Danny Jones Podcast - #241 - Border Patrol Chief: Mexican Cartels, Chinese Migrants & Human Smugglers | Chris Clem
Aired: 2024-05-30
Duration: 02:50:12


=== Securing The Northern Border (14:35) ===

[00:00:07]  All right, Chris, Clem.
[00:00:08]  Yes.
[00:00:08]  Thanks for coming down, man.
[00:00:09]  This is great.
[00:00:10]  Pleasure meeting you.
[00:00:11]  I'm glad to be here.
[00:00:12]  Thanks for getting me down here.
[00:00:13]  So, explain to people that are listening what you do.
[00:00:17]  What is a border chief?
[00:00:18]  Yeah.
[00:00:19]  So, I was a border patrol agent.
[00:00:21]  I was the chief patrol agent of Yuma, Arizona, my last two years of my career.
[00:00:26]  So, I'll just kind of back it all up.
[00:00:28]  I joined the U.S. border patrol in 1995.
[00:00:31]  and retired New Year's Eve, 1231-22.
[00:00:34]  So I've been retired a little over a year.
[00:00:37]  It was, you know, the Border Patrol, you know, really it's federal law enforcement.
[00:00:43]  Our job is to safeguard and protect our borders.
[00:00:47]  And really it's between the ports of entry.
[00:00:49]  The ports of entry is where people come in lawfully, where, you know, come in from Mexico or Canada or the airports, the seaports.
[00:00:58]  But in between those ports, anything and anyone that crosses is breaking the law.
[00:01:03]  And it's our job as agents to secure that border.
[00:01:07]  We're really tasked with interdicting, apprehending anything and anyone that comes in.
[00:01:13]  And then we can either prosecute them for criminal violations or we can administratively remove them through an immigration proceeding.
[00:01:22]  Drugs, terrorism, terrorist weapons, all sorts of contraband, and obviously people, which is making the headlines today, the amount of people that have come in through.
[00:01:28]  And it's just changed so much over my 27 and a half years of my career.
[00:01:33]  But, you know, I retired after, you know, again.
[00:01:37]  I had done my job.
[00:01:40]  I had been all across the Southwest border, Washington, D.C.
[00:01:43]  I was the deputy chief in New Orleans, but was a chief in Yuma when Yuma was one of the busiest sectors in the United States.
[00:01:50]  And yeah, we can dive into all that.
[00:01:53]  I have so many questions, but I'm going to start from like a 30,000 foot view of this and we'll kind of drill down as we go.
[00:01:59]  Sure.
[00:02:02]  Why is it important for us to have a border and border security?
[00:02:06]  Yeah, so border security is national security.
[00:02:09]  It's America's first line of defense.
[00:02:11]  Is that border, whether it's the Mexican border, whether it's our coast right here in Florida, or our northern border?
[00:02:18]  I mean, it is the civilian law enforcement role to protect that sovereignty right there on our borders.
[00:02:26]  Militarily, their job is outside of the United States.
[00:02:30]  They're protecting us around the world.
[00:02:32]  But in order to maintain our republic, to have a sovereignty, we have to secure our border.
[00:02:37]  Without a secure border, every town becomes a border town, every state becomes a border state, and you're seeing those impacts today.
[00:02:45]  So, yeah.
[00:02:46]  You have to have a secure border to have a country.
[00:02:49]  There's no other country in the world.
[00:02:52]  No country exists without its own border.
[00:02:55]  And so we have to maintain that.
[00:02:56]  And there's a lot of people that want to talk about open borders and people have the freedom of movement.
[00:03:01]  That's fine.
[00:03:02]  You just come in through the front door.
[00:03:03]  And that's what I like to tell people is like, you know, we just want you to come in through the front door, be invited, or at least knock on the door and let us see who you are before we let you in.
[00:03:14]  When you come in the back door, you sneak in.
[00:03:17]  That's what bouncers are for.
[00:03:19]  So, you guys are like the bouncers of the border to make sure that people trying to break in unlawfully don't get through.
[00:03:28]  Exactly.
[00:03:30]  How much border is there?
[00:03:31]  How many miles of border is there?
[00:03:33]  Yeah.
[00:03:33]  So, on the southern border, going from Brownsville, Texas out to San Diego, it's about 2,000 miles of southern border.
[00:03:40]  Northern border is about 3,000 miles.
[00:03:43]  Now, the coast, I mean, you really have to.
[00:03:47]  If you did the entire coast of the United States out, it's going to be thousands of thousands.
[00:03:51]  But.
[00:03:52]  We usually focus on the southern border and the northern border.
[00:03:55]  But yes, we do have coastal landings here in Florida coming from Haiti and in Cuba.
[00:04:01]  You know, obviously that's very prevalent on the southern tip here.
[00:04:04]  But really the main focus that most people are concerned with, as they should be, is that southern border and the vast northern border.
[00:04:12]  Now, what is the difference between the southern border with Mexico and the obviously, you know, other than like the obvious, that there's no giant wall?
[00:04:19]  It's more of like a trail, the border between the United States and Canada.
[00:04:24]  Yeah.
[00:04:24]  Because if you look at the photos of it, I don't know, see if you can find photos.
[00:04:26]  There's like, it's like, it looks like this.
[00:04:28]  dense forest with just like this carved out walking path.
[00:04:31]  Yeah.
[00:04:31]  They call that the slash on the northern border.
[00:04:33]  It's just a slash cut right through it.
[00:04:35]  So a couple things.
[00:04:37]  Geographically, it is so vast and very sparsely populated on the northern border, other than when you have like border towns, Toronto, Windsor, you know, Vancouver, places like that on the northern border.
[00:04:50]  And you have arduous conditions up there in some areas, mountainous, like you just mentioned, thick trees.
[00:04:57]  Then there's wide open, high mountainous desert up there, like in Montana and places like that.
[00:05:02]  Right.
[00:05:03]  But you don't have the threat picture.
[00:05:06]  You don't have a country of Canada that's controlled so much by cartel and transnational organizations.
[00:05:13]  Now, that's not to say we know that there are bad actors in every city around the world, but it's not like Canada is immune to it.
[00:05:20]  But you don't have that volume, although there are some uptick in numbers coming in from Canada.
[00:05:27]  It's not the source country.
[00:05:28]  It's just some of the areas where they'll fly into and come into the United States, where Mexico, everything's coming up from the Southern Hemisphere, coming in from Central America, flying into Mexico directly.
[00:05:37]  And coming in.
[00:05:39]  Plus, you have, you know, just a very well established business network by the cartels, by those criminal organizations that are profiting hand over fist by moving people and things into the United States.
[00:05:52]  So, I mean, it really is becomes a, it's just the danger and threat level that's coming in from Mexico versus the northern border.
[00:05:59]  Aren't the cartels actually flying people to Canada now and like walking them right across the border?
[00:06:04]  Yeah.
[00:06:04]  So they, you know, they're really good about figuring out loopholes, right?
[00:06:07]  So, We have a lot of visa waiver, different programs where you're not required a visa.
[00:06:13]  Yeah, so they're flying them from Mexico, direct flights to Canada, and then they're coming south.
[00:06:18]  And that's what we're seeing, especially in Swanton, Vermont.
[00:06:23]  That sector has seen just this fiscal year.
[00:06:27]  I think the latest report was like in the last six or seven months, it's almost been the last 10 years combined, how many people have entered through that part of our northern border.
[00:06:37]  We focus on the sexy stuff, which is the southern border, because it's just the mass numbers.
[00:06:42]  But we cannot, if we get, and when we do get a hold of that southern border, we cannot ignore the northern border.
[00:06:48]  There's no rest for the wicked here, right?
[00:06:50]  We've got to get that taken care of because you're already, like you mentioned, they're flying them in.
[00:06:56]  So we've got to work with Canada to make sure that we can screen before they even get off the plane or leave the airport.
[00:07:01]  If not, then they're coming in the northern border.
[00:07:02]  And we're going to have to address those vulnerabilities up there as well.
[00:07:06]  How many border patrolmen does it take to monitor that entire southern border?
[00:07:12]  Well, and how is that even?
[00:07:15]  I can't fathom.
[00:07:17]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:17]  It's a great question.
[00:07:18]  So there's just a kind of level set, and I probably should have mentioned this earlier.
[00:07:23]  There's 20 sectors across the United States.
[00:07:25]  There's nine on the southern border, eight on the northern border, and three in the coastal.
[00:07:29]  Okay.
[00:07:30]  And there's just over 18,000 U.S. board of trade agents.
[00:07:34]  Okay.
[00:07:35]  There's a couple thousand support personnel, mechanics, administrative staff, things like that.
[00:07:39]  But about just over 18,000 currently sworn board of trade agents.
[00:07:43]  To give you a perspective, I think I looked at the numbers a few months ago.
[00:07:47]  New York City has over 40,000 sworn police officers.
[00:07:51]  So, just handling New York, and obviously you're looking at a huge population, but just kind of giving people perspective.
[00:07:59]  There's about 16,000 of those border tragedians on the southern border, and that leaves the rest on the northern and the coastal.
[00:08:05]  Maybe about 15,000 in the southern, and two on the northern, and 1,000 spread across.
[00:08:11]  Numbers are probably off a little bit, but in Yuma, as the chief, there were 950 of us, to include myself.
[00:08:20]  And as the chief, you weren't out there.
[00:08:22]  Cutting sign and tracking people every day.
[00:08:23]  That would be a luxury.
[00:08:24]  I was in the office most of the time.
[00:08:27]  We had 126 miles of border.
[00:08:31]  We had five stations, three operating stations, and then intel and special operations stations.
[00:08:37]  So you divide that about across five stations, all working, you know, three to four shifts a day.
[00:08:46]  On a good day, you may have in a 24 hour period, 150 to 200 agents patrolling that area.
[00:08:52]  And, you know, we need probably in a place like Yuma, another thousand more people.
[00:08:58]  Wow.
[00:08:58]  Across the Border Patrol, we've asked for upwards of 25,000.
[00:09:03]  We think that that's the right number given the force multiplier that infrastructure can provide, technology can provide.
[00:09:12]  But that really enhances our southern border.
[00:09:15]  It also pads up the northern border and our coastal border.
[00:09:18]  So that's been the sweet spot between 22,000 to 25,000.
[00:09:21]  That's the high end would be 25,000.
[00:09:24]  We asked for that in the final budget going into 23.
[00:09:29]  We asked for 3,000 to 5,000 more agents.
[00:09:32]  We got 300.
[00:09:34]  Didn't even keep up with attrition.
[00:09:36]  Yeah.
[00:09:37]  We need more board troy.
[00:09:38]  There's no doubt about that.
[00:09:40]  Now, who's responsible for providing you this stuff, this budget?
[00:09:43]  Yeah.
[00:09:44]  So we formulate the budget and it goes into wrapped up into the president's proposal and then Congress appropriates.
[00:09:51]  So that cut was made by the White House.
[00:09:55]  You know, Congress did fund the 300, but it really comes down to the executive has to ask for the budget.
[00:10:03]  When in American history that you're aware of or in your career has the southern border been the most secure?
[00:10:12]  When was the best time for the southern border?
[00:10:15]  Well, again, not taking politics into a play of it, but it's a matter of fact.
[00:10:21]  It happened under President Trump.
[00:10:23]  Oh, really?
[00:10:24]  Yeah.
[00:10:25]  We had.
[00:10:26]  The Border Patrol in May is going to be 100 years old.
[00:10:29]  We're celebrating the 100 year anniversary, the centennial anniversary of the Border Patrol.
[00:10:33]  We were founded, started in 1924, May 28, 1924.
[00:10:38]  And, you know, what I like to tell people is while President Trump, when he was candidate Trump, you know, campaigned on build the wall, okay?
[00:10:50]  But the wall was so much more than a wall to us Border Patrol agents.
[00:10:54]  It was, yeah, the actual steel.
[00:10:57]  The wall that we physically needed, but it was the sensors, the cameras, the technology piece that came with it and the access roads.
[00:11:06]  And that is a culmination of that, you know, at the time, a 95 year old agency.
[00:11:13]  That's the culmination of somebody like me who had at the time, you know, 22, 23 years in, who has worked his career saying, hey, we need more requirements.
[00:11:22]  Every president that I worked under, to include Clinton, I was hired under Clinton, had leaned forward on border security.
[00:11:30]  Now, clearly, President Bush had 9 11 happen, so there was a lot of focus on national security, border security.
[00:11:36]  We started really updating a lot of our infrastructure in the forms of barriers, whether it was pedestrian barriers or vehicle barriers, so people couldn't drive through the desert.
[00:11:48]  But the technology packages, all that started building and gaining under President Bush.
[00:11:53]  We also doubled the size of the Border Patrol.
[00:11:55]  There was only 5,000 of us in the early 2000s.
[00:11:58]  We went up to 10,000 by the end of 2010, I think it was.
[00:12:02]  And now we're, again, we got up to close to 21,000.
[00:12:05]  Now we're back down.
[00:12:07]  Obama built a lot of wall.
[00:12:08]  A lot of people don't remember, or some do, some don't, but there was a big push going into Obama's second term.
[00:12:16]  He wanted comprehensive immigration reform.
[00:12:20]  The Republicans said, Well, you give us border security, you build us our fence, you secure the border, we'll give you immigration reform.
[00:12:26]  And so he did a lot.
[00:12:28]  That's what Obama said.
[00:12:29]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:30]  And he built a lot of wall.
[00:12:32]  He did a lot to secure the border.
[00:12:35]  Then they got into arguing definitions of secure and control, and the whole thing kind of fell to pieces.
[00:12:41]  And so he went with executive actions and really started creating his own immigration policies and just kind of shut down a lot of the.
[00:12:50]  The security apparatus that was being built.
[00:12:53]  Like what?
[00:12:53]  What kind of policies was he?
[00:12:55]  So a lot of it was he started the, which isn't a bad thing, is that DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, basically anybody that had been in the country prior to January 1st, 2014, we would defer prosecution.
[00:13:10]  So that's a pull factor because then people get to come in and then they claim there's a lot of fraud involved with that.
[00:13:15]  So there was a big mass of people started showing up at the border because.
[00:13:20]  They're like, hey, we've been here.
[00:13:22]  We've been here.
[00:13:22]  And it's very difficult to kind of explain.
[00:13:28]  But at the end of the day, when you have lack of consequences, when you're encouraging people to come in or they're going to get to stay, you start seeing this big, big push of people.
[00:13:40]  Our walls are falling apart.
[00:13:42]  Well, hey, you know what?
[00:13:45]  So is the southern border, right?
[00:13:48]  But, you know, so we started seeing this big influx, right?
[00:13:53]  Bunch of people, unaccompanied children showing up, just, you know, again, literally unaccompanied minors at the border that was overwhelming the system.
[00:14:01]  Family units, mainly from Central America and Mexico, showing up under Obama.
[00:14:07]  That's what I think motivated President Trump to say, hey, we got to secure the border and we got to build a wall.
[00:14:13]  So getting back to what candidate Trump ran off of, very easy to say, build the wall.
[00:14:18]  It could get a big crowd going.
[00:14:20]  Make Mexico pay for it.
[00:14:21]  All that stuff, right?
[00:14:21]  All those great talking points.
[00:14:23]  It really kind of ginned up his phone.
[00:14:26]  Oh, yeah.
[00:14:27]  Got people fired up.
[00:14:27]  Yeah.
[00:14:28]  There was bumper stickers.
[00:14:28]  There was all that.
[00:14:30]  Well, when he became president, you know, it took a little bit of a while, but the transition team's like, hey, there's more to it than just building the wall.
[00:14:38]  Wall is going to slow him down, but we actually need the technology.
[00:14:42]  We need the personnel.

