Bad Hombres ft. DHS Secretary Chad Wolf
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
194.9841
Summary
Ted Cruz sits down with the Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad W. Wolf, to discuss the recent ICE facility siege in Portland, Oregon, and the lack of support from local law enforcement in the wake of it.
Transcript
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A crisis at the border, a crisis within the borders,
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and we are lucky enough to have taken a little bit of time
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out of the day of the man who has to deal with all of it,
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the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security,
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And, Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for taking the time out.
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Let's begin all the way on the West Coast in Portland.
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is very different than what we see anywhere else in the country.
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We have a community that has fostered an environment of violence in Portland.
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This goes back to 2018, where we had an ICE facility,
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a DHS facility, set siege to for about 28 days.
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because there's a history here that sets the stage.
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and we had to send in federal law enforcement officers.
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We had to send in a contingent of DHS officers,
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provided egress, entry and exit from that facility
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There was Molotov cocktails thrown at the facility.
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Right, so we've got about five federal facilities
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which is where 95% of the violence has taken place.
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which is really when all this started in Portland.
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Those usually occur between 6 and 7 o'clock at night,
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And about how many people are we talking typically?
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There's a variety of different groups out there.
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but there are other names that have gone around.
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I remember, in fact, I think I commented on Twitter
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that Portland was quite peaceful while Seattle had this autonomous zone.
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And it was like, wow, when Portland thinks you're doing a bad job in law enforcement,
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And it seems after the Chaz chop whatever was disbanded,
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that seems to be about the time Portland got a lot worse.
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Yeah, what we saw over the course of June was progressively getting more and more violent.
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We started sending federal protective service officers to that courthouse
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And what is a federal protective service officer?
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is a component of the Department of Homeland Security.
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They secure about 9,000, almost 9,000 federal facilities,
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So these are law enforcement officers that are protecting federal buildings.
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but it's also maybe your Social Security Administration is there.
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It's where federal benefits are exercised in any given city, state.
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And they largely do that with a contract force,
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And I guess there's a long history of violence against federal buildings.
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Obviously, Ted Kaczynski blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma was horrific.
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deployed federal resources to federal facilities
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because there was violence directed at federal facilities.
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and I think you've drawn a good distinction here
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and then these violent anarchists who show up at night.
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We've been told, though, this is a grassroots movement,
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These are violent individuals, violent criminals,
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Anywhere from 500 at the height to about 5,000.
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So these are 5,000 individuals that are outside of a courthouse.
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and they barricaded our folks inside the courthouse.
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They use city streets to come to that facility,
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and then they will stay there for several hours
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while the city police, the state police, did nothing.
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Well, this brings up an important question, too,
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They just don't know what they're talking about.
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No, nobody in politics would ever say something
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if they didn't know what they were talking about.
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gives us the ability not only to protect our facilities,
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that we see that are damaging our facilities off property.
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So this idea that you can damage a federal facility
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because state and local law enforcement refused to.
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you see some fires and people pulling on fences,
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would be bricks being thrown at law enforcement officers.
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you see being thrown at law enforcement officers
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as they come out and try to protect the facility.
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You're saying people are hitting police officers
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Different injuries to law enforcement officers.
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About over 100 officers have individually been injured.
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We see a little different violence in different cities,
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whether it's Chicago, Kansas City, Albuquerque,
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but Portland is very different than any other city.
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come to a fence line around a federal courthouse
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That's just a pointer, like pointing at someone?
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There's some pretty powerful lasers they're using.
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they will shine the green lasers in their eyes.
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And unfortunately, we have about three officers
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that are going to have some probably permanent damage.
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but that's what we're hearing at the moment, yes.
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Okay, so it's not, I mean, I can see people thinking,
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and you've got three who are seriously injured.
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We've given them some eyewear that protects against that,
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but this is a new tactic from these individuals
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you have someone point a laser and it blinds an officer,
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I mean, is that part of what they're trying to do?
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We've seen barbecues being tossed over the fence
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I got to say, in Texas, those are fighting words.
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Commercial-grade fireworks are being thrown in.
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And so as those explode several inches from officers,
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Yeah, and this is not somebody lighting a black cat.
