gets, it kind of boils my blood when I hear all the humanitarian crisis at the border,

01:00:29.760 but they're not, they're not fixing it. They're just talking about it and kicking it for the next

01:00:34.040 election cycle. It seems like they always do that. And that's where it gets frustrating. It's like,

01:00:37.040 we need, we need to take care of the people. And by the way, the humanitarian issue is not just the

01:00:42.820 migrants. It's our agents. It's our border communities. It's the people that are suffering

01:00:47.100 in these sanctuary cities. I want to, I don't want to leave that topic just yet because, you know,

01:00:51.740 um, you hear the mayors of New York and Chicago and Denver, they're now they're crying about all this,

01:00:57.740 but they were with their bullhorn a few years ago saying, we welcome everybody. And now all of a

01:01:02.540 sudden they realize, Hey, this is kind of a mess. I will say this to defend a mayor Adams to some

01:01:07.440 extent from New York. He sent his team down to the border. Uh, we met with him back in 2022 and

01:01:13.180 showed them, this is what's happening. This is what's going on. A lot of, there was a lot of jaws

01:01:16.780 dropping, like, Oh my gosh, didn't realize this. So they kind of knew, but how can you not, how can

01:01:21.520 you not know what's going on? I know that's what, how do you have no, like, I don't even know what's

01:01:27.140 going on. And I know what's going on. Daylight savings time is starting up again for most states.

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01:03:40.760 Yeah. Like, how do you not know what's going on? Bring back that article up of what happened in New

01:03:44.600 York. I just want to go through that a little bit more. Oh, I just, I want to tap into this, um,

01:03:49.840 New York issue again, real quick. The surveillance footage recorded on January 27th, outside of

01:03:54.320 Manhattan homeless shelters shows several men kicking officers on a sidewalk and trying to pry them

01:03:59.560 off a man. Police had taken to the ground. Police have arrested seven people in connection with the

01:04:04.760 attack. Though prosecutors dropped charges against one person, they say may not have been involved.

01:04:10.300 I think if you don't prosecute or eliminate or get, well, it's tough because these people are

01:04:18.860 obviously in a state of desperation. They've been kind of released into a place where there's no clear

01:04:23.540 path for them either, probably. So they don't know what to do. And then you've put, but the,

01:04:29.440 the fact that they're putting the officers at risk, any of that, you got to go.

01:04:33.420 Did you see the video of them when they were released that day after the assault,

01:04:36.960 they're walking and flipping the camera. Oh yeah. They're flipping everybody off. They don't care.

01:04:39.440 So think about it. They all think they're, uh,

01:04:41.520 So that right there, broad brushes all these migrants, not all of them are that way.

01:04:47.640 Agreed. I mean, again, fortunately.

01:04:50.840 The second you kick a fucking cop though, dude, I think it's a bad look to the people of this

01:04:56.240 country who are still trying to obey the laws that, um, and uphold them. Yep. That, uh, that you

01:05:03.380 don't make a point you're gone. Well, that's the lack of consequences, right? These people now,

01:05:09.840 I don't know all their, their story, but I know they were, they were processed and released and

01:05:14.340 went to New York. Um, these people, um, have been, yeah, get the fuck. I don't give a fuck who

01:05:21.300 these people are. Get them the fuck out. To be honest with you. This, this is the, this is what

01:05:25.100 we're talking about, right? This there. Yeah. This is him. This is the guy right there. Dude,

01:05:29.220 let that motherfucker loose around song. Strickland will beat the shit out of that. This is what a

01:05:33.880 heartbeat. This is what pisses off the border patrol agents because we've had to process and release

01:05:37.780 these type of people. And this is what they end up doing, right? This is, this is not beat the

01:05:43.440 horse shot out of that motherfucker right there. To be honest with you. I just don't like it,

01:05:46.940 man. That shit is sick right there. It's just a sick way to behave, man. And I don't mean that

01:05:50.920 against anybody. Like I have countless Mexican friends and all kinds of shit. I don't need to

01:05:55.400 justify myself, but it just, there's a total lack of respect. And when we don't show any respect for

01:06:01.380 ourselves, it is after a while, um, people just, there's a lack of respect that's going to keep

01:06:07.840 coming, man. It's like, you're attracting it in a way. Well, you know, the profession,

01:06:11.480 the law enforcement profession has taken a hit over the last few years, right, wrong or otherwise

01:06:15.540 from different incidents that have taken place. But right there, when you see that and you look at it and

01:06:20.460 go, this is why some of the cops end up acting the way they do or they just don't end up responding

01:06:27.680 because it's like, why do I want to go get in this mess right here? I mean, it literally took

01:06:32.040 cops being assaulted, these people being released, flipping off the, the cameras for it to gain

01:06:38.480 enough attention to where people said, okay, this is enough. Yeah. You know, it shouldn't get to that.

01:06:43.320 Well, it's because the media, finally, these people are in New York causing some trouble.

01:06:46.380 Well, yeah, that's what I say. A lot of, if you're going to go to a, go into a, the high,

01:06:53.220 the richest neighborhood, that was, that's the guy you got to go. You're down here battling in

01:06:58.020 the fricking trenches. That's the dude. Then you want to, then, then some things would be adjusted.

01:07:02.680 That's the old, not my backyard mindset. Like, Hey, it's fine until you bring it in my backyard.

01:07:07.020 Right. And now I think it's, well, I think now it's ending up in, in New York city,

01:07:11.220 it's ending up in backyards where people are noticing it, but also the media is extremely,

01:07:17.460 it's all one group and they, uh, they don't want to show the truth. They want to live in this

01:07:23.800 fictional world that, um, that doesn't, uh, create reality. I don't think a lot of times

01:07:28.900 or reflect reality. Yeah. So this, this, the, the, the busting of the migrants, right? So I hate the

01:07:34.400 fact that we had to get to that. Yeah. That's a big thing. So you see this a lot, right? Uh, so people,

01:07:39.720 um, but I don't blame them. I mean, I don't blame these governors, right? I, again, I hate the fact

01:07:45.080 that we're there. They, we had to do that. That's because of failed policies coming out of Washington

01:07:49.840 and these States have said enough's enough. Right. So let's back up real quick. Okay. Let's get to

01:07:55.820 that. Yeah. Um, I want to, we spoke to a border patrol agent a few years ago, uh, Roy Villarreal,

01:08:02.160 chief. I know Roy. Yes. Yeah. Amazing guy. And really, I mean, just awesome guy. And, um,

01:08:09.380 he was saying that one of the issues was then that their legislative part was the issue because

01:08:17.320 they were doing the paperwork on guys, but they weren't none. No one was really being prosecuted.

01:08:22.280 People were being re-released. And so then it was just, you were constantly arresting some of the

01:08:26.620 same people. Like, what is the problem that you're saying now that like, what are the problems that

01:08:32.860 are holding up the border patrol from doing their job effectively? So it's a combination of things,

01:08:39.340 right? So number one, and I think this is, this is a great, great question. And it's really important.

01:08:44.420 And, and, and let's talk about the requirements that agents need to do their job. Right. Okay. So

01:08:50.480 every administration, and I remember I mentioned earlier, I started under Clinton,

01:08:54.040 every administration had leaned forward on border security. Clinton brought people on board,

01:09:00.280 hired more people. Um, we had the tragic of nine 11 and that addressed, uh, illegal immigration and

01:09:06.040 border security. So president Bush started building infrastructure and access roads. Obama built a lot

01:09:12.060 of wall, 15 foot wall. Trump comes in and says, Hey, we, we are Canada. Trump was build the wall,

01:09:20.760 right? President Trump's, Hey, we're going to build the wall, but Canada Trump candidate when he was

01:09:26.680 candidate. Oh, when he was running for president, he was build the wall. That was a campaign slogan.

01:09:31.360 When he became president, he's like, we're going to do this. Building the wall was so much more

01:09:36.760 than the actual wall. It was years, multiple administrations of requirements that agents have

01:09:43.240 said, we need that wall. That president Trump built was not only was it a 30 foot steel wall where it

01:09:49.660 made sense. It was cameras, right? It was lights. It was sensors. It was access roads. There are so

01:09:57.520 many places on the border that mother nature will through a monsoon storm season will wash away and

01:10:03.540 you can't even drive to the border. So we needed all weather roads. That was the wall system.

01:10:10.760 Right. There was so much more. There were places where agents could stop. There were places where they

01:10:15.080 could sleep, get rest. There was, it was so much to that, right? Right. The wall, it was the talking

01:10:20.780 point. The system was what was important to us. We didn't need a wall from the Gulf of Mexico to

01:10:27.820 the Pacific ocean. Right. Where we needed it was in the urban. So the border patrol has decided

01:10:33.640 through our requirements and our experience that there are three operating environments, urban,

01:10:38.940 where the vanishing point is seconds to minutes. Like literally if they cross, they can disappear.

01:10:43.260 El Paso is a great example. They can, a hundred yards, they're in a neighborhood, they're in a

01:10:47.680 high school, they're in downtown. You get into rural areas, it's, it's hours to, it's minutes to

01:10:53.120 hours they can disappear. And then you get in the remote areas, it's literally days to weeks they can

01:10:57.900 disappear because the, it's, you know, a hundred mile trek through the desert. So where it made sense,

01:11:03.600 we built the wall based on agents required, not just all the chief's requirement. It was,

01:11:08.860 what do you need agents to do your job? Sir, we need more wall here, a double wall here.

01:11:13.020 We need cameras. So we built that package and that, that package was being deployed and was being

01:11:20.280 effective. As I mentioned, the numbers, you've combined that with consequences through policy,

01:11:25.620 detaining people, prosecuting people that took those numbers from 900,000 to 400,000.

01:11:31.000 But by a stroke of several pins under this administration, the wall was stopped.

01:11:37.100 The migrant protection protocol was turned off. This administration halted all deportations for

01:11:44.740 no less than 100 days, which means nobody was being removed. Is that true what you're saying?

01:11:48.780 Yes. That's all, look it all up. It's all executive orders.

01:11:52.200 Biden's election, the foreign born population has grown spectacularly in millions.

01:11:56.580 Yeah. I see. Yeah. There are places on the border right now, Theo, where you can drive and see 30

01:12:05.360 foot wall and then a quarter mile gap with stacks of steel right there that was just left there.

01:12:09.940 Some of it's being sold off for salvage now. Our agents had to drive by spools of fiber optic cable

01:12:15.180 with a trench, but we couldn't deploy it because when they signed up, when they ended that wall,

01:12:19.520 it was the system, the whole package. There's right there.

01:12:23.100 How much did that hurt morale down there? So that was the big kicker. We actually had a-

01:12:28.580 Because these are human, these are our agents. It's like, why don't you care about the people

01:12:33.100 who are doing a real job? It's so sick in this country how they don't care about people who

01:12:38.900 are really fucking doing a real job, man. So without border security, every town becomes

01:12:44.800 a border town. Every state becomes a border state because we can't, it doesn't stop at the border.

01:12:49.380 They're not all hanging out in Yuma. They're not all hanging out in Tucson or all that.

01:12:52.560 They're coming to Nashville. They're coming around and people are seeing that.

01:12:56.780 You talked about the morale. We went from an administration, the Trump administration,

01:13:03.360 who championed border troidans, who had them at the state of a union, had them at his inauguration

01:13:07.760 parade.

01:13:08.520 Now, Obama had done a lot, you said, too.

01:13:10.380 Obama had, so let's talk about Obama on that one because if you remember going into his second term,

01:13:17.620 he wanted comprehensive immigration reform. The DACA, which is the Deferred Action Against

01:13:22.160 Childhood Arrivals, which I don't think anybody disagrees with. If you're an adult and you bring

01:13:26.040 your one-year-old kid over and that kid has stayed here all his life or her life and they're

01:13:31.040 graduated high school, you're going to deport them because they're not, you know, that's what DACA

01:13:35.280 was for, right?

01:13:35.900 Right. That makes sense.

01:13:36.720 That makes sense. No one's going to boot that kid. All this kid knows is American life, right?

01:13:40.840 Right. A hundred percent.

01:13:41.660 As long as he's not a criminal and doing bad things and trying to contribute, let them

01:13:45.700 stay.