=== Controlling Illegal Entries (15:54) ===

[00:14:43]  We need policies.
[00:14:43]  Oh, yeah.
[00:14:44]  All that stuff.
[00:14:45]  And, you know, he had a, I would say, a not so.
[00:14:51]  He had the house, but they weren't really supporting a lot of the things he was doing.
[00:14:54]  There was all that infighting going on.
[00:14:56]  And then he lost the majority.
[00:14:58]  So he struggled at getting the appropriations and he made a bunch of emergency declarations.
[00:15:03]  And again, build the wall was a slogan, but it was so much more to us, Board of Choyagents.
[00:15:11]  It was years of requirements that are finally going to be met.
[00:15:15]  So let the politics and the media do all the talking.
[00:15:19]  But for us, we were actually seeing results of our needs being met.
[00:15:23]  We started seeing, I think there was just over 570 miles of new wall, 30 foot wall put up.
[00:15:29]  We had Technology in the form of lights, camera, fiber optic sensor systems.
[00:15:35]  All this stuff was like whiz bang that was working for us.
[00:15:38]  We were loving it.
[00:15:41]  Access roads.
[00:15:42]  A lot of people don't realize that we don't have access to some of the areas of our border because it's like a jeep trail or it's a dirt road, but then a monsoon season, big old storms come in, flash floods, it wipes away.
[00:15:58]  There'll be weeks before we can get to repair it.
[00:16:00]  So all weather roads was important.
[00:16:04]  At that point, I would say the end of 18 into 19, starting 20, so late 19 into 20, things were all coming to play.
[00:16:17]  The steel walls had been put up.
[00:16:19]  Technology was turned on.
[00:16:21]  We were deploying more and more assets out there.
[00:16:24]  We had policies like the Migrant Protection Protocol, which is remaining in Mexico.
[00:16:29]  That was closing the asylum loopholes.
[00:16:32]  We were prosecuting target areas that were putting consequences to repeat offenders.
[00:16:39]  All that was making sense.
[00:16:41]  And just to kind of back that up with some numbers, in 2019, the Border Patrol arrested 905,000 people.
[00:16:49]  All right, 905,000 arrests.
[00:16:51]  That's approximate.
[00:16:53]  2020, it dropped to 405,000.
[00:16:57]  We shut that down.
[00:16:59]  I mean, we had a 100% decrease.
[00:17:01]  I mean, we went from almost, you know, just over 900,000 to just over 400,000.
[00:17:05]  Wow.
[00:17:07]  That's why I say it was one of the most secure borders we've ever had.
[00:17:10]  Now, it dropped because the wall was there, because of the barrier people couldn't get through.
[00:17:16]  And that was one part of it.
[00:17:19]  And the technology, basically the enforcement apparatus that was out there, but it was.
[00:17:24]  the policy.
[00:17:24]  There was all the people that were coming over here and getting in the United States, turning themselves over to us and claiming asylum.
[00:17:31]  So that migrant protection protocol said, fine, if you were going to claim asylum, we'll put you in the queue, but you're supposed to claim asylum in the first asylum country that you come to.
[00:17:42]  So if you go to Mexico, which is an asylum country, and you pass through it and then you get here, you can wait in the line for asylum here, but you're going to wait in Mexico.
[00:17:54]  So we sent them back.
[00:17:56]  And literally within a couple of days of that, going live, the numbers just dropped because people realized, well, they just closed that loophole because people were flying all over from all over the world, passing through multiple countries, getting to the United States, coming into where they could turn themselves in where we hadn't completed wall construction and then claiming asylum when we were processing.
[00:18:21]  And okay, fine.
[00:18:23]  When they claim asylum, we have to let them go for a hearing.
[00:18:27]  But under the migrant protection protocol, we did an initial screening and said, fine.
[00:18:32]  You can be in the queue, but you're going to go back to Mexico and wait.
[00:18:35]  Right.
[00:18:36]  So we sent them back, and they realized, well, this is not what I was promised by the smuggling organization.
[00:18:40]  Right.
[00:18:42]  So that remain in Mexico is what everybody called it.
[00:18:44]  It was called the Migrant Protection Protocol.
[00:18:47]  That and some other agreements with the cooperative agreements with other countries really kind of put a big kibosh on this smuggling network that was bringing people in, taking advantage of the loopholes on the asylum claims.
[00:19:02]  And that, I mean, those numbers tell that story because.
[00:19:06]  You know, getting back to the question, that's where it was the most secure because we had the infrastructure deployed and continued construction backed by strong policies that said, hey, if you do make it through these gaps, because remember, these are all people that entered the United States illegally.
[00:19:23]  You got arrested.
[00:19:25]  During the processing, we asked you if you had fear of return.
[00:19:28]  You go, yes, okay.
[00:19:30]  Why do you have fear of return to your home country?
[00:19:32]  Well, I'd like asylum.
[00:19:33]  Okay.
[00:19:35]  You can wait for it in Mexico.
[00:19:37]  And when they realized that's not the bill of goods that they were told was going to happen, people stopped coming.
[00:19:43]  They stopped coming and those numbers just dropped.
[00:19:46]  So that was a policy thing that stopped those.
[00:19:49]  So what typically happens in an arrest?
[00:19:52]  You said what year was it?
[00:19:53]  There was 900,000?
[00:19:54]  That was 19, 2019.
[00:19:55]  2019, there was 900,000.
[00:19:57]  2020, there was 400,000.
[00:20:00]  So what is the definition of an arrest?
[00:20:03]  Like what typically happens when you arrest one of these people?
[00:20:05]  Yeah.
[00:20:05]  So an arrest is when they have entered the.
[00:20:09]  We've taken them into custody.
[00:20:10]  We've basically put our hands on them.
[00:20:12]  How do you typically find them?
[00:20:13]  So, what's happening in these large numbers, they're given up.
[00:20:16]  They've found gaps in the wall and they show up in mass, 50, 100, 250 at a time, and they just sit there.
[00:20:24]  Oh, really?
[00:20:24]  Yeah.
[00:20:25]  And so, Border Patrol has to come get them.
[00:20:27]  Why do they just sit there?
[00:20:28]  Because they know that they're going to be taken into custody.
[00:20:31]  They're going to be fed.
[00:20:33]  They're going to be offered clean clothes.
[00:20:34]  They're going to have access to medical.
[00:20:36]  They're going to be taken care of.
[00:20:37]  It's going to take two or three days to process.
[00:20:39]  And because we don't have any place to put them, They're going to be let go.
[00:20:44]  So let me just kind of walk you through that one more time.
[00:20:49]  Border Patrol is supposed to arrest and process, and we turn them over to another agency, which is ICE.
[00:20:54]  Typically, it's ICE Enforcement Removal Operations.
[00:20:56]  That's where they were supposed to remain detained until they have their hearing with the judge to determine if they get to stay or they get removed, deported.
[00:21:06]  When there's no room to hold them, we end up having to release them on their own recognizance.
[00:21:11]  All right.
[00:21:12]  What we call an OR.
[00:21:13]  They're processed, they're.
[00:21:16]  you know, want to see a judge.
[00:21:18]  They're not from Mexico, so we can't send them back.
[00:21:21]  The migrant protection protocol is no longer in existence anymore.
[00:21:26]  They get let go.
[00:21:27]  That's where you're seeing these people showing up everywhere.
[00:21:30]  So they typically, ICE can't detain them.
[00:21:34]  They've entered illegally.
[00:21:36]  We have no place to put them.
[00:21:38]  We're not criminally charging them with anything.
[00:21:40]  It's just an administrative case.
[00:21:41]  So we have to let them go.
[00:21:43]  Wow.
[00:21:43]  So we turn them over to a non-government organization, helps facilitate their movement to wherever they're going.
[00:21:49]  You know, just to put it in perspective, when they're processed, they're processed typically for a notice to appear, which means they've been charged illegally, entering the country illegally.
[00:22:01]  They are going to go through a removal proceeding, which means they're going to see a judge.
[00:22:06]  And they'll tell us, let's say they're heading to Philadelphia.
[00:22:10]  We will use the reporting office, the Philadelphia ICE reporting office, where they will check in and their court dates will be set.
[00:22:21]  Some of these court dates are four to seven years out.
[00:22:25]  So, if you know that you got a four to seven year window before you could be removed from this country, you're coming in.
[00:22:34]  And you're coming in, and the smugglers are all profiting off all of this.
[00:22:38]  They're showing up at the border, entering the country illegally.
[00:22:42]  And 95% of the people are just waiting for Border Patrol to show up.
[00:22:46]  Wow.
[00:22:48]  Because they're just going to cycle them through the system and spit them out.
[00:22:52]  And go where they want to go.
[00:22:54]  Absolutely.
[00:22:54]  And it's paid for typically by the non government organization, which is ultimately reimbursed by our federal government through FEMA grants.
[00:23:03]  What is the name of the NGO?
[00:23:05]  Well, there's a lot of them.
[00:23:06]  Okay.
[00:23:06]  I mean, so it just depends.
[00:23:07]  You know, there's, you got Catholic Church.
[00:23:09]  The Open Society Foundation.
[00:23:10]  What is the Soros one called?
[00:23:12]  I think that's Open Society.
[00:23:13]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:14]  But they're actually working in Central America and Mexico, help facilitate some of those groups that are outside of the country.
[00:23:20]  But every Border Patrol sector, those nine on the southwest border, there are.
[00:23:25]  Local NGOs that are helping.
[00:23:28]  And because we don't want to put them on the streets.
[00:23:31]  I mean, by law, I've released you.
[00:23:34]  I can walk you out the front door to the street.
[00:23:38]  Well, that's not humane.
[00:23:40]  And a town like Yuma, we couldn't do that.
[00:23:42]  We were catching more people than the town had in the population.
[00:23:47]  So we had a non government organization that stepped up and said, well, we'll help this crisis.
[00:23:52]  I think it's also just important just to go back because I kind of jumped ahead.
[00:23:58]  Yeah, Border Patrol is just like the first cog in this immigration enforcement continuum.
[00:24:04]  Like we're the ones that can't say no.
[00:24:06]  Like we have to catch them if they've crossed.
[00:24:08]  Like if they're.
[00:24:10]  We can't just leave them out there.
[00:24:13]  ICE, for example, and I'm not really here to bash my ICE cousins, but the investigative teams, they don't have to come out.
[00:24:21]  They can say we can't respond for whatever reason.
[00:24:23]  Detention can say, well, we don't have enough room, so we're not going to respond.
[00:24:29]  Other agencies, whether if we wanted to criminally charge them, the U.S. Attorney's Office can say, well, we're not going to take the case.
[00:24:35]  So we're still stuck with these people.
[00:24:38]  And when you're catching, Now, the average the last couple days has been anywhere from 6,500 to 7,000 people a day on the southern border alone.
[00:24:48]  That adds up.
[00:24:50]  And it takes a couple hours to process each case.
[00:24:53]  And then you can only move people out during certain hours of the day.
[00:24:57]  It becomes a big problem.
[00:24:58]  And where I'm going with a lot of this is everybody, Border Patrol is responsible for like one hour.
[00:25:07]  If you put the immigration continuum in a 24-hour clock, We're actually responsible for about like an hour of it.
[00:25:14]  But we assume all the accountability because we're just supposed to catch you and process it.
[00:25:19]  If you're from Mexico, we can send you back to Mexico.
[00:25:21]  If you're not from Mexico, you're supposed to go to detention, which would be ICE.
[00:25:24]  But ICE says, hey, we don't have any more room.
[00:25:26]  So the NGO is taking them.
[00:25:28]  Yeah.
[00:25:28]  And they're released because we have to set it because we can't keep them.
[00:25:31]  And that's what you're seeing.
[00:25:33]  That's that hundreds of thousands that have been bussed to New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver, all those things that are happening because some of the Texas is the only one doing it right now.
[00:25:43]  They said, hey, they're not going to sit here in our state.
[00:25:46]  You know, they're not even, they're not coming to Texas.
[00:25:48]  They're going to other places.
[00:25:49]  So, but all this, what I'm getting at, which to me is the most important piece is our border security becomes vulnerable.
[00:26:00]  If our agents are having to go respond to 250 people on the ground just sitting there, like, and we have to take care, we become babysitters and transportation people when we know that the cartels have directed this group of people to show up in this gap in the wall.
[00:26:19]  knowing that once our resources respond there, we're going to have limited, if or any resources 10 miles west of us, and that's where they're going to send the really bad actors, the narcotics, the fentanyl, potential terrorists, the criminals, the gangs, because they're going to evade arrest.
[00:26:37]  What people don't want to talk about, and when I say people, oftentimes it's the mainstream media in this White House, is the gotaways.
[00:26:47]  Under this president, in the last three and a half years there's been 1.8 million known gotaways.
[00:26:54]  Okay, by law under the Ghepra Act and I it's government something I don't remember what it stands for but Borkshire has to report every 24 hours apprehensions, turn backs and gotaways.
[00:27:07]  So this isn't just some you know made up number.
[00:27:10]  We actually have to report based on what we've discovered and that's either through visual, we saw 10 people, we chased 10 people, we didn't catch them.
[00:27:20]  That's 10 gotaways.
[00:27:22]  We were driving along the border.
[00:27:24]  We saw the footprint of 10 people.
[00:27:27]  So we saw 20 feet.
[00:27:29]  There's 10 people.
[00:27:31]  We tracked them a mile.
[00:27:32]  We caught five.
[00:27:33]  We saw five more run.
[00:27:35]  There's five gotaways.
[00:27:37]  Our cameras detected a group enter.
[00:27:40]  We looked at that.
[00:27:41]  Looks like a group of 20.
[00:27:43]  Best guess is there's 20.
[00:27:44]  We never responded because we couldn't.
[00:27:46]  There's 20 gotaways.
[00:27:48]  That's 1.8 million people.
[00:27:52]  Now, when we've caught 70, 80 plus people in the terrorist database.
[00:27:57]  Sorry, remind me how many gotaways?
[00:27:59]  1.8 million in the last three and a half years.
[00:28:02]  Last three and a half years.
[00:28:02]  It's been basically 500,000 the last three years.
[00:28:05]  And then we're about you know, another 300,000 so far.
[00:28:10]  We don't know who's in that mix.
[00:28:11]  Right.
[00:28:12]  But statistically speaking, there's going to be people that are just wanting to get, you know, have been working here, maybe went back south, just want to get back and they don't want to get caught.
[00:28:22]  So they're evading us.
[00:28:23]  So there's going to be those just workers, right?
[00:28:27]  Then there's going to be, again, the criminal aliens who know that if they get caught, they're going to jail.
[00:28:32]  The gang members who know if they get caught, they're going to jail.
[00:28:36]  The terrorists, the potential smugglers, all the criminal sides.
[00:28:40]  Because, If you can just turn yourself into Border Patrol and you've got a 90 plus percent chance you're going to be released in a couple days to go about your business and may not even have to show up for a couple years to a hearing, why would you run from Border Patrol?
[00:28:53]  Exactly.
[00:28:54]  So, those 1.8 million gotaways, they're the ones that keep me up at night still.
[00:28:59]  Like, what is coming?
[00:29:00]  What is happening?
[00:29:01]  And you've got.
[00:29:02]  So, they deploy the groups of innocent people to distract you from the people that are committing crimes and that aren't going to get through.
[00:29:08]  Yep.
[00:29:08]  That cat and mouse and deflection game has been going on since the.
[00:29:12]  I came in the Border Patrol, they'd send a group here so they could send the backpackers running dope or something else.
[00:29:20]  How did you guys try to adapt to that?
[00:29:23]  Did you guys recognize a pattern there and start to figure that out?
[00:29:27]  So that's actually kind of funny, right?
[00:29:29]  So I can tell you when I was an agent, a patrol agent out there doing the shift work and pounding the sand and stuff out there, we would always respond to any entry.
[00:29:42]  And I worked in some remote areas where you didn't have a lot of that.
[00:29:45]  Give ups and people trying to deflect you because it was rugged areas out in the boot heel of New Mexico and far west Texas that people were just not there.
[00:29:54]  It wasn't easy for them to just show up at the border in those locations.
[00:29:57]  You really had to work for it.
[00:29:58]  But as deputy chief and as chief in the sectors I was working, especially El Paso and Yuma, you know, the border wall is designed to impede or deny entry or control and contain entry.
[00:30:14]  All right.
[00:30:14]  Because there's areas where we have a river, we can't put the wall.
[00:30:18]  In the middle of the river.
[00:30:18]  So we have to kind of concede some land.
[00:30:20]  So we're controlling and containing any illegal entries.
[00:30:24]  On a land border, it's right there at the border of Mexico.
[00:30:27]  So we can actually impede and deny entry in some of those locations.
[00:30:32]  You asked the question how do we adapt to that?
[00:30:34]  So I would use the wall to our advantage.

=== Wall Construction Gaps (05:04) ===

[00:30:37]  Let's, when you'd see these large groups giving up, we're controlling it.
[00:30:44]  If they're just sitting down, let's wait and see, right?
[00:30:48]  We can kind of.
[00:30:49]  They're just on the other side of the fence.
[00:30:50]  They haven't tried to go further in.
[00:30:52]  They're just waiting for us to come open the gate and let them in because it's already on our side of the border.
[00:30:58]  This is specifically where we had a river border in Yuma and in El Paso.
[00:31:02]  So they're already in the United States, but they just haven't furthered their injury because they can't get over the wall.
[00:31:06]  Or they're not in a gap.
[00:31:08]  And even some of the ones that would just sit there in the gap waiting for us.
[00:31:12]  I had instructed our field commanders, hey, turn the cameras over that way.
[00:31:16]  Keep an eye on them because as soon as you send four or five agents out there and a couple buses, what happens?
[00:31:24]  50 people start jumping over the fence and running to the neighborhoods.
[00:31:27]  So, we'd have to kind of play that decoy game.
[00:31:30]  And I don't want to give up too much of our inside tradecraft here, how we do it.
[00:31:35]  But that's kind of what we would do we would delay our response because we wanted to create the bad guys become vulnerable because they would get answered, hey, we got to run this group through.
[00:31:44]  So, you're tracking what I'm saying is like, hey, we'll send this group here.
[00:31:48]  We see it.
[00:31:49]  Let's monitor it to see what happens.
[00:31:52]  Because we know if we go right away over here to the big group, something's coming right behind us.
[00:31:56]  And so, this is typical what's always happened.
[00:31:58]  It just happened in scale.
[00:32:02]  That kind of was the game for decades.
[00:32:07]  And then in the last few years, we've been seeing this huge increase.
[00:32:13]  So I want to kind of, I know you got another question on this, but what I want to kind of make sure that I connect some dots here is I told you what happened in 19, 905,000.
[00:32:24]  It dropped to 405,000 in 2020.
[00:32:28]  Well, guess what happened in 21?
[00:32:30]  It went up to 1.66 million.
[00:32:33]  And then in 22, it went up to tripled?
[00:32:35]  Yeah.
[00:32:36]  Then it went up to 2.2 million in 2022.
[00:32:41]  Wow.
[00:32:42]  And then in 23, it went up to 2.4 million.
[00:32:45]  And we're trending right now.
[00:32:47]  Did I skip a year?
[00:32:47]  21 was 1.66.
[00:32:50]  22 was 2.2 million.
[00:32:52]  23, it was around 2.4 million.
[00:32:54]  And we're trending where this year, if they continue to hold, it'll be somewhere between that 1.6 and 2.2 million.
[00:32:59]  You're talking arrests.
[00:33:00]  Arrests on the southern border.
[00:33:02]  Yeah.
[00:33:03]  Yeah.
[00:33:03]  To which what percentage of those arrests are just getting let loose and how many are getting turned around?
[00:33:08]  Oh, so a good percent of those, you know, 75, 85% of the people that we catch are being released.
[00:33:14]  Okay.
[00:33:14]  Yeah.
[00:33:15]  So when, why did those big, why was that jump?
[00:33:19]  Well, we had a change of administration.
[00:33:21]  All right.
[00:33:23]  On inauguration day, President Biden signed multiple executive orders.
[00:33:27]  The first one was stop the wall.
[00:33:29]  Okay.
[00:33:30]  This is a very important piece.
[00:33:31]  This is why we're in this situation we're in today.
[00:33:35]  Remember when I said the wall was just a campaign slogan, but the wall system was our requirements?
[00:33:40]  Yes.
[00:33:41]  Well, so when he canceled the contract for the stop the wall, it was all those contracts associated with it.
[00:33:46]  So they stopped building the wall, they stopped installing technology, they stopped working on the access roads.
[00:33:55]  I can tell you in Yuma, Arizona, when that happened, we had all these gaps in the wall that were just where the contracts were going to change over.
[00:34:06]  We had camera poles.
[00:34:08]  that we couldn't put the cameras on.
[00:34:10]  We had light poles that we couldn't plug in the lights because that was all part of the bigger contracts.
[00:34:17]  We had miles of like dredged lines where we were going to install fiber optic cable.
[00:34:23]  We could, we had spools and spools of fiber just sitting there.
[00:34:27]  There are still to this day, I was just in Yuma two weeks ago, stacks and stacks of steel that we could have used to fill those gaps.
[00:34:34]  So when he cut that off, all the contracts that the bought and paid for were stopped.
[00:34:42]  and he ended the migrant protection protocol.
[00:34:45]  He shut down deportations for over 100 days.
[00:34:48]  He canceled private contracted facilities for detention and he reduced the daily capacity for ICE detention.
[00:34:56]  That was a perfect storm and that's how you go from 400,000 to 1.66 million.
[00:35:03]  Why do you think they did that?
[00:35:05]  Do you think political spite.
[00:35:06]  Do you think it's just political spite or do you think that they believe that there is some sort of good, they're doing?
[00:35:14]  Well, again, the simple answer is political because he campaigned on everything against Trump and he talks, still to this day, talks everything against Trump.
[00:35:24]  Yeah.
[00:35:25]  But I do think that there is a larger, more sinister kind of behind the thing, right?
[00:35:32]  Like, why are.
[00:35:33]  Because no country, no country can absorb eight plus million people plus the gotaways in a three year span.

=== Population And Representation (10:47) ===

[00:35:42]  I mean, it's a lot of people.
[00:35:43]  It's not happening anywhere in the world.
[00:35:45]  Why us, right?
[00:35:46]  Right, right.
[00:35:46]  So they got to be thinking, oh, well, it's a humanitarian crisis.
[00:35:50]  People are all refugees.
[00:35:51]  No, most of them do not meet the basic tenets for asylum claims anyway.
[00:35:56]  So I think there's a part of it.
[00:35:58]  There's a part of people in this administration thinking, hey, it's the right thing to do.
[00:36:02]  Okay.
[00:36:03]  And I'm not against immigration.
[00:36:05]  I'm only pro legal immigration, not illegal.
[00:36:08]  Then there's a part of it there, you know, you kind of, you'd end up, you know, you're a conspiracy theorist if you talk about it, but our brain is designed, you've got to find facts to reason and make sense of something.
[00:36:20]  Well, why on earth would you allow eight plus million people to come into this country when we're dealing with all the hardships we're already dealing with?
[00:36:29]  There is a play or not a play, but there is there's a conversation going around and I think it makes a lot of sense.
[00:36:37]  Our census is based on population, not citizenship.
[00:36:41]  Actually, Trump made it you had to be a citizen to be counted.
[00:36:44]  That's been repealed.
[00:36:46]  But that's how you gain representatives and that's how you could potentially increase electoral college votes for your area.
[00:36:53]  So by most people that live there.
[00:36:55]  Yes.
[00:36:55]  They live there, but they don't have to be a citizen.
[00:36:57]  Right.
[00:36:57]  So if you have a heavily blue state or blue district and you can send more people in there.
[00:37:04]  And there's a population count and say, hey, we've had an increase of 100,000 people.
[00:37:08]  We need another representative.
[00:37:10]  Well, it's a heavily blue area.
[00:37:12]  You can get another blue representative.
[00:37:14]  If you can add more electoral votes by adding to the population, you can swing that.
[00:37:22]  If you are in a purple state and you can send more people in there and hopefully shift it back to one of your colors, so there's that theory that's going out there.
[00:37:31]  And that makes a lot of sense because what.
[00:37:36]  Some people are doing is like it's about remaining in power.
[00:37:40]  And if we can, if we can control, I mean, that again, you, that's a tinfoil wearing hat theory.
[00:37:46]  So, how do those, how does that work though?
[00:37:48]  So, just because there's more people living in this, so let's just say, let's just say, for example, Tampa, Florida, right?
[00:37:56]  This is a, this is typically a red state, right?
[00:38:00]  It's gone blue before.
[00:38:02]  But if there's somehow, Let's just say a million people from Haiti came here.
[00:38:10]  Now the census in Tampa, Florida is a million people more than it was before.
[00:38:16]  Did those people individually, don't they have to vote?
[00:38:20]  No.
[00:38:21]  No.
[00:38:21]  When they do a population census and they do a census and realize, hey, there's been a million people increase, we need another representative.
[00:38:29]  We need more.
[00:38:31]  Okay, so that would make Florida more red, though, right?
[00:38:33]  It would give us another Republican representative?
[00:38:36]  Not necessarily.
[00:38:37]  It would be who, who they would.
[00:38:38]  They would give a representative position.
[00:38:40]  Then you'd have a special election and it would see who turns out to vote.
[00:38:43]  And is it going to vote for the Republican or the Democrat?
[00:38:46]  Okay, you don't add to the color, you I mean so.
[00:38:48]  So if you had, if you had um again, we'll just i'll use easy math so I can explain it so if you had, if you had a population of a million people here in in, in this county okay, and you added a million now.
[00:39:01]  So now you got two million and at one million you had five representatives.
[00:39:05]  Okay um, They do a census and a population.
[00:39:09]  They realize, hey, man, it's doubled.
[00:39:12]  We need at least two more reps to cover this area.
[00:39:16]  Okay.
[00:39:17]  They do special elections and then people run for those positions in hopes that, hey, if it's red, may not benefit the people with that mindset.
[00:39:26]  But if it's purple and they're like, hey, if we can get two more blue reps out of it, we turn this to a blue area.
[00:39:32]  Again, conspiracy theory.
[00:39:35]  There's no evidence out there other than that has been a lot of the talk lately because, again, we're trying to find reason.
[00:39:43]  This is not just about taking care of people that are fleeing a country and coming to the United States.
[00:39:52]  Trying to make sense.
[00:39:53]  Why on earth would you allow this to happen when you've got over $35 trillion in debt?
[00:40:00]  We've got the largest homeless population we've seen in this country.
[00:40:03]  We've got people dying of fentanyl.
[00:40:05]  We've got hungry children, hungry veterans.
[00:40:07]  We've got all this going on.
[00:40:08]  We're going to absorb more people.
[00:40:10]  The average American's paying over $11,000 more a year for the cost of living.
[00:40:15]  Why are you adding more people to this problem?
[00:40:18]  So, again, just.
[00:40:21]  You asked why.
[00:40:22]  And I'm like, this is the only thing I can think of is it ends up being a power trip because it does not make sense when you have law enforcement saying, this is not working.
[00:40:32]  This is a problem.
[00:40:33]  You are making us vulnerable.
[00:40:35]  Then why are the people in power continuing to take us down that road?
[00:40:40]  Again, I'm just trying to make sense of it because it doesn't make sense to me from someone who gave their whole life to adult life and profession to securing the board and following the laws.
[00:40:53]  And we're just blatantly allowing them to do all this stuff.
[00:40:55]  I wonder if it has anything to do with population because, you know, a lot of people in civilized nations or civilized, you know, first world parts of the world or in first world countries, the birth rate has been dropping a lot.
[00:41:14]  And the two things that determine a nation's power and superiority are wealth and population size.
[00:41:22]  And I know that our population has been stagnant and dropping.
[00:41:26]  But the one thing that's actually keeping the U.S. population at least level is all the immigration that's coming through.
[00:41:35]  So I wonder if somewhere, you know, high up in politics or somewhere that they're maybe thinking about that.
[00:41:46]  Like we need to increase our population because young people are not reproducing like they used to be.
[00:41:52]  You know, they're living in urban cities and worrying about their careers and not having babies.
[00:41:56]  So we need to increase our population, which, which, In turn, could maybe increase the wealth of the country or our GDP somehow.
[00:42:07]  I don't know.
[00:42:08]  But I don't know if that's something that.
[00:42:10]  I mean, if it is, then why haven't they said that?
[00:42:13]  Right.
[00:42:14]  Because to me, that would be a very sustainable theory that the leader of the free world should say, hey, we are no longer reproducing at the rate that America has.
[00:42:25]  And for order us to maintain our power and standing and our leading freedom in the world, we need to increase immigration.
[00:42:34]  Through this, okay.
[00:42:35]  Well, if that's the case, then let's do it the right way so we don't have all the illegal stuff going on.
[00:42:40]  So, again, I have no objection with that theory.
[00:42:45]  Here's my only concern, just like the concerns with my theory that I'm hearing.
[00:42:49]  And that's not made up by me, it's just the stuff I hear.
[00:42:54]  Just come in and tell us so we can make sense of it and maybe find a better way so we're not having people exploited along the way.
[00:43:02]  Because if it is about increasing population so we can sustain.
[00:43:06]  The future of this country?
[00:43:08]  Why are we making them go through smuggling networks, getting exploited along the way, getting raped and tortured, allowing the cartels and the smuggling organizations to make billions of profit off of people if we're trying to better the country?
[00:43:21]  See, that's where I'm like, okay, I agree that maybe a good way to go is to increase immigration, but they're putting people in harm's way to do that.
[00:43:32]  Why not make the lawful process more efficient, more easily attainable for somebody to come over here if if that's the goal, because then you would actually have a probably more empathetic country than what you're seeing right now, as you're seeing this erosion of empathy because people are getting tired of all the impacts.
[00:43:55]  If you go to a major city that's received, you know, Chicago has them lined up, you look at what's going on in New York City where they're getting five star hotels and getting debit cards, that's ticking people off, right?
[00:44:07]  But if there was a reason, a method to the madness, explain it.
[00:44:11]  We don't have to like it, but at least it allows our brain to start kind of reasoning out this.
[00:44:15]  Right now, Say, hey, we want to increase the electoral college and more representatives.
[00:44:20]  Okay, I don't like that, but I get it.
[00:44:22]  Hey, we want to increase the population of this country because we're declining.
[00:44:26]  Okay, I get it, but at least I can start reasoning.
[00:44:29]  But they haven't told us any of this.
[00:44:30]  Right.
[00:44:31]  We're just absorbing it all.
[00:44:33]  You know, my friend Luis Shaparo has been on the show a few times.
[00:44:36]  He's a journalist.
[00:44:37]  Somebody ever heard of him?
[00:44:37]  He's based out in El Paso, Texas, and he reports on all the cartels.
[00:44:40]  Yeah.
[00:44:41]  And he goes back and forth and he actually embeds with them and talks to them.
[00:44:44]  They trust him.
[00:44:46]  He was telling me that.
[00:44:48]  All of the cartels during Trump, they all loved Trump because he was so hard on the border.
[00:44:54]  And the point of view of the cartels was it's easier to make more money when there's a perceived obstacle, right?
[00:45:02]  So when all the people that are in Mexico are trying to come to the US, they all see the media and the news and building a wall, we're going to buff security.
[00:45:10]  So now the cartels can say, well, you know, we were charging five grand, but now we got to charge 20 grand because now we got to get you across this big wall and it's heavily guarded.
[00:45:18]  So they made more money.
[00:45:21]  From the perceived barrier of the wall that Trump was putting there.
[00:45:26]  So I'm wondering, like, now that there's less of it, you know, are maybe they're not making as much money now?
[00:45:33]  So, so well, I would say this.
[00:45:36]  First of all, the key to any of this, the one common denominator is the cartels are profiting.
[00:45:41]  Okay.
[00:45:42]  Yes.
[00:45:42]  People are being exploited and cartels are profiting.
[00:45:44]  It's when I was just again a year and a half ago, it was five to $15,000 a head is what people were paying.
[00:45:51]  Okay.
[00:45:51]  And that's just the typical rate.
[00:45:52]  And that's a big, that's a $10,000 range, but.
[00:45:55]  It really just depend because it gave them some deals.
[00:45:57]  Now, obviously, if you're from other countries, special interest countries, the price would go up.
[00:46:01]  But here's how you look at that, right?
[00:46:05]  You could have a super awesome car, all right, that's going to cost you $500,000 and you could pay high dollar for it if you got it, or you could buy 100 cars for $5,000.
[00:46:19]  Either way, the cartels are making $500,000.
[00:46:22]  So what I'm saying is under Trump, they're going to drive the price up.
[00:46:27]  Only one car is getting through, but they made their money with it.

