Verdict with Ted Cruz - Border Madness： In-Depth from the Border-Traffickers, Terrorists & Tragedy

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.680 Guaranteed human.

00:00:05.380 Senator, nice to be with you in the studio as always.

00:00:07.940 You just got back from the border, and I want to get into this.

00:00:10.780 It's not really shocking, but it's very concerning now from a national security standpoint.

00:00:16.900 How bad has it gotten compared to what it was even just last time you were there?

00:00:20.360 Well, it keeps getting worse and worse.

00:00:22.120 So I was down on the border Thursday and Friday of last week.

00:00:26.920 And so the Senate was in session.

00:00:28.480 I was in D.C. until Thursday afternoon and then jumped on a plane, and I flew down to McAllen Thursday night.

00:00:34.560 And I brought along with me four other senators, John Cornyn, and he and I often host our colleagues down at the southern border.

00:00:41.500 And we also had with us John Barrasso and Mike Lee and Pete Ricketts.

00:00:47.160 And so the five of us came down.

00:00:48.900 We landed.

00:00:49.520 First thing we did, we went straight from the airport to the midnight muster of the Border Patrol agents.

00:00:55.400 And there were about 50 Border Patrol agents gathered.

00:00:59.140 The muster is where they sit and talk right before they go out on duty.

00:01:03.700 And we had a good discussion with the Border Patrol agents.

00:01:06.400 Really, I just stood up and told them thank you.

00:01:08.400 More than anything, I wanted them to hear from me, thank you, thank you, thank you, and to tell them.

00:01:14.200 And I said exactly this.

00:01:15.460 I said, listen, I travel all over Texas.

00:01:18.240 I travel all over the country.

00:01:20.020 You need to know that the American people appreciate what you're doing.

00:01:23.400 Their morale is low right now.

00:01:24.580 It's incredibly low.

00:01:25.640 I mean, they are working for bosses who undermine them, who undercut them, who make their jobs impossible to do.

00:01:32.860 All right, I'll tell you something.

00:01:33.800 So we did, each of us spoke to them a few minutes, and we opened it up for Q&A.

00:01:37.980 And we asked the Border Patrol agents, okay, what should we know that we don't know?

00:01:43.740 One of the things we learned, which I had never heard, which is in the past year,

00:01:47.840 the Biden administration has put out new guidelines for pursuit of illegal aliens.

00:01:53.280 This is illegal aliens that are running, that are trying to get away. 0.98

00:01:56.360 And the guidelines, you'd have to effectively call them guidelines for non-pursuit,

00:02:01.280 because they are told you cannot pursue illegal aliens if there is anything that could potentially endanger someone's safety.

00:02:10.000 So what does that mean?

00:02:11.520 It means if, in a car, they have four people in the back seat, and you know there are only three seatbelts,

00:02:18.160 you're not allowed to pursue them.

00:02:20.640 Just let them go.

00:02:21.740 Just let them go.

00:02:22.400 It means if they run a stop sign, you must immediately stop pursuing them and let them go.

00:02:28.900 And what they said happens as a practical matter.

00:02:30.920 They said, look, the cartels know this memo has gone out, the memo of non-pursuit.

00:02:36.720 And so when they see someone and try to apprehend them, if they have illegal aliens hiding, like huddled down,

00:02:42.720 they'll all sit up so you can see, wait, there are more of us than there are seatbelts,

00:02:46.900 and the Border Patrol agents have to stop and just let them drive away.

00:02:49.980 Wow.

00:02:51.380 And that came down, I'm assuming, from the top, from Mayorkas?

00:02:54.120 In the past year, it was written instruction, basically, that they're prevented from pursuing.

00:03:00.120 They said things like the stop signs.

00:03:02.200 The coyotes now know, okay, break a traffic law immediately.

00:03:05.680 As soon as you see Border Patrol, do something dangerous, run a stop sign, run a red light.

00:03:10.200 Do speed, anything.

00:03:11.700 Speed, whatever, because the instant you do that, they're required to stop pursuit. 0.98

00:03:15.780 And, of course, so it's encouraging them to run red lights and do things that are dangerous because of the idiocy of the policy. 0.97

00:03:23.340 All right, so we did that. 0.91

00:03:25.160 Then we went out on Midnight Patrol, and that's something I do almost every time I'm down at the border.

00:03:29.440 And you go out, and you're looking to see where illegal aliens are.

00:03:35.100 And we were out maybe 45 minutes to an hour when we encountered a group.

00:03:42.740 This group was a group mostly of women and children. 0.97

00:03:46.800 It was about maybe 20 women and children, mostly kids. 0.80

00:03:51.040 And we stood there, and we talked to them for about 30, 40 minutes.

00:03:56.400 And we asked them where they were from.

00:03:59.360 They were from Guatemala.

00:04:02.560 They were from El Salvador.

00:04:04.760 A number of them were unaccompanied minors.

00:04:07.920 There was one little girl, a very cute little girl, was 13 years old.

00:04:12.580 She had no family with her.

00:04:14.660 There was another boy who was 15 years old.

00:04:18.080 He had no family with him.

00:04:19.340 There was another girl who was 16 years old.

00:04:23.160 She had no family with her.

00:04:25.180 They're all in this group.

00:04:26.320 So we asked them.

00:04:27.300 We said, okay, well, where are you going?

00:04:30.900 And they told different places they were going.

00:04:33.320 One said he was going to Oregon.

00:04:36.400 Another said she was going to Virginia.

00:04:40.000 And we said, well, where?

00:04:42.800 And their answer was the same.

00:04:44.660 Every one of them, they said their tío was there.

00:04:48.100 Tío is Spanish for uncle.

00:04:50.160 Mi tío, mi tío.

00:04:52.320 And we'd ask, okay, so does your uncle know you're coming?

00:04:56.500 No.