01:13:46.560 But there was the issue also, but there was also, there was another thing that he did

01:13:49.920 where it was like-

01:13:51.220 He did DAPA, which was on the parents, like you could bring your, now you can bring your

01:13:55.800 parents in. So what happened was he wanted comprehensive immigration reform. The Republicans

01:14:02.660 said, well, we border security first. So he said, okay, I'll give you border security if

01:14:06.000 you give me immigration reform. So they went to, he went to bat and started removing

01:14:11.660 people. I mean, he had a lot of deportations under Obama. He built a lot of wall. And then

01:14:17.200 in typical political fashion, they argued over the definition of border control, operational

01:14:23.160 control of the border. And so the left and the right started the political football back

01:14:28.280 and forth. What does control mean? What's an effective level of control? Obama said, okay,

01:14:32.300 enough's enough. I'm just going to start doing, you know, I'm going to start writing this as

01:14:36.960 executive fiat and do executive orders. And I'm going to start allowing people to stay

01:14:40.260 here. I'm going to do that. And that's what he did. And that's when it kind of went, look,

01:14:44.680 the Republicans at that point missed an opportunity. And-

01:14:48.580 Why? Because they could have-

01:14:49.840 They could have had, they could have had more border security and championed some kind of

01:14:55.100 immigration reform because we hadn't had any changes in immigration law for, you know,

01:14:58.760 20 years before that. So there was an opportunity. And to Obama's credit, at least on the front

01:15:04.180 end, now I don't know all, I'm not going to get into all the behind the scenes stuff,

01:15:07.280 but at least on the front end, he gave it the old college try. You got, I'll give you security,

01:15:11.960 but you got to give me something in return. And when we've, when we argued on the definitions-

01:15:17.440 Semantics of it?

01:15:18.100 Yep. He said, fine, I'm going to do my own thing. And we're going to start letting, if you were,

01:15:21.460 you know, he started doing his own executive actions and, and that, that was a pull factor.

01:15:26.460 So we started seeing this huge increase of people in the, in 2012, 13 and 14 under the second term of

01:15:32.480 Obama.

01:15:32.800 Why? Because you mean they're, they're seeing these reactions in the news and stuff like that.

01:15:36.580 And they're knowing, okay, now's the time.

01:15:38.640 Now's the time to come. He's not going to remove you. You're going to be, he's going to reunite

01:15:42.240 families. He's going to do all this stuff. So people just started, that's when it all started

01:15:46.960 changing was in about 2012. Remember earlier I was telling you a single adults, mainly Mexican

01:15:53.400 nationals, a few Central Americans in 12, 13 and 14, we started seeing this huge increase. And I'll tell

01:15:59.540 you a very funny story. It's not funny, but it's, it's a true story. I'm sitting here in Washington,

01:16:04.520 DC. It is, I believe it is Mother's Day weekend, the Friday before Mother's Day, 2014. We had so

01:16:13.360 many people in McAllen, Texas border patrol station that it was making the headlines. And we were on

01:16:19.560 the phone. It was a lot of children and families. And they were just, there was literally hundreds of

01:16:24.160 them in a sally port where you bring them into the station and border patrol stations are short-term

01:16:29.260 holding for single adults. They're not designed for detention, long-term detention. So you had

01:16:33.960 bodies stacked everywhere, sleeping in these, these, you know, mylar blankets and stuff. It was an ugly

01:16:40.400 scene, but it was, it was the reality. It was out of control in South Texas. We were on the phone

01:16:46.400 with people from Department of Homeland Security. I'm in border patrol headquarters in Washington

01:16:49.780 and we're telling them, Hey, this is, this is getting out of control. And they said, well,

01:16:55.300 let's think about what we want to do. Let's have a good weekend. And we'll, we'll reconvene on Monday.

01:17:00.920 And one of the guys that worked for me, he's just like, like chief, let me say this. I said, tell him.

01:17:05.100 He says, if you wait till Monday, you'll have a full blown, full blown crisis on your hands.

01:17:10.120 Now that was Friday, Sunday, then secretary Jay Johnson rerouted his plane and went down to

01:17:18.300 McAllen, Texas with his wife. It was mother's day, saw what was going on. On Monday, he made a

01:17:24.500 secretarial proclamation. This is a, you got all hands on deck. And then by the end of the week,

01:17:29.440 the president got involved and said, we're going to do everything we can. I mean, that's how quickly,

01:17:34.040 and we were catching less than 3000 a day. That's, that was 2013 and 14, 3000 day was a full blown

01:17:44.100 crisis. And now we're at five times that. Well, so for most of last year, we hovered over 10,000

01:17:51.380 arrests a day. Right now we're sitting around 6,700 arrests a day. So now, so now we're at twice

01:17:55.900 that. Twice that it was a full blown crisis under Jay Johnson and vice president Biden. And fast

01:18:03.940 forward, we've doubled that yet. We won't acknowledge the crisis from the white house.

01:18:08.080 Now, wait a second, what happened? And then in between you had president Trump who tried to fix

01:18:12.900 it and was making huge progress only be only to be kind of, you know, the, the, yeah. I mean,

01:18:19.520 the media hated him. Oh yeah. Well, that was, even though now some of the, the democratic policies

01:18:24.200 are turning into the Republican policies. They're like coming over because at a certain point,

01:18:30.320 I, there's no argument against organization. There's no argument against like investing in

01:18:38.940 our infrastructure and wanting to have this machine run. Well, it's like, you know, you've

01:18:46.540 asked, you asked about morale and that's kind of where we were going. So let's think about that.

01:18:50.460 One of the biggest morale killers for us was in September of 2021 in Del Rio, Texas, the horse

01:18:58.900 patrol incident that people would talk about. And you could probably bring that up. Yeah. We had

01:19:03.020 over 16,000 people showed up in Del Rio, Texas in a matter of like three or four days. Now,

01:19:09.940 now I'm over in Yuma dealing with a large number of people, but just not that many in three days.

01:19:15.200 All the resources were shifted down there and our horse patrol, which is our traditional,

01:19:21.320 we've started that. We're going to be a hundred years old in May. Every agent had a horse back then.

01:19:26.020 And I've ridden horses. Horses are great tools on the border. They were, they were keeping the chaos

01:19:33.620 organized. People were going back and forth to Mexico. They were setting up vendors were setting

01:19:39.680 up on Mexico, selling them tacos and food. Food trucks. Yeah. Food trucks. Right. As we were

01:19:44.020 trying to organize all this chaos. So this one particular subject grabbed food from this family

01:19:54.260 and was running across the river, the horse patrol. And like you can see in that picture comes down

01:20:00.120 there to try to, you know, round him up. Right. The image that was taken, the actual still photo

01:20:07.760 was, you know, was iconic. The, the horse in the river, the cowboy hat, the split reins,

01:20:15.720 the migrant run. And it was a beautiful image. It was captured by the secretary, the vice president,

01:20:22.200 and the president as they were whipped those migrants. And the president of the United States

01:20:28.020 said, I promise you, they will pay for strapping those people. And he made that motion.

01:20:36.060 Number one, the person that took the picture said, there's no whips. Nobody was being whipped. This was,

01:20:40.700 there's the image, right? That's a split rein. That's the guy controlling the horse,

01:20:45.120 trying to grab this guy who just stolen stuff from people. And he's running away from the agents.

01:20:49.600 Right. That's an agent of cost and somebody who's stealing. Yeah. So, and maybe for desperate

01:20:53.880 reasons, but stealing. Well, yeah, but it was, yeah. So you're stealing lunch from a family.

01:20:57.560 So that's, that's, if you've ever ridden horses and use split reins, that's how you control the horse.

01:21:01.920 Right. So we knew all that. And, and this was something to hear the president say they will pay.

01:21:10.180 Wow. I mean, I, I was a thousand agents. Yeah. The agents are going to, they're going to be in

01:21:14.800 trouble for this. The cameraman said there, nobody got whipped. This was, they didn't, it was a good

01:21:20.420 distraction from the chaos that was happening. Right. You know, let's shift it to the bad border

01:21:25.360 patrol agents, as opposed to my bad policies that allowed 16,000 people to come in in three days.

01:21:31.240 You want to talk about morale killer when the, the commander in chief of the president of the United

01:21:35.740 States in a country where you're innocent until proven guilty says they will pay when the facts

01:21:41.800 were, they didn't whip anybody. They were doing their job and. Throw his own border patrol under

01:21:47.340 the bus. And so, I mean, I was a thousand miles away going, oh my gosh, my agents were just like

01:21:52.440 deflated. And, and not only the agents, but let's think about the agent's parents and their loved ones

01:21:58.160 who are going, they're down there trying to do the best they can. The president just called them out.

01:22:01.480 Now, if they had done something wrong and they had beat somebody like that on camera. Yeah. There's

01:22:07.720 a consequence for those agents, but that was, that wasn't, that wasn't the case. That's somebody

01:22:11.840 doing their job. It's like at some point you have to have people do their jobs. So the morale just

01:22:16.440 tanked from that. It was already tough with the flow and we expect under every administration,

01:22:22.000 some kind of change. And we figured it would be a few months. We didn't realize it would be that long.

01:22:26.640 Then it just compounded and got worse and worse. And actually, you know the following year,

01:22:31.120 I think we had a 14 border patrol agents commit suicide and we had one of them in Yuma. And I'm

01:22:37.680 not going to say that, that it was because of the border crisis, but I could say that not being happy

01:22:45.700 at work, feeling demoralized and not having a purpose is a contributing factor. I'm sure there's

01:22:51.620 financial, emotional, physical issues that they were dealing with, but when you can come to work where it

01:22:56.360 used to be, Hey, I can go out there and make a difference. And now I'm being relegated to

01:23:00.320 transportation and babysitting. There's just no happy place for them. Right. And, and yeah,

01:23:05.240 you take away somebody's purpose, man. We, we had a, um, a great, uh, thinker in here,

01:23:10.460 John Vervakian. He, he, he talks all about purpose. Um, right here, it says between 2007 and,

01:23:15.720 uh, November, 2022 CBP is at California border. No, that's customs and border protection. That's

01:23:21.540 our parent agency. So DHS customs and border protection, U S border patrol. Okay. Customs

01:23:27.480 and border protection protection has lost 149 people to suicide among the highest rates compared

01:23:32.100 to other law enforcement agencies. I just don't understand why there's no support. I don't

01:23:39.440 understand why you have to beg for support. I don't understand why you give people a job

01:23:45.940 and give them all this training, but then don't even give them the fair environment to do their

01:23:54.280 job in. Right. And then look down upon them when they're doing their job just for what? Like

01:24:01.980 I just, it's just unfortunate. And you want your law enforcement, just like you want your doctors

01:24:08.440 and your teachers to have their head on straight and head in the game and not distract, at least

01:24:14.020 minimize all the distractions while they're doing that. Because, you know, number one, if it's a

01:24:19.040 doctor, it could save your life in surgery. If it's law enforcement, it could protect you and save

01:24:23.860 your life in an event of a tragedy. And if it's a teacher, you want them to educate you. So you can

01:24:28.340 make your own decisions as you, as you learn and grow. Um, we have to support all our military and law

01:24:35.740 enforcement and first responders in that mental health resiliency world, because it's so important

01:24:40.520 because we need them and we, and we need to recruit the good people too. So we need to offer

01:24:46.400 that like, Hey, not only are we going to, you know, expect you to do your job and Theo, I'll tell you

01:24:52.000 too, I I'm from old school. You're going to roll your sleeves up and get the job done, but it's okay

01:24:56.380 now to talk about it. Like, okay, what I'm dealing with, how I feel with that. I'm not saying we need

01:25:00.580 to be soft on all this stuff because we still have a very difficult job and you've got to get dirty,

01:25:05.140 but it's okay to talk about what what's bothering you afterward or, Hey, I wasn't a hundred percent

01:25:10.680 day because of this. All right. How can I help you? We, that is okay. You know, uh, we all grew

01:25:16.540 up in a, get some dirt on it and go back in there. Right. And that's okay, but we can talk about it

01:25:21.320 now. And I think that's the difference in where we evolve professionally and we grow as a leader.

01:25:26.180 That's where I saw, I couldn't make policy changes under president Biden, but I could make

01:25:31.720 operational changes. Say I can devote some funds to mental health and resiliency with my workforce

01:25:36.300 and bring people in to champion our agents and tell them the same thing as chief. I would say

01:25:42.160 something like, okay, yeah, chief, that's just box checking. You're the boss. Right. But when I bring

01:25:46.020 in an NFL player to come in there and say the same thing, like you guys are heroes, thank you for doing

01:25:51.320 what you're doing. It changes their, they come to where they're happy. Like, Hey, somebody appreciates

01:25:56.960 that. And so just little things like that, you know, it's cliche, but thank a cop. That's

01:26:01.640 what you want to do because you want them on your side. And nobody, by the way, nobody hates a bad

01:26:06.960 cop more than a good cop. And so we're not going to tolerate bad stuff amongst our ranks, but there

01:26:13.660 are so many good people out there, whether it's a border patrol agent or a domestic law enforcement

01:26:17.940 or an FBI agent, there's so many good ones doing good work. We've got to champion them because

01:26:22.240 what, what are the alternatives if we don't complete chaos? Yeah. And I want to say that too,

01:26:27.940 to people out there who are in that, in a position where you're a teacher, where you're a, you're

01:26:33.340 an officer, you're a sergeant, you're a community worker that isn't, you're not rewarded as well

01:26:41.480 financially as you should be by your environment, by your city, your state, your country. I just

01:26:48.080 want to say, just hold on, just, just thank you. And just, you know, just, just know that

01:26:55.700 citizens, they feel that with you, you know? And, um, I don't know, maybe I'm just kind of getting

01:27:01.540 preachy or weird. I don't know. It just makes me sad, man. It just doesn't, cause it doesn't add

01:27:06.000 up. Yeah. And I think people are tired of, uh, even nice people are getting like, fuck.