=== Cartel Smuggling Tactics (14:44) ===

[00:46:29]  Okay.
[00:46:30]  Right.
[00:46:30]  Under Biden, they can get 100 people in at the same price and they've still hit their profit lines.
[00:46:36]  So it comes down to their profiting regardless.
[00:46:39]  What they really love is they love election season and they love the mainstream media because that's the marketing for the smuggling organizations.
[00:46:50]  We had the Trump effect, is what we called it.
[00:46:53]  When he got elected, we saw, I don't know if the overall large numbers reflected, but we saw on the ground the impacts of, oh, you better get in now because he's going to start building this wall.
[00:47:09]  All right.
[00:47:10]  Every election cycle, whether it's midterms, whether it's senatorial, whether it's presidential, the hype on the border comes up.
[00:47:17]  And that's a marking opportunity for the smugglers to say, get in now.
[00:47:21]  Come on now.
[00:47:22]  Right.
[00:47:23]  You know.
[00:47:25]  I just don't see where that ends until somebody really grabs the bull by the horns and says, all right, enough's enough, right?
[00:47:38]  We've got to shut this down.
[00:47:39]  Because my big concern here is the national security and the security piece.
[00:47:46]  Politicians, mainstream media, they like to give us virtue signaling and false choices.
[00:47:53]  They tell you that if you want to secure the border, That means you're anti-immigrant.
[00:48:00]  If you're pro-immigrant, then the other side says, well, you must be open border.
[00:48:05]  I'm trying to tell you is that you should be pro-lawful immigration and you can have your ideas of why and how and who should come over here.
[00:48:15]  But as an American citizen, it shouldn't be a political issue to secure our border.
[00:48:21]  I like to talk about our country should be tall fences and wide gates.
[00:48:26]  The tall fences represent that border security apparatus.
[00:48:30]  That's the wall where it makes sense.
[00:48:32]  That's the cameras, the lights, the technology package, the access roads, where the border patrol agents need it.
[00:48:39]  The wide gates is the lawful immigration piece that this country still needs to continue to flourish, as we talked about.
[00:48:47]  If our community can't provide the labor force, small business owners need to be able to, or big business owners, need to be able to find an efficient, cost effective, kind of all becomes efficient way of bringing in workers without jumping through.
[00:49:04]  You know, four federal agencies waiting two, three years and spending thousands of dollars on an application.
[00:49:09]  You may not.
[00:49:10]  Why do we do that to ourselves when there is clearly a need?
[00:49:15]  People want to come over here.
[00:49:17]  We know for whatever reason, there's a lot of unemployed people that can work, but they're not working.
[00:49:25]  And you got people waiting, trying to come over here looking for a better life.
[00:49:28]  Yeah.
[00:49:28]  Can we find that sweet spot?
[00:49:30]  Yeah.
[00:49:31]  I think we can.
[00:49:31]  I think you take your extreme right and your extreme left and you put them on extreme recess and you bring some common sense in the middle and say, okay, Small business owner, what do you need here in Tampa?
[00:49:41]  Well, I need this.
[00:49:42]  I can't find this type of workforce in this area.
[00:49:45]  And you can't recruit it around the state or around the country.
[00:49:47]  No, they're not coming over here.
[00:49:49]  All right, let's get you some non immigrant worker visa that would work this.
[00:49:56]  But all of this happens once you secure that border.
[00:50:01]  That's going to keep us safe.
[00:50:03]  That's going to mitigate the threats that are impacting us, whether that's gang members coming through here.
[00:50:10]  Potential terrorists coming through here, fentanyl getting in here because the fentanyl, I mean, it's coming in.
[00:50:16]  It's getting brought in from China and it's being pressed in these clandestine labs in Mexico and it's getting smuggled in the United States.
[00:50:23]  And it's killing people every day.
[00:50:26]  But we have to secure that border first.
[00:50:28]  That's that tall fence piece where it makes sense because walls do work when you put them in the right place.
[00:50:37]  When you have your buddy Luis in El Paso, The vanishing point is seconds to minutes in El Paso.
[00:50:43]  They can literally cross the border and be in a high school in a 200 yard sprint.
[00:50:49]  They can be in downtown, they can be in an apartment complex, big neighborhoods.
[00:50:52]  So you absolutely have to have that wall because, as I mentioned earlier, it's designed to impede, deny, control.
[00:50:57]  If you can slow it down, you got the cameras that's put them in, the agents can be vectored right in there, they have a better chance of making an apprehension.
[00:51:05]  Now, you get out into some of the remote areas, 10, 20 miles outside of urban and rural areas, the wall's not going to do anything.
[00:51:13]  Because if you don't have an agent there, they're going to go up and over.
[00:51:16]  But you know what?
[00:51:16]  Cameras and sensors, drone technologies, some even higher tech stuff.
[00:51:22]  Can help us, because there's areas out there where they'll walk five, seven days till they get to that vanishing point.
[00:51:28]  They get to interstates.
[00:51:31]  We don't.
[00:51:31]  A wall is not going to stop that it's.
[00:51:34]  You know they're going to go up and over that.
[00:51:35]  If it's in a very remote, desolate area, they still got a seven day walk right.
[00:51:40]  But if you had cameras and sensors out there and you had agents out there on patrol, you can make that difference.
[00:51:45]  So I don't know any agent that i've known closely or ever heard that we need a 2 000 mile wall from Brownsville Texas, to San Diego.
[00:51:53]  But where it makes sense we absolutely need that If we get a new administration in at the first of the year after this election, the plans are, the requirements are there, the plans are in place.
[00:52:06]  I think we just need to revamp it to say, hey, do we still need this wall here or can we go with technology?
[00:52:11]  Where we didn't have technology here, we've seen a shift in migration patterns.
[00:52:15]  Should we put technology here?
[00:52:17]  I think that plan would be so easy to vamp up and get it done that that would allow people to have a standalone border security bill.
[00:52:27]  To secure the border, and then they can focus on a standalone immigration bill to say, Hey, okay, how do we regulate what's happening?
[00:52:35]  How do we get the American workforce, whether it's agriculture, whether it's STEM, whether it's academia, whatever it is, how do we get them what they need?
[00:52:45]  And then we can go back and figure out how are we going to handle the 8 million that have been here for the last few years or the 20 million, depending on who's telling you the estimates.
[00:52:53]  Steve, can you pull up the video that Luis showed us of those guys cutting the fence open and they were like waving at the cameras?
[00:52:59]  You remember what I'm talking about?
[00:53:01]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:53:04]  This video is crazy because these guys are like, they're using some sort of wires to like cut the fence.
[00:53:10]  And then these guys are just piling through it.
[00:53:13]  And the guys behind it, they're just like waving at the camera, like thumbs up, like, hey, everybody, how are you doing?
[00:53:18]  Yep.
[00:53:18]  They knew nothing was going to happen.
[00:53:19]  Is that out in Arizona or is that in El Paso?
[00:53:21]  I don't know.
[00:53:21]  Or is that El Paso?
[00:53:22]  Or is that Arizona?
[00:53:23]  Yeah.
[00:53:25]  Look at this.
[00:53:26]  Yeah.
[00:53:26]  I think that's by Lukeville.
[00:53:28]  So can you explain what's going on here?
[00:53:30]  Yeah.
[00:53:30]  So, um, And look at this guy filming right there.
[00:53:33]  Yeah, he's taking his own selfie.
[00:53:35]  So he's letting everybody know that he, okay, well, maybe just everybody can see the video.
[00:53:40]  First of all, look at that.
[00:53:41]  Okay, the agents are close by.
[00:53:43]  Who are those guys?
[00:53:44]  That's Border Patrol agents, I look like.
[00:53:46]  I couldn't see the back of that.
[00:53:47]  Yeah.
[00:53:50]  Yeah, I think that's actually in Lukeville, Arizona.
[00:53:53]  That was a big hotspot right at the end of the year.
[00:53:57]  So that guy.
[00:53:59]  Can you pause on those guys' jackets, those Border Patrol guys?
[00:54:03]  It had something on the back.
[00:54:04]  I wasn't sure what it said.
[00:54:06]  That's why I was going to.
[00:54:07]  Yeah, right about there, Steve.
[00:54:08]  Get ready to pause it.
[00:54:11]  Yeah.
[00:54:11]  No, I think it was before this.
[00:54:14]  I think it was before that earlier.
[00:54:16]  So you saw the marking on the bollard there.
[00:54:19]  So those are, that's a 30 foot wall.
[00:54:23]  That's the bollard.
[00:54:24]  It's got the steel and the rebar reinforced.
[00:54:26]  You have to have like a plasma cutter.
[00:54:28]  You have to have some legitimate tools.
[00:54:30]  And if you look where they're stepping, it actually looks like it has a, where it's had repairs before.
[00:54:35]  Right there, Steve.
[00:54:36]  Okay, so that's board of Troydons.
[00:54:37]  That's board of Troydons.
[00:54:38]  Yeah, so I don't know where.
[00:54:40]  Where they were on that.
[00:54:41]  And looking at that truck, that could have been the contracting material or the contractor that's going to repair that.
[00:54:50]  So, a couple things that I can take away from this video, try to provide some context.
[00:54:55]  They pour concrete in the middle of those things?
[00:54:57]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:54:58]  So, there they are repairing it.
[00:54:59]  Okay.
[00:54:59]  Okay, so that's what it was, right?
[00:55:01]  So, that's what they're doing.
[00:55:03]  So, the bad guys, obviously, that's Arizona.
[00:55:08]  Wow, look at that freaking elevation change.
[00:55:10]  Yeah.
[00:55:11]  Yeah.
[00:55:12]  That's wild.
[00:55:13]  So the bad guys have found a kind of a remote area where they were able to get their whatever tool they had, looks like probably a plasma cutter or something, to cut that bollard and moved it back and forth.
[00:55:27]  And, you know, coordinated this whole group to come through here.
[00:55:32]  And he's just looking, sorry, that's a coyote.
[00:55:34]  That's a coyote, yeah.
[00:55:35]  I just got paid.
[00:55:37]  He's recording to let somebody know A, they made it through.
[00:55:42]  B, he's marketing himself to wherever that video goes.
[00:55:46]  See, you come in with me, you're going to get in.
[00:55:49]  Now, I don't know about the concept.
[00:55:51]  How's that right there?
[00:55:52]  That's crazy looking.
[00:55:53]  Yeah, so, Paul Steve?
[00:55:54]  So, looking at that, man, it looks like so many areas.
[00:55:57]  That looks like it could be east of Nogales, Arizona, going straight up the wall there or the mountaintop there.
[00:56:05]  There's just so many places on that border that look like that.
[00:56:08]  And that's another challenge, right?
[00:56:10]  Because oftentimes the bureaucrats and the politicians in Washington want to give a one size fit all.
[00:56:16]  If you've been to one sector, you've been to one sector because that's nothing like Yuma.
[00:56:22]  That's nothing like the Rio Grande Valley.
[00:56:24]  That's a lot like Tucson.
[00:56:26]  That's nothing like El Paso sector.
[00:56:30]  So one size definitely does not fit all.
[00:56:33]  But what you see here is a great picture.
[00:56:35]  You see the wall.
[00:56:37]  You see the access road.
[00:56:38]  You see the camera system and the lighting system.
[00:56:41]  That is what agents want.
[00:56:42]  And they can see this.
[00:56:43]  What you don't see are agents because they're tied up processing.
[00:56:47]  Hundreds and thousands of people that have been going through the border gap.
[00:56:51]  Now, for whatever reason, they chose that spot.
[00:56:55]  They felt safe to cut through there, push them through there.
[00:56:59]  I don't know why they chose that spot, but somehow it had to do with who was controlling on the south side, who was, was there attention someplace else, you know, in other parts of the border.
[00:57:12]  But, and I don't know if those agents were actually right there when that happened or that was just the way the video.
[00:57:19]  That could have been a cutaway.
[00:57:20]  Cutaway.
[00:57:21]  Yeah.
[00:57:22]  Let's blush it again, Steve, from the beginning.
[00:57:24]  Oh, I got another video.
[00:57:25]  Oh, okay.
[00:57:26]  But even if they were, I mean, once they're here, there's alleys in Lukeville right there on that bottom left.
[00:57:32]  Yeah.
[00:57:34]  So what's going on here?
[00:57:35]  This is a different part?
[00:57:36]  So that's Border Patrol right there.
[00:57:39]  And yeah, so they're already.
[00:57:41]  So he just stopped him.
[00:57:42]  That's the coyote on the other side.
[00:57:44]  Yeah.
[00:57:45]  Yeah, so this looks like it's right there in Nogales.
[00:57:48]  It could be Lukeville.
[00:57:49]  Looks like Nogales.
[00:57:51]  From all over the world, he's just like, All right, guys, hurry it up, hurry it up, let's get this over with.
[00:57:55]  Yeah, so yeah, there's nothing you know, he's there's the coyote making sure he did his jobs and can show his bosses.
[00:58:02]  I've never seen that video where they're actually just letting him come in.
[00:58:06]  Why he didn't stop them, he's trying to put something up right now, like a barrier, dude.
[00:58:11]  He's just trying to, yeah, why would he be like trying to hurry them up, like get through?
[00:58:16]  I guess he figured there's nothing he's not gonna stop them, like they're already there.
[00:58:22]  I can't believe that he didn't just stop.
[00:58:24]  I don't know.
[00:58:25]  I don't have an answer for that.
[00:58:26]  I mean, like.
[00:58:28]  Human traffickers easily getting migrants through the border wall.
[00:58:32]  I mean, look, if that was me, I would have been, I would have been like, yeah, that's Lukeville.
[00:58:36]  See, I've been down there to that.
[00:58:38]  Right.
[00:58:38]  Yeah.
[00:58:39]  I've actually, I know Allie Bradley.
[00:58:40]  Is that behind her?
[00:58:42]  Yeah.
[00:58:42]  Is that those blankets, those thermal blankets?
[00:58:45]  Mylar blankets, yeah.
[00:58:47]  So I was down there right before Christmas.
[00:58:50]  I got there early in the morning.
[00:58:51]  Actually, Allie was there, and so were some other media folks.
[00:58:54]  And there were 800 people on the ground there.
[00:58:59]  There were 500, I'd say approximately 500 single adult men.
[00:59:04]  Just sitting there.
[00:59:05]  Yeah.
[00:59:05]  There was probably in the 18 to 35 year range.
[00:59:08]  And then the remaining 200 to 300 people were.
[00:59:12]  a mix of family units, mom and dads and kids.
[00:59:17]  They just all crossed in the last three hours in a hope similar to that.
[00:59:22]  And that was happening in Lukeville, Arizona right before Christmas.
[00:59:26]  That made a big headway there because there was literally a thousand people a day coming through there for a couple days.
[00:59:31]  It shut down the port of entry in Lukeville because they had to divert all the resources to support Border Patrol, which kind of ticked off the community.
[00:59:39]  And that's the way to go to Puerto Penasco, which is Rocky Point, which is a pretty a very big tourist area.
[00:59:44]  It's just an hour drive south there to the Baja.
[00:59:48]  And so it shut that down.
[00:59:49]  Everybody goes down there to vacation during the Christmas time.
[00:59:52]  But because there was so much traffic going there, they had to divert resources there.
[00:59:57]  But I'm not going to sit there and Monday morning quarterback those agents because there could have been other things going on.
[01:00:05]  Like they've got, there could be 10 of those things happening all around.
[01:00:08]  He's like, all right, just, you guys just go get in here.
[01:00:11]  You're not, you're going to, if I, as soon as I turn around, you're going to come in anyway.
[01:00:15]  Maybe that's what his decision was.
[01:00:19]  I have a hard time with that.
[01:00:21]  I would have at least attempted to stand right in the middle of that, you know, maybe deployed some less lethal, you know, some pepper ball or something to just say, hey, get back.
[01:00:31]  You're not allowed to shoot them, right?
[01:00:32]  No, no, you can't shoot them for that.
[01:00:33]  There's no immediate threat, right?
[01:00:35]  But you can use less lethal.
[01:00:36]  You can do some, you know, put some gas out there because you don't know who's in that threat, right?
[01:00:44]  Yeah, what would be a humane way to keep them back?
[01:00:47]  Well, so you mean you have a right to defend that territory, right?
[01:00:51]  And again, without knowing, you see the smuggler, he's a masked guy.
[01:00:55]  You don't know who he is, what he's doing.
[01:00:58]  So you could do an area of saturation with like some pepper ball, which would have some not CS gas.
[01:01:05]  Pepper spray.
[01:01:06]  Yeah, it would be this, it wouldn't be gas, but it would be the pepper spray.
[01:01:10]  And that would just keep people like, okay, I'm not, it's irritated.