00:04:58.120 And it started to really dawn on us in a really depressing way that these kids weren't going to an uncle.

00:05:06.440 Yeah.

00:05:06.640 That they were being, they're being trafficked.

00:05:10.120 They're being sent somewhere.

00:05:11.720 They're all told to say they're going to see their tío.

00:05:14.980 We asked them how many of them had experienced violence and assault on the trip.

00:05:24.900 I have to say, Ben, the look on those kids' faces.

00:05:32.680 Because they know what you're asking.

00:05:36.340 Their look answered it.

00:05:38.400 And they basically just said it's everywhere.

00:05:40.540 It's constant.

00:05:41.020 The one that was haunting for me was in the back.

00:05:47.080 There was this man, a grown man, maybe 35 years old.

00:05:51.180 And he was with a little girl who was 10.

00:05:56.760 And he said she was his daughter.

00:06:00.820 She said he was her dad.

00:06:02.620 And it was obvious to everyone.

00:06:06.840 He was lying.

00:06:07.400 He was not her father.

00:06:09.500 He had his arm around her and it was like locked tight.

00:06:13.000 Like he was holding her almost so she wouldn't run away.

00:06:18.660 And the look of terror in that little girl's face.

00:06:23.800 She was so frightened of this large, sweaty man who had his arm around her and was saying he was her father.

00:06:36.280 And there's a frustration and helplessness that there's nothing we can do.

00:06:39.920 There's nothing the Border Patrol can do.

00:06:42.600 Because when they take them in, the Biden administration instructs them, release them.

00:06:47.760 And, you know, during the Trump administration, they had a policy that they were DNA testing.

00:06:55.580 In particular, adult men who would present with young children and claim to be their fathers.

00:07:00.360 Because this was a persistent problem.

00:07:02.360 And they DNA test them.

00:07:03.540 And north of 30% of them had no match.

00:07:07.580 They were not their fathers.

00:07:09.800 Now, think for a second about what the risks are of handing a 10-year-old girl over to a grown man

00:07:17.060 who is not her father.

00:07:18.940 And the reason for this is the policy under Obama and the policy under Biden is if you show up with a kid,

00:07:27.620 you get let go immediately.

00:07:29.080 And so there's a value.

00:07:30.900 To bring that child.

00:07:31.700 It's a cover story.

00:07:32.680 The cartels effectively rent these kids. 0.99

00:07:36.380 But I got to say it was sick.

00:07:39.740 Looking at that little girl. 1.00

00:07:41.700 In any sane world, you'd say, get your damn hands off her. 1.00

00:07:45.320 And we're going to DNA test. 1.00

00:07:47.280 We're going to DNA test you.

00:07:49.920 And when we find out you're not her dad, you're going to be arrested.

00:07:53.080 Can they even separate the parent from the child?

00:07:56.620 Biden canceled the DNA tests.

00:07:59.420 Like, you want to talk about one of the great scandals.

00:08:03.120 These Democrats who prance around and say they're so compassionate,

00:08:07.720 they no longer test to find out if father and alleged daughter or father and alleged son are related

00:08:14.560 because they don't want to know.

00:08:15.940 They don't care. 0.79

00:08:17.180 They are perfectly happy just leaving a pedophile with a little girl or a little boy who's being abused. 0.99

00:08:24.140 I mean, it's sick. 0.87

00:08:25.400 I've never seen.

00:08:26.380 So I've raised this in judiciary committings repeatedly.

00:08:28.720 I've never seen a Democrat give any reason, compassionate, rational.

00:08:34.360 Why wouldn't you DNA test it when you know?

00:08:37.580 Because you could stop the trafficking at that moment.

00:08:40.200 But they don't want to.

00:08:41.560 Their objective is to be efficient.

00:08:43.760 They want it to be fast.

00:08:44.780 They want more, more, more, more, more.

00:08:47.000 I got to say it was, and all five of us, I mean, we were shaken up.

00:08:54.800 When you're looking at little girls, all or almost all of whom had been sexually assaulted recently,

00:09:01.900 you could tell the trauma was evident in everything about them.

00:09:06.680 And it's horrifying.

00:09:08.620 The little 13-year-old girl, she was going to see her Tio.

00:09:13.940 She just had a number to call.

00:09:17.000 And Sarah Carter from Fox News was there, and she said,

00:09:21.460 Oh, you want to call him?

00:09:22.240 I have a cell phone.

00:09:22.880 Do you want to call him here on my phone?

00:09:24.240 No, no, no, no, no.

00:09:26.140 Like, with absolute fear.

00:09:28.880 Look, kid.

00:09:29.520 And this is every day, all day, 24 hours a day.

00:09:32.360 In all likelihood, that little girl is going to spend the next several years trapped in forced prostitution. 1.00

00:09:44.100 And that was one day in one hour.

00:09:47.000 And there's a reason.

00:09:48.240 It was interesting.

00:09:48.680 We were talking to the Border Patrol agents.

00:09:50.080 We were asking, okay, do Democrats come down here?

00:09:53.640 Do they see this?

00:09:54.260 And they said no.

00:09:55.660 And they said they don't.

00:09:56.500 And they said there are a couple who've come down, and they said they do totally different things than you guys, the Republicans, do.

00:10:02.480 They said they will never go out on midnight patrol because they don't want to actually see the kids who are being abused because I guess then they would have to lie about it if they've never seen it.

00:10:14.200 What they do instead is they go in to the headquarters.

00:10:18.060 They don't want to actually see the illegal aliens. 0.84

00:10:20.000 And they say, okay, talk to us about what kind of food you're giving and what kind of medical care you're giving and what kind of – their whole focus is like a welfare worker where they assume the Border Patrol is the bad guy.

00:10:30.140 And can we give them more stuff is basically what the handful of Democrats who go down there do.