01:27:12.120 Yeah. It's that erosion empathy, right? That we talked about. So look, we understand that

01:27:16.300 we can't always pay people in their, their, their, their bank accounts more money, but we can

01:27:22.180 pay them in that emotional bank account by thanking them. Oh, a hundred percent. That's important.

01:27:25.760 We had some, we had a, uh, a garbage man on dude, legend, bro. Yeah. Um, and he said the best thing

01:27:34.320 you can do, go out there once in a while. Thank you. Garbage man. He said, they never even see

01:27:38.780 anybody. Nobody's doing a wake. They're out there doing the long haul by him a sixer way

01:27:43.820 knowing. Yeah. There he is right there, man. You're right. So, uh, Chris, let me ask you,

01:27:50.640 I want to just, before we move forward, I know, like, I want to think about some of the political

01:27:54.760 stuff, you know, cause you hear a lot of things, right? Like being in an election year right now,

01:27:59.840 it's like you start to see the political kickball, like you were saying, being kicked around of the

01:28:05.300 border, right? It's the, the border, the border immigrate, you know, you start to see a lot of

01:28:09.860 that happening. And one of the things that you hear recently is that, that, uh, democratic party

01:28:16.740 wants to allow people into the country to, to be able to get them to be able to vote or even, even

01:28:25.220 by, by whatever means to be able to get them to become democratic voters. But also I was thinking,

01:28:32.720 is there a value in like the Republican side and also letting it be an issue because then they can

01:28:41.880 say, Hey, this is an issue. So you have to vote this way. So, so those are two things that I hear

01:28:48.380 kind of, and that I think about, um, what is that like? Like, would you, is that something that border

01:28:54.560 agents feel at all? Yeah. Yeah. We, we, we, we, unfortunately we did not want to be in the limelight

01:29:00.420 and, you know, not be in the political sphere, but we, we are on, uh, because we're on the news

01:29:05.840 all the time. So let's, let's, let's dissect this a little bit. Um, for the democratic side,

01:29:11.560 it is all about victim of the poor migrants. We need to help them out. They're being exploited.

01:29:15.900 We need to bring them over and give them a better life, right? That that's a feel good story,

01:29:19.880 right? Now there's some truth to that. There are victims and there are people that want to,

01:29:23.760 but that becomes a feel good story. The Republicans will say, Hey, look, it's a security issue.

01:29:28.560 They'll talk about security. We need to save our country and secure our borders to prevent

01:29:32.600 terrorism and criminal aliens and drugs and all that stuff. Cause that's a real problem too. So

01:29:36.600 they're both, they're both real. They just present them as false choices. Like you can't have one

01:29:41.660 without the other. And if you want one, then you're against the other person. And that's,

01:29:45.580 that's the divisiveness that this, this, this country has become is you can be pro security,

01:29:50.720 but still have lawful immigration. The, the other piece too, is there's a, if you,

01:29:58.040 if you utter this, people will say it's kind of a conspiracy, but you have to start kind of

01:30:03.520 thinking about where are they going with? Why would you allow upwards of 7 million people to

01:30:08.760 come in here? And one theory and that people will float around is, well, not necessarily to have them

01:30:15.300 vote because your only citizens are supposed to vote, but you know what? Census determines

01:30:24.040 representation and ultimately electoral college numbers and things like that. So if you can flood

01:30:31.300 a Texas and you take it from red to purple, you get more representatives that may vote swing to a

01:30:41.180 district that could be a more Democrat. I see. So if you feel like your party could influence to get

01:30:46.540 more electoral votes or representatives or representatives. So if you feel like your

01:30:52.220 party could get more representatives because there's a larger population in that area and you

01:30:57.400 feel like you got the, the, the, the ability to get more players in the game, then you're going to be

01:31:02.460 pro that. That, that, that is a, that is like without the truth, without somebody saying, well,

01:31:08.180 here's why we're letting 7 million people in. You kind of start floating these ideas. And I'm not

01:31:12.140 saying that that's the case, but if you, if you look at it, if you have a state that is split 50,

01:31:18.700 50, when it comes down to Republicans and Democratic elected representatives, but you can put in

01:31:26.320 five more million people into that state and the next time they redistrict or do a census and, and

01:31:33.100 okay, well you get to increase the number of representatives and it's leaning one direction or the

01:31:38.180 other. You're going to lock it. Yeah. And look how close the house is right now. Yeah.

01:31:42.220 One extra, uh, uh, or two extra Democratic, uh, uh, officials now on that, on the house

01:31:48.020 swings everything to the party of power. So there that, I mean, again, without somebody telling you,

01:31:54.360 Hey, why are you letting all these people in? Why are you bogging the system down? Someone floats

01:32:00.580 that idea. He's like, well, now I mean, if that's the truth, it's evil genius. Great. At least we know

01:32:06.280 now we can work, you know, the devil, you know, versus the devil, you don't know. Right. And that's

01:32:10.660 because, because I, for the life of me, I can't make heads or tails of why this would

01:32:16.700 happen. Right. So as an agent, you're like, these people should be given a hearing and

01:32:21.700 removed because they're not going to meet the merit. Instead, we let them go and we

01:32:25.140 house them.

01:32:25.580 But then it's about control because then it's about a sickening few people with such

01:32:32.200 control. Like where is the value in that as a human being? It's like the people that

01:32:39.000 are controlling shit have no, do they have any fucking feeling? I'm just like, what is

01:32:44.160 even going on?

01:32:45.080 I think because why would you let all of these people suffer? Not only the people who are

01:32:48.740 being, um, who are sick, don't, don't have a clear path to, uh, to asylum or to residency

01:32:55.740 or to comfort or to peace. They're not in peace either. If they're having to sleep hiding behind

01:33:01.380 something to not get arrested all the time, you know, like, and also the families and people

01:33:06.440 who are just, um, citizens of the country. It just, first of all, my wife tells me this

01:33:13.140 a lot. Clear is kind. We need to clear, send a clear message that, you know, and, and so

01:33:18.780 if somebody's sitting here for seven years before they get their first hearing, that's

01:33:24.320 not clear. They don't know what the results are going to be. They don't know if they're

01:33:27.980 going to get to stay. They don't know if they were going to get a work permit. That

01:33:30.880 is not very kind, right?

01:33:32.820 No, it's not.

01:33:33.280 And then I also, to your point about this sick, demented, whoever's pulling the strings

01:33:38.900 here, they want servants over citizens because you know what? Citizens will

01:33:42.960 stand up. Eventually we will speak our mind, but if I can bring you in and give you handouts

01:33:48.820 and control you, you are going to be my servant and you will do what I tell you to do. I mean,

01:33:53.500 again, I don't want to be a tinfoil hat wearing person, but without the facts, without somebody

01:33:58.100 telling me what the plan is, you start inserting these things. And some of it kind of starts

01:34:02.800 making sense because you can lean things, you can control things. If you have a bunch

01:34:07.320 of servants.

01:34:08.260 Well, it's where conspiracy theories really, that's how it starts. I was talking about this

01:34:12.740 with a friend yesterday. It was like, well, when the news got bad and got not news and

01:34:18.740 it was just like, uh, the news was just trying to say what it wanted to say and not just give

01:34:26.360 the facts. That's when conspiracy theories start because people have to make sense of

01:34:31.120 things. So it's your brain's, your brain's only function is to organize and to make sense

01:34:38.000 of things. That's all it's supposed to do. And so a lot of conspiracy theories, it's like,

01:34:43.560 it's, it's, it's just not adding up. It's yeah. When things don't add up, you have to,

01:34:49.740 the equation needs to make sense. So that's only reason why you, a conspiracy theory even gets

01:34:54.900 created is to make things make sense. And when things aren't making sense anymore,

01:34:58.600 then the conspiracy theories could be what does make sense. And oftentimes these days it is.

01:35:03.760 Yeah. And the naysayers just throw that back at you. Well, they don't know what they're talking

01:35:06.540 about. They're a conspiracy. Well, no, one in one is two. It's not three and it's not adding up to two.

01:35:11.160 So what's the deal here? You know, you know, it's, it is kind of crazy because we've seen

01:35:16.880 such an evolution of, of, you know, what's happened at the border. Right. I've talked about

01:35:23.760 that and, and, and, you know, there's solutions out there. It's just, it's, you know, we just got

01:35:28.280 to be able to, I like to say, get the extreme left and the extreme right, take extreme recess and get

01:35:32.920 some common sense in the middle. Right. To start coming up with some solutions. And when they're not

01:35:36.900 doing it, I mean, they just had the, uh, Mayorkas guy, um, who was the, he was a secretary just got

01:35:43.440 impeached. Yeah. He just got impeached, but that was impeached by the house of representatives.

01:35:47.700 Right. Right. Which is only it, the Senate's not going to pass that. So he's not really going to be

01:35:52.780 impeached. No, it's just, it's just like president Trump, just like president Clinton, they were

01:35:56.180 impeached in the process, but they weren't convicted. So they're not removed. And so, yeah, it's, uh,

01:36:00.900 right. People have given up. The American public has almost given up on all of this charades of

01:36:05.560 bullshit because you can't even follow it. Homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas has been

01:36:10.640 impeached by the house of representatives. A cabinet secretary has not been impeached by the

01:36:16.140 U S Congress since 1876. The office of Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who is the worst,

01:36:23.860 I think said Mayorkas impeachment trial will begin later this month. So this is just going to be

01:36:30.820 a whole big hoop raw process, man. And it probably will not happen unless they need to have a patsy

01:36:36.860 to make it look like they're going to do something different. Yeah. So, I mean, you can have the

01:36:41.000 trial and it's still going to require two thirds of the Senate to, so that would be everybody on

01:36:45.080 the Republican side and half of the Democrats saying he's convicted. Right. And that's not likely to

01:36:51.400 happen if this even happens. And it's easy to say it's likely to begin in a month, but you've got all

01:36:56.340 these other world events happening. Um, you know, it, it, again, it's, um, that's the politics of it,

01:37:01.400 you know, and this is a classic example of, of, uh, of an election cycle last go around. They ran on

01:37:07.620 going to impeach the guy. It took two years for them to finally do it. Um, and did it change anything?

01:37:12.560 No, it, you know, nothing. And they ran on the Russia shit. I just, it's, it's, I'm okay with

01:37:18.560 letting people make their own choice. Right. Um, people are, you would think people can get a

01:37:25.820 sense and trust their instincts and find a leader that has enough of their commonalities,

01:37:31.840 things that they believe in. Right. Um, I don't think I ever fall into like identity politics where

01:37:37.160 I'm going to vote for somebody just because they're a one party or this party I've voted for

01:37:41.640 people from both parties. Um, back to choices. Think about it. Everybody wants choices until it comes

01:37:47.940 to politics. Then they, they, they forced their, their choice on you. You know, we want it. We

01:37:53.280 want to be pro-choice in all things in life. Right. We want to have options. It doesn't matter

01:37:57.440 what, what those options are, but we should have options. Right. Then it comes to politics. Oh no,

01:38:03.200 you can't have a choice. Yeah. Back to the political, politicalization of the border.

01:38:08.360 I tell you, I had so many congressional delegations under president Trump. I couldn't,

01:38:13.180 I was the deputy chief in El Paso. Number two.

01:38:15.120 And what is a congressional delegation?

01:38:16.120 That is where a group of congressional members representatives will come down, uh, and they

01:38:21.200 want to hear and learn. It's a, they, it's a field trip for them, right? Sometimes they're

01:38:25.160 caucuses like Hispanic caucus or a border security caucus or, you know, African American caucus.

01:38:30.000 They'll, they'll, they'll be a group of like-minded, mainly usually one party. They go down there and

01:38:34.860 they, they want to hear what's happening. Um, oftentimes it's oversight committees will go down

01:38:40.500 there under president Trump in El Paso. I kid you not, I couldn't turn around without tripping

01:38:46.040 over a congressional delegation, wanting to point the finger at big, bad Trump and what he was doing

01:38:50.760 and all the people that was when the AOC was said they were drinking out of the toilet. All that kind

01:38:55.400 of stuff was when I was there in El Paso, completely ridiculous. But you know what? Under this

01:39:00.760 administration, when I was the chief in, in Yuma, I had two Democrats come down to the border. One

01:39:07.120 was a Democrat. Um, he was, he came down, but, but he was, uh, I had, uh, Mark Kelly, the Senator

01:39:14.200 from Arizona who worked with me to try to fill some border gaps. So he, we, it took us 18 months,

01:39:19.020 but we finally got something done. And I had, uh, Gary Johnson out of the, uh, Homeland Security

01:39:23.140 Committee, uh, Senator Johnson from, uh, from Michigan. Only two Democrat sitting representatives

01:39:28.440 that came down to the border. A lot of Republicans, but they did, they wanted to ignore the problem.

