00:13:07.360Now, it's going to take a little bit of time to get the bill across across the finish line, but I'm confident we'll do it.
00:13:12.260And I will say it really underscores something we've said on verdict many times, which is the most important factor in securing the border.
00:13:21.140And this is what Tom said just a minute ago is a policy decision.
00:13:25.140And it is a decision. What happens when you apprehend an illegal immigrant?
00:13:29.600And if the answer is. You put them on a plane and you fly them back home, they all have cell phones.
00:13:36.040They pick up their phones and they call home and they say, don't come. They're not letting you stay.
00:13:40.460And the flip side is true. If if when you apprehend them, you let them go, you say, what city do you want to go to?
00:13:45.900And you put them on a plane, you put them on a bus and you let them go in every city in America, which is what Joe Biden was doing.
00:13:51.560Again, they all have phones. They pick up the phone. They call their friends and family and the numbers skyrocket.
00:13:57.740And so when President Trump left office the first time, he had produced the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years.
00:14:07.120That's what Joe Biden inherited. It immediately skyrocketed to the worst rate of illegal immigration in history.
00:14:14.200Joe Biden allowed 12 million of the illegal immigrants to come into this country.
00:14:17.740And and regular listeners of verdict will recall I predicted I said we will see the numbers plummet and it won't take a year.
00:14:27.420It won't even take six months. It will happen immediately because on day one catch and release is going to end and we're going to see the numbers plummet.
00:14:35.180Now, all that being said, Tom, let me ask you honestly, I will admit I predicted loudly that the numbers would plummet.
00:14:43.080I'll confess I didn't think they'd drop over ninety nine percent or are you I'm surprised at just how massive the success is.
00:14:51.600Are you are you a little bit surprised or no? I'm I'm I'm not surprised about the success.
00:14:57.140I'm surprised how fast that happened. When President Trump, when he called me, asked me to be the board, of course, I didn't hesitate.
00:15:02.580I came back and the first meeting he had, he asked me, how long would it take you down to secure the border?
00:15:07.680I said, sir, I need I need at least 120 days.
00:15:10.960He says, well, look at 90. I said, sir, how to respect 120 days to even push net.
00:15:16.100We did this seven weeks, seven weeks. Number's already down.
00:15:20.080Yep. And you're exactly right. Everything you said was right.
00:15:23.600But I want to add one thing. When Joe Biden opened that border up, he's the first president in the history of this nation who came into office and unsecured a border.
00:15:32.580On purpose. This wasn't mismanagement. This wasn't incompetence.
00:15:35.920He ran on open borders. And that's exactly what he did.
00:15:39.400You know, so when you tell the whole world you can enter this country legally, don't worry about it.
00:15:43.220We're going to release you anyways. And when you got a secretary of my orchestra on ice, you can't arrest somebody for being here legally unless they got a serious criminal conviction.
00:15:51.240The whole world's going to come. You can cross the border illegally. You get released in 24 hours.
00:15:56.140We won't give you a free plane ticket to the city of your choice.
00:15:59.120We're going to put you in a free hotel room. We're going to give you three meals a day.
00:16:02.580We're going to give you free medical attention. And guess what? Hang out for 120 days.
00:16:06.600We're going to give you a work authorization. The very reason they came here, not because of asylum, because they wanted a job.
00:16:11.500So Biden did what he did on purpose. And President Trump came back in seven weeks.
00:16:18.080Again, seven weeks, did what Joe Biden couldn't do or wouldn't do.
00:16:22.060Repeat the numbers you said about how many illegals are in the U.S. right now who have criminal convictions.
00:16:28.660And to be clear, these are convictions for crimes other than crossing illegally into the country.
00:16:32.760Every illegal has committed that crime.
00:16:34.820But but but how many have convictions for murder, for rape, for other crimes other than crossing the border illegally?
00:16:43.620I mean, that is a stunning number. And and and what you're saying, and I agree with you, is is that Joe Biden deliberately chose we're going to leave murderers here.
00:16:55.280We're going to leave rapists in America. We're going to leave child molesters in America.
00:17:00.160We're not going to send ICE to arrest them. We're not going to pick them up.
00:17:02.900We're not going to deport them, that that they put partisan politics above protecting American families, about protecting our kids.