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Mr. Secretary, the scene that you are describing,
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and I think the scene that a lot of us have seen
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I've been saying that for almost over a month now,
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it's not a few protesters who are getting angry
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These are violent individuals that are organized.
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This is an organized entity here that is doing this.
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Have the politicians let them actually do their job?
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and I basically put any resource at the department
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You know, for them, as they addressed the violence,
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And if you'd left Portland, what would have happened?
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So you're saying what the mayor and governor were saying
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and let the mob burn the courthouse to the ground?
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Well, you know, this ties into the same strategy
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And DHS has been a particular object of those criticisms.
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So we have about 240,000 employees across the enterprise.
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that you see as you get on commercial aircraft.
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You know, when they do the groping at the stands,
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I mean, I'm like, look, if you're going to get it,
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As long as we don't have any incidents in the skies,
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So what's the difference between Customs and Border Protection and ICE?
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Southwest border, northern border, border security.
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So as you come to a port of entry and you're legally coming to the U.S.,
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you're going to have to go through several officers and go through a process.
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So they do not only legal but illegal entry into the U.S.
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We have both ICE, E-R-O, which is our removal operations.
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So these are individuals that will go into communities, identify criminals,
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identify other individuals that have no legal right to be in the U.S. and remove them.
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You've got ICE officers going in, arresting them.
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The large majority of, I would say, targets that we get are actually from individual jails and courthouses.
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So it's individuals that probably have gotten picked up on another criminal charge
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come to find out they're illegally here in the U.S.
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We would then go in, ascertain them, and then start removing proceedings.
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And there are now widespread calls among one political party to abolish that entire enforcement agency.
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We have Homeland Security Investigations, which does transnational criminal organizations, drug trafficking.
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They do a variety of national security missions that are part of ICE.
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So part of what they want to abolish are criminal investigators protecting communities from a variety of threats.
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So I think it's an interesting arc of development because a couple of years ago, the Democrats seized upon abolish ICE.
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It started off with a few kind of fringe characters, and then it expanded.
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And some of what you guys faced in Portland with Ted Wheeler refusing to protect the ICE facilities
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was a manifestation back then that they were saying, get rid of ICE.
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That's now transmogrified into abolish all police, that it's not just ICE,
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but it's anyone with a badge and a gun is apparently now the bad guy.
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So Nancy Pelosi has called your officers stormtroopers.
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Well, she's not only called them stormtroopers.
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I heard them being referred to as the Gestapo or thugs as well.
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I've called on each of those members of Congress that have said those terms to apologize to the men and women of DHS.
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Get up every day, put on a badge, put on a uniform, protect their communities.
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They're federal cops, but they're law enforcement officers protecting us.
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And to call them stormtroopers, to invoke that kind of imagery, is just shameful.
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Because that's the language they're saying is apparently you're now kidnappers.
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So it's, again, I think it's individuals that don't understand what our mission is.
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So there in Portland, because you did not have state or you didn't have local law enforcement making arrests.
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So night after night after night, hundreds of individuals are committing criminal acts with no consequence.
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So we have the ability to go out and arrest individuals.
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And we started doing that within a two to three block radius of the courthouse.
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And then that's when, you know, a number of individuals said, well, how can you do that?
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You're making this point about Nancy Pelosi and a lot of other Democrats in the House.
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They're going after abolish ICE, abolish law enforcement.
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But there's another very hot political issue that they're also talking about, which is immigration, illegal immigration, the border.
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This was a central plank when President Trump was running for office.
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What's the situation down there on the border wall, on enforcement, on making sure our country is secure?
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We just eclipsed about 265 miles of the new border wall system under President Trump.
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We had several hundred miles of wall initially, and we built about 200 more.
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I would say initially as we came in, we had different forms of fencing, some of it about six feet tall, some of it maybe up to eight feet tall, maybe.
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Easily scalable, easily defeated, no impedance and denial there.
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Any type of barrier, what you want for our Border Patrol, the men and women in green on the border,
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they want something that's going to stop an individual or at least to slow them down.
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So that's the impedance and denial aspect of coming into the country illegally.
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The bigger the barrier, the more effective the barrier, the easier it is for them to do their job.
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What we saw with six-foot high wall, you could scale it, you could be over, disappear.
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Very difficult for Border Patrol to do their job.