01:39:34.480 Um, I had some phone calls from, uh, Senator Sinema, um, but never came down there to meet

01:39:39.920 with me only two. But when it was president Trump, I had hundreds of people.

01:39:47.400 So why aren't more coming even just because it's one president or the other, that shouldn't

01:39:50.660 determine why one, because one side doesn't want to talk about the problem. The other side

01:39:56.640 wants to blame the problem. So under Trump coming down to blame, just like the Republicans

01:40:00.960 come down there now to point the finger at the Biden administration. So it becomes,

01:40:05.420 so we have to, we have to, right. That's what I was saying. It's like the Republicans also,

01:40:09.220 part of them is happy that it's open because they can say, look, this is, this is the problem.

01:40:14.560 So it gives them also, there's quite, there's, there's a handful in every party that really

01:40:20.220 want to try to solve this. But unfortunately they're, they're the minority piece, right?

01:40:25.420 The, and there's people that just don't want to deal with it. Right. Part of it too,

01:40:28.700 when it comes political is it's, it goes back to that victim boogeyman thing. I can run on the

01:40:33.900 emotions every two years as a congressional representative sentence every six years,

01:40:38.700 but as a congressman or woman, I can say, if they would have just voted for my bill,

01:40:43.920 we would have solved this. But if you elect me next time, we'll get it done. And think about this

01:40:49.400 has been going, we've been talking about this since nine 11, 23 years. We've been cooking border

01:40:55.540 security, immigration controls in the forefront. And we still can, and it's the worst it's ever

01:41:02.200 been. It's the worst it's ever been right now. Yes. It's the worst it's ever been. And we've

01:41:07.480 been talking about it now. Let's, let's be clear. Nine 11 was the worst, right? That was a separate

01:41:13.500 event, but that triggered us talking about securing our border for 21 years or 23 years now.

01:41:20.940 Do they even have TSA at the border? Well, they're at the, they're at the airports,

01:41:24.800 but not when you're walking across. No, that's us. That's border patrol.

01:41:27.800 So do, if people come in illegally, do they take their shoes off or anything like that or no?

01:41:32.140 So, so, well, look, if they, if border patrol is in Canada, you've come in illegally. We're,

01:41:35.840 we're arresting you. We take, we do all, we take all, we take, we check everything.

01:41:39.840 Oh, I see. Yeah. So there's either people that are, that are legal that are coming in and they

01:41:43.340 are probably doing their paperwork and all that. Yeah. So, so if you come into the airport,

01:41:47.520 then you're going to be dealing, you know, if your TSA deals with, right. And domestic stuff

01:41:52.720 international, that's the custom side of things. When you come into an airport or through a port

01:41:57.280 eventually, they're going to, they're going to inspect you. And you know, everybody's subject

01:42:00.440 to an inspection. When you come in, when you come in illegally, you're arrested. Okay. And then

01:42:05.500 you go through it. Just like if you were arrested in downtown, they're going to take you in,

01:42:09.360 they're going to patch it down. They're going to go through your stuff. They're going to inventory

01:42:11.320 your property and all that kind of stuff. We do the same thing at the border, which is a challenge

01:42:15.060 when you're arresting 2.2 million people every year, and there's no place to put you.

01:42:18.420 What percentage of people get arrested and sent back?

01:42:23.260 That's very few right now. No way, really?

01:42:25.540 The ones that get returned back immediately are going to be Mexican nationals because the

01:42:30.120 contiguous country, right? They're going to send them right back. There are some, oh,

01:42:36.080 there's just, man, 95% of the people I caught in Yuma were caught and released.

01:42:42.060 In New America? Yeah.

01:42:43.140 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, let's, you know, let's talk about a couple of things.

01:42:47.340 And what do you just let us...

01:42:48.720 Yeah. Here's, here's, here's, here's, here's a very important piece, right? You've heard this

01:42:52.400 about, you've heard the term vetting. They're not properly vetted or, you know, they're being

01:42:56.620 released without vetting. Well, let's, let's let you in the, in the audience know. So anytime

01:43:01.720 somebody is arrested by Border Patrol, we are taking their biometric data. We are fingerprinting

01:43:06.640 them. We are photographing them. As long as they are 14 years and older, there's laws from,

01:43:12.120 uh, tender age minors. Okay.

01:43:15.260 The problem with that is the record checks are only based on information that we have.

01:43:21.880 So if you are a serial killer in New Guinea and you've never been caught and we don't,

01:43:28.940 there's no system of record, we're not going to know who you are. We're going to take your

01:43:32.900 fingerprints and photograph and say, well, there's no, no immigration or no criminal history,

01:43:36.980 excuse me, no criminal history in the United States. We have no place to hold him. So he's

01:43:42.400 going to be processed and released. But meanwhile, he can go about his business.

01:43:45.300 So you can't check with another country to see?

01:43:47.320 If they don't have the data in our system, that that's, that's the problem. The process

01:43:51.760 the agents go through, perfect. You, every, no one gets released or everybody that gets

01:43:56.940 the data taken. But if there's nothing in the system, cause we don't have a relationship

01:44:02.560 with our country, that was, that goes back to the Obama and Trump travel bans. The reason

01:44:08.320 why there was a travel ban on those countries, they did not have a vetted system of record

01:44:13.760 for us to make compare notes to see if these people are good or bad. So if you are from a

01:44:19.080 country, if, unless you're like in some kind of Interpol record that matches with us, if you've

01:44:25.640 never committed a crime in the United States, we're not going to know who you are. So you could

01:44:29.480 be an MS-13 gang member that has no visible tattoos that we can see.

01:44:34.660 In another country.

01:44:35.380 In another country and never been arrested in the United States and not in some kind of

01:44:39.080 Interpol database, we could theoretically release you.

01:44:42.380 Wow.

01:44:42.820 That's why detention is so critical.

01:44:46.720 Critical.

01:44:46.900 So we can hold on to them to make sure on no uncertain terms that who this person is,

01:44:53.960 what's their intentions, what's their background, who are their sponsors, where are they going

01:45:00.260 to go? That's why holding people and doing all the extra checks is so important. And by

01:45:06.480 the way, the databases and systems are only as good as the databases and so they'll garbage

01:45:12.020 in, garbage out. Sometimes there's delays. Sometimes there's a system upgrade. And when

01:45:17.180 I ran your check today, it came back clear. I released you two days later, it came back as

01:45:21.960 a hit. Well, we released that guy. So that's why we have to detain folks for that. That's

01:45:29.620 the process is to detain them until they see the judge, but that's never going to happen.

01:45:34.620 Pipes are clogged.

01:45:35.220 Yeah. Pipes are clogged.

01:45:35.640 There's way too many people in line. When you release someone, right? You release them

01:45:41.560 back into America. What do they have to do then?

01:45:43.720 Yeah. It's great. You're going to love this. So we process them and they get a, they have

01:45:48.720 to check in when they, within 30 days of their, or where they said they're going. So if I catch

01:45:54.680 somebody, somebody caught somebody in Yuma today and they said they're going to Nashville,

01:45:58.100 we would give them the, the, the information for ice here in Nashville. Okay. So when they

01:46:04.820 arrive in Nashville, they're supposed to call and check in and say, Hey, I'm John Doe. I'm

01:46:09.640 supposed to report to you. And there's that. There's also some ankle bracelet monitorings

01:46:14.300 they'll, they'll put on so we can track and follow, but that's, it's, it's basically

01:46:18.920 on the honor system and, and we don't have the ability to vet that location where you're

01:46:26.520 going. There are places where you'll find 200 people using the same address, but here's

01:46:31.020 another kicker for everybody. Cause you know, we're all paying the price at the pumps, the

01:46:34.520 gas, the, the grocery table, everywhere else. I was spending close to just over $400,000 a

01:46:42.580 day in my soft sided migrant processing facility with medical food, laundry, and

01:46:52.260 migrant care services. Migrant care was really the minors. So if they were children,

01:46:57.880 we had, it wasn't agents having to babysit anymore. We actually hired people to do

01:47:01.540 that. That was 400 plus thousand dollars a day. There was six other Southwest border

01:47:07.220 sectors or six total South that was kind of using the same model. So two and a half

01:47:11.800 million dollars on the math, not too quick, but when we, they'd be in our care for maybe

01:47:16.780 two to three days and then we'd release them. We don't release them to the street

01:47:20.500 necessarily. We release them to a non-government organization who will take them in and then

01:47:24.980 they will help facilitate to, if they want to go to Nashville, would you have a plane

01:47:29.000 ticket? Do you have the means to get there? If you don't, we'll help you get there. If

01:47:31.800 you do, then we'll get you on a bus to Sky Harbor and you can fly. Those organizations

01:47:37.520 are getting reimbursed dollar for dollar from FEMA through DHS grants. So, so now we're

01:47:44.440 paying for the shelter and processing facility. You guys are paying for it up front. And then

01:47:48.540 you're paying for the non-government organization is getting. So the non-government organization

01:47:52.820 is a nonprofit. Yes, it's, but it's getting reimbursed for the monies they spend by the

01:47:57.460 government. So the government's paid twice now. Oh, and by the way, the sanctuary cities

01:48:02.000 said, Hey, we need $5 billion to handle these migrants that are being dropped off. So in

01:48:07.980 theory, we could be paying for the majority of those migrants up to three times.

01:48:13.020 So it's a money laundering. It's basically little Ukraine in America.

01:48:15.940 I mean, so, so when you're looking at the cost now, remember a couple of years ago,

01:48:20.420 former Speaker Pelosi said that we didn't have the money to build a wall. Well, but the states

01:48:25.500 have now said we want $5 billion. We wanted 5 billion to finish the Trump wall.

01:48:29.400 We'd have sent a hundred billion to another country. Again, charities should start home,

01:48:34.500 right? We do. It's just fucking unbelievable. And here's the saddest part is Chris, is that

01:48:40.540 it feels like as a per, as a voter, it doesn't even matter anymore. Yeah. That's the part that

01:48:46.780 starts to feel like this does it like what has to happen where these sick people, here's

01:48:53.940 an article right here, the Biden administration and the U S Congress have directed more than $75

01:48:58.180 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial, military support.

01:49:05.280 And I wonder where all that money's going. There's no, I don't believe this war doesn't

01:49:09.700 even seem like it's, it's no one's talking about it. Right. It's a facade. All we're talking about

01:49:14.940 is the money being spent over there. It's a Zelensky. It, I believe it is a money laundering.

01:49:21.000 So, you know, it's so crazy about that with the, the, the number you threw out and what I was

01:49:26.420 talking about as far as how much we're spending. And a spirit laundering by the Ukraine of the

01:49:30.180 Ukrainian and Russian people. I think they're being laundered in most, uh, mentally, not,

01:49:35.320 not that I'm in favor of paying off people's student debt. But if we, if we just focused a

01:49:42.240 little bit of energy here in the United States with the money that we were spending everywhere else,

01:49:47.320 and I get it, we have to invest around the world. I'm not saying not do that, but not to the same,

01:49:51.540 we could help people. My other problem I have is the homelessness and the mental health issues we

01:49:57.120 have facing this country. What would $75 billion do right now to help the homelessness and the

01:50:03.680 homeless veteran problem and the mental health issues we're facing? And the addicted. What would

01:50:07.440 that, it would be a life and game changer. Yeah. Meanwhile, we're just printing money to go

01:50:13.000 someplace else, but the ones that should matter the most, the American people, the people within

01:50:17.040 our borders are suffering for that. And it is frustrating. And here's why it is frustrating,

01:50:20.980 but here's also why it's frustrating because it's not like I want to say that, Hey, we're fortunate

01:50:26.420 enough. We shouldn't help other people. I don't believe that. I believe that if someone is in a

01:50:33.880 place of power or possibility, they should do what they can to share it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But I

01:50:40.360 believe that you are killing the very people you're killing, you're killing the spirit of the people

01:50:46.500 who do that work by making them feel unsupported by making them feel like, um, they, uh, their country

01:50:56.340 doesn't have any tradition, that it doesn't have any purpose, that the borders that people died to

01:51:01.080 protect, um, don't even matter. You're, you're killing the will and the spirit of the people that

01:51:07.700 are going to do that, um, that outreach and work. And so you're going to get to a place. Yes. We're

01:51:16.240 like, you're saying, you just have servants that, that if they even want to do that as opposed to

01:51:22.240 spirited American people that want to help others. Um, I'm with you. I don't want to, I don't want to

01:51:29.960 keep saying it, but it goes back to that erosion of empathy and not only empathy, but just the spirit.