00:10:38.880 Now, mind you, Kamala Harris has been to the southern border zero times since she became the border czar.

00:10:45.960 Joe Biden has ostensibly been to the border once.

00:10:49.420 He went to El Paso.

00:10:50.140 Except when he went there, he didn't go to any migrant facilities, and his advance team cleared all the illegal immigrants off the street, so he went to a bridge. 0.89

00:11:00.820 He met with some government officials, and he left.

00:11:03.040 And according to the White House, he literally did not see a single illegal alien.

00:11:07.800 That is a heartlessness because when you see these people – by the way, we did that on midnight patrol.

00:11:12.520 Also in that group was a couple, a husband and wife with a little girl that were from Moldova.

00:11:18.380 The little girl was beautiful, blonde, blonde curls, maybe two, three years old, a gorgeous little girl.

00:11:25.060 They had gone from Moldova to Holland to South America to Central America to Mexico and then trafficked up into the United States.

00:11:39.120 It was a many-month trip to come from Moldova, and I'll tell you that couple, it was evident they had gone through hell, especially the eastern Europeans. 1.00

00:11:52.220 The border patrol agents told us they will never tell you what happened to them.

00:11:56.200 They're very disciplined.

00:11:57.440 Like if you ask, they're just – they don't answer questions.

00:11:59.780 No, no, no.

00:12:01.140 They won't.

00:12:01.500 They said they're from Moldova.

00:12:03.140 That's it.

00:12:03.660 But they won't describe – they're too afraid of the cartels.

00:12:07.300 They're too afraid of what the cartels would do to them, that they won't describe what happened.

00:12:12.900 But again, it was obvious these people had gone through hell, and it makes you angry because this is entirely preventable.

00:12:25.480 And the reporters, Corrine Jean-Pierre – we've talked about this a lot on the pod – stood up and said,

00:12:31.480 well, people are not just walking across the border.

00:12:33.280 And you remember, I invited her.

00:12:34.460 I said, Corrine, come with me.

00:12:35.580 And I'll show you them walking across the border.

00:12:37.420 Within an hour.

00:12:38.580 And this last time, we found this group within an hour.

00:12:41.100 How big was the group?

00:12:42.100 About 20.

00:12:43.680 Mostly kids, little, little kids, three- and four-year-old kids, teenagers, several moms, a couple of men, but it was mostly women and children.

00:12:54.240 And the Border Patrol agents told us, they said, in all likelihood, every one of these children has been sexually abused.

00:13:03.600 Repeatedly, not just once.

00:13:04.940 That that's just part of –

00:13:08.200 The trip. 0.99

00:13:09.340 Being trafficked is that you are going to be violently raped repeatedly. 0.97

00:13:14.340 And I don't understand how, if you're Joe Biden, if you're Chuck Schumer, how you don't care about that. 0.96

00:13:23.980 You've seen this a lot.

00:13:25.700 The others that were with you, when they left, what was their demeanor?

00:13:30.740 I mean, you bring other senators with you, some of them not from border states.

00:13:35.120 It's disturbing at a level.

00:13:38.380 Like, when you see it, it's different.

00:13:41.320 When you look in the eyes of a 10-year-old girl who is with an adult male pretending to be her father, you want to rescue that girl.

00:13:51.180 Yeah.

00:13:51.420 But there's nothing you can do.

00:13:52.840 They're in custody.

00:13:54.880 Can they even – you know, like, when you have normal investigations in the U.S. and something happens, they'll usually separate, even if you're two good guys.

00:14:03.260 They'll separate you to get your stories to see.

00:14:05.760 And I've been told the Biden administration doesn't even allow them to be separated anymore.

00:14:08.860 Is that true or false?

00:14:09.880 Well, the Bureau of Patrol will do some investigation if they're behaving very unusually.

00:14:14.040 We'll do some investigation, and they will occasionally find people who are obviously abusing kids.

00:14:21.860 But that's not their mandate.

00:14:25.260 Their mandate is process as fast as possible.

00:14:27.620 So it's churn and burn.

00:14:28.860 Yeah.

00:14:29.560 It's speed.

00:14:30.260 And by the way, look –

00:14:32.820 And that really happened, to go back in time to remind people, when there was a humanitarian issue and there were so many people under that bridge and they started getting the drones up and the media were covering it and there was tens of thousands of people under this bridge and it was a humanitarian PR problem.

00:14:47.180 That's when they went into full expedite and as fast as they come in, release them so that we don't look like we have a problem at the border with a bunch of people gathering.

00:14:56.520 And by the way, release them means send them to every city in America.

00:15:01.280 Yeah.

00:15:01.380 You look at this supplemental bill that the Biden White House wants, Israel military funding, but they also want Ukraine added to it.

00:15:09.000 They also want what they call border security, which has nothing to do with border security.

00:15:13.180 It's a whole bunch of money for more people to process illegal aliens faster, to put them on more buses and more planes. 0.63

00:15:19.460 All right, that was Thursday night.

00:15:21.480 Friday morning we wake up.

00:15:22.800 We meet with senior leadership of the Border Patrol for a briefing on what's happening.

00:15:26.840 The numbers that continue to skyrocket were upwards of 7.9 million illegal aliens under Joe Biden.

00:15:34.320 7.9 million.

00:15:35.220 After that, we went to the Ursula facility, which is a facility that is processing illegal immigrants. 0.79

00:15:46.340 There were hundreds and hundreds of illegal immigrants in holding cells.

00:15:50.040 They separate them.

00:15:51.380 So there were adult males.

00:15:52.740 There were adult males with criminal convictions.

00:15:54.700 They get lots of adult males with criminal convictions.

00:15:57.220 They separate them.

00:15:58.340 That's just U.S. convictions, by the way.

00:16:00.000 They don't know if they have convictions in Honduras or El Salvador or Venezuela.

00:16:03.080 Venezuela, that's just U.S. criminal convictions.