=== Accessible Work Permits (15:02) ===

[01:01:13]  I'm not going to come across, right?
[01:01:15]  So you could do that till you kind of got control of the area.
[01:01:19]  Till he could assess.
[01:01:20]  Because anytime you have a situation like that, if it's not an immediate reaction because you're being threatened, we always, it's a stamina stop, think, assess, manage, act.
[01:01:29]  I would, that's what I would do.
[01:01:30]  I'd be like, okay, hold on a second.
[01:01:31]  What's going on?
[01:01:33]  Do I have the ability to do some area saturation here so I can stop, make sure that there is not a threat coming in?
[01:01:41]  I don't know who the smuggler is.
[01:01:42]  I know he's wearing black and he's covering up.
[01:01:44]  He's got something, he's talking on a phone.
[01:01:47]  I got people just jumping right through.
[01:01:49]  What the heck is going on?
[01:01:50]  Yeah.
[01:01:51]  They're not supposed to be doing that, that they're committing a crime right in front of you.
[01:01:55]  Right, they've just cut the wall.
[01:01:57]  Man, what a crazy statement!
[01:01:58]  Again, this goes back to this is what the agents have had to face, uh, every day, uh, and continue to this day.
[01:02:06]  Um, I mean, like, I like what Bobby Kennedy was saying about if he was president, he would make it the passports free and accessible to people who can't afford them, right?
[01:02:19]  Like, because I know what it's like to get a pass, I've never gone through immigration, but I know it's like to get a passport.
[01:02:23]  I've gotten like I have my passport renewed three times, and every time I have to do it, I do it for my kids.
[01:02:27]  It's a pain in the ass.
[01:02:29]  It's time consuming.
[01:02:30]  You got to take time out of your day to drive to the wherever, like the post office or the passport office.
[01:02:35]  And it's not easy, and I can read.
[01:02:39]  Yeah.
[01:02:40]  Right.
[01:02:40]  And I'm somewhat educated.
[01:02:42]  But somebody who doesn't speak the language fluently or is not educated that has to do all this for their kids and they have to come up with the money.
[01:02:49]  It's like hundreds of dollars to get a passport.
[01:02:51]  That's sometimes you have to travel like a long distance to one of those offices.
[01:02:54]  It's pretty freaking hard.
[01:02:56]  I think what he was saying is he would make that accessible to all Americans who, because then you would know, right?
[01:03:01]  Then there'd be that American document.
[01:03:04]  You only get a U.S. passport if you're a U.S. citizen.
[01:03:07]  So he was trying to make that, you know, to where.
[01:03:12]  There's very few things nowadays because they're even challenging the right to vote.
[01:03:17]  You know, there's people out there.
[01:03:18]  Right.
[01:03:18]  Like he was making the argument there's people that are really old, that their passports have expired, their IDs have expired, their driver's license, whatever.
[01:03:26]  There's lots of different nuanced situations where people, it's just inconvenient for them or it costs too much money for them to renew this stuff.
[01:03:33]  I don't disagree.
[01:03:33]  I mean, having a U.S. passport, you know, why should it cost hundreds of dollars for U.S. citizens to get that?
[01:03:42]  I would be in favor of something like that because it becomes that.
[01:03:44]  You know, people don't like talking about it, but that becomes a national ID.
[01:03:48]  And that's okay because it's saying you are a U.S. citizen.
[01:03:52]  And really, the only thing that is separating a U.S. citizen from a non citizen nowadays is that right to vote and that U.S. passport.
[01:03:59]  Right.
[01:03:59]  Because a non citizen doesn't get a U.S. passport.
[01:04:02]  Right.
[01:04:02]  And he was, I think the other thing he was saying, I think the point of this rant he went on was that companies, business owners should be liable for hiring people that have these passports or have these identifications.
[01:04:14]  Right.
[01:04:14]  You can't just hire people off the street.
[01:04:16]  They have to have this legitimate.
[01:04:18]  ID, but at the same time, it has to be manageable, right?
[01:04:22]  It can't be completely unreasonable, like an insurmountable task for somebody that's coming from another country to obtain it if they're not a criminal or whatever.
[01:04:33]  If they're a good person and they're going to contribute to society, it should be easy, right?
[01:04:37]  I don't disagree with you on it.
[01:04:38]  And that goes back to the wide gates, right?
[01:04:41]  That way, and I say gates because you're allowed to open and close the gates to the width that you need because there's going to be times when, let's say, there is a natural disaster.
[01:04:52]  To where we need to give some kind of refuge to people, that we need to open the gate a little bit.
[01:04:57]  There could be an economic disaster, like some of the areas that are impacted around the country.
[01:05:04]  We need to open that gate.
[01:05:06]  But then you have situations where we've got too many illegals coming in here.
[01:05:10]  We've got too much crime going on as a result of some of the legal activity.
[01:05:16]  We need to narrow that gate to strictly just trade and travel and commerce, right?
[01:05:20]  But that's what you do with a gate, it opens and closes, right?
[01:05:23]  And so, To me, that becomes manageable.
[01:05:26]  And that is also something that helps with the overall security solution because now it's a dated, very, you know, goes back to many years ago, 40s, 50s, and into the early 60s, the Bracero program.
[01:05:39]  And I've talked about that before.
[01:05:41]  That's where they made it very easy for, that was basically Mexican field laborers.
[01:05:47]  So the ranchers could hire them and they'd come in for the season, they'd go right back.
[01:05:50]  And there was a major reduction in illegal entries, which allowed the very sparse border patrol to go do their real job to go get.
[01:05:59]  Smugglers, as opposed to going to get farm workers, and you had people that were willing to come in here.
[01:06:05]  I would venture to say that if we had truly had the need for the labor, which I think we do, if we made non immigrant work visas more accessible, we had a better vetting system to make sure that we are not letting somebody in that shouldn't be here.
[01:06:24]  If we made it, you know, just covered the cost, no one should have to pay all this money.
[01:06:30]  Have people argue it's a privilege to come here, and I do agree it's a privilege to come over here.
[01:06:33]  But if you're going to contribute to the company in my neighborhood that's going to contribute to my neighborhood, provide me the supplies I demand, let's make it easier for that company to get the people so I can have things stocks of my neighborhood and my needs are met.
[01:06:52]  I think that again, we should start with here at home, but if our workforce is not willing to step up or not able to step up for whatever reason to fill those gaps, why should we make it?
[01:07:05]  Almost incentivize the underground world.
[01:07:09]  Let's expose it.
[01:07:10]  Let's tighten it up.
[01:07:11]  Let's make it more accessible.
[01:07:13]  And I know that there'll be a direct correlation to mitigating our vulnerabilities on the border.
[01:07:20]  If our agents are not having to deal with these mass give ups, people trying to use loopholes, people trying to gain the system to get over here, we could go back out there and do the job that we intended to do, and that was secure the border.
[01:07:34]  I think that that piece gets so conflated.
[01:07:38]  Of immigration and border security, that's why nothing gets done.
[01:07:42]  It just becomes a quagmire because, you know, Washington is not about solutions.
[01:07:48]  Washington's about trade offs.
[01:07:49]  And when you create that environment to say, I go back to Obama, I want comprehensive immigration form, Republicans, we want border security.
[01:08:00]  So instead of saying, okay, well, let's secure the border, and we're all in, 100%, left and right, down the middle, all in, secure the border.
[01:08:08]  That's done.
[01:08:09]  Now we're all in.
[01:08:10]  Let's work on a viable immigration reform system that makes it right for the people in this country and the people around the world that works.
[01:08:18]  But when you turn around and make it, you throw it together, it becomes, well, I'm going to give you 100 miles of wall.
[01:08:25]  Okay.
[01:08:25]  Well, if you give me 100 miles of wall, I'll give you five more immigrant classes, you know, or we'll up the quota.
[01:08:32]  Okay.
[01:08:33]  Well, if I give you 500 miles of wall, would you?
[01:08:35]  Then it becomes trade offs, right?
[01:08:37]  Not solutions.
[01:08:38]  And that's politics.
[01:08:39]  And you know who suffers?
[01:08:41]  We the people.
[01:08:42]  And the ones that suffer the most are the agents, the border communities, and the migrants themselves because they're caught into this vortex that becomes, hey, I'm going to try to make my way to the United States for a better life.
[01:08:55]  Well, I can't do it on my own, so I'm going to hire a smuggler so they can help me facilitate there.
[01:09:00]  I'm going to pay the cost, whether it's real or perceived or actual cost or some kind of payment plan.
[01:09:08]  Oh, meanwhile, I thought I was paying a smuggler.
[01:09:11]  Now I'm caught up in this trafficking world and now I can't get out.
[01:09:15]  And, you know, bad things can happen.
[01:09:17]  I had a dude on this podcast a few months ago.
[01:09:19]  He was born, I think he was actually born in San Diego, but his whole family lives in Tijuana.
[01:09:25]  Yeah.
[01:09:26]  And his mom actually has a job in San Diego where every day she's allowed to cross the border.
[01:09:35]  Her and all these other, all these Mexican national or these people that live in Mexico and Tijuana, they all just like get in a big line and they all walk through the border because they all work.
[01:09:45]  In, like, service industries.
[01:09:46]  Like, his mom, I think, was a maid at a hotel.
[01:09:49]  Yeah.
[01:09:50]  And some of them, the cartels get to some of them and they get those people to smuggle drugs.
[01:09:56]  Yeah.
[01:09:57]  Yeah, that's a problem.
[01:09:57]  So, you know, that's a typical border community, right?
[01:10:00]  You have people that work in the U.S., go and school in the U.S., but they live in Mexico.
[01:10:04]  That happens in every major border town along the border, right?
[01:10:07]  That's typical.
[01:10:07]  And that's what the border crosser card, the work visa is for, all that kind of stuff.
[01:10:12]  That's, that's, and all those people have been through this immigration process.
[01:10:16]  They, Okay.
[01:10:18]  Yeah.
[01:10:18]  They've got either, most of them are probably like, they could have been U.S. citizens, but, you know, again, a lot of times they come over here.
[01:10:25]  They were born in the United States, but they're raised in Mexico like your friend.
[01:10:29]  They could have a work permit.
[01:10:32]  They could be resident aliens, but they live in Mexico.
[01:10:36]  But there is a process.
[01:10:38]  Farm workers, there's all sorts of visas and requirements that they've met, right?
[01:10:42]  Because they're coming through the port of entry.
[01:10:44]  They're coming in through the front door.
[01:10:45]  They're being scanned in and brought in every day.
[01:10:48]  But to your point, the cartels get a hold of them and they say, ah, we see you come in and out every day.
[01:10:55]  Exactly.
[01:10:56]  You know what?
[01:10:57]  And this is this again, this becomes.
[01:10:59]  Human exploitation.
[01:11:01]  And, you know, not to get graphic, but they'll turn around and they'll basically say, well, you know what?
[01:11:06]  I've got your sister and I know where she lives.
[01:11:09]  I know where she goes to school.
[01:11:11]  So if you don't carry these drugs across, you'll never see her again.
[01:11:18]  Or I will harm her in front of you.
[01:11:20]  I will assault her in front of you.
[01:11:21]  I will rape her in front of you to show that I have power.
[01:11:24]  And that's real.
[01:11:26]  That's not made up stories.
[01:11:27]  I mean, you can talk to so many.
[01:11:30]  People that have made this arduous journey to come over here and the horror stories that they can tell you of what happens or what they witness, whether it's murders, whether it's rapes, whether it's just assaults, that occurs along the way.
[01:11:46]  That's a power, that's a control thing.
[01:11:49]  And, you know, when you have young women who are taking birth control, you know, traveling with plan B, all that because they know that the likelihood of being.
[01:12:03]  And sexually assaulted to get to the United States is so high that that's what they do.
[01:12:09]  I mean, is that the right way to have a.
[01:12:12]  Is that for real?
[01:12:13]  That's for real.
[01:12:13]  That's 100% for real.
[01:12:15]  I mean, you can talk to any non government organization, talk to anybody that's gone through these journeys and what they've seen and what they'll tell you.
[01:12:23]  And the women are carrying Plan B and birth control?
[01:12:25]  Because they know that they are likely to, the likelihood is there.
[01:12:28]  Oh, God.
[01:12:29]  Why would you put your kids in harm's way?
[01:12:32]  Why would you allow that to go on?
[01:12:34]  And then that's what frustrates me when you.
[01:12:38]  Hear politicians say, Oh, it's a humanitarian crisis.
[01:12:42]  You're damn right it is because these policies and you're allowing this exploitation because you won't secure the border.
[01:12:48]  You won't address the lawful and efficient means of bringing people into the country for the right reasons.
[01:12:55]  So you're giving these people this false sense of this American dream.
[01:12:59]  So they put themselves in harm's way.
[01:13:02]  I've got some friends that have done a lot of research and experts in the trafficking and all that.
[01:13:07]  And something that no one talks about that it's ongoing.
[01:13:12]  Is even organ harvesting going on in these same groups?
[01:13:17]  People will realize they'll pay high dollar.
[01:13:20]  I need a kidney.
[01:13:21]  Well, I need a kidney of a young person, and all of a sudden, this person has disappeared.
[01:13:27]  This stuff goes on.
[01:13:28]  This isn't me embellishing hyperbole.
[01:13:31]  This is the stuff that happens, and this is when it is a profit making business and people are being exploited.
[01:13:38]  That's why you have to be send a very clear message.
[01:13:42]  But kind message that there is only one way to come to the United States, and that's the lawful way through the lawful channels, not through a smuggling organization, not through some guy you met online.
[01:13:54]  That you go through the State Department, you go through your consul.
[01:13:57]  And while we do have a nurturing heart as a country, we are that beacon of hope where immigration is something that has sustained us and should sustain us.
[01:14:10]  We got to do it the right way.
[01:14:12]  And that's where I get very frustrated, having seen it.
[01:14:16]  You know, play out in the political world, haven't seen it, you know, for whatever reason, cause great harm to this country by creating vulnerabilities at our border, that they can't get this right.
[01:14:29]  Why are we having a system in place to where we are allowing people to be put into the arms of unscrupulous smugglers and trafficking networks and things like that?
[01:14:43]  I get it.
[01:14:44]  I would do whatever it takes to take care of my family.
[01:14:47]  But I am not going to willingly put them in the arms of a trafficker that's going to exploit them if there is another way to do it.
[01:14:55]  And I think the other way to do it is to get our system right and send a very clear message.
[01:15:00]  You know, I'd rather wait a few more years in squalor if that was the case to make my journey than to put my wife or children in harm's way, you know?
[01:15:09]  And that's happening.
[01:15:10]  Danny, it's real.
[01:15:12]  What is the sentiment on the ground with the Border Patrol agents that you spent your time with, where the different places you were?
[01:15:20]  What is.
[01:15:22]  Their attitude towards, you know, are they into politics?
[01:15:28]  What do they think about politics?
[01:15:29]  Are they just, are they all frustrated?
[01:15:32]  And like, I assume there's got to be some level of empathy when you're dealing with like mothers and children that are coming through the border, or maybe not.
[01:15:41]  Or do you just like build up this callousness after doing this for years and dealing with hundreds and thousands of people?
[01:15:47]  Yeah, it's all the above.
[01:15:48]  So we didn't really want to be in the politics of it.
[01:15:51]  We just kind of became part of it.
[01:15:55]  And we saw – and I guess it was kind of a roll of the dice with the – of course, I was in leadership positions, members of management, so I was not part of the union.
[01:16:04]  Our union actually got involved in politics under then-Candidate Trump.
[01:16:09]  And they rolled the dice and won because they got what they wanted.
[01:16:12]  They wanted that border security support from the President of the United States, and they got it.

=== Agent Morale And Empathy (04:13) ===

[01:16:16]  But that put a lot of things – put us on the spotlight.
[01:16:20]  Then we became a political football for people.
[01:16:25]  Exactly.
[01:16:26]  That's what I'm saying.
[01:16:27]  That must be frustrating to be a guy on the ground spending your time every day dealing with these people in real life.
[01:16:32]  And then you just see people using it as an optics thing.
[01:16:34]  Oh, yeah.
[01:16:35]  You couldn't, when I was in El Paso under President Trump, especially his last two years, I couldn't turn around without tripping over a Democratic congressional delegation wanting to come do oversight investigations and see things firsthand.
[01:16:53]  Funny how I didn't have a single Democrat.
[01:16:55]  Delegation came in under Biden and tour when I was in Yuma.
[01:16:59]  But so, yeah, we got thrust into the politics.
[01:17:02]  Now, it was my job as a deputy chief and a chief to deal with that.
[01:17:05]  That was my job.
[01:17:07]  But they're also humans, those agents, right?
[01:17:09]  So they see all this.
[01:17:10]  They understand the impacts when appropriations get reduced because the House controls the purse strings and they didn't like what the president was doing.
[01:17:18]  So they reduce funds.
[01:17:19]  They make a big deal.
[01:17:20]  That was a problem.
[01:17:22]  They see it firsthand.
[01:17:24]  And I will tell you this anybody in law enforcement, anybody that wears that badge, And, you know, if you don't have the heart, you're doing this to save lives.
[01:17:35]  You're doing that to protect people.
[01:17:38]  Yeah, there's always going to be the bad apple somewhere in the bunch, but everybody I ever known in this profession, you know, they cared about people.
[01:17:48]  And, you know, it would be, you would get jaded, you would get calloused, but then you'd see that two year old that was left in the desert with nothing but a safety pin that says, call my grandma at this number.
[01:18:00]  And it kind of resets you and go, man, what the hell is going on, right?
[01:18:03]  So you'd see that, and that's a common practice.
[01:18:05]  You would see that all the time.
[01:18:08]  So, you know, they take off that badge and right underneath the badge is their heart.
[01:18:12]  So I have no doubt that the men and women, the board patrol and any law enforcement agency that's dealing with some of this type of crisis, you know, they're in it for the right reasons.
[01:18:21]  But it does take a toll on you.
[01:18:23]  Yeah.
[01:18:24]  And especially when you see what happened, where we were just like, man, this was great.
[01:18:29]  And then all of a sudden it was taken away from us.
[01:18:31]  And we're dealing with all these numbers.
[01:18:33]  And, you know, we're kind of doing our job with one hand tied behind our back.
[01:18:38]  It's made it so difficult and so frustrating.
[01:18:41]  that the morale was just at an all-time low.
[01:18:43]  And look, even as the sector chief, my morale was low.
[01:18:47]  I was like, how do I go in there and go to a station and visit the command and the muster where all the agents are for their assignment and try to motivate them when I'm, this is bad, man.
[01:18:57]  There's not going to be a change.
[01:18:59]  So you do the best you can.
[01:19:00]  What we did is we actually started investing in some resiliency programs, some mental health programs, because we noticed we had, well, it's a fact.
[01:19:08]  I mean, I think there was 14 suicides by border betrayants in 2022.
[01:19:14]  I had actually one permanent staff member that worked for me take his own life.
[01:19:19]  And we had somebody that was detailed in from a visiting sector that took his own life all in about a six-month period.
[01:19:24]  Because now I'm not saying it was the border crisis that did that, but not feeling like you have a purpose and a mission where you feel that what you're doing is of no value, you add that to whatever else is going on in your life, whether it's personal or financial, emotional, physical.
[01:19:46]  Whatever, if you've got a bad home life and then you come to work and you're like, all I got to do is process these people and let them go, and I know people are getting away, I got to say that contributed to it.
[01:19:56]  And so the morale is still low.
[01:20:00]  They're still very frustrated.
[01:20:02]  I think there's talking to, I still have a very good relationship with a lot of colleagues and agents.
[01:20:09]  And, you know, I think they feel like, you know, out of the three presidential candidates right now, at least in the top end, you obviously President Biden and President Trump, and you got, Bobby Kennedy, who's making an impact.
[01:20:25]  They know two out of the three have said border security is a priority for them.