01:51:34.540 Like you said, the, to roll up the sleeves and get the job done and go to work and, and, and,

01:51:38.880 and, and fight for what's right. You, you just kind of numb them. And that's what, I think that's

01:51:43.360 what the plan is, right? If we can, we can create that servant mentality where like, all right,

01:51:47.080 fine. I'm just, but can't beat them, join them. And that's not what we were founded on. Right. I

01:51:51.140 mean, no, it's not. And, but it's a bill of goods that people are starting to think that they were

01:51:54.800 sold. That's not real. And that's why I think people, that's why I think you start, have to start

01:51:58.560 voting for people that have, um, some real morals and ethics. You have to re and some ethos, you

01:52:05.540 know, I think you got to start voting for those people who believe that. Yeah. Cause if you don't

01:52:09.860 take care of this, there's nothing for this can't do anything. If you don't water a plant, nobody can

01:52:15.500 see it or smell it or, or enjoy it, you know, and it can't be a part of growth. Um, no, you're,

01:52:21.900 you're exactly right. I think that that's so powerful, uh, or so powerful to, to begin, you

01:52:28.920 know, to have just a moral compass and azimuth set for the right. It doesn't mean it's, we're

01:52:33.640 going to agree, but it's, it's rooted in, in good faith, right? Just, and that's, and that's the

01:52:39.040 problem. And we become, we become so addicted to, uh, you know, just, uh, immediate response or some

01:52:45.900 kind of, uh, uh, illicit of a response that we were not putting in the work anymore. You know,

01:52:51.360 it takes a little bit of effort to, to do that. It's, if it was easy, we wouldn't be in this

01:52:55.400 problem. It's, it takes hard work. Um, and, and just like are the men and women in the border

01:53:00.040 patrol, you know, I, I go back to, that was my wheelhouse for, in my life for 27 and a half

01:53:04.940 years out there walking in the desert in 120 degree heat, climbing up in the mountains when

01:53:12.340 it's, you know, sub zero temperatures sludging through the snow on the Northern border, uh, going

01:53:17.720 through, you know, uh, uh, through rattlesnake infested desert out there to track somebody

01:53:23.800 one more mile, because number one, you either, you may rescue somebody or you may have gotten a,

01:53:29.980 uh, a drug runner, or you may have gotten a potential terrorist, but if you just didn't put

01:53:34.340 in the work, they're going to get away and they could cause harm. And that's what, you know, what

01:53:39.600 I love about what was my profession for, for a better part of my life was it wasn't easy.

01:53:45.680 It was rewarding and it was hard work, but in the day, the scars, the limps and all that stuff

01:53:52.140 was worth it because of the camaraderie and the spree decor that we had, because we were doing

01:53:57.480 something good. And, and it's, and to have that minimize and victimize and not supported is tough.

01:54:06.200 We are a resilient agency. The men and women of border patrol ride to the sound of gunfire.

01:54:13.560 We just needed that, uh, shot in the arm every once in a while. It says, Hey, keep up the good

01:54:17.540 work. We got your back. And we get that from a lot of people. We just need that, you know,

01:54:22.280 from a broader branch because for all the things that are wrong for this country, in order for us

01:54:26.420 to get it right, we have to protect our country, both domestically through border security and then

01:54:31.720 militarily, you know, be safe, you know, around the world. Cause we know that there's fires

01:54:36.120 everywhere. Um, and that starts at the top. Yeah. Not only the, in your house and every day when

01:54:42.480 you go to work, but the top of the country, which is our, the white house has got to be able to

01:54:46.480 establish that. And we're not seeing that. And that's, I think that's, I also believe, and I've

01:54:51.600 been around the country the last few months and continue talking about the border around the

01:54:56.220 country. And I, and I'm noticing the pendulum swinging back to like, Hey, enough's enough

01:55:00.820 when people are dying because of fentanyl overdoses, because it's coming through the border,

01:55:06.200 because we won't shut it down from China and from Mexican cartels. And it's coming in and it's

01:55:11.820 killing people. When you have 300, you know, opioid related deaths a day, and most of it's fentanyl

01:55:17.940 related because it's coming through because our overworked border security apparatus is not being

01:55:23.500 nailed the job to the extent it can. People are getting fed up. You know, it's not, it's no longer

01:55:28.460 a border issue. It is an American issue. And I think that people are seeing it and they're seeing

01:55:34.260 the, the, the, it's being shrugged off at the, at the highest levels. And I think, you know,

01:55:40.000 it, it sucks that it gets to this point, but if this is what's going to have to happen, this is

01:55:44.500 what's going to have to have people have to got to wake up and make sure that we stop electing morons

01:55:49.020 and get people in that have a, a, a good head on their shoulder that are pointing in the right

01:55:52.920 direction. We can disagree. That's okay. But I guarantee you, if people will just pause for a

01:55:59.680 moment and sit there and listen, they'll find more common ground than they have differences.

01:56:04.340 And I think that's, that's the spirit of America. That's the spirit of what makes this country tick

01:56:09.520 and why people still try to come over here every day. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. No, I look, I think that you,

01:56:15.340 yeah, you have, I'm just amazed that people would sit there in places where they're be, they can't,

01:56:21.700 they're not even brave enough to go to their own vehicle because they're scared, but yet they would

01:56:26.420 vote for policies and people that aren't going to, uh, make sure that they have police and street

01:56:33.020 lamps. Yeah. You know, it just, I don't, I'm just sick. I think it's, it's, it feels, I think our souls

01:56:41.720 are starting to feel sick. Um, and I don't want to get just stuck in that. And I know you don't want

01:56:45.420 to either. Um, so what is, what do solutions at the border look like? What does that look like?

01:56:51.180 Yeah, no, great question. I think what we have to look at and, uh, it kind of, it's, it's great

01:56:56.060 timing because we've talked about kind of the evolution of what's happened over the past, you

01:57:00.700 know, nearly 27, 28 years of my life. The, the adversary has, has changed, right? So traditionally,

01:57:08.800 traditionally people would come across, you had your migrant workers we talked about earlier,

01:57:13.180 but then you had the criminal side of the smuggling operation, whether it was narcotic

01:57:17.620 smuggling or people smuggling. This is people, the smuggler crossing the border, guiding the

01:57:24.480 people to a vehicle, jumping in a vehicle and drive into the next city and then going to wherever

01:57:30.100 they were going. Right. What do you mean driving who to it? Like, what do you mean? So, so literally

01:57:33.660 you would have like vehicles, I mean, this is all organized. So I'll, I'll use Arizona as example.

01:57:40.560 So a smuggler would come down to from Phoenix or Tucson. Okay. There'd be somebody on the

01:57:46.080 American side. Yeah. On American side, leaving a vehicle. Oh, I see. Coordinating with the South

01:57:50.580 side. So it's a two day walk to this vehicle. The smuggler is smuggling through the desert,

01:57:57.360 avoiding border patrol, guiding people to this vehicle. And sometimes they all get in together

01:58:02.840 and drive off. Sometimes it's so well coordinated that they, they know they're going to show up in

01:58:08.660 this window, this one hour and the smuggler drives in, picks them up, and then they drive back to

01:58:14.020 the next city. That's how it used to be. And there's still factions across the border where

01:58:19.240 that's happening, where you're having these pursuits. I'm telling you, it was so fun back

01:58:24.600 in the day when it was really cat and mouse games. Like we would chase these people for hours or shifts.

01:58:30.260 Yeah. All those things on TV, people being smuggled. Theo, some of the funnest things.

01:58:36.720 Y'all use lassos? You don't use a lasso? No, no, no, we don't do any of that stuff. No, we,

01:58:41.520 we handcuffs. And, but what, what I would tell you what would be fun and, and, and again,

01:58:46.740 give it context. You got to realize you're chasing somebody that that's the, that's the thrill,

01:58:51.820 right? It's part of it, right? The adrenaline. Yeah. You would get pursuits and they would be,

01:58:57.480 you know, you're going high speeds or sometimes low speeds. And then they would bail out and people

01:59:03.100 would, it was like hamster Shawshank and out of the back of a, of a pickup truck, my friend,

01:59:09.680 bailing out everywhere. Right. And so you would throw that vehicle in the park and you would give

01:59:14.560 foot chase. You had to go after the driver. It's like when the pinata bus opens. That's right.

01:59:19.220 Exactly. You got to get the big snicker. Yeah. So our goal was to go get the driver. Cause that's

01:59:23.680 who we could prosecute. And then you go round up everybody else. But that was, that was fun. And you

01:59:28.960 would even almost kind of like you and the smuggler would almost kind of like, all right, all right,

01:59:32.700 you got me. Oh yeah. And so, and that was before we had all the databases and systems to double check

01:59:38.880 that this person was being caught. Now we would know if we caught you, you know, 10 or a hundred times,

01:59:42.920 but that was some of the, the most thrilling part of my job was it was rewarding because you were saving

01:59:50.540 lives if you end up rescuing people, but then they'd be fun. Like, you know, you'd pick up the two by four

01:59:56.200 or the plywood on the back of a pickup truck. And it's like, Hey man, I can see you. And they

02:00:00.360 wouldn't look at you, but you would get vans with, you're it. Yeah. You'd get 30 people in a van,

02:00:06.180 you know, you get 10 people in a, in a Ford, you know, Fiesta and you're like, how does this happen?

02:00:11.980 What was really funny is you see these older model vehicles. I'm like my vehicle, I, I would be,

02:00:17.160 I wouldn't trust driving it to Michigan in the middle of the night. These people didn't care.

02:00:20.600 They were going, but we had some number one vehicle that got left down there, by the way. Like,

02:00:24.440 was there one vehicle that was always like, if you saw, if you saw a suburban, any kind of SUV

02:00:30.300 that was, that was always a, you know, just a giveaway. You're driving down a two lane border

02:00:36.400 highway. And then there's next to a culvert, there's a, some kind of SUV. They love pickups

02:00:41.940 because they could just jump in real quick. So, you know, pickups were very extended cabs were great

02:00:48.580 because they could put people in the front end and you know, you could, they would, if you

02:00:52.920 drove by, they drove by you, you wouldn't see anything in the bed of the truck and you couldn't

02:00:57.280 see what was in the back. Um, but we just knew cause you'd see the yellow lights cause they were

02:01:02.040 usually older vehicles and they're riding like this. Um, but we, we would get into all that.

02:01:07.020 It was so much fun or you would track people for days. Literally like you go in, if you're a day shift

02:01:13.240 guy, you're in at six o'clock in the morning, you're on a trail by seven, you work until three or four in the

02:01:17.860 afternoon, turn it over to the next shift. You come back the next day and like, Hey, we're all,

02:01:21.000 we pushed it 20 miles. So you'd go out there and work it and then you catch them. And it was people

02:01:26.180 looking for work, people that were criminals, gang members, or there were, you know, back then it was

02:01:31.400 the cash crop was marijuana. That was when everybody was backpacking marijuana. Now you don't even catch

02:01:35.340 marijuana anymore. It's legalized in so many places, but it's, it's changed now. It's changed because

02:01:41.240 again, for years we fought a conventional war, if you will, against a conventional smuggling.

02:01:47.860 Now, because of policies and the way things are so interconnected, like people are making all the

02:01:54.140 arrangements now on the cell phones, using online, you know, uh, social media platforms.