00:16:06.760 There are single women.

00:16:09.720 There was a separate holding cell for pregnant women, filled with pregnant women. 1.00

00:16:15.240 Who will have kids in America. 0.65

00:16:17.480 They will have kids in America that will be U.S. citizens.

00:16:20.380 They're right there.

00:16:22.900 There was another cell that was just for people that are sick, that are coming in with infectious diseases.

00:16:28.780 You look at this, and by the way, these cells, the illegal immigrants are, many of them are sleeping on the floor.

00:16:37.120 They're packed in side by side like sardines.

00:16:40.240 I mean, a cell will be, oh, I don't know, 30 feet wide by 60 feet long, something like that.

00:16:48.720 And you'll have 100 illegal immigrants in there. 0.97

00:16:50.720 And they'll be lying on the floor, side by side by side, covered in reflective blankets.

00:16:57.700 Looks like tinfoil.

00:16:58.780 Yeah.

00:16:59.340 And they're just in there.

00:17:01.280 That's every day.

00:17:02.040 By the way, those, remember the kids in cages?

00:17:04.340 Yeah.

00:17:05.420 Those are the Biden cages.

00:17:07.240 They're still there.

00:17:08.760 And they're still being used.

00:17:09.720 And no Democrat cares.

00:17:11.380 Nobody in the media cares.

00:17:12.080 No AOCs down there crying.

00:17:13.520 Nope.

00:17:13.720 It just, it doesn't matter at all.

00:17:15.660 From there, we went to a stash house.

00:17:17.280 So this is a stash house they had just busted.

00:17:21.600 The stash house was an incredibly dilapidated, nasty house.

00:17:30.960 They had busted it and they found two illegals held in there right there.

00:17:34.500 And so they arrested them.

00:17:35.420 We saw them pulling them out in handcuffs as we arrived.

00:17:38.780 I mean, we were there minutes after they busted it.

00:17:42.060 Those tend to be much more dangerous illegal aliens. 0.87

00:17:46.040 Why?

00:17:46.440 Because the ones that are more dangerous try to run and escape.

00:17:52.140 Many of them just turn themselves in.

00:17:54.360 But if you've got a criminal conviction, if you're a gang member, if you're MS-13, if 0.84

00:17:57.940 you're a murderer, a rapist, a child molester, if you're a terrorist, those are the ones that

00:18:02.940 want to be gotaways. 1.00

00:18:04.140 And so the cartels will put them in stash houses and hold them for a day or two and then

00:18:09.060 try to put them on a bus or put them on some transport to get them into the interior.

00:18:13.460 So these stash houses are located all over the place down on the southern border.

00:18:18.160 This stash house, like we opened the door, it was this totally dilapidated house.

00:18:24.380 There were wet clothes.

00:18:26.240 They had clearly crossed the river recently because they were soaking wet clothes that

00:18:29.740 were just thrown on the ground right there.

00:18:31.500 There were piles of clothing, shoes, shirts, I mean, just piled up.

00:18:38.760 There was one tiny little air conditioner in the house, but the walls were falling down.

00:18:44.200 The house was filthy. 0.53

00:18:45.680 It stunk. 0.51

00:18:47.700 And that and they don't know who owned it.

00:18:50.640 They said that house had probably been rented to 20 different people.

00:18:53.280 They'll try to track down.

00:18:54.840 But the cartels, by the way, there was a lock on the outside.

00:18:58.420 So they put the illegals in there and lock them in. 1.00

00:19:02.420 Unbelievable.

00:19:03.240 There was not a caretaker there when they busted it.

00:19:06.000 So sometimes they'll have the cartel person watching them. 0.99

00:19:09.480 And look, the stash houses are also where they will rape women again. 0.98

00:19:12.980 They will shake people down for more money. 0.97

00:19:15.180 In that case, they were just holding these two guys.

00:19:17.660 The two guys they pulled out were both single adult men.

00:19:22.040 I'd say 20s or 30s.

00:19:24.200 Military age men.

00:19:25.540 Lots of tats, pretty rough looking guys.

00:19:28.040 They got pulled out in handcuffs.

00:19:29.540 We don't know their story.

00:19:32.760 From there, we went out on horseback patrol.

00:19:36.800 And so the Border Patrol has a whole division that is on horseback

00:19:41.040 because much of the terrain there, you can't even get to with vehicles.

00:19:44.380 And so we spent about an hour on horseback patrolling and riding along the Rio Grande.

00:19:50.440 Then we met with local leaders, including the mayor of a big Mexican city

00:19:56.100 on the other side of the border, who was expressing enormous frustration,

00:19:59.860 said, look, your policies are resulting in my city being invaded.

00:20:05.680 He said, we've got tens of thousands of people camping out in my city

00:20:08.900 because when they come to the United States, you guys let them go.

00:20:12.800 Now, his argument, what he wanted is he said,

00:20:15.240 couldn't you just take them at the embassy so they don't have to come to the border?

00:20:18.060 He was fine with us letting them all in.

00:20:20.660 He just didn't want them to have to cross through his city.

00:20:23.680 So he's like, can't you be even more efficient and fly them from Mexico City or something?

00:20:27.960 I wasn't terribly interested in that suggestion.

00:20:30.200 Yeah, fair point.

00:20:30.880 And then the last thing we did is we went out with Border Patrol on the boat,

00:20:35.320 went up and down the river.

00:20:36.820 It was interesting.

00:20:37.620 You're going up and down the river.

00:20:40.240 All along the shore, we probably saw 20 different discarded rafts

00:20:45.720 that are like green vinyl, but they were done.

00:20:48.180 They were sort of, you know, thrashed.

00:20:50.520 Thrashed out.

00:20:50.900 And just laying along the shore, probably 20 of them,

00:20:55.040 that had been used to either shuttle illegal aliens or shuttle drugs.