00:17:10.760And that's why I woke up four years pissed off every morning, President Trump, when he called me, asked me to come back.
00:17:17.560And he said to me, we've been you've been bitching about for four years.
00:17:20.240Want to come back and fix it? And I did, because I knew every morning I wake up in center.
00:17:25.980I knew every morning when I woke up, how many children died crossing the border last night, how many women got sexually assaulted, how many people on terrorist watches got across the border, how many women and children were sex trafficking in this country, how many billions of dollars in the cartels make, how many Americans died in the last 24 hours from fentanyl coming across the open border.
00:17:44.700For four years, I was pissed off. President Trump came back.
00:17:47.920And like I said, in seven weeks, we had a border down 90 percent in seven weeks.
00:17:52.140So, you know, like you said, it was a matter of president, a matter of enforcing the law.
00:17:57.360You know, I'll tell you, Senator Cruz, and you know, every time I see you in a meeting, every time I see you in a meeting, I call you out.
00:18:03.740I call you out because you've been the tip of the spear on this thing.
00:18:06.680I appreciate your work in this. You're from Texas.
00:18:08.780You know, and God bless Governor Abbott.
00:18:11.280And Governor Abbott, he was more of a Secretary of Homeland Security, more of if he's ever been or ever thought of being.
00:18:23.120Thank you for being the tip of the spear.
00:18:25.160I see you everywhere wanting to secure a border, and you're fighting hard for me, and you're fighting hard for the men and women of the Border Patrol.
00:18:30.900You're fighting hard for the men and women of ICE.
00:18:33.360I love each and every one of those men who put their lives on the line for this country every day, men and women.
00:19:00.780There are Americans, and there are a significant number of Americans who are alive today because a violent criminal did not cross the border, was not released, and didn't murder them.
00:19:13.640There are women who have not been raped because you've stopped the Biden practice of releasing rapists.
00:19:19.520There are children, and the number of children who haven't been physically and sexually assaulted by human traffickers, it is already, I think, well into the thousands.
00:19:41.560Because President Trump came in, and because you've been, the borders are implementing it, and secured the border, and those kids are no longer being trafficked.
00:19:50.340That is a profound legacy in just four or five months.
00:19:59.280Secure the border, run the largest deportation officers I've ever seen, and find these children.
00:20:04.060The Biden administration, over half a million children were smuggled in this country, separated from their families, smuggled in this country, and put in the hands of sponsors, many unvetted sponsors.
00:20:15.140The last administration lost track of 300,000 of them.
00:20:18.300President Trump's committed to finding as many as he can.
00:20:21.000We've already found over 7,500 of them.
00:20:23.760Some of them were perfectly safe with families.
00:20:26.020Some were perfectly safe, and some weren't.
00:20:28.060Example, just there for yesterday, a 14-year-old little girl, already sex trafficked, was pregnant, living with two men who were trafficking there.
00:20:35.620Well, they're going to prison, and we're helping that little girl.
00:20:38.100So we're going to rescue every one of these little girls and make sure that they're safe.
00:20:42.740Because many of them are going to be okay with family members.
00:20:45.060They just didn't respond to call-ins or so forth.
00:20:47.540But many of them, I guarantee you, I've been doing this for over 40 years, many of them are in sex trafficking.
00:20:51.980Many of them are in forced labor, living a life of hell every day.
00:20:55.820We're committed to finding every one of these little children and making sure they're safe.
00:22:00.940Well, they're dangerous for everybody because in a sanctuary city, it means I don't have access to jail, arrest a bad guy, public safety threat, and the safety and security of a jail.
00:22:10.440Were the aliens safe, the officers safe, and the public safe?
00:22:13.520Like, when sanctuary cities knowingly release a public safety threat back in the street, it certainly puts the community at risk.
00:22:20.540It even puts the alien at risk because anything can happen during a street arrest.
00:22:24.220And it puts the officers at great risk because now we've got to arrest a criminal alien public safety threat on his turf.
00:22:29.680We have access to who knows what weapons.
00:22:54.140If you're an elected mayor, elected city council person, or elected governor, your number one responsibility is the safety and security of your neighborhoods, your communities.
00:23:04.920ICE has been clear from the beginning with President Trump.
00:23:08.660We're going to prioritize public safety threats and national security threats.