02:01:59.940 The smugglers oftentimes don't even cross the border anymore. All the arrangements are made prior to

02:02:07.860 people getting to the border. As I mentioned earlier, the large groups are being, you know,

02:02:12.620 pushed through in one area. The other ones are using their apps. And I'm not going to name

02:02:17.700 the, the, the programs, but they will communicate with the smuggler via cell phone and via apps

02:02:23.560 doing DMS and, and Hey, I'm lost. And they will send me a picture of what you see. And then they

02:02:29.920 will text back, okay, you need to go through this way. And they'd, they'd put a, they'd roadmap it for

02:02:34.660 them. Oh, so the coyotes or whatever, who are bringing them across usually aren't even going

02:02:38.440 anymore. They're either in Mexico or in Phoenix because they, and then, then everything's done

02:02:43.280 through cash apps and everything else. So we have this beautiful thing called interconnectedness

02:02:50.460 has made the unconventional, it made the adversary unconventional. So how do we attack it? It's one

02:02:58.100 of the things that I'm doing right now. And this is necessarily a, a big pitch, but the reality is,

02:03:03.060 is there is so much online smuggling and trafficking done on our numerous social media platforms that

02:03:14.600 children are being recruited to be smugglers. Children are, and, and, and people are being recruited

02:03:20.420 to buy, uh, uh, you know, uh, uh, illegitimate, you know, narcotics, you know, uh, you know,

02:03:28.380 underground stuff, you know, Hey, you want to, I've done it. We're using, oh yeah, you can do this

02:03:32.660 on the apps. And this is where it becomes so deadly because this, it may be pressed in a

02:03:40.120 clandestine lab in Mexico as a Vicodin, but it's, they don't have the same sanitary. So now you've

02:03:45.680 got residual fentanyl, you know, DEA put out a stat recently, like, like seven out of 10

02:03:51.200 off-market things have, uh, enough fentanyl in it now to kill them. That's ridiculous. So one of the

02:03:57.580 things, a solution that we have, have created, I'm part of is, is using artificial intelligence

02:04:03.100 and machine learning to target the online predators, whether it's doing that. So, yeah,

02:04:12.300 so this is, this is my company that I'm part of massive blue. So we, we basically use deep tech and

02:04:17.720 to identify the, the habits and, and, and the process of, you know, look, I, I worked on a

02:04:23.800 physical wall. Now we've created a cyber wall to protect and target those that are going after

02:04:31.940 people, right? Like there are, look, there were over, I think in the last seven days,

02:04:38.400 close to 2000 unique individuals posting sex services in Nashville alone. Yeah. Who do you think

02:04:47.180 those people are? You know, Theo, you and I are close enough in age to realize, remember milk carton,

02:04:53.260 missing kids in the milk carton. You don't see that anymore, right? It's this, it's these people,

02:04:57.540 not only are they internationally being victimized in traffic domestically in Nashville alone,

02:05:04.180 that many unique individuals, right? And about 25% of that stuff is narcotics crossovers. So not

02:05:11.220 only are they selling people and services, there's also drug with it. So we have got to take this

02:05:17.040 unconventional approach and use the technology that they're using, that use it.

02:05:23.000 And we play by the rules, obviously, but we have got to create that cyber wall to protect our

02:05:29.640 country, protect our community, our companies, because there's all sorts of corporate espionage

02:05:33.960 and our children, most importantly, because if you think that, you know, kids are upstairs going to

02:05:40.240 bed on a school night at nine o'clock and not on their social, do you think the person they're

02:05:43.920 engaging with is really their friend or somebody that they know? This is where this, these predators and,

02:05:50.500 and boy, the sextortion, all this stuff that's going on. You look, that's, I did this for so long

02:05:55.820 that this was where I knew how can I continue to make a difference and not wear the badge and gun

02:06:01.420 anymore is to go after the bad guy in an unconventional manner. And, you know, I think

02:06:07.740 it's going to save lives. It's going to protect lives. It's going to, you know, there's so much we

02:06:12.440 can do with it. Let's use the technology to our advantage. It's not going away, right?

02:06:18.040 Let's use it to help. And if I can minimize human trafficking online, if I can save lives,

02:06:25.880 then I'm living the best life.

02:06:28.660 How does this company do that? How does your company do that?

02:06:30.920 Well, I'm not going to get into too much of it.

02:06:32.700 You're just saying, but that's where you're headed.

02:06:33.920 That's where we're heading.

02:06:34.440 Right. Yeah.

02:06:34.720 So you, and that's where you're headed or you also think that that's where we're headed

02:06:37.900 as a, as a border patrol agency?

02:06:40.320 Well, so I would love to be able to get this in the hands of the border patrol because let's,

02:06:43.420 let's think about what's happening right now online. It really takes a person staring at

02:06:50.620 a computer, data mining, just going through websites and going through all, why not use

02:06:55.240 technology that what I can do in an hour would take somebody a week or more. Um, and so this

02:07:03.160 is how we can get this into, we're working with a couple of States and a couple, uh, agencies

02:07:08.180 to, with this program to help them use this tool. It's a great lead generator, right? It's going to

02:07:15.040 do that. And we're just, we're going to continue to evolve. There's, we love online. We love our

02:07:19.400 social media and it's a good thing. It is a good thing, but let's put the safeguards and let's use

02:07:24.780 it to, well, it goes back again though, to why doesn't our country have, I, and maybe this is me

02:07:30.460 just expecting out of government. You know, I've all often said, if you expect anything out of

02:07:35.160 government, you're out of your mind, but you would think the one thing that you would want out of

02:07:40.200 your government that you would get is safety. Yeah. Right. That is the number one thing that

02:07:45.400 people will always pay for, um, is, is safety. Um, and the fact that they just had Zuckerberg in court

02:07:52.580 the other day, uh, apologizing with no emotion guy. I don't know if the guy's ever had a feeling

02:07:59.120 and he's in court, um, because of families that have lost children or had children sex trafficked or,

02:08:06.360 um, bought and there's, there's just, there's no, uh, wall. I don't know why an adult, um,

02:08:16.540 Zuckerberg apologizes to families of online child sex abuse. Um, in an unscripted scene during tense

02:08:23.640 testimony, Wednesday, meta platforms, Inc. CEO, Mark Zuckerberg stood before a PAC Senate hearing.

02:08:29.360 I am sorry for everything that you have all gone through. He said, um, Wednesday while facing a

02:08:34.680 crowd of safety advocates and parents holding photos of their children. It's terrible. No one

02:08:38.320 should have to go through the things that you families have suffered. Yeah. I mean, it's unbelievable.

02:08:41.860 He's sitting there surrounded by all of his lawyers. Um, and he, it's felt, it seemed like

02:08:47.300 he didn't have an emotion. Like, it's like, it just, but that blows my mind why there isn't,

02:08:53.480 if, how could you, how are you even allowed to use a fucking, I can't even buy a deodorant

02:08:58.300 that doesn't have a little thing on it that has a plastic thing on it now so that some kid just

02:09:03.220 doesn't put it on or put his mouth on it. Right. But yet you can have an app where some predator

02:09:08.160 can reach out to my fucking child and not go to fucking jail for it. I feel like these guys should

02:09:14.320 be jailed. You know, it's the same with that family, the Sackler family that did the opiates

02:09:20.300 with Oxycontin. It's like they killed hundreds of thousands of people in this country. Yeah.

02:09:26.140 They killed hundreds of thousands of human fucking beings and they didn't go to jail.

02:09:31.380 Yeah. It's, uh, it's unbelievable that, uh, you know, which is again, your passion is exactly my

02:09:37.240 passion when it comes to this. You know, we need to be able to come up with tools to combat this

02:09:41.800 because look, social media, the platforms, the different apps, it's not going away. We're not

02:09:46.280 going backwards. So let's, let's attack it from the front end. Let's, let's beat them at the punch.

02:09:50.440 And that's what my company has been doing. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm super excited because I think that is,

02:09:55.440 you know, a way that we can feel safe as a parent myself. I want my daughter to be able to,

02:10:00.080 to, to, uh, enjoy the, the, the technology that's there. It's part of her generation,

02:10:04.720 but I want her to be safe. And, and, and I want to be able to, you know, we're investing in this

02:10:10.220 to make sure people can be healthy, healthy and, and, and, and, and live life. You know,

02:10:15.180 for every story I can tell you, there's a dozen more of parents that have lost their children on

02:10:20.500 something as simple as I'm ordering this online. It got delivered to the house and I thought it was a

02:10:25.240 Vicodin and, and they woke up, well, they never woke up. You know, I met, I met a lady,

02:10:29.280 a lady a year or so ago and it's exactly that her daughter had was dealing with some, uh, you know,

02:10:34.100 recovering pain from, she was a gymnast and, uh, her friends were chatting online. She's like, well,

02:10:38.460 you can, you know, you can order this online. And, and she did. Mom went to bed. This got delivered,

02:10:44.300 uh, to the house. Um, and she woke up, went upstairs to find her daughter and she was dead,

02:10:50.660 you know, and, and she found the, the exchange on, on her phone, you know, and no parent should,

02:10:56.780 you know, it's tough enough just to imagine, uh, losing a child. But when you lose them because

02:11:02.220 of something like that, that could be prevented, or at least there could be safeguards.

02:11:08.800 There's gotta be, there's no way they can tell what kind of shit you like to look at and advertise

02:11:14.920 you bullshit, but they can't tell, they can't keep, uh, they can't have a little bit more efficiency

02:11:22.140 with figuring out who is able to reach out to children or who children are able to reach out

02:11:27.620 to. Now, I guess somebody could create and look, obviously I'm not arguing the other side of it,

02:11:33.000 that maybe there's like somebody could create a plat, but if somebody hasn't been online long

02:11:37.240 enough with a platform, then maybe they shouldn't be able to reach out to children or there should

02:11:41.060 just be much stricter things in place. It seems like, well, I don't know. I don't know enough about

02:11:46.000 it. It's a stark reminder that, you know, that there's evil out there and, uh, uh, and, and so,

02:11:51.600 uh, it's fucking winning. That's what it feels like sometimes. Yeah. And that's why we're invested

02:11:55.580 in this. I can tell you that there are platforms out there that will recruit teenagers. And this is

02:12:02.300 very prevalent, Arizona in the Phoenix area to get an SUV, get your mom and dad's SUV, um, drive down.

02:12:10.340 If you're interested to make a thousand bucks a person, you want to make $5,000, you know,

02:12:14.400 get an SUV DME here. And then that message disappears. Right. But they're now they're,

02:12:18.980 they're, they're messaging and they give them a pin drop and go pick up these five people.

02:12:23.220 Well, now these kids, and most of them are minors, 16, 17 years old. So they haven't been

02:12:27.340 driving very long. Now they're in mom and dad's SUV. They end up picking up 10 people in some remote

02:12:33.180 area near Douglas, Arizona. And they're told drive to Phoenix. And when you get to Phoenix, uh, DM me,

02:12:37.880 I'll give you a pin drop and don't stop for border patrol or cops. They're doing a hundred miles an hour

02:12:43.880 with 10 people in their car, top heavy. They don't know how to drive because they're young.

02:12:48.140 Anyway, they're rolling over. People are dying. They're T-boning, innocent civilians caught in

02:12:52.720 an intersection, killing people. This is happening every day. And they're using social, uh, media to,

02:13:00.620 to coordinate it. So the smugglers are not at risk because they're doing the job. Yeah. Burn the

02:13:07.160 account, burn the phone. They they're not, there's no, there's no overhead for them. Wow. They just

02:13:11.780 used mom's SUV. Oh, and by the way, if you were successful and you got to the drop-off location,

02:13:17.360 they're going to say, yeah, I've got your license plate. I know who you are. I'm not going to pay

02:13:22.840 you this time. You're not going to squeal because I know who you are. I know what school you go to.

02:13:27.360 I know what your mom drives the hooks in, man, the hooks. And yeah, there's stuff right there.

02:13:32.900 Yep. That happens. Migrants kill in pickup crashes, undocumented immigrants killed chase on

02:13:37.660 border that killed eight. Yeah. Wow. It's nuts. And you know, again, back to the solutions,

02:13:41.720 how do we fix it? So we, we, we attack it. We have to attack at the front, right? We still have

02:13:45.780 to secure that border, right? We've got to, we've got to plug the leak, not just what this,

02:13:50.280 the administration and what a lot of politicians like to give you buckets to bail the water out,

02:13:54.540 just fix the damn leak. Right. Right. Yeah. But if they fix the leak, then they won't have

02:13:59.360 something to fucking kick the ball around to use as a, uh, football. So we keep playing this game.

02:14:04.540 Yes. Yeah, exactly. What do you, well, yeah, if you're the board, if you were the,

02:14:09.040 you could make the choices, what would you do? Well, I'd finish what we started as far as securing

02:14:13.280 the border where it made sense, what the agents need. Well, I don't need, again, like I mentioned,

02:14:17.440 I don't need a wall 2000 miles. Right. Right. But I, where I need it, I need it. Right. I need the

02:14:21.480 technology. I need the, I need the agents. I need to put some of these safeguards back in place to

02:14:28.220 close loopholes in the existing policy. I would put immigration judges in mass to quick court

02:14:34.360 these people. Like we do sometimes in municipalities, you know, night courts, right. Where they just go

02:14:38.860 up there and see the judge and you, you know, so we can start then in the herd of, of this

02:14:44.500 backlog, right. So the legislative side need, you need help. Yeah. So, so is that legislative? Yeah.

02:14:49.260 So we need some laws, just the laws and the books are good. Right. But we need laws to hold

02:14:55.280 the executive accountable to pursue the laws and not have the too much latitude. So I would,

02:15:02.180 I would do some things and we need legislature to appropriate, to fund.