00:20:59.320 And then several times we saw people that the Border Patrol agents said were cartel scouts

00:21:05.560 that were just Mexicans on the Mexican side of the border.

00:21:10.920 They were like standing a little bit in the river and like pretending to fish or something.

00:21:14.240 But they weren't really fishing.

00:21:15.700 They were there watching us to radio back.

00:21:17.720 Okay, here's what the Border Patrol is doing.

00:21:19.960 And then we ended with a press conference.

00:21:22.620 But, you know, the press conference, we tried to talk about what happened.

00:21:26.360 What is happening at the border is horrific, and it keeps getting worse.

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00:23:05.460 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00

00:23:07.660 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.

00:23:11.820 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

00:23:15.540 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:23:16.680 And I'm Catherine Clark.

00:23:17.700 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.

00:23:21.780 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers.

00:23:25.280 All at different stages of their journey.

00:23:27.460 So, if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

00:23:30.680 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:23:36.560 There's also something that's changed.

00:23:38.140 And I really want to focus on this for a moment before we move on to other stuff.

00:23:41.480 But there are new threats that are against our men and women at the border.

00:23:45.900 Our border patrol agents, we're seeing bounties on them.

00:23:50.620 We're seeing people that are willing to pay for their families' addresses, where they're living, where they're renting, if they're in a hotel, whatever it may be.

00:24:01.400 There's a new level of boldness from the cartels that are now saying,

00:24:06.440 we want these border patrol agents to be afraid of us and not do their job and just disappear.

00:24:11.260 Look, it is very dangerous.

00:24:13.100 The threats against border patrol agents are real.

00:24:16.340 Just this past week, I sent an oversight letter to Alejandro Mayorkas saying,

00:24:20.960 what are you doing to protect border patrol agents?

00:24:22.720 Given these threats, given that they're paying for their home addresses, their families' addresses,

00:24:27.160 they're threatening their families, what are you doing?

00:24:29.660 And if you can't protect your agencies, you need to resign.

00:24:32.200 He needs to resign regardless.

00:24:34.780 Is this thing Republicans should take up in the House?

00:24:36.920 Of course.

00:24:37.000 We've got a new speaker now.

00:24:38.240 Yes, yes.

00:24:38.900 Because there's enough evidence now.

00:24:40.840 The House should impeach Mayorkas. 1.00

00:24:44.080 And why?

00:24:44.860 Absolutely, yes.

00:24:45.600 For absolute dereliction of duty, for defying federal law, for facilitating the invasion of the United States of America by 7.9 million people,

00:24:55.720 for facilitating the deaths of 753 migrants last year,

00:25:01.000 for facilitating the rape and sexual abuse of thousands of women and thousands of little children,

00:25:06.720 for 100,000 overdoses, including 70 percent from Chinese fentanyl across the southern border. 0.96

00:25:12.780 After all of that, Alejandro Mayorkas is responsible for, and he doesn't give a damn.

00:25:17.400 And by the way, you remember when I questioned him in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee,

00:25:21.860 I asked him about the colored wristbands.

00:25:23.640 He said he had no idea what they were.

00:25:24.920 He'd never seen them before.

00:25:26.220 When I was down there, I found several colored wristbands just laying on the ground.

00:25:29.700 It takes you about a minute to do it.

00:25:32.340 The wristbands, the colors correspond to how many thousands of dollars they owe the cartels.

00:25:37.360 They are modern-day leg irons, and that group we met, we met a group of slaves, and it's horrifying.

00:25:47.000 You feel like you're back pre-Civil War and you encounter slave traders.

00:25:51.780 People are going to say, how did you know they were actually slaves?

00:25:54.000 You're making it up.

00:25:54.960 You're exaggerating.

00:25:56.160 I know the left is going to say that.

00:25:57.160 When you say you meet slaves, explain that.

00:25:59.760 When you talk to little girls and they say they're going to some random T.O.

00:26:03.320 who they don't know his name, they don't know who he is,

00:26:06.060 they say, oh, he doesn't know I'm coming, but I just have a number to call.

00:26:10.220 You're in slavery.

00:26:11.280 You are in slavery.

00:26:13.340 And it sounds harsh to say Democrats don't care, but if you cared, you'd do something about it.

00:26:25.500 If Joe Biden cared, he could stop it.

00:26:28.840 If Alejandro Mayorkas cared, he could stop it.

00:26:31.640 If Democrat senators cared, they could join us in trying to force Joe Biden to stop it, but they don't.

00:26:39.000 The Democrat Senate has zero interest.

00:26:42.000 Look, two and a half years of Biden being president, I have not seen one single Democrat senator on judiciary

00:26:46.840 question one single witness about the slavery, about the sexual assault,

00:26:56.080 about the abuse of migrants by the traffickers.

00:26:59.340 Now, they're all for made up stories.

00:27:02.160 So you remember there was that whole thing about Border Patrol agents are whipping migrants.

00:27:06.040 Yes.

00:27:06.320 And it was a completely made up lie where they focused on the reins of the horse.

00:27:10.320 By the way, we were riding those horses.

00:27:11.820 We have long reins.

00:27:13.120 Yeah.

00:27:13.700 That are used for riding the horse.

00:27:16.020 But they weren't.

00:27:16.940 I mean, it was a total lie.

00:27:18.500 That got Democrats very excited because they're full investigation.

00:27:22.960 They should be fired immediately.

00:27:24.940 But when it comes to the cartels, look at lunchtime.

00:27:30.520 We sat down with local community leaders.

00:27:33.040 We sat down with the mayor, McAllen, who's a Republican, a good friend.

00:27:38.380 We sat down with the sheriff of Brooks County.

00:27:41.060 Brooks County is north.

00:27:42.780 And where Brooks County is, there's a checkpoint at Valfurius.