=== Coastal Buoy Barriers (08:52) ===

[01:20:30]  So I think there's a level of hope, like, hey, if we can, if this administration is no longer in charge, we're going to at least get back to where we were.
[01:20:39]  And that's what's right for us.
[01:20:41]  It's right for America.
[01:20:43]  And I mean, I just know that.
[01:20:45]  I mean, they really hope that there is a regime change come November because how did you meet Bobby Kennedy?
[01:20:52]  Yeah, so that's a great question.
[01:20:55]  I was reached out by the campaign last year.
[01:20:59]  I guess it was about this time because he was interested in going down the border and seeing firsthand.
[01:21:05]  They knew I had just, at that point, had just retired a few months before.
[01:21:09]  And would I be willing to come talk to him and just share my experiences with him?
[01:21:13]  And I said, absolutely.
[01:21:15]  I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat or now he's an independent.
[01:21:19]  If you want to know about the border and you have interest in being informed or be educated so you can make informed decisions and influence something, That's going to help secure this border.
[01:21:28]  I'm in.
[01:21:29]  I don't care who you are.
[01:21:32]  So I went to Yuma and I spent a few hours down there with him and just explained everything about the border and how dynamic it is and how fluid it is and some of the impacts we had.
[01:21:44]  He asked some of the same questions that you've asked, you know, like, why did this happen?
[01:21:48]  And, you know, and, you know, and kind of explained everything.
[01:21:53]  What I'll tell you about that is he spent three days down there and he met with.
[01:22:01]  The mayor, the hospital director, the NGOs.
[01:22:05]  He met with the food bank.
[01:22:07]  He met with the domestic violence family advocacy groups, a rancher coalition, the county commissioner, the sheriff.
[01:22:15]  I mean, he spent three days down there meeting with the border community.
[01:22:20]  He went out there all hours of the night and saw hundreds of people just turning themselves in from all over the world.
[01:22:27]  And he said to me, he's like, he actually thought this was like, this has got to be some far right conspiracy talking point.
[01:22:37]  It can't be true.
[01:22:37]  And he's like, Oh, it's true.
[01:22:40]  Without a border, we don't have a country.
[01:22:42]  And this is a problem.
[01:22:44]  And what I tell people, and I, you know, when I speak about it, he saw this through a common sense and compassionate lens.
[01:22:55]  Like he saw solutions here.
[01:22:56]  He's like, we absolutely have to seal this up.
[01:22:59]  There's no reason why we should have a 400-foot gap when the material is right there just because we said we're not going to build any more Trump wall.
[01:23:09]  Okay, we'll call it Biden Wall, but build the, close that gap.
[01:23:11]  You're causing, you're causing, you know, a vulnerability.
[01:23:14]  You're putting people in harm's way.
[01:23:17]  Yeah.
[01:23:17]  So I've maintained that relationship with him.
[01:23:21]  He's, you know, he reaches out if he's got questions about the border.
[01:23:24]  And I think that's great.
[01:23:25]  I think it's awesome that you have somebody that has lived his life on the left side of the political spectrum, not really doing much or talking about the border.
[01:23:36]  And now you've got him talking about the border, saying this is a problem.
[01:23:40]  We have to secure the border.
[01:23:43]  He understands that.
[01:23:44]  That is uh, that is important piece to any sovereign nation and his uh, his vice uh president uh nominee uh, Nicole Shanahan she uh, she did the same thing I did.
[01:23:54]  I was just down there two weeks ago and we uh well, it wasn't three days worth, but it was a full day down there um, you know, learning about the whole thing yeah that's, that's what we finally got.
[01:24:05]  It took 18 months.
[01:24:06]  What is this to you?
[01:24:07]  That gap on the, in the, in the pictures there you pull up the articles yeah, the the top right or the bottom left?
[01:24:13]  Yeah, that big gap.
[01:24:15]  Yeah so um, It took 18 months for this administration to approve closing that gap.
[01:24:24]  Wow.
[01:24:24]  And that's a canal on our side, but on the Mexican side or the other side of that wall is the Colorado River and the Morelos Dam.
[01:24:33]  And water, smugglers, migrants, bandits don't mix.
[01:24:40]  And people were coming in through that gap specifically.
[01:24:44]  But it took 18 months to convince the administration, could we close that gap?
[01:24:51]  And they said, finally they said, okay, we'll do it, but it can't look anything like the existing wall and it can't be permanent.
[01:24:59]  So they spent six months going on a contract.
[01:25:03]  It basically took just over two years for them to close about 1,000 feet of gap.
[01:25:10]  And the material looks more like chicken wire and it just sits on top of like a concrete barrier.
[01:25:17]  So it's temporary where all the other stuff, the Trump wall that you're seeing, the big stuff on the left there, that's like, 10 feet anchored into the ground.
[01:25:26]  You're not going to burrow underneath it directly.
[01:25:29]  Yeah, so.
[01:25:31]  Yeah, didn't some shit go down recently with Greg Abbott in Texas?
[01:25:38]  He wanted to line the walls with razor wire and some of the rivers.
[01:25:43]  He wanted to put buoys in there with razor wire borders.
[01:25:45]  And then the federal government basically said, you got to get rid of that.
[01:25:49]  Yeah, so he did that.
[01:25:50]  So those old floating buoys, that's actually a border patrol apparatus.
[01:25:54]  We've used that in waterways for a long time.
[01:25:57]  He put that in there.
[01:25:59]  Which, I mean, look, if you're telling, if you do it, you're like, look, there's razor wire, you're going to get shredded.
[01:26:04]  Yeah.
[01:26:05]  And if you tell them that, it's, I mean, like, try or don't try, but you know the consequences.
[01:26:11]  Yeah.
[01:26:11]  Yeah.
[01:26:12]  So quite interesting.
[01:26:13]  So they put the buoys in there.
[01:26:17]  Department of Justice sued him, said, that's not your right to do that.
[01:26:20]  That's the federal government's responsibility.
[01:26:23]  You know, I'd argue that if the federal government's not doing its job and then it gets delegated to the states and the state has a right to protect its borders.
[01:26:29]  And so, you know, I commend Abbott for stepping up where he was doing it.
[01:26:35]  The government should be doing that.
[01:26:36]  It shouldn't be an issue.
[01:26:37]  The state shouldn't be doing what they're doing, but they have.
[01:26:39]  To um, the razor wire.
[01:26:41]  Did they leave it up?
[01:26:43]  So the buoy got pulled out?
[01:26:44]  They had, because that was international waterways and all that kind of stuff, but uh um, but the razor wire is actually still out there and they're still installing it.
[01:26:52]  Because that's on Texas, is either it's uh, mainly private land and uh, or state land out there and in Texas, and so um um, they've got the ability to do all that um, they're.
[01:27:03]  They're basically filling gaps where the the federal government has uh, not done it, where they stopped building wall.
[01:27:08]  Okay um I uh I, I wish they didn't have to do it.
[01:27:13]  As a retired Border Patrol chief, I wish that Texas didn't have to do this.
[01:27:18]  But because of what I would call a betrayal from this government to the state of Texas and to really the whole country when it comes down the border, Texas has been kind of forced to do that.
[01:27:29]  They were taking the brunt of it.
[01:27:31]  Now, I dealt with a lot of crap in Yuma.
[01:27:34]  We went from in 2020 just over 8,800 arrests to 114,000 to 312,000 arrests in two years.
[01:27:42]  So we dealt with a lot in Arizona.
[01:27:45]  Oh, shit.
[01:27:45]  Pull up that one with them.
[01:27:46]  Those are buoys wrapped.
[01:27:48]  Those aren't wrapped.
[01:27:49]  Yeah, they've got, they've got, it's a metal.
[01:27:51]  Dead body found stuck to, dead body found stuck to Texas Governor Greg Abbott's border buoy in Rio Grande.
[01:27:58]  Okay, so, so, so, so, well, here's the story, okay?
[01:28:01]  That's the headline.
[01:28:03]  And that's what the, the, uh, the progressive, uh, uh, political base, the, uh, the mainstream media, that's what they went after him on.
[01:28:12]  See, you caused this.
[01:28:14]  The coroner, Determined that the body had died upriver and had floated down and basically got caught.
[01:28:19]  Oh, really?
[01:28:20]  So the drowning didn't occur because of the buoys.
[01:28:22]  It was actually where the body got hung up.
[01:28:24]  Okay.
[01:28:25]  So they discovered that through, you know, however the forensic corners do their stuff, where the water was, how long the body had been.
[01:28:32]  But that's not a juicy headline.
[01:28:34]  That's going to get people clicking.
[01:28:35]  Exactly.
[01:28:36]  So this just is something they can throw at it saying, see, you're causing it.
[01:28:39]  Well, look, why would you cross right there when you've got this?
[01:28:42]  This is clearly a barrier.
[01:28:44]  What's under it?
[01:28:44]  Are they just floating or can you swim under it?
[01:28:46]  It spins.
[01:28:47]  Okay.
[01:28:47]  So, yeah, I mean, you technically could, it's where it is anchored, you could, you couldn't, but it's just kind of floating out there.
[01:28:54]  And, you know, it's a, it's a, the river, you know, again, it looks smooth, but it's a pretty fast moving river.
[01:29:00]  Is it?
[01:29:00]  Yeah.
[01:29:01]  How deep is it?
[01:29:02]  Oh, well, there's areas where you can literally walk across it.
[01:29:04]  And then there's areas where it's, you know, four or five feet deep and then 20 feet deep just because of channels, you know?
[01:29:09]  Wow.
[01:29:10]  But, yeah, I mean, we've used those barriers and floating barriers and different waterways across the border for a long time.
[01:29:17]  That's nothing new.
[01:29:19]  The razor wire, again, allows.

=== Mexico Border Cooperation (07:03) ===

[01:29:22]  You know, it sends a message like where the border wall stops, people were going through there.
[01:29:27]  So they are like, look, enough's enough.
[01:29:29]  And it really happened in Eagle Pass, is where it first started because you just had this invasion.
[01:29:37]  I mean, literally had 1,500, 2,000 people a day coming through.
[01:29:41]  Are these the caravans?
[01:29:43]  And we were, no, no, there's just people, just groups of people.
[01:29:47]  Wow.
[01:29:48]  The caravan, that's a, I'm glad you brought that up.
[01:29:51]  Caravan is, that's just activist propaganda.
[01:29:55]  Yeah, what does a caravan mean?
[01:29:56]  So when they caravan, it's organized by some advocate, usually an open border advocate.
[01:30:04]  They stir everything up, get media down there.
[01:30:07]  They've got the support from a lot of non-government organizations internationally.
[01:30:10]  They're throwing money down there.
[01:30:12]  And what they end up doing is they organize right there, usually in Guatemala, right before they, and they talk about, hey, we're all coming in.
[01:30:20]  We're heading to the United States.
[01:30:21]  We're 1,000 strong.
[01:30:22]  We're going to be 5,000 strong.
[01:30:25]  What they ultimately, their goal there is to get the humanitarian exit visa from Mexico.
[01:30:31]  That allows them to, the migrants to stay in Mexico for up to 40 days and do their own thing.
[01:30:35]  Because you never hear about a caravan arriving at the US border.
[01:30:41]  You always hear about the caravan coming into Mexico, but you never hear about the caravan tracked all the way up to the United States.
[01:30:47]  You know, they just disappear because they've gotten in, they've gotten the attention, they get their visa, they can stay in Mexico and traverse through Mexico for about 40 days.
[01:30:57]  So then they go into whatever smuggling network they want to go to.
[01:31:02]  And Money gets put into the advocacy groups because they get money in there.
[01:31:10]  Mexico does their part of saying, look, we're keeping to this humanitarian rule that we have.
[01:31:16]  They came in here.
[01:31:18]  Caravans are really a nothing burger for the Borbjoins because, number one, we can track them because the media is following them.
[01:31:26]  So we know where their movement is.
[01:31:29]  We've never had a group of 5,000 in a caravan ever make it.
[01:31:33]  to the border.
[01:31:33]  I mean, there was some in San Diego that made it to Tijuana a couple years ago, but it was, it had dwindled down.
[01:31:39]  But yeah, so caravans are just basically activists and propaganda to try to bring attention to their cause.
[01:31:45]  And, you know.
[01:31:47]  Do you know what Mexico's border policy is on their southern, on their southern borders?
[01:31:51]  So they have a, they, they have a, their constitution basically prohibits criminalization of migration.
[01:31:57]  So they, they basically have an open border, if you will.
[01:31:59]  I mean, you have.
[01:32:00]  From the south.
[01:32:00]  Yeah.
[01:32:01]  So, I mean, they don't see, they don't see anything wrong with people migrating.
[01:32:07]  They think that that is their, their right so constitutionally, Mexico is not enforcing migration deals.
[01:32:14]  So they, when they do things in support of us, it's really, you know, pushing the boundaries of their, of their constitution.
[01:32:20]  Um, you require to have a visa to fly in there, like you are, and to come in there.
[01:32:25]  But uh, if you're just coming to traverse through it's, it's not a problem for them.
[01:32:29]  Yeah yeah, if you fly in, you got to have a visa.
[01:32:32]  But if you're coming in, like the border there, I mean they, They let them in.
[01:32:36]  Have you ever had a conversation with any other border patrol agencies or border patrol agents of any other countries?
[01:32:42]  Yeah, we would work directly with Mexico for sure.
[01:32:46]  They created their National Guard under suppression from President Trump to shut some things down.
[01:32:54]  What that did, when you combine our infrastructure on our side, our policies, and the Mexican National Guard, they were disrupting things, the humanitarian, they were going after the smugglers.
[01:33:05]  So that's where they could criminalize the.
[01:33:08]  The human smuggling and the humanitarian stuff.
[01:33:12]  If you're putting 50 people in a tractor trailer or 50 people in a hotel room, they could go after them criminally for that because it's putting people, but it wasn't because of their immigration status.
[01:33:23]  So that worked.
[01:33:24]  A lot of Mexico's domestic enforcement is done either at the federal police level or through the military.
[01:33:31]  And so that becomes a big challenge for them.
[01:33:34]  The boots on the ground, just like everywhere, whether it's here or even internationally.
[01:33:41]  They always have a good working relationship.
[01:33:42]  I never had a problem with any of my counterparts in Mexico.
[01:33:48]  But I will tell you this, that when there is intestinal fortitude in Washington, it resonates in Mexico.
[01:33:56]  If there is no will in Washington, Mexico's like, sorry, I can literally tell you stories.
[01:34:03]  It's a true story.
[01:34:06]  When I was in Yuma, there were still, I guess I was there a little over a month before inauguration.
[01:34:16]  A lot of the policies were still in place.
[01:34:20]  There was no change in policies at that time.
[01:34:26]  And I met immediately with our Mexican counterparts there in Mexico.
[01:34:30]  And it was like, Jefe Clem, we're going to do this and we're going to do this for you.
[01:34:36]  We're going to make sure we shut this down and we're going to deflect so you don't have these impacts here in Yuma.
[01:34:42]  Thank you.
[01:34:44]  Fast forward about six months later after the new administration, everybody's in place and all the changes have been made.
[01:34:51]  Same meeting.
[01:34:52]  this time in Tijuana, because we would do things regionally.
[01:34:55]  And it would be, Jefe Clem, good to see you.
[01:34:58]  Have some coffee.
[01:35:00]  I wish there was stuff we could, more we could do for you.
[01:35:05]  There was no pressure from them anymore.
[01:35:10]  I could take it even further when I was the deputy chief in El Paso and even the acting chief there in Mexico City having meetings.
[01:35:20]  And this was under President Trump.
[01:35:22]  They were literally, they being Mexico were literally moving assets to help things at the border.
[01:35:29]  That same meeting happened when I was chief in Yuma with a lot of the same people, and it was that same type of response.
[01:35:35]  Sorry, we really wish we could help because there was no diplomatic pressure from Washington to stop it.
[01:35:42]  Where under President Trump, he was like, that's the, I think, where he was like, Mexico's going to pay for it.
[01:35:46]  You know, I don't think he ever expected a check written from Abrador to Trump.
[01:35:52]  you're going to help us.
[01:35:54]  This is a shared border.
[01:35:56]  We're going to secure it together.
[01:35:57]  And that's another thing.
[01:35:59]  And I go, you know, even Bobby Kennedy mentioned that, like Mexico has a stake in this claim too.
[01:36:04]  And I can tell you everywhere where we have secured the border, when you have a safe and secure border, when you have law enforcement on both sides working together, that's a healthy situation.
[01:36:18]  It's a healthy environment for both countries, for both citizenry.
[01:36:23]  I spent a lot of time in my career in El Paso.

=== International Intelligence Concerns (15:29) ===

[01:36:26]  And I remember I had a house, and my landlord, she was nearly 90 years old, born in El Paso, family lived on both sides of the border.
[01:36:38]  And she couldn't thank me enough every day she saw me about what Border Patrol has done to make it safe for her.
[01:36:44]  She was 89 years old when I left.
[01:36:47]  Every week, she and her sisters would go to church and then go to lunch in Juarez and come back.
[01:36:54]  She's like, there were times when we couldn't do that because it was so dangerous, but y'all came in here and built that wall.
[01:37:00]  She's, oh, I love that wall, it keeps us safe.
[01:37:02]  Now this is an 89 year old person who was born in El Paso, lived there her whole life, saying how important and the family on both sides of the border how important that is.
[01:37:11]  I I say that because that's what a lot of people don't want to believe.
[01:37:15]  They don't want to believe that hey, if you build that wall, if you have the technology, you have good, strong law enforcement that makes it safe and healthier for people to go back and forth and trade and travel and tourism, all that plays out.
[01:37:27]  Yeah, why wouldn't you want that?
[01:37:28]  And you know It just gets shifted around.
[01:37:31]  I mean, like, I wonder what other countries are doing.
[01:37:33]  I know, for example, Australia has a very, very strict immigration policy and they have very strict border control.
[01:37:42]  Yeah.
[01:37:46]  It's hard to just cross into Australia, right?
[01:37:48]  Right.
[01:37:48]  To the middle of the ocean.
[01:37:50]  Yeah.
[01:37:50]  Like I heard, for example, like people that are crossing illegally, they send them to some fucking barren island off the coast where they have to like detain them for a while and they don't really have a big problem.
[01:38:00]  Yeah.
[01:38:01]  I've never really had too much conversation with any Australian border guards or border police.
[01:38:08]  I've known some of their.
[01:38:09]  When I was at school at Harvard, there was a military liaison people in the same class as I was in.
[01:38:17]  And they.
[01:38:18]  They talked about, you know, hey, everything is from a national security piece because, I mean, really, I mean, they're a continent, an ocean.
[01:38:25]  It's not like they're not swimming from New Zealand over there.
[01:38:29]  Most of them are going to be flying in, right?
[01:38:31]  And so that ends up being a visa thing.
[01:38:34]  I'm not too really keen or aware on some of those threats there because they're probably more concerned about, you know, issues of contraband being smuggled in through shipping and through.
[01:38:49]  So I imagine you have stowaway type issues on shipping container cargo.
[01:38:53]  It just never was something that ever came up in a lot of my conversations.
[01:38:58]  I will tell you that it's my understanding there to immigrate to Australia, to become a resident or a citizen.
[01:39:06]  I mean, you have to like have a master's degree.
[01:39:08]  You have to have, I mean, it's like, again, no one has a problem if they have strict requirements in other countries.
[01:39:15]  But as soon as we put requirements on you coming over here, it's like, oh, man, you're racist and xenophobic.
[01:39:21]  It's like, huh.
[01:39:22]  But, you know, this other country, Mexico has got very strict immigration policies.
[01:39:27]  If you want to be a landowner or to buy things, you have to, like, my understanding is you have to, like, prove you have the income and the wealth and stuff if you want to buy a property.
[01:39:36]  I mean, it's a lot of challenges.
[01:39:38]  And, I mean, again.
[01:39:39]  We don't have that here.
[01:39:40]  No, no.
[01:39:41]  You can buy.
[01:39:42]  I think most of our land's being bought up by Chinese right now.
[01:39:45]  Well, you know, that's a fact, first of all, that there's a lot of land buying by the country of China.
[01:39:54]  I don't ever like to broad brush a particular nationality or demographic.
[01:39:57]  I think that's unfair.
[01:39:59]  I wouldn't want people to do that to me.
[01:40:02]  But we know China is one of our biggest geopolitical opponents.
[01:40:07]  They are not looking out for our best interests in any way, shape, or form.
[01:40:11]  24,000 Chinese were arrested crossing the border last year.
[01:40:16]  We've already exceeded that much.
[01:40:18]  That's spot on.
[01:40:19]  We were actually looking this up before you came in here.
[01:40:21]  I think that was the exact number, right?
[01:40:22]  See?
[01:40:22]  Yeah.
[01:40:23]  And I think we've already exceeded 24,000 six months into this fiscal year.
[01:40:27]  I've been down there on that border.
[01:40:29]  Some of those images we showed earlier down there in Lukeville, been down there where you'd see 20, 30, 40 Chinese nationals.
[01:40:37]  Is it true they're all military-aged men?
[01:40:39]  Yeah.
[01:40:39]  Well, they're not all military-aged men.
[01:40:42]  A lot of them are military-aged, but there are some females in there.
[01:40:46]  But what I've seen, and I can say this with hand raised, what I've seen, seven out of 10 have been military-aged men.
[01:40:54]  There were females in there.
[01:40:55]  There were some small family groups in there.
[01:40:59]  Here's the thing.
[01:41:00]  And again, They're very stoic.
[01:41:04]  They're very transactional.
[01:41:05]  You don't get a story out of them.
[01:41:09]  We have to use translation services to get information out of them just to do basic paperwork to process them.
[01:41:15]  If they do speak English, it's very, very limited, or they're just not sharing it with us.
[01:41:21]  So it's unlike any other country we've dealt with because sometimes even the ones from former Soviet countries and some of the Middle East countries, they'll talk.
[01:41:32]  Chinese nationals don't say much.
[01:41:34]  And so we're relying heavily on the translation services to get us the information.
[01:41:39]  And, you know, that to me is kind of a concern, like, because we didn't deport 24,000 people back to China.
[01:41:48]  And China is one of those countries where you're allowed to leave.
[01:41:52]  In other words, you have to get almost like permission to flee.
[01:41:55]  If, you know, for the longest time, if you, I think if you even look at those numbers, if you go back the year before last, I think you're not allowed to leave.
[01:42:02]  Yeah.
[01:42:02]  You're not, you know, like you have to almost like get permission to leave China.
[01:42:06]  Right.
[01:42:06]  Yeah.
[01:42:07]  It's so controlled.
[01:42:09]  I think if you go back and look at the numbers, I think in 2022, maybe 450 Chinese nationals were arrested.
[01:42:19]  And then we went up to 24,000.
[01:42:20]  450 in 2022?
[01:42:22]  Yeah, I think that was the number.
[01:42:23]  Can you find that, Steve?
[01:42:25]  Yeah.
[01:42:26]  You may be able to find that in some of the websites, but I think such a low number compared.
[01:42:30]  And then we're up to 24,000.
[01:42:31]  I mean, like, it's like, why?
[01:42:33]  Is it true that some of them, they found a bunch of them that were connected to the PLA, the Chinese military wing?
[01:42:41]  Yeah, they're all related to that.
[01:42:42]  I mean, it's, I mean, And that's one of the things that people don't understand about other countries.
[01:42:46]  We really have it made here.
[01:42:48]  These people are all kind of connected and forced to do certain things for their country, right?
[01:42:53]  There's that side.
[01:42:56]  I will tell you that there's a lot of misinformation that goes on out there.
[01:43:01]  It's a good story, good headlines.
[01:43:03]  There's a lot of people that will delve into something.
[01:43:08]  But there is a lot more truth than fiction when it comes down to some of these specific countries, you know?
[01:43:13]  And yeah, I am.
[01:43:16]  Again, I'm not saying every one of them have bad intents, but given all the issues that we're facing around this globe right now, that's one country that I would be concerned with because I just think if something was to happen, where is their allegiance going to be?
[01:43:31]  Did they really flee China because it's so oppressive and bad?
[01:43:35]  But that's another problem.
[01:43:38]  The other thing, too, for people to understand is that Mexico just, again, resumed.
[01:43:43]  Yeah, there you go.
[01:43:44]  What is that?
[01:43:45]  In 2023 alone, more than 12,000 were arrested at the northern border crossing into the United States illegally.
[01:43:51]  241% increase from just 3,500 arrests in 2022.
[01:43:57]  In 2021, more than 450 Chinese now.
[01:43:59]  Yeah, so I was close.
[01:44:00]  450.
[01:44:00]  Yeah.
[01:44:01]  I mean, that's just crazy, right?
[01:44:03]  Now they're having Mexico resume direct flights from China.
[01:44:06]  So, you know.
[01:44:08]  That's kind of scary.
[01:44:09]  Yeah.
[01:44:10]  Yeah.
[01:44:10]  Mexico's got a very strong footprint in, or I'm sorry, China has a very strong footprint in Mexico and a lot of leverage and influence within the cartels.
[01:44:20]  And, you know, they're mining lithium there.
[01:44:24]  And the cartels are helping protect those lithium mines.
[01:44:28]  There's literal Chinese chemists coming into Mexico, teaching these cartels how to produce fentanyl.
[01:44:36]  What China is doing is what we have done forever.
[01:44:39]  They've just followed our.
[01:44:41]  Yes.
[01:44:42]  The 100 year war is kind of what people talk about with them.
[01:44:44]  It's a marathon for them.
[01:44:46]  I think they've taken up all of South America.
[01:44:49]  They are looking this hemisphere at a time.
[01:44:52]  While we're busy infighting and using law of fair against.
[01:44:56]  Former presidents and trying to keep other people off ballots and doing this and sending money to around the world.
[01:45:03]  China's just slowly just monopoly building everywhere because they've got the money.
[01:45:09]  They're back in Africa helping build nations out there.
[01:45:13]  To your point, they're working directly with the government of Mexico and Central America and South America.
[01:45:20]  I don't know about Central America, but South America.
[01:45:22]  The fentanyl is flying in or coming in from China.
[01:45:27]  Into Mexico, you know, I mean, yeah, it's a concern.
[01:45:33]  And the fact that we have just, you know, make it, again, so vitriolic to even talk about it from a national security, it's like it makes it challenging for people to just have a conversation about, hey, what about taking care of America?
[01:45:52]  What about, you know, if you turn around and say America first, well, that makes you a white nationalist.
[01:45:56]  Well, it just makes me an American that says, I think we need to take care of America.
[01:45:59]  Charity starts at home.
[01:46:01]  When we no longer have homeless veterans and hungry veterans and homeless children and hungry children.
[01:46:07]  And fentanyl poisonings and things like that when we have, when we're actually moved up in ranks and education, then we can start worrying about everything else.
[01:46:16]  I I do think it's we need to time out to kind of clean up our own mess and it starts, secure the border and take it so we don't bring any more poison and problems into the country and and and start working and cleaning up our own, our own situations here.
[01:46:31]  That's, look, I I didn't, I didn't read this in any book, but people talk about me.
[01:46:36]  That's kind of how the Roman empire fell.
[01:46:38]  They're just it.
[01:46:38]  Just it collapsed from within and that's how.
[01:46:42]  That's how this republic would fall, I think.
[01:46:44]  They're not going to attack us from the outside.
[01:46:46]  They're going to just allow this continuing to infight and divisiveness and just, you know, we're going to implode, you know?
[01:46:55]  Yeah, it makes me wonder when you see so many foreign nationals coming in from the southern border, especially like Chinese.
[01:47:03]  So the Chinese are going into Mexico and then coming across the southern border.
[01:47:08]  Well, according to that, the northern border too, right?
[01:47:12]  So.
[01:47:14]  It makes me wonder if there's some bigger influence behind all this, kind of orchestrating it.
[01:47:22]  Is there some sort of plan to overwhelm America's border security system and our welfare system and everything like that to force us to rework our policies and to rework our laws and to create this sort of internal chaos?
[01:47:44]  That's always something you think about too, especially when there's people coming across that are like military age coming from like Venezuela and China and all these other countries that China is so has so much influence over.
[01:47:56]  Yeah.
[01:47:57]  So you bring up really, really interesting points.
[01:47:59]  And I think one of the things I love to talk about is just are these type of thoughts, right?
[01:48:05]  That cause people to pause.
[01:48:07]  Now, I don't have any official knowledge of any of this from my time as a border patrol chief, but as a career law enforcement, these are the type of things like you are a planner.
[01:48:19]  It's the reason why our military does 50-year planning.
[01:48:21]  Who thinks about 50 years ahead of now, but the military does?
[01:48:26]  So I have heard in various circles, both in the media and a lot of our politicians, especially a lot of the progressives, talk about how the Constitution is an outdated document.
[01:48:38]  So that's kind of where your comments and your thoughts start making sense.
[01:48:45]  If we can implode the system, if we can break the immigration system.
[01:48:51]  by overwhelming and somebody can come in and say, all right, well, this just isn't working.
[01:48:56]  We've got 20 million at least illegal aliens that have been in this country for the last few years.
[01:49:01]  We just need to give them an amnesty and then we need to rewrite it.
[01:49:04]  We need to have this more open policy.
[01:49:07]  Well, then they win because without a lawful, you know, controlled immigration policy and they get to get this open border.
[01:49:17]  And then all of a sudden it becomes, well, you know, they're here, so they might as well be able to vote because they're influenced by.
[01:49:25]  And we just start tearing down the whole, you know, constitution and the amendments and the laws that are so they can rework the system.
[01:49:34]  That's how that's why we are still the only republic that's lasted this long.
[01:49:38]  because we've been able to defend that living document.
[01:49:42]  And we've got rules to add amendments.
[01:49:45]  Just none of the states have ever come together to make any amendments in any recent years.
[01:49:52]  The other thought on that is think about the police reform.
[01:50:01]  Now, maybe just a couple of things.
[01:50:02]  I don't like using the word reform because actually police reform isn't a bad thing.
[01:50:06]  If you're a leader of an organization, someone can say, hey, we can reform some things to improve you.
[01:50:14]  I'm all for it.
[01:50:14]  If I can make myself better and look at this like, hey, these current practices are not applicable today because you no longer use this technology.
[01:50:25]  So we need to clean it up.
[01:50:26]  I mean, I see reform as a positive thing.
[01:50:28]  Problem is, is police reform ends up being letting criminals go in the spirit of reform.
[01:50:34]  Well, no, if the laws are still on the books and you're supposed to go to jail and you're supposed to be detained and then you're supposed to pay a fine, but you just turn a blind eye to it, that's not reform.
[01:50:44]  That's just letting criminals.
[01:50:45]  And that's what's the problem with.
[01:50:47]  Reform.
[01:50:49]  Where i'm going is think about the last few years.
[01:50:52]  There's been this, defund the police, defund the police, abolish ICE, defund the Border Patrol.
[01:50:58]  Well, the talking heads and policymakers and lawmakers and people in the White House know that they're not going to.
[01:51:06]  You know, get rid of law enforcement agencies.
[01:51:08]  They just can't do that.
[01:51:10]  But if you can overwhelm them and you can create systems and policies to make it so difficult to do their job and you can pull funding from different areas, you are essentially accomplishing that mission without ever publicly saying, well, we didn't abolish ICE.
[01:51:27]  Well, you basically kept their mission down to next to nothing.
[01:51:32]  We didn't reimagine the Border Patrol or defund Border Patrol.
[01:51:36]  No, you've just tied both their hands behind their back when they're out there trying to secure a border and they can't do anymore.
[01:51:41]  So, oh, if we would just facilitate migrant processing better and throw more resources that way, Border Patrol will be able to free up and go do the job.
[01:51:53]  So we'll put all our investments in processing.