02:15:06.580 You need people to do the processing. Yeah. Well, so that, again, that's kind of one of those things

02:15:12.140 where if we, if we minimize the flow. Right. Then we could handle that. That hiring more people to

02:15:19.660 process is a bucket to bail water. It's not fixing the leak. Got it. Forcing them through the ports of

02:15:25.340 entry through better lawful pathways, right. Instituting that migrant protection protocol,

02:15:31.620 where are they going to wait in the country they first stepped in for asylum until they can get here

02:15:36.280 or until they can get those kinds of things. We can modernize and we can clean them up. A lot of

02:15:40.480 these policies were highly effective. They were a little clunky to start, but they were working.

02:15:45.580 They could have been smoothed out. That's what I would do. I would secure the border first and I would

02:15:49.700 start right away with working on the backlog and then the preventive piece, which would be

02:15:55.320 better pathways, but I would do it by not my circle of friends in Washington. I'd be out there

02:16:01.880 in every, all 50 States saying, what do you need to make? And I don't want to sound political, but

02:16:07.100 to continue to make this country great, to make sure that we are, you know, doing the right thing for

02:16:12.640 we the people and opening that door to our invited guests as we, as we need and see fit, right. We,

02:16:21.320 the country should determine who and what comes in here and how they come in, not just, you know,

02:16:27.200 come in and mass and we'll, we'll filter through it when we can. That's, that's no plan. Like you've

02:16:32.260 mentioned, we, that would be the plan. Secure, uh, uh, cleanup and preventive maintenance is what I

02:16:38.640 would do, you know? And there's people out there that, uh, that see that, you know? Um, and that,

02:16:45.020 that want to do good. They want to secure that. We want to find that balance. Like when you,

02:16:49.660 what do you mean when you say that? Like there's politicians, yeah, there's politicians out there

02:16:54.260 that I think see this, um, from, uh, from a, a common sense and compassion. Have you had some

02:16:59.900 that have showed up like that? Yeah. Well, uh, Bobby Kennedy, there's an example is a guy who's,

02:17:04.300 so we've had, well, let's talk about current. Oh, Bobby gives a fuck. It's

02:17:08.380 unbelievable. You look at Bobby and you look at other, the other candidates, you're like,

02:17:13.060 he, oh, he actually gives, he has thoughts and views on shit. Biden. I don't have, I don't know

02:17:18.200 any of his policies. Trump is very like one handed kind of in a lot of ways, you know,

02:17:22.440 he doesn't elaborate. Um, Biden is not, he's just not hell. It's just not fair what they keep doing

02:17:28.360 to that man as a senior citizen. I think it's sick. Um, but yeah, Bobby is dialed in.

02:17:36.560 Yeah. So I would say this has views. He has views on things. He'll give you reasons why he has,

02:17:42.820 you know, you can tell that he cares and I think he's open to, to whatever, but you can,

02:17:48.280 I just like to have anybody that gives a fuck. I think that's, that's the, you're going to see

02:17:52.480 in that video that there's actually a picture of me and Alan, what he posted, he posted a couple

02:17:56.140 things about with me on it today. I'll do this. I'll say this. They're in the current sitting

02:18:02.220 political pieces. There's for every one that gives a darn, there's a couple that don't care.

02:18:07.220 Right. You just, just, just, you just get it right. They're down there for photo op. They're,

02:18:10.560 they're nodding their heads. Um, it's like, they don't want to solve that as we just talked about

02:18:14.600 so they can pawn it. Right. Um, but then there's, again, there's, there's, there's yours truly right

02:18:20.120 there. So when you, yeah, I'm not trying to sound like a, I'm not some right wing nut job. I just,

02:18:26.500 that's the crazy part too. You start, they start brainwashing you to feel like you're some

02:18:31.080 like far right crazy person. If you just think there should be organization to the fucking program.

02:18:40.260 It's compassion and common sense is all we're talking about. Cause there's, yeah. I don't

02:18:43.800 want us to not have people here. I don't want us to not have diversity. I don't want, I would hate

02:18:49.120 that. I, but I don't want us to have people hiding in the desert who are scared, who don't know what

02:18:54.780 the fuck is going on, who don't know how they can, they don't have a path. Yeah. Both people need

02:19:00.060 immigrants to have a path. It seems like the, the current elected class, if you will. And I,

02:19:05.740 I'll just say the former, uh, politicians, current politicians, they, they, they present you with

02:19:12.580 false choices. Like you can, and we've talked about a little bit today, you either for it or

02:19:16.640 you're against it. You can't be one or the other. No, that's not true. It's not true. You know,

02:19:19.860 there is, there is some common ground and that's what I, you know, anybody to include

02:19:24.580 yourself. That's why we're here today that wants to learn facts, to learn about the border or come

02:19:30.200 down to the border and see what's going on. Not just a photo op, not just saying I've been there

02:19:36.880 to check a box, but literally go down there and spend some time, talk to the sheriffs, talk to the

02:19:44.480 mayors, talk to the agricultural leadership, the farm and ranchers, talk to the nonprofits,

02:19:49.720 the domestic violence shelter, talk to the superintendent of the hospital who had, has a $21 million

02:19:54.180 bill from illegal immigration that hasn't been paid yet, who's supposed to serve the community.

02:20:00.080 Talk to retired border patrol officials, talk to people that have lived there to find out what's

02:20:06.580 going on. Not what one TV show or news station says, or the other, uh, counterpoints it. Go down there.

02:20:13.960 And that's, that's, that's why I appreciate what, what Bobby did. He came down there and spent three

02:20:18.540 days. I spent maybe a couple hours with him, giving him my, my take, but that's longer than

02:20:24.640 anybody else has spent. That's longer than the president, the vice president and the secretary

02:20:28.380 goes often, but look, this is somebody, that's what we want. We want those choices. We want that

02:20:34.800 out of our leadership. Whether it goes anywhere or not, you come down there and you listen.

02:20:43.060 Yeah. And when you listen, you can pause and you can maybe learn and, you know, maybe make a

02:20:49.580 difference. And I think that's the critical piece as a country. As we talked about earlier, we want

02:20:54.920 choices. We want options. You know, we want to look at a menu. We don't want to be told what we're

02:20:59.080 going to do. And so many of our elected, I don't even want to call them elected leaders because

02:21:03.200 they're not leading. So many of the elected politicians, like you said, it's either one way or

02:21:07.980 the other. It's either so strong handed this way. And that's just not how we are. And so it's

02:21:13.280 refreshing to have people that are actually listening. People like Bobby, they come down

02:21:16.500 and say, Hey, I want to learn. Um, you know, uh, it's, it's a good thing. And I think we need more

02:21:21.140 of that to, to make this country better. Yeah. Amen, man. I think, um, yeah, I would love to see

02:21:27.280 Bobby get, uh, I don't know if most people know if he's on the balance. I think they're still figuring

02:21:31.500 that out, but it's Trump, Biden and Kennedy. Those are the options. I don't even think some

02:21:37.200 people realize that, uh, that Bobby Kennedy is an option. Yeah. You know, I tell you what,

02:21:42.340 I listened to him often. I've, I've had the pleasure. Look, his campaign reached out to me.

02:21:47.020 The others haven't. So I'm, you know, I'm well, I don't care who you are. If you want to listen and

02:21:51.220 you want to learn and you want to hear what I have to say, I'll be, I'll be happy to talk to you about

02:21:55.280 it. Um, yeah, I think he is the campaign still trying to get on some of the ballots, but at the end of

02:22:00.740 day, that's the big three that are going to be probably left when it's all said and done.

02:22:04.160 Don't, don't know how that's going to play out. Cause we still have a primary. There's still one

02:22:07.320 Republican candidate out there, two out there. Haley and Trump are out there. You got Biden and

02:22:12.580 you got Kennedy. Haley has some good border policies, doesn't she? Well, yeah, I think she's,

02:22:16.680 she's kind of, I don't know who's advising her. I, I'm certainly not. Um, uh, I think she's about

02:22:22.980 securing the border, but a lot more openness about it, you know, than, than, than, you know, uh,

02:22:30.160 than some of the others. I think that there's, uh, uh, I think at least from Trump and Kennedy,

02:22:36.760 it's like, Hey, we got to secure the border, you know? And I think Haley is saying the same thing,

02:22:40.640 but I, I just Biden's saying it now too, or their campaign. Well, it's that they're saying it. I'm

02:22:45.940 saying, yeah, the timing is, is, is impeccable, right? Right. The numbers at the lowest he's been

02:22:52.120 border is a number one. So it's definitely a last ditch effort. Um, I can't imagine they're going to

02:22:58.740 run. I can't imagine he's going to run for president. I just don't think it would be,

02:23:04.260 uh, humane is my argument. Um, I don't think it would be humane to do that to somebody, you know?

02:23:11.800 Yeah. Well, you know, what I will say is that candidates and campaigns are, uh, they,

02:23:16.740 they change and evolve over a campaign cycle. So we're still, I mean, yeah, we're months away,

02:23:21.900 but those are long months away. Anything can happen, uh, with whether it's, uh, the current

02:23:27.660 president or the, the, the other contenders, I just glad that we've got, you know, uh, uh,

02:23:33.180 another option out there, you know, I think that's, what's important. And, and, and again,

02:23:38.400 super smart guy. And, uh, you know, I wish him all the best and I, you know, I too, Bobby,

02:23:42.680 man. And I've always liked the, I like the underdog, you know, I like, I've always, um,

02:23:49.500 I like the underdog. It's fun to listen to him because he comes, he's smart on the, on the topics,

02:23:54.760 right. And you can't even fucking understand him half the time, but that is just a vocal.

02:23:58.200 Yeah. Some people don't realize that. Some people are like, he's drunk. I'm like, no,

02:24:01.000 no, that's, he has a bad, uh, it's quarter. Yeah. It, it, but you know what, when you listen

02:24:06.160 to him and he talks about it, look, he, he, he, he, he told me, he's like, I didn't see this

02:24:11.300 border issue. I thought it was some right wing deal. Right. Um, we don't have a country if we

02:24:16.840 don't have this board. I mean, he literally changed his mind in 72 hours of where he was coming

02:24:23.180 from. And to me, that's a win and that is successful. And that is also someone that is

02:24:31.040 showing compassion and common sense. And I've said that multiple times. I think that's what,

02:24:36.580 what we stand for when it comes down to this border. I agree. Common sense to secure it,

02:24:41.340 compassion, not only for our agents in our communities, but also the migrants. And he

02:24:44.880 sees that also wants to hold Mexico accountable and they, cause they've got, they've got a stake in

02:24:49.880 this claim too. Yeah. How was Mexico benefiting from, um, the current border security?

02:24:57.160 Well, you know, well, first of all, it'd be very interesting how much money transferred to Mexico.

02:25:03.840 Um, when, uh, Marcus and Blinken went down there between Christmas and new years to address the

02:25:08.820 issue. Um, cause all of a sudden we went from 10, 12,000 arrests a day to about 6,700 arrests a day.

02:25:14.820 So, um, Mexico. So you think maybe there could have been some sort of a payoff or something?

02:25:19.120 Oh, they're absolutely foreign aid to help support their, you know, uh, that's just money in the

02:25:23.620 coffers. Um, look, I want to make it very clear. The Mexican people are beautiful people. They are

02:25:29.920 God-fearing, hardworking. They are so, everyone that I've met and even some of the officials,

02:25:36.500 but the government of Mexico is very, very difficult to deal with. And I'll tell you that,

02:25:42.260 um, I think that a lot of the, uh, you know, obviously there's the cartel influence on things and,

02:25:47.760 uh, the, the, the, the amount of money that is coming through, um, this, that country through

02:25:56.640 smuggling and through just human beings transiting through Mexico to get to the United States is,

02:26:02.620 is astronomical. You know, when, when, when you, and, and so what I, what I will say is they

02:26:08.340 probably are getting some kind of financial support from the United States. Um, you're not hearing about

02:26:13.620 the caravans anymore, right? They're, they're being disrupted. I'm sure. I'm sure that's what

02:26:18.060 Mexico is doing is caravans of two, three, 4,000 at a time coming up from Guatemala. They get

02:26:23.880 dispersed and Mexico is, is taking some, um, some of the migrants that get returned and they're flying

02:26:31.060 them back to the interior. So they don't have an immediate, you know, um, like giving them, like

02:26:35.340 taking them. Yeah. Set them back like men's teas or whatever. Yeah. So if, yeah, so if I, yeah,

02:26:39.100 exactly. So if I caught you in San Diego and returned you in Tijuana, you just could come

02:26:43.420 right back. Right. Well, if I caught you in San Diego, returned you to Tijuana and Mexico flew

02:26:47.580 you to, uh, Guanajuato or down to Oaxaca, you got a whole, you got a whole nother journey to get back

02:26:54.620 up to the border. So that disrupts that smuggling cycle and gives us a little, so Mexico is cooperating

02:26:59.740 with that, but there, it ain't happening without a lot of money. So I would be, I'd be curious to how

02:27:04.240 much, uh, arrangements there in the state department under blinking, you know, there's state

02:27:08.520 department has so much money. Well, how about send them 5 billion? That's what I would do then

02:27:13.360 send them a decent amount and let's shut it down completely for a while. Yeah. Well, but I, yeah,

02:27:17.800 I don't know. Constitutionally, Mexico does not see immigration as, uh, they see that as a, as a,

02:27:23.640 as a human right. There's no laws preventing. So it's very, so they don't have any laws preventing

02:27:28.760 people from wanting to come here. They don't say, Hey, don't do that. Yeah. Right. Ah, right. So that,

02:27:33.220 that's a challenge, right? So they have a constitutional challenge. So they'd have to do things like we

02:27:37.680 would do use executive actions, as long as it's not considered unconscious. So they've had to,

02:27:42.480 they've had to navigate some things, but I'll tell you, they did it under president Trump

02:27:45.820 because of the different mindset in the white house, holding Mexico accountable. If you don't,

02:27:52.240 we will shut this down. I will tear a few. And Mexico all of a sudden complied to establish their

02:27:56.900 own humanitarian national guard and all those kinds of things. In fact, probably had the highest level of

02:28:01.360 cooperation I ever had with my Mexican counterparts. Um, that changed a lot under this administration.