00:27:46.720 And so what happens is the smugglers don't want to be caught at the checkpoint.

00:27:52.420 So they stop south of the checkpoint and they make all the illegal immigrants get out. 0.99

00:27:57.040 And they go through Brooks County to get around the checkpoint.

00:28:00.960 And Brooks County is a pretty rugged county.

00:28:04.100 It's in the summertime.

00:28:05.800 It's brutally hot.

00:28:06.800 There's not a lot of water there.

00:28:08.960 And the number of deaths that they find, they just, the farmers and ranchers find dead bodies.

00:28:16.140 One after the other, after the other, after the other.

00:28:18.780 There are emergency beacons that they've installed that have writing for illegal immigrants. 0.95

00:28:24.840 The first language you see is Chinese.

00:28:27.540 Wow.

00:28:27.920 They have writing in Chinese.

00:28:28.940 They have writing in Arabic.

00:28:30.520 And it's pushed this if you're in distress, the Border Patrol will come rescue you.

00:28:34.440 But they go off and the coyotes, if you're in distress, they just abandon you.

00:28:40.740 Yeah, they don't care.

00:28:41.340 If you're a pregnant lady, if you're elderly, if you're a little kid, you will die. 1.00

00:28:46.100 The sheriff of Brooks County had brought a three-ring binder with about 100 different cases of bodies they'd found in Brooks County.

00:28:57.660 Wow.

00:28:57.840 And I sat there, Ben, and I flipped through it one at a time.

00:29:03.640 The conditions of those bodies, I have to tell you, I was physically ill, seeing in the heat, people's face gets charred, they get blown up and enlarged.

00:29:19.140 Just the effects of the weather are grotesque.

00:29:23.740 There were multiple young women who had died, and every one of them had their pants open and pulled down. 1.00

00:29:33.760 And it was clear they'd been raped before they died, one after the other after the other.

00:29:41.460 And I actually made a point.

00:29:42.640 I said, I'm going to go through this entire book.

00:29:45.060 These are human beings.

00:29:46.320 I need to see what's happening.

00:29:48.020 I got to say, I don't know a reporter at CNN or MSNBC or ABC or CBS or NBC who goes through that book, who covers that book, who tells the story.

00:30:02.740 These are the Biden body bags.

00:30:04.420 These are the people who are dying because of your policies.

00:30:08.120 Last question on the border.

00:30:10.780 How concerned were Border Patrol agents over the possibility of terrorists, not possibility, the reality that terrorists are coming across at a much higher rate than we've seen over the last five years combined?

00:30:21.680 We talked about this on a previous verdict.

00:30:23.700 But this is the first time you've been down there since these new numbers have been released that are saying there's a significant increase of terrorists that are on the terrorist watch list that we are catching at the border.

00:30:34.980 Doesn't count any of the ones that we're not catching.

00:30:36.820 So, look, they're very concerned.

00:30:39.180 We talked about, particularly with the war in Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah specifically targeting coming across the border.

00:30:45.100 As we talked about in last week's podcast, the San Diego Division of the Border Patrol instructed their agents be on the lookout for people from Hamas and Hezbollah hiding and pretending that they're not.

00:30:57.320 In the Rio Grande Valley, they said they had not encountered recently people from Hamas and Hezbollah.

00:31:02.500 So in the last couple of weeks, that had not yet presented.

00:31:05.860 They're worried about it.

00:31:06.660 They're watching for it.

00:31:08.400 Now, it's worth noting, if you're a Hamas terrorist, you're not going to be in the people that are turning themselves in voluntarily.

00:31:17.440 Sure.

00:31:17.940 You're going to be in the gotaways.

00:31:19.280 And one of the real problem is the volume is so great that it overwhelms the Border Patrol agents so that you have, on any given night, no capacity to even chase the gotaways.

00:31:32.620 And so that evening, Muster, it was interesting.

00:31:35.420 I was talking with Brandon Judd, who's the head of the Border Patrol Union, a good friend.

00:31:38.600 He was with us.

00:31:39.980 And he was saying, he said, all right, that night, he said, typically that night there would be about 170 agents that are available to go out on patrol.

00:31:48.880 He said that night there were 31 that were available because all of the rest were doing paperwork and processing and handling the detention facility.

00:31:58.760 So it should have been 170-some-odd.

00:32:01.200 Instead, it was 31.

00:32:03.000 That's part of how the cartels overwhelm us is the bulk of the manpower is not actually on the border securing it.

00:32:09.660 Air Marsh is a great example.

00:32:10.940 They're off planes now processing at the border.

00:32:12.940 Yes, the exact same thing.

00:32:15.920 And then, so this group that they encountered, so this group, there were several agents.

00:32:20.120 He said, okay, there are 31 that started at midnight out on patrol.

00:32:23.060 This one group, you've got 20 to 25, mostly women and children.

00:32:27.500 You have several agents to go pick them up.

00:32:29.340 You've got to detain them.

00:32:30.320 You've got to question them.

00:32:31.180 You've got to process them.

00:32:32.140 He said that group will take 5 to 10 off the field.

00:32:36.020 So that means 31 becomes 21.

00:32:38.820 By the way, where they were, there was no transport bus.

00:32:43.560 So they had to load them in the back of pickup trucks, all these kids in the back of pickup trucks.

00:32:47.640 And you know what they told me?

00:32:48.600 They said, okay, this is against the rules.

00:32:51.840 Yeah.

00:32:52.480 But are they just supposed to leave them here?

00:32:54.080 What else are they supposed to do?

00:32:55.120 They don't have any vehicle to put them in.

00:32:57.020 So they put them in the back of the pickup truck to take them to the processing center.

00:32:59.920 And he said, you know what?

00:33:01.080 If something happens, if that car gets in a wreck, if a kid jumps out the back and hurts himself,

00:33:06.360 those agents will be disciplined or fired for transporting them unsafely.