=== Foreign Aid Misallocation (05:29) ===

[01:51:56]  Well, that's great if you'd actually stop the flow from coming into the country, but you did neither.
[01:52:00]  So, our agents are essentially they've accomplished stymieing immigration enforcement, right?
[01:52:07]  Without having to stymie immigration enforcement, right?
[01:52:11]  So, that goes back to the comment about you know, clean slate and everything and rewriting it.
[01:52:18]  There's that movement of rebuilding this constitution.
[01:52:21]  There are people out there that think that we it's it's outdated and we need to be updated, and you know, uh, and so again.
[01:52:32]  As someone who has spent their whole life in law enforcement, you look for those, you plan, you start thinking strategically.
[01:52:38]  And again, as a brain trying to make reason, these things are not too far-fetched in today's world that there's people thinking that way.
[01:52:46]  So whether that ever happens, I hope it doesn't.
[01:52:49]  But you have to kind of at least start talking about it because, again, without anybody telling you, why are we doing these things?
[01:52:56]  Why are you knowingly sending us into spiraling debt?
[01:53:01]  Continue to fund endless wars, continuing to allow mass immigration to come in here, to continue to drive costs in different sectors up to where Americans are having a hard time making it.
[01:53:17]  Why would you willingly do that unless you had a sinister plan?
[01:53:20]  Again, that goes back to I don't want to be come across as some conspiracy theorist, but I'm just trying to make sense of it.
[01:53:27]  So at least I know where I'm going so I can make adjustments along the way.
[01:53:31]  And I think that's kind of one of the concerns that.
[01:53:34]  that people have, particularly when it comes to the border, is like, what is the plan here?
[01:53:38]  But I go back to if we could just focus the attention on starting with border security, shore up the gaps where we need it, the technology where we need it, and then address the wide gates piece, I think we'd be in a better place there and it's a good starting point.
[01:54:00]  Then, you know, again, that's just my wheelhouse, right?
[01:54:04]  I know that probably everyone, audience listeners would say, Well, what about this one?
[01:54:09]  Well, okay, talk about that.
[01:54:10]  I'm talking about the border and how it impacts us.
[01:54:14]  That is one of those areas where we absolutely, from a national security perspective, you have to start securing that border.
[01:54:20]  You have to get the resources there.
[01:54:23]  Nancy Pelosi a couple years ago said they didn't have the $5 billion to finish Trump's wall.
[01:54:29]  Now, how much did they just send over to Ukraine?
[01:54:31]  Like 90 something.
[01:54:32]  Yeah.
[01:54:32]  Like last week.
[01:54:33]  Somebody else's border is going to get taken care of.
[01:54:36]  And I'm not saying we don't need to help foreign aid.
[01:54:38]  I'm not saying we don't need to, you know.
[01:54:40]  try to reduce Russia's impact over there.
[01:54:45]  I'm not denying supporting some of the foreign aid bills, but my gosh, the money we're throwing to other countries that are going to secure their peace, the world's too interconnected to sit there and say we're protected by two oceans now.
[01:55:00]  We're seeing they're flying in droves.
[01:55:04]  We've got to think about secure that border, and that would give us so many more opportunities to do other things.
[01:55:11]  Yeah, it really.
[01:55:14]  It really makes no sense the amount of money that we're spending to secure other countries' borders that are on the opposite side of the world, but not spending a dime on our.
[01:55:24]  Like, how much money, you know, how much money is given to secure the southern border?
[01:55:30]  Is there like a budget, like a yearly budget that's given?
[01:55:34]  Do you know how much that is?
[01:55:35]  Oh, so they've kind of changed it.
[01:55:38]  We used to own it and then they broke it down.
[01:55:40]  Like, we had a CBP had an $8 billion budget.
[01:55:43]  That's Customs and Border Protection.
[01:55:45]  That's a Border Patrol's parent agency.
[01:55:47]  We had like $2.1 billion of it back when I was really into knowing all those budget numbers.
[01:55:54]  In Yuma, I had about an $8 million budget at one point, but the infrastructure programs, those were carried out of the larger parent budget.
[01:56:04]  So what ends up happening, and it's a shell game by Congress and a shell game by the executive branch too.
[01:56:09]  So we'll have an operating budget of $8 billion, and Border Patrol gets, I think, $3.2 billion, if I'm not mistaken, is what we had.
[01:56:21]  A year or so ago for board patrol.
[01:56:22]  And that was for non discretionary stuff or discretionary, even discretionary, which isn't.
[01:56:28]  That's like you got to pay the lights and the gas and all that kind of stuff.
[01:56:31]  Very limited in operations.
[01:56:34]  The actual infrastructure piece, the building of the wall, those were usually done in supplementals and different appropriations based on the department's requirements.
[01:56:44]  Don't know what that was, but I know that it was like $5.3 billion is what Trump spent on the 571 miles of wall.
[01:56:55]  And then there was multiple, you know, technology system packages and things like that.
[01:56:59]  So, I mean, it's, it's costly.
[01:57:01]  Don't get me wrong.
[01:57:02]  I mean, but when you drop in the bucket, drop in the bucket.
[01:57:06]  Yeah.
[01:57:06]  And again, I just look at like the hundred million we just sent over to, they just signed off on.
[01:57:13]  I'm like, you know, what could that do to secure our border, help in education, help with the homeless, help with the fentanyl addiction recovery issues, and then save a little bit for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan?

=== Military Equipment Sales (05:42) ===

[01:57:25]  I'm okay with that.
[01:57:27]  But charity starts at home.
[01:57:29]  And we've got enough problems here.
[01:57:30]  I mean, I'm married to a lifelong educator, so education is very important to me.
[01:57:35]  And she's a special education director, so it's even our most vulnerable.
[01:57:39]  And we're just failing there miserably as well.
[01:57:42]  You know, why are we not?
[01:57:43]  I mean, teacher salaries are down, education, you know, it just, there is so much we could do here.
[01:57:49]  Sad.
[01:57:50]  And, you know, I just think that that's where we've got to, we've really got to get our priorities right moving forward because this current trend line is not comfortable looking down the road.
[01:58:02]  You know, again, I don't want Chinese aggression into Taiwan.
[01:58:07]  I don't want, you know, what's going on in Israel to continue.
[01:58:11]  I don't want Putin and Russia to advance into parts of Europe.
[01:58:14]  I none of us do right.
[01:58:16]  But at the same time, I also don't want us to employed from within from what if these evil forces are behind all this stuff?
[01:58:25]  What if if China is purpose these are all, you know, if half of them are going to end up being, you know, notified when they're going to act.
[01:58:33]  I mean, that's kind of how like the traditional.
[01:58:36]  You know, sleeper cells.
[01:58:38]  I mean, that's not a make believe story.
[01:58:41]  I mean, these people, they're born and raised into, you know, hating the infidel.
[01:58:47]  So, I mean, at some point, we have to at least accept that that is a possibility.
[01:58:52]  Now, could it happen?
[01:58:54]  Yeah.
[01:58:55]  Is it likely to happen?
[01:58:56]  Probably not.
[01:58:57]  But we can't rule it out and we can't not have the conversation.
[01:59:01]  I don't think we need widespread panic.
[01:59:03]  I don't think we need to tell everybody that, oh my gosh, something is going to happen.
[01:59:07]  But I also want people to have a level of awareness because who would have thought I saw this morning what there's like almost like six, seven different major universities are having complete chaos pro Hamas, pro Palestine.
[01:59:19]  Oh, yeah.
[01:59:20]  What the hell?
[01:59:21]  Yeah.
[01:59:21]  I mean, that to me is like this.
[01:59:25]  I mean, protest has been around since this country was founded.
[01:59:29]  I mean, we founded this country on protest.
[01:59:32]  But what we're seeing now, you combine that with this.
[01:59:37]  They've been infiltrated by intelligence since at least the 60s Vietnam War.
[01:59:41]  Yeah.
[01:59:41]  Yeah, so when you think about all this, I mean, we really need to kind of put the brakes on and pause and say, hey, we got to get our act together.
[01:59:49]  And again, where my laser focus has been is the vulnerabilities that have been created over the last few years at our border.
[01:59:58]  And the numbers don't lie.
[01:59:59]  And those gotaway numbers, again, if there's 24,000 Chinese nationals that came over, and let's say all 24,000 had no ill intent, probably a good chance that some of those 1.8 million gotaways may have some that have bad intent, right?
[02:00:16]  I mean, just the statistics are, you know, the likelihood that it's there.
[02:00:22]  My buddy, the guy I was talking about earlier, Luis, he was explaining to me, he just recently published a story where he had a couple sources within the Mexican military and within one of the cartels.
[02:00:35]  I think it was the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, where the higher ups in the Mexican military.
[02:00:46]  They have this software that I believe they got from Israel.
[02:00:51]  It's called the Titan software.
[02:00:53]  And essentially, what it is, is it's a software that the police and the military have in Mexico where they can type in someone's name, their social security number, their phone number, their address, and they can essentially hack into their phone.
[02:01:07]  And they can geo track them anywhere, wherever their phone is.
[02:01:11]  They can pinpoint wherever it is on a map.
[02:01:14]  They can look through their recent texts, their recent calls, all this stuff.
[02:01:18]  And my buddy Luis, because they sell licenses.
[02:01:23]  To it, to their military and their law enforcement.
[02:01:27]  And Luis was like, I got to see if this really works.
[02:01:29]  So he got a source that had been sold a license to this technology and he got the phone, they got the software, whatever.
[02:01:38]  And he was like, okay, let me try tracking one of my buddies.
[02:01:39]  Called one of his buddies who was in like Arizona or something.
[02:01:43]  The guy was in the States.
[02:01:45]  Typed in his phone number, literally got into the guy's phone.
[02:01:49]  So it legitimately works.
[02:01:50]  Like they can just get anybody's name or phone number, figure out where they are, and the Mexican military is selling it to them.
[02:01:58]  To make money.
[02:01:58]  Not only that, but they're also selling weapons.
[02:02:00]  They're selling to them like guns and drones, all kinds of crazy stuff.
[02:02:07]  So these cartels are like essentially like a black ops military in Mexico.
[02:02:15]  Like it's insane.
[02:02:16]  And that combined with the intelligence they have now from being sold the licenses to these crazy software programs is terrifying.
[02:02:26]  Yeah, no, this is real stuff.
[02:02:28]  I mean, this is, you know, and, and, That's why we have concerns with our own intelligence agencies and how they have been operating over the last few years.
[02:02:38]  Working with the cartels.
[02:02:39]  Yeah, yeah, because they're not supposed to do anything domestically, so they do everything outside the United States.
[02:02:45]  Yeah, I have no doubt about that.
[02:02:47]  That's why it's important why we look at, we don't ignore when they talk about redoing FISA, that we don't ignore when they have acts about Fourth Amendment issues.
[02:03:03]  Of course, Verizon can do the same thing because it's their phone, right?

=== Pharmaceutical Smuggling Routes (09:00) ===

[02:03:07]  They're going to be able to, you know, but what they can do with that.
[02:03:11]  See, there's products out there that I think should be restricted, and then there's things that we should be able to use, right?
[02:03:21]  Like, you know, we don't want, I don't want somebody's, I don't, someone should not be in trouble for their browser history, right?
[02:03:30]  But if you're going to sextort somebody or exploit someone, because sextortion is a real thing, if you're You know, advocating violence online against somebody, that information needs to be shared and we need to get that out there and we need to stop that.
[02:03:45]  But your browser history or, you know, the number of likes you clicked on shouldn't, that's, that's, that should be protected.
[02:03:52]  And that's kind of the world we're living in now with tech is you've got licenses out there that's in the hands of the bad guys.
[02:03:59]  Yet then sometimes here in our own United States, we, we inhibit the good guys' ability to counter that.
[02:04:04]  So, I mean, it's just a conversation and question that needs to happen is how do we, you know, for years, I, um, You know, I spent my career going against what I would say a conventional adversary.
[02:04:17]  There was a line of demarcation.
[02:04:19]  That was the border, right?
[02:04:20]  And somebody's going to cross it.
[02:04:22]  You know, but over time, the adversary has become unconventional.
[02:04:25]  And it's been the advent of technology, social media, you know, our cell phones or our smartphones.
[02:04:31]  And I mean, you know, so we've got to look at it.
[02:04:33]  And it's one of the things I'm doing, one of the many projects I'm involved in with an AI company.
[02:04:39]  Massive Blue is the company's name.
[02:04:40]  And Overwatch is our program.
[02:04:42]  We target online.
[02:04:44]  Human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
[02:04:48]  How do they communicate online?
[02:04:50]  You'd be surprised.
[02:04:51]  I mean, some of it is, it's kind of like high level catfishing.
[02:04:56]  They use a lot of emojis and there's clear web, there's dark web, there's, you know, they just start chatting with people and then they DM me and all this kind of stuff.
[02:05:04]  Look, and that's on like the human trafficking and sex trafficking piece.
[02:05:11]  They do this every day in the smuggling network for human smuggling.
[02:05:17]  I mean, in Arizona, Tucson, the area where I live, it is not uncommon for someone to put out something on a social media platform and, you know, hey, you want to get a thousand bucks?
[02:05:33]  You know, DM me.
[02:05:35]  And they send a digital message and, hey, get an SUV.
[02:05:41]  I'll give you a pin drop.
[02:05:42]  You'll get a thousand ahead.
[02:05:44]  And if you see Border Patrol or law enforcement, don't stop.
[02:05:46]  And when you get to Phoenix, DM me again and I'll tell you where to go.
[02:05:50]  And that is happening daily in places in Arizona.
[02:05:55]  In fact, I know, Steve, you could probably bring up car chase, smuggling, you know, accidents in Arizona.
[02:06:02]  There'd be a whole list of them.
[02:06:04]  Wow.
[02:06:04]  That's happening where innocent lives are being lost because smugglers, these teenage smugglers, are taking mom and dad's SUV, driving from Phoenix, Tucson down to the border, overloading it, and then driving 100 miles an hour.
[02:06:18]  And yeah, there's one just from last year.
[02:06:22]  But they'll.
[02:06:23]  That actually, yeah, that's a human smuggling attempt in Arizona, incident rollover crash.
[02:06:29]  Wow.
[02:06:30]  Yeah.
[02:06:30]  So there's other ones like in Cochise County.
[02:06:33]  That's one of the busiest areas, too, where, you know, they're just, you know, these are kids.
[02:06:38]  I mean, they're 15, 16 year olds, you know, 16, 17 driving cars that they're not familiar with, overloaded mom's SUV and, you know, taking a slow curve at 100 miles an hour, and you're going to lose it.
[02:06:54]  And, you know, here's the other thing that happened.
[02:06:58]  So let's say they're successful.
[02:07:00]  I mean, this is some of the back briefs I've heard.
[02:07:05]  You probably could Google Cochise County and find something, too.
[02:07:11]  So they're successful.
[02:07:12]  They get down to Naco, Arizona.
[02:07:15]  They pick up seven people.
[02:07:18]  They head out to, they make it to Phoenix.
[02:07:21]  They do the pin drop.
[02:07:23]  The guy meets them in a parking lot and says, you did good.
[02:07:27]  I'm not going to pay you, but I want you to do this again tomorrow if you're willing, and then I'll pay you.
[02:07:31]  And then, you know, somebody, the guy gets mouthy and says, hey, well, I thought you were going to pay me.
[02:07:36]  He's like, I know what car you drive.
[02:07:39]  This is your mom's car, right?
[02:07:41]  And I got the driver's license plate.
[02:07:43]  I think you're going to cooperate.
[02:07:45]  I mean, so now he has now brought him into the trafficking world because he has basically said, I'm not paying you.
[02:07:52]  You're going to do this again for me.
[02:07:54]  And if you decide to call the cops, I know this is your mom's car.
[02:08:00]  I got your driver's license plate.
[02:08:02]  I'm going to figure out, I know where you live.
[02:08:05]  I've got you online.
[02:08:07]  So now he just hooked them in there.
[02:08:09]  And yeah, so some of the bigger events, we've been fortunate we hadn't had as many fatalities lately, but the smuggling goes on there.
[02:08:19]  There's one just from a two vehicle crash in Sierra Vista.
[02:08:22]  That was just a month ago.
[02:08:24]  Yep.
[02:08:25]  I mean, and these are all being recruited on online apps.
[02:08:30]  You know?
[02:08:31]  And so, you know, and not only are they doing that, but that's also how a lot of people are getting poisoned by fentanyl because they're ordering, you know, what they think are Percocets or something online.
[02:08:41]  And there was something recently the DEA said that seven out of 10 pills that are not purchased through a U.S. pharmacy have deadly doses of fentanyl in them.
[02:08:55]  Right.
[02:08:56]  You know, and all this stuff comes in from the border.
[02:09:00]  And some of it about, it's a it's roughly like a 55 45 split.
[02:09:08]  55% of the percent is being interdicted at the ports of entry.
[02:09:12]  Like people are trying to smuggle it in on their bodies or in compartments.
[02:09:16]  And the other is being caught between the ports by Border Patrol or by the Highway Patrol and things like that.
[02:09:21]  But that's what we're catching, you know.
[02:09:23]  And so it's good that we're catching it.
[02:09:24]  But I also, like I mentioned, of that 1.8 million gotaways, how many of those may have been smuggling in, you know, hard narcotics?
[02:09:31]  Right.
[02:09:32]  You know, we don't see it's rare.
[02:09:34]  It's rare that you see marijuana.
[02:09:36]  being smuggled anymore because it's legalized.
[02:09:38]  Because it's legalized, yeah.
[02:09:39]  Arizona's a state where it's legalized.
[02:09:41]  I heard they also converted a bunch of their pot growing fields into poppy fields.
[02:09:46]  Yep, yep, that's true.
[02:09:47]  That's true.
[02:09:48]  Because they're able to make other things with that.
[02:09:51]  And, you know, again, all the clandestine labs are, and that's the thing, right?
[02:09:56]  It's kind of a scary thing for a lot of the, I've always concerned, and so far I haven't known of any cases, but you have a lot of winter, Visitors, right?
[02:10:07]  You have that here in Florida, but especially down there in the southwest border, the snowbirds will come down and they'll go to Mexico to get their medicine.
[02:10:17]  And I'm always concerned about.
[02:10:18]  Like, what kind of.
[02:10:19]  What do you mean?
[02:10:20]  Just for prescriptions.
[02:10:21]  You know, they'll just go down to.
[02:10:23]  It's cheaper for them to go to, you know, Algodonas, Mexico to get it than it would be in Yuma.
[02:10:28]  You know, they're going to pay, you know, a lot less.
[02:10:31]  So I've always been concerned with are those pharmacies getting them from true pharmaceutical companies or are they.
[02:10:37]  Are they getting them from some, you know, black market pharmaceutical company out there?
[02:10:41]  And, you know, are some of our elderly going to fall victim of that?
[02:10:45]  It's always a concern with me because the labs in Mexico, especially the clandestine labs, are not following any kind of safety and security features, right?
[02:10:55]  I mean, they're no, there's no regulations.
[02:10:56]  Yeah, so they press Percocet in one and then they press fentanyl in the other and then they come back with another round of Percocet and it's still got residual in it.
[02:11:04]  And that's a concern.
[02:11:06]  There's pop-up shops all around Mexico where you can literally just walk on the side of the road and they have like full on pharmacy like fruit stands from Viagra to ibuprofen.
[02:11:17]  It's just one of those things that it scares the heck out of me because not that I'm advocating for this type of lifestyle or anything crazy like that, but kids can't even really, they got to be so careful on their rite of passage nowadays.
[02:11:33]  I mean, like going to parties and smoking something or taking something just because that's just what the kids can do and have done or, you know, and now You know, you can't even risk it that somebody, you know, said, Oh, yeah, my friend got me these gummies.
[02:11:50]  They're supposed to be really good.
[02:11:52]  And then they got them from some pop up stand in, you know, in Mexico or some online deal.
[02:11:58]  And then now you're, you know, your kid ODs, you know, is poison.
[02:12:01]  I mean, thank goodness it hasn't happened to my family, but I know countless people who have lost.