00:23:12.460Why will you not help us make your communities safer?
00:23:18.580And sanctuary cities want to argue, well, we're a sanctuary city because we want victims and witnesses of crime if they're illegally in the United States to feel comfortable coming to the law enforcement without fear of working with ICE.
00:24:23.900Are they going to know any release of terrorists?
00:24:25.800Then we're going to go out to prosecution.
00:24:26.960So it's about to get a lot tougher, and it's the right thing to do.
00:24:31.700Well, and let me ask you, how worried are you that there are terrorists who came across the southern border in the last four years that are out there and that are planning acts of terror in the United States right now?
00:25:09.840And some of these are going to be people from a terrorist-sponsored country.
00:25:13.740Under Joe Biden, we arrest over 400 people on terrorist swaths that come to the southwest border.
00:25:18.340If you don't think a single one of the two million Godwais didn't come from a country sponsoring terror, didn't come here to do us harm, then you're just crazy.
00:25:25.480As you know, it was, what was it, just a few months ago we arrested eight that were planning a terrorist attack, a Russian-type terrorist attack in the United States.
00:25:34.680Luckily, the intelligence community called them on some chat, and we were able to arrest them.
00:25:55.900Well, and as you know, Chris Wray, the former director of the FBI, every few months would come to Congress,
00:26:00.820and he would do everything but set off an alarm and bang a drum to say we are at major risk of a terrorist attack from the open borders.
00:26:09.560Hamas and Hezbollah have declared jihads on America.
00:26:13.040As you know, the Border Patrol under Joe Biden was advised be on the lookout for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic jihad terrorists coming across the southern border.
00:26:23.280And one of the things, Tom, you said that was really important, of the 12 million illegal immigrants that came under Joe Biden,
00:26:28.300and roughly 2 million of those were gotaways.
00:26:30.860That's by far the most troubling of all those folks.
00:26:34.140The other 10 million are people who were apprehended, and apprehended in many instances is the wrong term,
00:26:39.840because as you know, and I've spent a lot of time down on the southern border.
00:26:43.820I almost always go out on midnight patrol with the Border Patrol agents when I'm there.
00:26:49.340Apprehended doesn't even characterize what they were doing most nights.
00:26:52.400People would cross the border, and they'd go look for a Border Patrol agent and actively turn themselves in.
00:26:58.280Because the result would be that Joe Biden would say, where do you want to go, and would fly them to wherever they wanted to be.
00:27:04.720Literally, the Biden administration was the last mile of the human trafficking network.
00:27:09.100But, Tom, what you said is exactly right.
00:27:10.960Those 2 million gotaways are much more likely to be violent criminals, much more likely to be murderers or rapists or child molesters,
00:27:20.140much more likely to be MS-13 gang members, much more likely to be terrorists.
00:27:25.280And that's the population that is most worrisome.
00:27:28.040And speaking of MS-13 gang members, just when I thought politics could not get weirder,
00:27:35.080the Democrats have decided to go all in, making their central party platform be that we should admit more illegal aliens,
00:27:43.940and in particular, we want more Venezuelan gang members, MS-13 gang members here.
00:27:48.160And they've decided that Kilmar Abrego-Garcia is their poster child for the Democrat Party.
00:29:37.500He is a certified MS-13 member, not just by ICE, by local police departments, intelligence reports, immigration judges, and the country of El Salvador, says he's a MS-13 member.
00:29:49.920This country, his wife, his neighborhood is a lot safer because he's locked up.
00:29:55.280I want to go back to accountability for a second, Tom.
00:29:57.480And I want to ask you, there are a lot of people that believe that there were laws that were broken deliberately in the last administration.
00:31:56.360And no-inspected terrorists, they've got no open net anymore.
00:31:59.500Now that we've got the border secure, every single border agent is on the line, on patrol, doing his national security duty.
00:32:06.840Under Joe Biden, it was an average, most days, an average, 70%.
00:32:11.82070%, 70% of agents were no longer on patrol.
00:32:15.960They were changing diapers, making baby formula, making hospital runs.
00:32:19.440The last time I went down there, before the election, I talked to hundreds of board players and told them, hang on, hang on, change is coming.
00:32:25.240I really think President Trump's going to win.
00:32:27.220But they told me, no, we're sick of being tourist agents.