02:28:06.300 Um, still good people, but they didn't have the pressures coming from Washington to Mexico city

02:28:11.940 to do anything. And, you know, I just, uh, yeah, it's just challenging, you know, to ask another

02:28:16.680 government, look, we should never be in the business of negotiating with another country for our own

02:28:20.720 border security, not as the American, not as the United States. I get it. Other countries have to do

02:28:24.660 that. That's why we have NATOs and things like that. But the United States of America should never

02:28:29.440 negotiate our security with another country. Not, not here on, in this hemisphere. Yeah. That's our,

02:28:35.780 that's the, we talked about it. We hinted a little bit. The government's responsibility is

02:28:40.080 life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. You do that through a strong domestic security,

02:28:44.520 a strong international security in the sense of our military to protect us. And, and I'm not saying

02:28:49.140 going into wars, but just protect us and then a strong economy. So we can pursue happiness. Doesn't say

02:28:54.880 we're going to be happy, but if the government would just focus on those two things and they

02:28:58.660 get the heck out of our lives, we'd be a lot, a lot more, you know, fun. There's some safeguards

02:29:03.220 like we talked about that that's the protection piece, but at the end of the day, uh, where does

02:29:08.220 all that money go to? Right. I know that's crazy. That's what's baffling. And it's still at the same

02:29:12.480 time, we're able to sit in a place that has heat and cool and, and have water and, you know,

02:29:18.740 and food and know that we have, can go eat when we get out of here. And I know that there's a lot

02:29:22.420 of people that's far less fortunate than that in the world. Um, but I, again, go back to the fact

02:29:28.860 that if we are healthy and safe and organized, then we as individuals can best service other people

02:29:41.280 who want to come to this country to stay or to visit, um, or to work. Um, we can better have a plan

02:29:49.060 of how to make that happen, um, as a group, but then as individuals, we can, um, we can service

02:29:55.780 that and be a part of that, which makes you feel like you're part of immigration and you were,

02:30:02.300 and you were grateful to share your country with other people. Um, and that is a sense of pride,

02:30:10.480 which gives you a sense of purpose, you know, and a lot of that disappears when, um, there's not a

02:30:16.720 program in place. I think, I think you're right. You know, the, the, the sense of purpose and

02:30:20.960 contributing is important to just, just living a good life. Right. And if we can get our act

02:30:26.380 together as a country and we can, can contribute and, and number one, clean up our own backyard,

02:30:31.700 but then also help others can contribute to others to come. Oh yeah, we can do. I just,

02:30:37.480 we can do a lot more from a healthy place. It's hard. It's hard when you're not, when you,

02:30:42.300 when you, when you're in fear, it's really hard to, uh, to do your best and have just raised kids

02:30:49.180 that are, it's just, it's not a, it's not good. Um, and I love, you know, I love you having this

02:30:55.700 platform and I think it's so important to be able to have these types of conversations because when

02:31:02.220 you've got a status, you know, um, a celebrity status, it's got a, a podcast or you're a, you know,

02:31:08.380 a rock star or you're a, an athlete, you know, you, you, you have an audience that is not,

02:31:14.980 you know, doesn't always hear some of the things that are really going. So when you can

02:31:19.300 use this platform that you have to talk about what's impacting people every day,

02:31:24.520 that's impacting this country, I commend you. I mean, like, look, I, I, I love it when I see

02:31:30.680 people like yourself, you know, having these types of conversations. It's so, it's so important

02:31:35.760 because a lot of your audience, you know, they've heard about it, you know, indirectly,

02:31:40.400 but now they're actually hearing it today about this is the real problem. This is what you're

02:31:47.260 seeing on TV is real and there's not a solution in place. There was a solution. It wasn't perfect,

02:31:53.680 but it was working. But now it feels like there's nothing. Yeah. And, and the plan,

02:31:58.020 and we need a plan. We just need a plan. You need a plan. You do that when you hit your,

02:32:01.880 your app to figure out how you're going to drive the grocery store,

02:32:04.400 but we won't do it to chart what's best for our country.

02:32:07.720 I know it just, yeah, we need to feel safe so we can operate well. And I don't think it's a thing

02:32:12.460 where it's like, I don't want anybody to come over here. I think it's like, um, like, Hey,

02:32:18.880 let's get this. We think should be in an organized space. You, so you can come over here and we can be

02:32:24.900 here and everything can work well for the better of the people coming and the better of the people

02:32:31.800 that are already here. Yeah. Um, I would say that add to that foot stomp that, you know,

02:32:37.340 like secure our border, recruit and attain the best and brightest that we need. Right. Let's,

02:32:44.080 let's have, let's invite people and let's have people sign up for the guest list. So we know

02:32:48.320 who's coming, right. Let's have, let's have consequences for those that are taking advantage

02:32:53.040 of those people that are violating the system. And then let's have full transparency about what's

02:32:58.940 really happening. So people can make informed decisions in their life. People need to know

02:33:02.440 what's going on on our borders because it's impacting them. Not look when the, when the

02:33:06.780 administration is more about securing their narrative than securing the border. That's a

02:33:10.780 problem. That's what I see as the issue. Yeah. I'm sorry to cut you off, but that was something

02:33:14.120 that was, that was very, very important that we have to have a plan. We have to, we have to

02:33:18.820 create the invite list. And we also have let people apply to be on that list as well. And just

02:33:23.040 know who's coming in and we control that. Yeah. And the fact that there's only so many

02:33:27.380 visas, it all just, the thing needs a huge overhaul and people know it. And I'm just

02:33:31.380 amazed. I wish I could see a little bit deeper. I don't know what's past the first few shovels

02:33:38.640 of dirt, you know, what's fucking holding the roots of some of this stuff in place that

02:33:44.100 makes people want to keep it the way it is. Some of that I'm a little foggy on. But man,

02:33:49.860 I want to ask you one more thing. If you go to like the border, like you're going to Canada

02:33:53.280 or something. Um, and they, when they look up your stuff on the computer, do they know

02:33:59.820 everything right when you go through there? Like they border patrol, like, yeah. So if

02:34:03.640 you're, if you're going lawfully in and out of Canada, they're going to, they're running

02:34:07.860 your, your car, your driver's license, your passport with your, your drive, your vehicle

02:34:13.180 license plate. Yeah. All that data. It's all public information that's in there. Oh, so they

02:34:16.900 just have all of that. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's all in the databases, which is interesting

02:34:20.280 because in New York, going back to sanctuary cities and policies, they refuse to share

02:34:25.760 DMV, uh, motor vehicle information with the federal agents. So it's difficult for agents

02:34:31.840 sometimes to run license checks on vehicles. How do you know who the smuggler is or who

02:34:36.860 this person is that may be going through the border? I wonder why they did that though.

02:34:40.600 It's just because it was just seen as bad, but yeah. So if you go into Canada and if you

02:34:45.220 go into Mexico, if you're crossing through a lawful port of entry, whether it's an air, land,

02:34:49.760 or seaport, when you present your identification, it's going through everything that we've got

02:34:54.920 on you. That is a public record. So your, your, your driver's license there. Um, it's always

02:34:59.940 curious because like, have you been here before and you're like, Oh shit, do they know if I've

02:35:04.200 been here before? Do I know? Yeah. They'll, they, they know your crossings. Uh, there's a,

02:35:09.480 I'm not going to get into it. Well, it's not, it's not anything that's, you know, you know,

02:35:13.300 a secret or anything like that, but yeah, we have, uh, we have records checks to know if

02:35:16.700 you've crossed in the last 72 hours or how often your vehicle is crossed. And same thing

02:35:20.980 there's visa entry exit requirements in law. So we know when you come in and when you leave

02:35:26.960 the country, even if you fly a domestic, sometimes there's a, you know, you can take a, they'll

02:35:31.280 take a picture just to track you. You can voluntarily opt out of that kind of stuff, but

02:35:36.340 yeah, it's, it's part of it. You know, um, what, one last question, why isn't the same

02:35:41.660 problem at the Canadian border? That's at the Southern border. Who's to say it's not,

02:35:45.940 it's just not volume. Right. So let's talk about that. Um, uh, uh, about 90% of the Canadian

02:35:52.880 population lives within a hundred air miles in the United States, all your major cities

02:35:56.540 in, cause it's so much tundra and wide open land. Yeah. Shout out Windsor. Yeah. Every,

02:36:01.040 every major organization, terrorist organization, affiliate like that has some kind of, you know,

02:36:09.720 uh, uh, tie to those, all the cities in the world pretty much, but in that Canadian population,

02:36:15.880 uh, in those cities. Right. So there is a threat on the Northern border differences. It's not sexy

02:36:22.080 enough because the volume, and I can't recall off the top of my head, but I think there was probably

02:36:26.080 only like eight to 10,000 arrests on the Northern border compared to the 2.4 million on the Southern

02:36:32.400 border. So because of all the focus on the Southern border, we've had to shift resources internally

02:36:38.340 within the border patrol. So about, and I want to say too much, but during 21 and 22, about half of

02:36:46.440 our Northern border agents were down on the Southern border. So that creates a vulnerability

02:36:49.960 and go back to morale and resiliency. So in the frozen North, you know, you only have a few months

02:36:58.160 that you can get your house and your life prepared for the winter. So when our agents are being deployed

02:37:02.700 down South, they're left their family behind. It just creates a tough cycle. So by not fixing

02:37:08.240 the Southern border, you've created vulnerabilities on the Northern border and our coastal, which

02:37:11.620 includes a New Orleans sector, Miami sector, and Puerto Rico sector, those same resources

02:37:16.300 were shifted to the Southwest border as well. So we're creating vulnerabilities on our coast.

02:37:20.800 So without plugging that leak on the Southern border, you're creating vulnerabilities everywhere

02:37:26.060 else. So, I mean, we got that right sized a little bit better than we were. So we're not

02:37:31.280 as vulnerable up North as we were a few years ago, we've gotten better, but it's still something

02:37:35.400 we have to consider. So it does, if we fix the Southern border, which this latest bill that

02:37:40.940 failed was all about the Southern border, there's still a Northern border threat.

02:37:44.260 Yeah.

02:37:45.280 I mean, again, we, we, we, you have to think broadly on this.

02:37:49.400 Yep. You got to think broadly and you got to stay positive too. I know there's been a lot of like,

02:37:52.700 kind of like, it sounds dour here and there. It's a lot of looking at it and, um, and you know,

02:37:58.940 and even, uh, we got to stay hopeful though. And that's where I'm at with it. And, um, yeah,

02:38:04.540 Chris, I got to hit an AA meeting, man. Thank you so much for your time, dude.

02:38:07.120 You got it, brother. This was great. This is good. Thank you for talking about it. I hope the

02:38:10.480 audience, you know, uh, appreciates it and just stop and think, man, if we can cause somebody to

02:38:15.100 pause a little bit, to just take it all in and think about, Hey, we can do better. I think,

02:38:19.480 I think this is a win for the, for the show today. And, uh, you know, I, I really appreciate you,

02:38:23.500 you know, having me on and talking about something. This is a serious issue. Um, but, uh, you know,

02:38:28.480 it, it, it can be solved, but it's going to, we got to roll up our sleeves and get it done.

02:38:33.240 Yeah. Awesome. Chris Clem, thank you so much, man. Yeah. I appreciate your time, brother.

02:38:37.240 I appreciate it, man. This is great.

02:38:38.060 Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be

02:38:45.240 cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this

02:38:53.060 peace of mind. I found I can feel it in my bones, but it's going to tell you.

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - March 04, 2024

E486 Border Patrol Chief Chris Clem

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