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The new border wall system that we're building in many cases is 30 feet high.
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It has a number of things that if you can defeat it, very difficult to, if you can defeat it,
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you have Border Patrol waiting on you as you get to the other side of that border wall system.
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And several years ago, I joined them down in Rio Grande Valley for their midnight muster
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and then went out on midnight patrol with them, which is very cool.
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And so we're going out, and they arrested a number of people.
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And so they go into this one stash house that's, oh, probably 200 yards in from the river.
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And they go in and kick the door down, and there are a bunch of people there that they're apprehending.
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And there's some pretty rough-looking characters coming out of this stash house.
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He was probably 260, 280 pounds, was wearing sort of a raggedy undershirt covered with tats.
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And the agents kept saying, Senator, Senator, hey, come over here, Senator.
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That is, you know, I think that's probably typical, though.
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We're dealing with, to use the president's term, tough hombres down here.
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And I don't know, to hear the rhetoric coming from the left right now, it's as though these are the most wonderful people in the world.
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And the villains are the law enforcement officers who are trying to arrest them.
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Again, we have, DHS is the largest law enforcement agency in the country.
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We have over 100,000 law enforcement officers in the department doing their job every day, on the border every day.
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They're stopping individuals from crossing into the country illegally.
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And I would say, in a pandemic environment, stopping individuals crossing into the country illegally takes on a more important mission.
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We're stopping individuals that perhaps could have COVID-19, could be coming into the U.S. and infecting American citizens.
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And we're told that we're not allowed to leave our homes in many cases, but it's perfectly fine to have foreign nationals, who obviously are not being tested, cross that border illegally.
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But actually, Senator, you raised this question for me because your job is to make the laws.
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There are, your job is to enforce the laws, and there are regulations that you use as well.
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And my job is entirely to make fun of the laws.
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But it occurs to me, if we're now four years into an administration, we were told big, beautiful wall, we know that people want to build the wall.
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And yet, I think a lot of people listening will say, only 200 or 250 miles of wall.
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It strikes me, there are other people who make the laws as well, outside of our perhaps constitutional system.
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Yeah, so we are not only stymied by congressional inaction, you know, the president's been very clear about a border wall system.
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We've had to fine that funding internally to the administration over the last several years as Congress, certain members of Congress, I would say, are not supportive of that.
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But we also have courts, and we have lawsuits that we have to deal with.
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But again, as far as building the border wall system, we're going to reach 300 miles by the end of August.
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We've got another 100 miles coming in the next month or so.
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And I think is the goal by the end of the year 450 miles?
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And that's a new wall or replacing previous barriers?
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So it's a great, you know, this is what the other side, you know, our opponents usually say is you're not actually building any new wall.
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So in many cases, we are tearing down a five to six foot fence and putting up a 30 foot wall.
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It's very much like if you were to tell you another story of this.
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It's just on the five to six foot fence back in 2016, presidential race, we're down in Arizona on the border.
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And, you know, I've got a whole bevy of reporters following me.
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And we're doing a we're doing something right on the border wall.
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And it's got this this little sort of vehicle barrier.
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It looks like the sort of crisscross metal planks.
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And and the reporters are there and we've got a bunch of sheriffs and folks who are down there with us.
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And a bunch of the reporters, they want to get a better camera shot.
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And I'm like, OK, so you just crossed into Mexico illegally.
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Maybe we need something more substantial, given that you're like, I think, currently an illegal immigrant in the country of Mexico.
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They unwittingly, I think, proved your point on the border.
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And yet you're being stymied left and right on building that wall.
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So, again, as the senator mentioned, about 450 to 500 miles by the end of this calendar year.
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But we can put it in the places that need it most so that patrol, so officers can patrol other hard-hit areas as well.
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Well, even beyond the operators, I think it's what the American people want.
00:24:39.860
Let me make a point also that's interesting and would surprise you.
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The guys working for Chad, the CBP guys on the border, they need a lot more technology.
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So, I've been out with them on their boats on the river.
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I've been up in their helicopters, which are old.
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Some of the helicopters are old Hueys, like, you know, out of, like, watching, you know, MASH growing up, which, by the way, they keep the doors open on the side.