=== Defensive Asylum Claims (15:17) ===

[02:12:08]  I actually made the mistake calling an overdose.
[02:12:12]  Like, I introduced them.
[02:12:15]  We were chatting.
[02:12:15]  I was like, Oh, they're unfortunately, you know, their daughter overdosed.
[02:12:18]  And he's like, No, she didn't overdose.
[02:12:20]  She was poisoned.
[02:12:21]  I mean, like, I'm like, well, my bad.
[02:12:23]  I just, I've totally just messed up because I was just using common sense, like, I'm not common language.
[02:12:30]  It was an overdose.
[02:12:31]  No, an overdose is me.
[02:12:32]  I took too much of it.
[02:12:33]  She was poisoned.
[02:12:34]  She was not intending to take fentanyl and it was in whatever she did.
[02:12:37]  So, you know, that was definitely an eye opening moment for me because it truly is.
[02:12:45]  You know, I know it's poisoning.
[02:12:47]  I know all that.
[02:12:48]  And it just really hit home when I, when the, you know, the dad, and I'm glad he corrected me because, you know, an overdose is something that could be considered intentional.
[02:12:58]  A poisoning shouldn't be, right?
[02:13:00]  And that's the problem.
[02:13:01]  And that kind of goes back to, All this stuff that we've got to focus on keeping it from even getting here.
[02:13:09]  And how you do that is you secure our border, you secure our ports.
[02:13:13]  You know, there's efforts out there.
[02:13:15]  I know that that was, you know, there's some bills that have been out there.
[02:13:19]  You had the Senate bill recently that the administration has been pushing, but that was not a border security bill.
[02:13:26]  That was an immigration facilitation bill.
[02:13:28]  There was very little.
[02:13:30]  There was some push for some technology in that bill to help process.
[02:13:34]  Migrants faster.
[02:13:36]  There was some counter narcotic technology that's out there, but they could still use that.
[02:13:42]  They tried to hijack it in that bill.
[02:13:45]  The only thing that I saw in there that was truly positive was the increase in the detention space.
[02:13:52]  But that was to bring it up to 50,000 a day, average daily population of ICE detention.
[02:13:59]  That's what they started with under this administration.
[02:14:01]  They reduced it in half.
[02:14:02]  And now they're like, hey, well.
[02:14:03]  25,000 a day?
[02:14:05]  Yeah.
[02:14:05]  And then, but the House bill.
[02:14:09]  was all about border security.
[02:14:11]  And Schumer never took it up.
[02:14:13]  It sat there and the first four bullets of that were finish the wall construction, add more technology.
[02:14:23]  It was put the migrant protection protocol in place and then increase border patrol agents up to 25,000.
[02:14:29]  I think that was the first four chapters in that bill.
[02:14:32]  Yet all you hear is like, why didn't you pass a Senate bill?
[02:14:36]  Because that was a bill based on Conflating immigration with security, and the house bill was mainly focused on border security.
[02:14:46]  And, and you know, there was some putting some more immigration judges in there, but that's how I would challenge uh, I would challenge Congress right now is I would tell them, and I did tell them, I was on the Hill uh, last week, uh, speaking to a governance group, uh, do a standalone border security bill, just talk to your leaders, security, just talk to DHS, specifically customs and border protection leaders.
[02:15:12]  And border patrol leaders and say, what is it you need now?
[02:15:15]  You know what?
[02:15:16]  Give me that and let's put that in a bill.
[02:15:18]  Let's not talk about visa quotas.
[02:15:19]  Let's not talk about, you know administration uh Admin uh, immigration judges.
[02:15:24]  Let's talk about what is it you need for to secure the border and what policies back it.
[02:15:29]  Let's put that up there and let's see who votes for securing the border for America versus.
[02:15:34]  Oh well let's, let's do the trade-offs.
[02:15:36]  No, a border, a standalone border security bill, specifically talking about the, the physical needs to secure requirements backed by the appropriate policies to support those agents and the requirements, let's put that forward and stand alone and let's see who stands up for Secure In America.
[02:15:54]  And then when that passes, then say, okay, we're going to get that.
[02:15:59]  Now let's talk about how do we clean up this system?
[02:16:02]  How do we increase immigration, lawful immigration, while reducing the opportunities for exploitation of immigration?
[02:16:11]  How do we right size the ones that have been here?
[02:16:15]  Who do we allow to stay?
[02:16:16]  Who do we order removed?
[02:16:18]  I mean, these are complex questions that are going to require complex solutions, but you cannot muddy the waters by throwing in five miles of wall here and there with paroles and asylum.
[02:16:33]  That's where it gets.
[02:16:35]  Then it becomes emotional again.
[02:16:39]  Same people that are arguing this had no problem putting a fence around the Capitol.
[02:16:44]  Right?
[02:16:46]  To include razor wire.
[02:16:47]  Right.
[02:16:49]  But boy, when it comes down to putting a fence around our front yard.
[02:16:52]  They sure do want to complain about it, you know.
[02:16:55]  What is the, can you explain the asylum thing?
[02:16:59]  Like when people come through asking for asylum or saying they have asylum, some of them come through and they already have asylum from other countries and they're still coming here.
[02:17:10]  What are the rules involving asylum?
[02:17:12]  And like maybe you can explain exactly what defines asylum.
[02:17:15]  Yeah, I'll make it very clear.
[02:17:17]  I'm not an asylum expert, right?
[02:17:19]  But I have a little bit of knowledge on some of these things because, again, It didn't matter what you thought you had or what you wanted to claim.
[02:17:26]  If you cross between the ports of entry, you are violating the law, and that's where my space was, right?
[02:17:30]  Regardless of your intent, it didn't matter.
[02:17:32]  You broke the law.
[02:17:33]  Got it.
[02:17:34]  You robbed the bank to pay for your food, doesn't matter.
[02:17:37]  You robbed the bank.
[02:17:38]  We'll deal with the consequences later.
[02:17:40]  But asylum, there's two types of asylum there's an affirmative claim.
[02:17:45]  That's where you are in your country.
[02:17:48]  You're like, hey, this is not a good place.
[02:17:52]  I am, and there's, and I always get it wrong, but there's a couple of them.
[02:17:56]  that persecution for race, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation, religion.
[02:18:05]  It's those, right?
[02:18:06]  That's like the main kind of very simple to our anti-discrimination EEO laws.
[02:18:11]  It's very so like someone who's in Gaza right now while it's being bombed, they can come here for asylum.
[02:18:15]  So if you are well, no.
[02:18:16]  I mean, if you are yes and no.
[02:18:19]  I mean, just because you're there and bad things are happening doesn't mean you can get that would be more of a war refuge and things like that.
[02:18:26]  But we're talking about what's happening at the border right now.
[02:18:28]  It's close, okay?
[02:18:29]  Okay.
[02:18:30]  If you are a Christian in a Muslim country and you're getting stoned every day by rocks, right?
[02:18:39]  I've got to be clear nowadays.
[02:18:40]  The old school stuff.
[02:18:40]  Yeah, the old school stuff.
[02:18:41]  Yeah, if you're getting beat up every day simply because you're a Christian, that is persecution and you can request asylum because of your religious background, okay?
[02:18:53]  Okay.
[02:18:54]  All right.
[02:18:55]  So let's think of it that way.
[02:18:56]  So that would be where you would apply through an affirmative act.
[02:19:00]  affirmative claim.
[02:19:01]  It's actually an application for asylum, a 595, I think is what it is.
[02:19:06]  And you would submit that to the American consulate, your embassy.
[02:19:10]  You'd come to the United States.
[02:19:11]  It's like, I got a 590.
[02:19:12]  I want to fill out a file.
[02:19:13]  I'm going to apply for asylum.
[02:19:15]  Here's what's happening.
[02:19:16]  Okay.
[02:19:17]  Then there's the defensive claim.
[02:19:20]  Okay.
[02:19:21]  And that's where 99.9% of the people that the Border Patrol have encountered Our claim and asylum.
[02:19:33]  What happens there?
[02:19:34]  So, again, you have the affirmative claim, and let me flesh that out a little bit further how that works.
[02:19:40]  There's a segment in the affirmative claim law that says, regardless of your status of entry, all right, regardless of your immigration status, your status entry, people like to hold on to that in today's world.
[02:19:53]  But the intent behind that was you're a Ukrainian student at the university.
[02:20:03]  And your visa is good till June.
[02:20:06]  You just finished the semester.
[02:20:08]  It's, you know, May 25th.
[02:20:10]  And you're like, okay, my visa expires in a week.
[02:20:13]  I don't have classes again till September.
[02:20:15]  I'm going to go home to Ukraine.
[02:20:19]  Well, you realize that there's a war broken out and there is no home.
[02:20:22]  You have no place to go.
[02:20:24]  Russia has now advanced through your neighborhood.
[02:20:27]  You have no contact with your family.
[02:20:29]  It is now June 2nd.
[02:20:32]  Your visa has expired.
[02:20:33]  You are technically illegally in the United States.
[02:20:36]  You are out of status.
[02:20:39]  You go to the nearest immigration office.
[02:20:42]  You go to the nearest consul.
[02:20:43]  You go to Ukrainian embassy, whatever it is, and you say, hey, I need asylum.
[02:20:47]  My neighborhood's gone.
[02:20:48]  My family's gone.
[02:20:49]  My visa's expired.
[02:20:51]  You can apply for asylum there.
[02:20:53]  Okay.
[02:20:53]  That's all an affirmative claim, regardless of your status.
[02:20:57]  Okay.
[02:20:59]  Now, back to that 99.9% of what Border Patrol is encountering right now.
[02:21:04]  When we arrest somebody and when we are processing them through into removal proceedings, we ask them, Do you have fear of returning to your home country?
[02:21:17]  There's only two answers yes or no.
[02:21:20]  If you say yes, then we will put you in for a credible fear screening.
[02:21:28]  That's where they will use asylum.
[02:21:30]  You can claim asylum as I have fear of returning, and they make a defensive claim.
[02:21:35]  In other words, they've got to prove that they are not removable because they meet the merits of asylum.
[02:21:46]  That means they have to say, I'm persecuted for XYZ.
[02:21:50]  I fled for XYZ.
[02:21:52]  They get those hearings.
[02:21:54]  And that is a defensive claim.
[02:21:57]  They're doing it on the back end.
[02:21:59]  In other words, they didn't apply for asylum.
[02:22:02]  None of these people we catch say, Oh, hey, I came here for asylum.
[02:22:05]  It's after the effect.
[02:22:06]  Like, okay, you're going to be removed.
[02:22:09]  You're going to go see, you're going to get deported unless you have fear.
[02:22:13]  Then, if you have fear, then we ask you these five questions.
[02:22:16]  And if you say yes, then you're going to go get an asylum hearing, which could be years down the road.
[02:22:23]  Okay.
[02:22:24]  So that's.
[02:22:25]  That's where that whole loophole is.
[02:22:28]  So, ah, oh, all I have to say is yes.
[02:22:31]  Now, what happens in these people, unfortunately, are in terrible situations.
[02:22:37]  But, you know, if you are living in a neighborhood where you're getting, you know, a shakedown every week for ransom and you're getting beat up and you're being threatened, you're being assaulted, that's not asylum.
[02:22:52]  That's just, that's sorry, man.
[02:22:54]  That's a tough life.
[02:22:55]  But that's not asylum.
[02:22:58]  I know of stories where, and I've heard this from an immigration attorney, a friend of mine, where he had clients that came from Central America.
[02:23:07]  The mother was being extorted by the local gang, said, you're going to pay me 40 bucks a week.
[02:23:12]  She said, I'm not going to pay you 40 bucks a week.
[02:23:14]  And they came back and said, well, not only are you going to pay us 40, you're going to pay us 80.
[02:23:17]  And if you don't start paying us, I'm a daughter.
[02:23:21]  She's like, you're not going to do any of that.
[02:23:23]  They came back and said, okay, you're going to pay the 80 bucks.
[02:23:27]  And then if you don't agree to pay, I'm going to and then I'm going to kill her right in front of you, and you're going to still pay me.
[02:23:33]  And she's like, All right, let me see if I can come up with the money.
[02:23:36]  And then she fled.
[02:23:38]  Horrible life.
[02:23:39]  Horrible.
[02:23:39]  Horrible decision.
[02:23:41]  Not a merit for asylum.
[02:23:43]  And nor should it be.
[02:23:45]  It's just a terrible thing because that is just a bad situation.
[02:23:49]  If everybody, because how do we validate that claim as a valid claim, right?
[02:23:53]  You're taking her word for it.
[02:23:56]  I mean, it is a horrible situation.
[02:23:58]  But.
[02:23:59]  Those threats and those assaults and things like that happen in our own neighborhoods in this country.
[02:24:04]  It's just a very difficult situation that this world has put everybody in.
[02:24:10]  Is that there's that evil out there that would ransom somebody's daughter in front of them to say, I'm going to rip her in front of you, then I'm going to kill her.
[02:24:17]  And if you don't pay that, I'm going to kill you afterwards.
[02:24:19]  But you're going to see her die before.
[02:24:22]  That is a horrible place to be put in.
[02:24:25]  And that doesn't meet the grounds for asylum.
[02:24:30]  And that is open for debate, but that's the way the rules are.
[02:24:37]  And.
[02:24:38]  I think it is going to open a Pandora's box to where is that line of what's horrible and what's tolerable.
[02:24:45]  Right.
[02:24:45]  Well, you can be assaulted, but not murdered.
[02:24:47]  Okay.
[02:24:47]  I mean, again, this becomes where this becomes very emotional because I could only, my stomach turns telling me this, telling the story because I'm thinking, what if that was my family?
[02:24:59]  Right.
[02:24:59]  I would want refuge.
[02:25:01]  But, I mean, these are legitimate stories and these are human lives at stake.
[02:25:07]  And that's why it's such a, it's a, Such a difficult deal.
[02:25:11]  Why we should be able to say, okay, mother that needs to get a better life, if you do, if you want to come to the United States, you know, here's an opportunity for a six months work visa that you don't have to wait your whole life to get.
[02:25:26]  I mean, maybe there's maybe I don't know the answer of that, right?
[02:25:29]  But there's got to be a better way.
[02:25:33]  And again, that is why this has become such a difficult thing.
[02:25:37]  And I think as soon as we start bringing in immigration and asylum, We lose the security piece.
[02:25:43]  And again, it still starts with figuring out the right way.
[02:25:46]  But no one should have to live with that threat over their head.
[02:25:52]  But can she go from that city in Guatemala to someplace else?
[02:25:57]  Possibly.
[02:25:58]  Could she go to Mexico?
[02:26:00]  Yeah, she could.
[02:26:01]  And this is where a lot of this gets all messed up, is the international asylum laws, in a very simple way to put it, is All the cooperating asylum countries, which there's a bunch of them, if you, as soon as you make it to that country, that's where you're supposed to seek Assam.
[02:26:21]  So if you're in India and you're, you know, fleeing for whatever reason and you've got a flight out from India to Germany.
[02:26:30]  Right.
[02:26:31]  And you're seeking Assam, you seek it in Germany.
[02:26:33]  That's the first country that you've landed in.
[02:26:35]  You mean like if it's like a connecting flight, you got to connect in Germany to go to the U.S.?
[02:26:38]  Well, wherever, yeah, wherever you're going, right?
[02:26:40]  So whatever, let's say, you know, this is where it gets all.
[02:26:44]  It's all messed up.
[02:26:45]  Yeah, because if you want to go to another country, but there's like four countries in between you and that country, you have to go through those countries, right?
[02:26:51]  Right.
[02:26:51]  But if you're seeking asylum, if your whole basis is you're fleeing persecution, you don't get to pick and choose where you go, at least on the front end, right?
[02:27:01]  So you pass through several countries and then you get to the United States and then you say, Do you have fear of return?
[02:27:06]  Oh, yeah, I have fear of return.
[02:27:08]  Okay, well, I'm going to use asylum as my defensive claim.
[02:27:10]  If you were really being persecuted, if your life was on the line, And you were able to board a plane out of, I just said India, to Germany, nonstop to Frankfurt.
[02:27:22]  Would you just say, I'm here, I'm safe, I'm not in India anymore?