00:33:15.040Look, that's what you sign up in the job.
00:33:18.380And they were sitting there just shuffling paperwork they were processing and just running a revolving door to try to release as many illegal immigrants as fast as possible.
00:33:29.400That's what Mayorkas viewed his job is accelerate illegal immigration, not stop it, but make it go more quickly.
00:33:37.160Let me ask you, Tom, you mentioned fentanyl.
00:33:39.260What do we know about the numbers of fentanyl traffic over the first four months of the Trump administration?
00:33:45.540There's been a decrease, and I've got from three or four different sources, the percentage of the decrease is different from every source.
00:33:53.300The problem is the CDC doesn't have good metrics on fentanyl.
00:33:57.620But look, across the country, you can see the decrease in fentanyl.
00:34:01.180Fentanyl is being seized on the southern border.
00:34:04.520And the metrics, and that's maybe something you all can work on up there in the Senate.
00:34:10.160And CDC needs to track this more accurately.
00:34:16.080Like I said, you've got a number of deaths reported by states.
00:34:19.160You've got a number of deaths reported by CDC.
00:34:41.880So one of the things we've talked about on this podcast, in 2018, the Mexican drug cartels made roughly $500 million from human trafficking.
00:34:52.020Last year, the drug cartels made over $13 billion from human trafficking.
00:35:03.320Do you have any visibility on what has happened to the drug cartels' revenue?
00:35:08.460Because one of the worst consequences of what Biden's open border did is it turned these vicious, murderous, transnational criminal organizations into incredibly wealthy powerhouses, and it put huge resources in their pockets.
00:35:24.540Do you have any data on what's happened to their revenues?
00:35:27.460Well, one of the best things President Trump did was designate a terrorist organization because these cartels have killed more Americans than every terrorist organization in the world combined.
00:35:36.160We knew that's why there's so much violence in Mexico over the last four years.
00:35:41.440Cartels were fighting each other for control of the plazas.
00:35:44.760Because they're making record amounts of money in smuggling people, record amount of money in trafficking women and children, and a record amount of money in moving dope across that border.
00:35:53.060Now, with the border secure, we're hitting them where it hurts.
00:35:56.120Smuggling's down, both drugs and people, trafficking's down.
00:36:01.500So that's why the latest intelligence reports I see, they're trying to produce and push more fentanyl into Asian and European nations because their market here in the United States has been so brutally attacked.
00:36:14.100I wish what would happen is that Mexico would agree with President Trump to let us help them take the cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth.
00:36:22.600Because right now, like the Jalisco cartel, they're in 44 countries around the globe.
00:36:38.460A lot of the corruption is forced corruption.
00:36:41.160Because you're a police officer in Mexico, you're making, you know, $400 a month.
00:36:45.740But a Mexican cartel comes up and offers you $10,000, look the other way, and you're going to take it, or they're going to kill you and your family.
00:36:51.240I think Mexico would be a much safer, a much more prosperous country if they let President Trump help them wipe the cartels off the face of the earth.
00:37:02.900A lot of people don't realize, particularly those on the left, that what Joe Biden and the Democrats did, it wasn't just horribly cruel to the American people.
00:37:11.660It was horribly cruel to Mexican nationals in Mexico.
00:37:16.140Turning these vicious criminals into the most powerful economic force in Mexico has increased the murder rate, the crime rate, the kidnapping rate.
00:37:29.660I visited with a Mexican mayor of a town on the other side of the border, and I'm not going to say which mayor because he told me in confidence because he was afraid.
00:37:38.800But he said in his town they had had over 3,000 disappearances, just people, Mexican nationals living in Mexico who just ran afoul of the cartel, and they just disappear, and they find mass graves.
00:37:53.720And the suffering and murder and kidnapping that has happened in Mexico because of the Democrats' political decision I think was cruel and horrible, and Tom, you're exactly right, that the U.S. military can take out the cartels.
00:38:50.620We saw just this week that New Jersey Democrat Congresswoman LaMonica McIver was charged for assaulting law enforcement at an ICE facility.
00:39:01.700Tell us how important that is, and what do you think about the fact that charges were brought for assault?
00:39:07.900We saw during the Biden administration repeatedly law enforcement, Customs Border Patrol, ICE agents were subject to physical assault.