00:33:13.840 And he said, now, there's no alternative way to transport them.

00:33:16.460 They could leave these children out here, just say, okay, bye.

00:33:18.920 They could die. 0.94

00:33:20.020 There's a reason the Democrats don't come.

00:33:22.860 There's a reason CNN doesn't come.

00:33:25.240 You cannot see this and spin it and say, hey, this is great.

00:33:29.420 This is perfectly okay.

00:33:30.900 Senator, I also want to bring in our guests.

00:33:32.700 We've talked a lot about kids, protecting kids.

00:33:34.860 We also have problems in this country where we have basically given our kids over to the government

00:33:39.860 and parents are trying to get back in their kids' lives.

00:33:42.260 They've been declared domestic terrorists by our own government, which is shocking.

00:33:46.720 A good friend of the show, someone that you used to do Verdict Plus with,

00:33:50.680 people will know her from that, Liz Wheeler, has her own great show. 1.00

00:33:54.200 She's got an incredible new book out as well.

00:33:56.780 And I know it was important that we make sure we had her on Verdict.

00:33:59.380 Well, Liz, welcome back.

00:34:01.060 Liz is my former co-host of Verdict. 0.83

00:34:03.220 We did Verdict together.

00:34:05.360 We traveled the country.

00:34:06.740 We went to college campuses together and dealt with young leftists who had questions

00:34:12.320 and wanted to be confronted with the truth.

00:34:14.260 And Liz does an amazing job on her own show on the Liz Wheeler Show.

00:34:18.020 And she has a brand new book, Hide Your Children, Exposing the Marxists Behind the Attack on American Kids.

00:34:25.500 Liz, welcome back.

00:34:27.320 Senator, thanks so much for having me.

00:34:28.860 Thanks, Ben.

00:34:29.860 Good to have you here.

00:34:31.160 Tell us a little bit about this book, why you wanted to write it, and why it's so important, especially right now.

00:34:37.240 Yeah, this book started as a question that I think a lot of parents actually had the same question that I had during COVID

00:34:44.100 when we saw this increase in attacks on our children.

00:34:47.520 I mean, all parents had to do was look over their kids' shoulder on Zoom school, and they'd see critical race theory and trans ideology, the 1619 Project, plus good old-fashioned moral relativism just thrown at their kids.

00:34:59.860 And I understand that this isn't a new thing, that our kids are the target of the left, but it did seem to be escalating.

00:35:06.380 So I wondered, well, where is this coming from?

00:35:09.260 Who's behind this?

00:35:10.080 What's behind this?

00:35:10.840 What's their goal?

00:35:12.160 So the purpose of this book is I sought to find the answer to that question.

00:35:15.940 And what I found was both frightening and frustrating.

00:35:20.060 The frightening part is that the left has spent decades trying to get to our children, and to do so, they have co-opted, they've captured what I call four of the five major cultural institutions.

00:35:32.180 So the media, that's an obvious one, the education system, sadly a lot of religious institutions too, the law, which has become evident in the last couple of years,

00:35:41.300 and now they've set their sights on the nuclear family, particularly on children.

00:35:46.700 This is the frightening part.

00:35:48.140 The frustrating part is if this attack on our children isn't new, if it's been decades in the making, why haven't we been able to stop this?

00:35:55.440 What has the Republican Party been doing for all of these decades to fight back?

00:36:00.160 And so what I do in the book, the first half of the book is I name the names of the people in the organizations that are behind the capture of the institutions, behind the attack on our kids.

00:36:08.700 And the second half of the book is a critique of the Republican Party.

00:36:12.580 I offer a solution that I will tell you is different than what the Republican Party offers for how we can actually start winning, how we can recapture our institutions, how we can protect our kids and therefore our country.

00:36:25.100 All right, so let's take those one at a time.

00:36:27.640 You said the first half of the book, you're naming names.

00:36:30.160 So who are the biggest names?

00:36:31.500 Who are the individuals most responsible for the relentless attack on our kids?

00:36:36.900 Yeah, that's a great question.

00:36:37.840 So what I do in the book is I make sure to differentiate between the Marxists who conceived the ideas, many of whom are long dead, and the current Marxists, the modern Marxists that are alive and well in our country today, who are propagating these ideas on our children.

00:36:53.920 And I'll give you an example of one of each.

00:36:56.380 One of the modern Marxists who's propagating an entirely destructive ideology on our children is a woman by the name of Gail Rubin.

00:37:03.380 Gail Rubin is known as the founder, or she wrote the founding document of queer theory.

00:37:10.160 Queer theory is a neo-Marxist theory that, unsurprising to most of your viewers, is what underpins the transgender ideology. 0.66

00:37:17.380 So these poisonous ideas that are being taught to children in school right now, that boys can be girls, girls can be boys, gender is not connected to biological sex, everything's fluid.

00:37:27.660 This is not just a random assortment of nonsense.

00:37:29.880 This is pulled directly from neo-Marxist queer theory, which was penned by Gail Rubin, who is alive and well in our country today. 0.77

00:37:38.840 And yet, most people, maybe in the past couple months they've heard about her, because I've been talking so much about her, most people have never heard of this woman, even though she's having such a direct and destructive impact on our children.

00:37:50.140 That's the first example.

00:37:51.700 The second example I will give is a Marxist who is long dead.

00:37:54.980 And that's a Marxist, a Brazilian Marxist, actually, by the name of Paulo Freire.

00:37:59.420 He was the one who contended that teachers in school shouldn't teach children facts and knowledge.

00:38:05.640 He should teach them a worldview, how to view the world.

00:38:08.880 And he called this worldview critical consciousness.

00:38:11.860 What critical consciousness is, really, is just teaching children to look at everything through a Marxist lens.

00:38:17.800 And this idea of critical consciousness is what exists in our public school system today under the all-encompassing, vague umbrella term of wokeness.