=== Non Immigrant Visitor Loopholes (08:59) ===

[02:27:25]  And again, I'm just using that as an example.
[02:27:29]  Then they pass through, they go from India to Germany to UK, and then they go flying direct from London Heathrow to Mexico City.
[02:27:41]  All right.
[02:27:41]  So now that they've been traveling for four or five days now, they're in Mexico City.
[02:27:45]  They spend a month in Mexico City and then they show up at the southern border.
[02:27:49]  Our southern border, then come across and now they're seeking asylum?
[02:27:52]  If you were really seeking asylum based on those main persecuted, why wouldn't you seek it in Germany?
[02:27:59]  Why wouldn't you seek it in the United Kingdom?
[02:28:00]  Why wouldn't you seek it in Mexico if you were those reasons?
[02:28:03]  Now, oh, you have family in it?
[02:28:05]  Oh, so you, oh, really?
[02:28:06]  You want to family?
[02:28:07]  You're in a vacation.
[02:28:07]  You want to be with your cousins that live here.
[02:28:09]  You were looking for a job.
[02:28:11]  Oh, you weren't really being persecuted, but you found that loopholed.
[02:28:15]  That's the problem now everybody's been clumped into this one big mass of 8 million people.
[02:28:22]  So the true asylum seekers, the ones that are fleeing, which is very limited, as I said, very limited in scope, are now in the same line as the people that are economic.
[02:28:32]  Migrants looking for a job or family reunification, and they've gummed up the whole system.
[02:28:38]  So now this asylum seeker waits the same time as somebody that's just trying to get a benefit and relief for the United States.
[02:28:44]  That's why it's all jacked up.
[02:28:46]  Yeah, if I was like, well, maybe what about flying into Canada?
[02:28:49]  Because if the border is easier to cross from Canada to the U.S., why not just fly to Canada?
[02:28:54]  Because Canada won't let them in.
[02:28:55]  Well, no.
[02:28:56]  What's your intent?
[02:28:57]  Are you seeking asylum?
[02:28:58]  Seeking asylum, yes.
[02:28:59]  Then go to Canada.
[02:29:00]  Seeking asylum.
[02:29:00]  If you can fly, why are you choosing the United States?
[02:29:04]  Maybe I like watching.
[02:29:06]  Maybe I'm a New England Patriots fan and I want to go to a Patriots game.
[02:29:10]  I want to go to the U.S. because they got good hot dogs, hamburgers.
[02:29:13]  I want a Ford truck and I want to go to a Patriots game.
[02:29:15]  And you apply for a non immigrant visitor visa.
[02:29:20]  And that's easy?
[02:29:21]  Well, you got to wait in line like everybody else.
[02:29:22]  Have you ever heard the story?
[02:29:24]  My point being is that is not asylum wanting to go to the Patriots game.
[02:29:30]  That's not asylum, correct.
[02:29:32]  So if you want a Patriot, you go as a tourist visa and you wait in line and then.
[02:29:35]  Right.
[02:29:36]  Yeah.
[02:29:36]  And then when you get that time, you finally get that chance to go and you better have a, you have to have a return ticket.
[02:29:41]  Right.
[02:29:42]  Right.
[02:29:43]  Um, there's a, so there's this guy, this DJ named Dead Mouse.
[02:29:48]  Have you heard of him?
[02:29:49]  I don't know if I've heard of him.
[02:29:50]  He's like a, one of like the top famous electronic DJs, um, in the world.
[02:29:56]  And he had this story.
[02:29:57]  We were just watching it before you came in.
[02:29:59]  He was in Canada.
[02:30:01]  I think he lived in Canada.
[02:30:02]  He was a Canadian resident.
[02:30:03]  Right.
[02:30:03]  And he was, he had a buddy.
[02:30:05]  That he worked with because they made music together, and this guy had a band and whatever.
[02:30:09]  And they wanted to like, they wanted to meet up and like hang in LA for the weekend or something like that.
[02:30:15]  And so he went to, he caught a cab, which was like 20 minutes away to the border where you cross.
[02:30:21]  It was like near Niagara Falls.
[02:30:23]  Okay.
[02:30:23]  Yeah.
[02:30:23]  Buffalo.
[02:30:24]  Yeah.
[02:30:25]  And he went there, and they're basically like, oh, no, you can't go to the US.
[02:30:31]  He's like, how do you know this guy?
[02:30:32]  He lives like 2,000 miles away.
[02:30:33]  How the f do you know this guy?
[02:30:34]  He's like, what do you mean?
[02:30:35]  He's like, the internet.
[02:30:36]  Talked to this guy.
[02:30:37]  I met him online years ago.
[02:30:39]  We've been talking ever since, and I'm going to go meet him and hang out with him for the weekend in LA.
[02:30:43]  Like, huh, that's fishy.
[02:30:44]  And they were like, oh no, we see what you do.
[02:30:48]  You're a skilled musical artist.
[02:30:52]  You're going to go here to work and make money.
[02:30:54]  And fuck, no, you're not coming across to the US or whatever.
[02:30:56]  And they ended up banning him from the US for seven years.
[02:30:59]  Yeah, he was probably, he would have had to have a P visa, which is a performer visa, because they see him as a performer.
[02:31:05]  And basically, he tried to enter as a non immigrant visitor.
[02:31:09]  To come see, but he didn't have the right visa.
[02:31:11]  And so, and he didn't answer the right questions.
[02:31:14]  And so, again, that's he was just going to hang out and he wasn't even going to work.
[02:31:16]  But they just assume because he's this highly skilled, world famous DJ that he was going to work and they're going to say, you're banned.
[02:31:24]  Why?
[02:31:25]  So, again, you get into that immigration quagmire.
[02:31:30]  I've used that twice now.
[02:31:31]  I shouldn't say that immigration just that it's if you have a non immigrant visa, and they're again, non immigrant visa is temporary, right?
[02:31:39]  You're here for, you know, they're usually for six months at a time.
[02:31:43]  Versus an immigrant, which is an intended immigrant, somebody that's going to come here and immigrate and go through the process to be a resident alien and ultimately a citizen.
[02:31:52]  We've got to make it easier.
[02:31:53]  Yeah.
[02:31:54]  The irony I wanted to point out in this is that, like, look, here's this super highly skilled guy who's coming here who could, even if he was working, I'm sure he would contribute to something.
[02:32:03]  And, but on the other hand, you have, like you said, on the southern border, these droves of people who are coming through and just getting released.
[02:32:10]  Yeah.
[02:32:11]  Yeah.
[02:32:11]  But the guy who tried to do it the right way gets banned.
[02:32:14]  International superstar has a performance visa, been, you know, whatever.
[02:32:19]  They know everything about him.
[02:32:20]  He can't even come in for the weekend.
[02:32:22]  Right.
[02:32:23]  That's why this is all messed up.
[02:32:25]  We should not be able to.
[02:32:26]  We should find a better way to make that happen.
[02:32:29]  I know I met somebody a few weeks ago.
[02:32:31]  I was speaking in Philadelphia, and this guy was a naturalized citizen, a business owner, quite wealthy business owner.
[02:32:40]  His brother had applied to be an immigrant, he was going to try to come over here and immigrate to the United States.
[02:32:46]  So his application was in.
[02:32:49]  Because he is an intended immigrant, when he wanted to come over here to go see his family or see his brother for the holidays, He applied for a tourist fee, so they denied it because he's intended that he wants to stay here.
[02:33:05]  So they're assuming he's going to come in as a tourist and stay.
[02:33:12]  Well, again, I think that's kind of jacked up because number one, his brother's a naturalized citizen and you know all the information on him.
[02:33:19]  Anybody that goes through the immigration process and that we know everything about you.
[02:33:22]  No, this guy's not a terrorist.
[02:33:23]  Yeah, right, right.
[02:33:24]  You've applied to be an immigrant, so we have all your application on file.
[02:33:30]  All you're saying is, hey, I want to come over here for a short time to go see family and, Take in the sites, and I'm going to go back because I'm waiting to immigrate.
[02:33:39]  If he doesn't comply with that non immigrant visa, then he is putting his whole immigrant opportunity in jeopardy.
[02:33:47]  Right.
[02:33:48]  So he has everything to lose by not complying with the six month visa or whatever length of time he wanted.
[02:33:57]  If he came over here as a non immigrant and allowed that to stay beyond six months and became out of status, he would jeopardize it.
[02:34:04]  But we denied his ability to come hang out with his family.
[02:34:09]  and visit the United States for X amount of weeks or months.
[02:34:12]  Now, there's two sides of every story.
[02:34:14]  There could be a huge lengthy background.
[02:34:16]  I have no idea that's why this guy is not allowed in.
[02:34:18]  I don't know.
[02:34:19]  But just on the face value of this, this shows how jacked up our system is.
[02:34:26]  It kind of goes back to the daily border crossers.
[02:34:30]  I mean, this person comes to work every day in the United States and goes back.
[02:34:35]  We make that so difficult if they wanted to come through for any other reason.
[02:34:39]  I'm not, I never am going to sacrifice Security for comfort when it comes down to our national security at the border.
[02:34:48]  In other words, yeah, if you've got to sit and wait in line an extra two hours to come through, but you're going to get the privilege of being here, so be it.
[02:34:58]  But we can make it better.
[02:35:01]  And I just get it's just kind of frustrating because you look at all the different things in our world.
[02:35:10]  What would happen if there was a line since 6 a.m. at a famous pop star's? Tour, right?
[02:35:19]  Sold out for months in advance.
[02:35:23]  People have been there since six o'clock in the morning waiting to get in the parking lot.
[02:35:27]  And you and I decided with no tickets, just hopped the fence, walked in line, and snuck in and got front row.
[02:35:32]  Yeah.
[02:35:33]  We'd be in jail if we made it out alive, you know?
[02:35:39]  And, but yet when it's our border, no one thinks in there and they know, you know, let them do it.
[02:35:43]  No, that makes no sense.
[02:35:45]  You can't even walk in in front of Starbucks and cut in front of somebody to order your latte.
[02:35:50]  You're going to get yelled at and screamed at.
[02:35:52]  And if you don't go fast enough at a green light in Tampa, I figured that today, you're going to get honked.
[02:35:57]  But, you know, I'm like, it just doesn't happen.
[02:35:59]  That's all the New Yorkers that moved down here.
[02:36:00]  That's right, right?
[02:36:02]  I mean, if that happened here, nobody thinks anything of it.
[02:36:06]  But if you jump in line at our border, everybody knows it's okay.
[02:36:13]  Yet there's a threat there.
[02:36:14]  There's no threat if you.
[02:36:16]  If you don't get your coffee in time, but there's a threat if we don't vet who comes in here, you know?
[02:36:21]  How many people, you said that the ICE detention facilities are full.

=== Broken Family Units (04:19) ===

[02:36:24]  How many people are in there and how long do they typically stay there for?
[02:36:28]  That's a great question.
[02:36:29]  So it's funded on a weird deal.
[02:36:32]  It's called the average daily population.
[02:36:33]  So it's like they're funded at 24,000 beds a day.
[02:36:38]  It's based on beds.
[02:36:40]  And that means that they do have more people than they have beds in there, at least funding for.
[02:36:45]  So they're, like every government agency, they're robbing Peter to pay Paul.
[02:36:48]  They're pulling out of this to cover bed space.
[02:36:53]  They need at least 50,000 beds a day.
[02:36:56]  And there's some people that will stay.
[02:36:58]  Are there kids in there?
[02:36:59]  Like little kids?
[02:37:01]  No.
[02:37:02]  So there's a couple things here.
[02:37:04]  So unaccompanied minors, okay, by law, it's actually the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
[02:37:10]  I actually had to change a name, but we always called it TVPRA.
[02:37:15]  That defines a minor as unaccompanied minor as 17 and younger without a parent or legal guardian.
[02:37:21]  They belong to Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.
[02:37:25]  So, whenever we catch a 17 year old that is not with his parent or legal guardian, they get turned over to HHS ORR and they handle the children.
[02:37:35]  There was a lawsuit, a Flores settlement, and through that, it has said that you cannot detain family units for more than 20 days.
[02:37:49]  So, if you come as a family unit, the worst case scenario is you're going to stay in custody for 20 days, then you're going to be released if you don't have your hearing and removed.
[02:37:55]  So, That's why there's always this big push for family units to come over here.
[02:37:59]  And there's a lot of fraudulent family units that come over here because.
[02:38:03]  Meaning they like take randoms and stick them together so they can get through?
[02:38:07]  Absolutely.
[02:38:08]  They will put single adults together and then have children.
[02:38:13]  A lot of the breaking up of families happens on the South side.
[02:38:15]  Like they'll literally take kids and put them with single adults to make a family unit and then try to make the arrangements when they get back.
[02:38:24]  Wow.
[02:38:25]  Yeah, it's crazy.
[02:38:27]  Yeah.
[02:38:27]  That's happened.
[02:38:28]  We've had, we've even had, before I got to Yuma, Yuma actually discovered a, it was a, you know, kind of a recycled kid.
[02:38:37]  He was being used multiple times to make family units.
[02:38:40]  He was unrelated.
[02:38:41]  And it was really an agent who recognized this kid being processed.
[02:38:46]  He said, he looks familiar.
[02:38:47]  And he asked somebody, I don't know.
[02:38:49]  He seems like this kid.
[02:38:51]  Using the same name or no?
[02:38:52]  No, don't.
[02:38:52]  Different name.
[02:38:53]  Different name.
[02:38:53]  Because we're not going to have the bio on a small child name, but we wouldn't have fingerprints or pictures because we do only, it's 14 or younger.
[02:39:01]  Oh, we don't take that.
[02:39:02]  Yeah.
[02:39:02]  You guys do like all kinds of like fingerprint scanning.
[02:39:05]  But we can't do that with a child.
[02:39:07]  So, but they recognized it.
[02:39:09]  And when they started talking and they basically, through interrogation, broke the parents.
[02:39:15]  And like, no, this isn't our kid.
[02:39:17]  We got him in Mexico.
[02:39:19]  We were put in.
[02:39:19]  And then we come to find out this kid had been used a couple times, like from Brazil to Mexico City to Yuma to Ohio, South Carolina, back to Brazil, back to Mexico.
[02:39:29]  This happened a few times.
[02:39:30]  So, you know, this is the kind of stuff that goes on.
[02:39:34]  And, you know, And thank goodness we caught them.
[02:39:37]  And, you know, we had a pretty good setup to using DNA testing.
[02:39:43]  And of course, that was put on hold under this administration.
[02:39:48]  You know, if we had, you know, you need to have to get consent or probable cause to swipe somebody's DNA.
[02:39:55]  So you had, you know, let's say a husband, wife, and two children, but only the guys doing the talk in, some of the last names, the documents look kind of funny like, all right, I think I have enough.
[02:40:07]  This isn't the family unit.
[02:40:09]  We got consent or we get probable cause to do the DNA swab.
[02:40:14]  where we started breaking family units up, you know, the fraudulent ones.
[02:40:18]  And it got so good that agents could just walk up with a q-tip and people were like, all right, yeah, yeah, this is my cousin's friend.
[02:40:25]  Really?
[02:40:26]  Yeah.
[02:40:27]  That happened in El Paso.
[02:40:28]  We broke a few of them just by, we didn't even take the swab.
[02:40:31]  They just kind of confessed right off the bat because they knew they needed to get caught.
[02:40:35]  Because once you, if we test you and it comes back and you've been lying to us, we could charge that, you know, that lying to federal agent deal.

=== Legal Pathway Funneling (08:39) ===

[02:40:44]  So it's a complex, evil world, this human trafficking.
[02:40:49]  human exploitation that's happening under the guise of, oh, it's a humanitarian border crisis.
[02:40:56]  It is.
[02:40:57]  But we've kind of created it with some really lackadaisical policies or looking the other way.
[02:41:02]  And I think if you secured that border and you basically funneled it through those wide gates that I talk about, which is our legal pathways and our ports of entry, we could at least narrow it down a little bit.
[02:41:13]  It's not going to end evil.
[02:41:15]  It's not going to end human exploitation, but it sure could mitigate it and give the good guys a better chance.
[02:41:23]  of going after the bad guys and identifying them and saving some lives.
[02:41:29]  Because I could only, I mean, it's just, you know, you can only imagine the horrors that people go through.
[02:41:34]  Because what do you do if you, you know, if you can't pay off that debt?
[02:41:37]  You make arrangements to, if you think that all the arrangements are going to be good paying jobs to pay off your debt, you're fooling yourself.
[02:41:44]  These are people that are going to be, you know, put into prostitution and, you know, indentured servitude.
[02:41:50]  I mean, that stuff goes on right here in this very, very country of ours.
[02:41:53]  Yeah.
[02:41:54]  What would you do if you were given like if good old Joe Biden came down and said, Mr. Chief Clem, we're going to give you the blank check, magic wand to fix this southern border security problem.
[02:42:06]  What would you do?
[02:42:07]  What's like the lowest hanging fruit of problems that you would solve?
[02:42:10]  The first thing I would do is I would institute the migrant protection protocol that basically closing those asylum loops right off the bat.
[02:42:18]  It was working when we had it in its very fullest intent and robust.
[02:42:23]  I would do that because that sends a message day one that you can't try this loophole.
[02:42:29]  And that can be done instantaneously by a directive, like effective immediately.
[02:42:35]  Okay.
[02:42:36]  Then I would resume the construction of the border wall where it made sense.
[02:42:42]  We already have the plan to include the technology.
[02:42:45]  I would do all of that right off the bat.
[02:42:48]  Those are the first two things that I would do that would send a very clear message that we mean business.
[02:42:56]  Like, you cannot come in here this current way.
[02:43:01]  I would also, you know, I want to make sure that it's not considered a roundup or any kind of, you know, thing like that.
[02:43:09]  But I would definitely, I would end the parole system that's being used right now because that is, that's that 300,000, 400,000 people that are being flown in because they're claiming a status before they even get to the United States.
[02:43:22]  That could be shut down right now.
[02:43:24]  What's that?
[02:43:24]  That's a, yeah, that's the Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan parole system that this administration has created where, They can apply for a humanitarian cause and they're flying into the United States.
[02:43:41]  That's the.
[02:43:42]  Plane loads of them.
[02:43:43]  Yeah, 400,000 people have come in.
[02:43:45]  Whoa.
[02:43:46]  Yeah.
[02:43:47]  Yeah.
[02:43:48]  It's called parole.
[02:43:49]  Yeah.
[02:43:50]  Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans.
[02:43:52]  Yep.
[02:43:54]  Venezuela.
[02:43:54]  DHS, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, parole process.
[02:43:58]  Click on that one.
[02:43:59]  Yeah.
[02:43:59]  They've applied for asylum and they're basically allowing them to come over here from countries that they can get asylum in.
[02:44:04]  Oh, wow.
[02:44:05]  Yeah.
[02:44:07]  Yeah.
[02:44:08]  I heard that some of them were.
[02:44:10]  It's an unlawful process when you look at how this is creating a classification of people.
[02:44:16]  And only Congress can do that.
[02:44:17]  So I'm very, I'm very, I don't think this would, this will hold up to challenges when it finally gets all challenged.
[02:44:23]  So, yeah, it's, those are a couple things right there that become deterrents.
[02:44:30]  Again, let's finish what we started.
[02:44:32]  Let's get the migrant protection protocol on there.
[02:44:35]  And then let's, you know, and I guess the fourth thing would, which would be, I think the most profound yet most difficult thing would be let's clean up the immigration pathways.
[02:44:48]  Let's figure out so.
[02:44:51]  The guy from Canada can go spend a weekend with a friend that he's met.
[02:44:54]  You know, if the guy's got no criminal history or immigration history, right?
[02:45:00]  Let's figure out a way to where cousins that live in San Diego and in Tijuana can go hang out on either side of the border, you know, for the weekend in a very efficient manner to where they don't have to jump through all the hoops to do that.
[02:45:15]  So we can have that shared border, but then, you know, but also accountability for security on that same border.
[02:45:21]  You know, I mean, those are the things that we need to do.
[02:45:26]  I am very much, again, hawkish and pro-security.
[02:45:31]  But I also recognize the challenges we face if you pull a hard line, it doesn't end well.
[02:45:38]  So we've got to make sure we kind of look through it from that common sense and compassionate lens.
[02:45:44]  Secure the border, but let's find out a way to encourage a more efficient pathway for those that, you know, Need our help and also, you know, that help spur commerce and trade and travel.
[02:46:01]  Let's, if we can't find it here, let's find a way to attract and attain the best and brightest.
[02:46:08]  And let's not make it such an arduous process.
[02:46:12]  Let's figure out a way to where an intended immigrant can still come over here to see his family on a tourist visa for a limited time without jeopardizing his application.
[02:46:25]  But at the same time, if you violate the system, if you exploit people in the system, there is a big consequence.
[02:46:33]  So if you come over here under a tourist visa after you've applied to be an intended government and you violate that tourist visa, you start from scratch again, buddy.
[02:46:43]  You don't get a second and third bite at the apple because you knowingly violated the process.
[02:46:49]  And I think that's probably the top four or five things I would do.
[02:46:54]  And they're all doable.
[02:46:56]  Some are can be done overnight.
[02:46:59]  Some will take amount of time.
[02:47:01]  But, you know, if the president asked me today, it would start with that fundamental tenet that we have to secure the border.
[02:47:11]  It is the government's requirement for safety is to secure our border.
[02:47:17]  Then we can work it from there.
[02:47:18]  Yeah.
[02:47:20]  Well, Chris, thank you again for coming, man.
[02:47:22]  This was a super enlightening conversation.
[02:47:24]  I hope so, man.
[02:47:25]  I really appreciate it.
[02:47:26]  I mean, it's it really is one of those things where, man, we could talk and go on because sometimes I'll say something I'm like, I could spend an hour kind of giving you a backstory on that, you know.
[02:47:38]  I mean, um, but I just I'll just leave you with this, Danny.
[02:47:41]  Thank you, number one, for having the conversation.
[02:47:44]  All right.
[02:47:47]  It may make perfect sense to some people.
[02:47:49]  Some people may walk away more confused or even angry.
[02:47:51]  I don't know.
[02:47:52]  But my intent is for people to understand that what is happening right now, we can't sustain.
[02:48:00]  That we have to secure our border for national security purposes.
[02:48:06]  But we can do it in a very meaningful and deliberate way to keep Americans safe and then also address that.
[02:48:16]  The need to number one, be that beacon of hope for those that need it, and also find a way to where we can have America benefit from continued lawful immigration, right?
[02:48:31]  To help businesses and America continue to grow and prosper.
[02:48:35]  You know, that's the whole gist of the conversation wrapped up in 30 seconds.
[02:48:41]  Yeah.
[02:48:41]  And I've always wanted to talk to somebody like you who has like firsthand experience, like, Boots on the ground at the border to see what's going on because all I ever hear is just people talking about headlines or something they read.
[02:48:53]  Or, I mean, that's that's for the most part when you're talking to people about any sort of big issue, it's very rare to find somebody who's actually witnessed it firsthand for years, like you did.
[02:49:04]  Yeah.
[02:49:04]  So over my half my life, I mean, yeah, I mean, I could have told you war stories and you know, scary moments and vehicle pursuits and all that stuff, but you know, anybody can talk about cool stuff.
[02:49:16]  This is important stuff that is, you know.
[02:49:19]  I think that it can actually shape the future of this country and having these conversations.

=== Thank You For The Conversation (00:48) ===

[02:49:23]  So, I really, truly, you know, thank you for having me here to having this conversation.
[02:49:30]  And, you know, you ever need a follow up or, you know, a point, you know, yeah, reach out.
[02:49:36]  You know, you're welcome to come back or welcome to chat over the phone or however we can do it.
[02:49:40]  Yeah, we'll definitely get you back in here, man.
[02:49:41]  You got it.
[02:49:42]  Where can people find your stuff online?
[02:49:44]  Can they follow you?
[02:49:45]  Can they get in contact with you?
[02:49:46]  Yeah, so at Clem Official.
[02:49:48]  So that's C as in Chris and then Clem, C L E M, Official.
[02:49:52]  That's on my X there.
[02:49:53]  Okay.
[02:49:54]  That's the best way to get a hold of me.
[02:49:56]  And that's, you know, I'm active.
[02:49:58]  I'm not super active, but, you know, there's usually a post every day or every couple of days.
[02:50:02]  There's a lot of stuff I'll forward and comment on that is making headlines.
[02:50:05]  So, yeah, I'll even put a picture of us on that thing.
[02:50:09]  Hell yeah, man.
[02:50:09]  I'll make sure I link it all below.
[02:50:11]  You got it, man.
[02:50:11]  Thanks.
[02:50:11]  All right.
[02:50:12]  Good night, folks.