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And I think the helicopter pilots enjoy doing turns where you're going forward and you're looking at this one little round desk that is holding your body.
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And if it comes loose, you're falling 200 feet down into the ground.
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And you're trying to, like, yeah, this doesn't bother me at all.
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I would say they do that with the acting secretary as well.
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But what's interesting, so Texas DPS, Department of Public Safety, I've been up.
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Texas has, for example, it's an $8 million plane.
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And it flies along the border and it has heat imagery where they can look like a mile or two away on the other side of the border.
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And you'll see, and we'd look at the screen and be like, they'd be like, all right, there's the coyote there.
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And you can see four or five people that he's getting ready to send across.
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And what Texas DPS will do is call CBP and say, all right, there are five guys right here that are preparing to cross.
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And you can see the CBP vans, like, pulling up on the other side, waiting to apprehend them when they come.
00:26:17.120
The amazing thing, though, is the state has better technology than the feds, which is messed up.
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We haven't given it, but it's kind of startling.
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You don't expect the state equipment to be better than the federal equipment.
00:26:35.360
Well, some of our best partners are obviously Texas DPS as well as in Arizona and other places.
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But as you indicated, we do not have an unlimited budget.
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So there are certain – we have a number of air assets as well that we send up along that border to patrol that.
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But we can always use new and better equipment.
00:26:54.760
Mr. Secretary, we want to be respectful of your time.
00:26:56.980
But before we go, I think a lot of Americans looking around don't feel great about how things are going.
00:27:11.780
But how are things looking as we now move toward the end of the year?
00:27:15.220
Well, I would say what we've seen over the past month, and we've talked a little bit about here,
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when we talk about defund the police or you start attacking law enforcement,
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I think what we are seeing around the country is the result of that.
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At their very heart, they are violent opportunists.
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And they see an opportunity to exploit their street, their corner of the world,
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because they know the police are under a microscope.
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What the president, what the administration has been very upfront about is we're not going to let this continue.
00:27:45.100
So whether it's through Operation Legend, which is surging federal resources in to deal with some of this violent crime,
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we're going to continue to surge federal resources in.
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We're going to continue to protect federal property.
00:27:56.000
We see it almost, you know, we get threat and intelligence every weekend.
00:27:59.620
Certain federal properties around the country are being targeted by these groups.
00:28:03.180
We surge resources into those communities to make sure that those properties are protected.
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Particularly when we talk about a courthouse, a seat of justice in a city has to be protected.
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And DHS is going to be on the front lines protecting those for years to come.
00:28:20.420
How do you get to be Secretary of Homeland Security?
00:28:26.640
Like what, you know, when you were a kid, is this what you dreamed of doing?
00:28:33.000
I actually dreamed of joining the military and for whatever reason didn't happen.
00:28:36.720
I grew up in Texas, went to school in Dallas, had the opportunity to come to D.C.
00:28:44.160
9-11 for me, I was on Capitol Hill, rushed out of the buildings.
00:28:50.800
So this was basically right when DHS was formed.
00:28:55.420
So it was a formidable event in my life and really changed my outlook.
00:29:01.180
So I jumped in, started serving at DHS, took a break during the Obama administration, and
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then came back in and held a variety of different positions here in the department.
00:29:13.320
I think the thing that, you know, a lot of us here in the department, we believe in this
00:29:17.820
We believe in what the department does and how it was created after 9-11.
00:29:21.240
It's a counterterrorism mission, but it has a number of other missions, some of which
00:29:25.140
we talked about that I think the vast majority of Americans just don't know about.
00:29:28.500
Federal Protective Service, a lot of our immigration enforcement, and a lot of other
00:29:33.720
So it's a big department, 240,000 folks, 22 different agencies that came in.
00:29:42.740
But, you know, when I can, I try to run a little bit and bike a little bit.
00:29:46.300
Well, those hobbies notwithstanding, I think you're probably working a lot more of these
00:29:51.200
Well, and I do need to clarify it and just say, Chad, thank you for being here.
00:30:05.800
And your wife has called you saying, hey, our basement's flooding.
00:30:18.760
And please get home quickly and help your wife.
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We need to get you back to the basement and, more importantly, to the mission.
00:30:28.320
Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for being here.
00:30:33.960
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