00:38:26.580 So I trace everything back to its origins and show the manifestations of how it's impacting our kids in our society in America today.

00:38:34.000 Liz, I want to ask you about moms specifically.

00:38:37.680 I've actually been inspired, and I think TC and I, when we've been on the road, we've seen this.

00:38:42.340 There are a lot of moms have gotten off the bench and are getting really involved with their kids and their kids' curriculum and what's happening in their schools and what they're being taught.

00:38:51.580 But that's one of the biggest blessings, I think, of the COVID lockdowns was moms got to see in the classroom what was happening with their kids.

00:38:59.320 I'm inspired by that, and I think this is going to be something that liberals are going to have hell to pay now with moms that are now involved. 0.93

00:39:06.220 Is that part of what you're seeing and inspiring you to write this book?

00:39:09.220 Yeah, it's incredible to see how many parents, moms and dads, who've had their eyes opened.

00:39:14.500 I think as conservatives, we're generally people of good faith.

00:39:17.520 We generally like to give other people the benefit of the doubt.

00:39:19.920 We generally see the good in humanity.

00:39:22.240 And sometimes because of that, it can be difficult to look at our political opposition and label them for what they are.

00:39:29.340 We'd rather say, oh, you know what, this is a well-intentioned, good faith opposition who just has unwise, practical solutions to problems that we all admit are problems.

00:39:39.180 That's how the Republican Party actually has operated for the last 50 years.

00:39:42.680 But I think for the first time in many parents' lives during COVID, they saw that, no, that's not true.

00:39:49.480 Our Democrat opposition are not well-intentioned, well-intentioned opposition who want the best, just have bad ideas for how to bring that about.

00:39:56.920 They are, in fact, embracing neo-Marxist, anti-Christian, anti-American, sometimes anti-human ideology.

00:40:04.280 And it's a really important step in fighting back against this to be able to define what the other side is.

00:40:09.940 That's why I spent so much time doing that in the first half of my book, because if we don't understand the reality of this political enemy we face, we won't fight well against it.

00:40:19.260 And if we don't fight well, we won't win.

00:40:21.280 And I'm tired of not winning.

00:40:22.640 I'm ready to win, as I know everyone watching this show is, too.

00:40:25.640 Amen. All right, Liz, last question.

00:40:28.540 You said the second half of the book focuses on a critique of the Republican Party and what we need to do better to fight back.

00:40:35.440 What does the Republican Party need to do to stop this madness?

00:40:39.600 Honestly, this is the part of the book that I'm proudest of, and I know it's the part that's ruffled some feathers a little bit.

00:40:44.040 But I stand by this 100 percent.

00:40:45.820 So I'll give you an example of one of the most interesting pieces of information that I found in the course of researching this book.

00:40:51.940 Our public school system was not mandatory.

00:40:54.320 Children were not compelled to go to public school until the year 1852.

00:40:58.480 In 1852, the state of Massachusetts became the first state to compel public education.

00:41:03.540 And the reason why was because there was an influx of immigrants to our country at the time, particularly Catholic immigrants.

00:41:09.780 And the Protestant politicians in charge wanted to indoctrinate these immigrant children in American values so that they would be loyal to America first rather than the country of their birth and in Protestant doctrine because of the centuries long battle between Protestants and Catholics.

00:41:23.580 And I realized that our institutions were never intended to be neutral institutions.

00:41:29.280 Our school system was never intended to simply teach reading, writing and arithmetic and otherwise be value neutral.

00:41:34.440 That if we as conservatives and the Republican Party do not harness these institutions to teach children our values, what's going to happen is the left is going to swoop in and teach their own.

00:41:46.120 The Republican Party has fallen for the false idea of tolerance and neutrality, which doesn't exist.

00:41:53.380 And perhaps the philosophical reason for this is because they misdefine the word liberty.

00:41:59.160 They define liberty as simply the maximum amount of individual freedom possible in a civil society.

00:42:04.220 When really our government was formed around the idea that liberty is the means to something greater, that there's a moral, the thing that is greater is a moral thing.

00:42:14.680 And that our society, a flourishing society is intended to try to attain that.

00:42:18.860 And Republicans have gotten very shy of bringing religion or morals or anything of that nature into our politics.

00:42:26.120 And it's been to our detriment.

00:42:27.660 We wouldn't be in the chaos, the cultural chaos that we exist in now, if Republicans had not surrendered both institutions in the name of neutrality and morality and virtue in the name of libertarianism to the left a long time ago.

00:42:42.680 Liz, congratulations on the new book.

00:42:44.960 Grab it for your kids, your grandkids.

00:42:47.240 Make sure you read this.

00:42:48.040 Hide your children.

00:42:49.520 It is out now, exposing the Marxists behind the attack on America's kids.

00:42:54.200 Congratulations.

00:42:55.560 Thank you, gentlemen.

00:42:56.220 I appreciate it.

00:42:56.920 Great to see you.

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00:44:46.560 Don't forget, you can download Verdict and listen Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,

00:44:50.780 wherever you get your podcasts.

00:44:52.860 Also, we have our weekend review on Saturday that's become incredibly popular.

00:44:57.440 Some of the things you may have missed later in each podcast during the week,

00:45:01.100 so make sure you grab that as well.

00:45:03.180 Don't forget to rise to five-star review, and please share this episode if you're watching

00:45:06.640 on Facebook or on YouTube or wherever you're listening on social media.

00:45:11.120 And on those in-between days, grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast.

00:45:14.920 I'll keep you updated on the breaking news in-between verdict episodes.

00:45:18.140 We'll see you back here in a couple of days.

00:45:20.780 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:45:23.640 Guaranteed human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - October 30, 2023

Border Madness： In-Depth from the Border-Traffickers, Terrorists & Tragedy

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