Theo sits down with a recently retired Chief Patrol Agent of the US Border Patrol, Roy Villareal, a 32-year veteran of the force, to discuss the current state of America's border with Mexico, the daily dangers he faced with cartels and wild animals, and the difficulties of balancing his duties as a border patrol agent with the women and children he encountered everyday.
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You know, it's a unique time where there's so much information and false information and rumor and biased material going around about the U.S. border.
And I'm sure we've all heard things and tried not to hear things about it.
And so I wanted to get someone here today who has boots on the ground been there, you know, that frontline bad boy.
And I'm so happy today to have Fresh off of his 32 years of service working with the U.S. Border Patrol, where he finished as the chief Border Patrol agent of the Tucson sector.
We are happy to have him today, Mr. Roy Villarreal.
Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you my stories Shine on me And I will find a song I've been singing just before We'll be right back.
Oh, yeah, Burt Kreischer.
Oh, man, I love that guy.
Yeah, he's so funny.
Dude, he is an animal.
Or the machine, they call him.
He's everything.
Yeah.
He's like, and he laughs all the time.
Every time he's, he's, he reminds me of like Winnie the Pooh.
Like, if Winnie the Pooh went to college and was like in a fraternity for a really long time.
Oh, yeah.
You know?
Like, just like, yeah, he's one of a kind, man.
So you live over in Tucson?
Yeah.
Nice, man.
I went to Santa Rita High School for a semester, yeah.
My mom used to live out on Pantano.
Oh, my gosh, yeah.
So I used to be out there and people would fight in the car washes and stuff like that after school.
So we didn't have any border control.
We could have used some border control right there.
Yeah.
We could have used some border control out of Santa Rita High School, man.
Go Eagles.
So Roy Villarreal, that's how you say your last name.
Nailed it.
So your position with the border, what was it exactly?
So I recently retired from border patrol.
I served for 32 years.
My position at the time was the chief patrol agent of the Tucson sector.
Okay.
And that sector is about how big?
260 miles of border with Arizona border with Mexico.
Okay.
And so when you're in charge of that, are you in charge of both sides of it or just one side?
Just the one side.
So don't we have control over the U.S. side?
Do they have, do you know the person who's in charge of the other side?
Like, is there someone in charge of the other side?
Well, yes, to a degree.
Dealing with the Mexican government, you're dealing with different entities.
Their customs, their immigration, federal police, local police.
There's a whole myriad of entities you have to deal with in Mexico.
Okay.
So like on a day-to-day basis, kind of what were some of like your kind of responsibilities?
Like what are you guys' responsibilities over there?
So Tucson Sectors is the largest sector in the Border Patrol.
And so I had about 4,000 employees under my purview.
Wow.
And that was about 3,400 sworn law enforcement officers.
And then the rest were administrative folks, mechanics, technicians, intel analysts, radio operators, you name it.
There's a full gambit behind it.
The day-to-day operations, in the height of operations there in Tucson, we're arresting about 500 to 1,000 people a day.
And that includes, you know, like looking at the news right now, you're dealing with unaccompanied children, families.
And then that's about 30, maybe 40% of the workload right now.
And then the rest are all single adults, criminal aliens.
You've got everything from pedophiles, rapists, narcotic traffickers.
Heading in.
Coming in, yeah.
Wow.
So is it, and so, man, there's just so much.
It's like such a lot.
It just seems like a lot.
Is it so someone comes into the country, right?
Someone's coming in illegally.
And I say that just because that's the, you know, these are the, there's a lot where you have to have some rules.
And the rules are if somebody's in a place they're not supposed to be, then we're just going to use the term illegally.
So is that okay with you?
Absolutely.
Okay.
I mean, that's the appropriate legal definition.
You've entered the country illegally.
Right.
Yeah.
Like if I went somewhere, they would say that to me.
If I went to a country where I wasn't, or I wasn't, like, didn't have the paperwork done to be in, then they would say you're here illegally.
So if someone comes across and you guys apprehend them, is it apprehend?
Like, what do you guys do?
You guys take them in?
Do you guys take them into a facility?
Do you immediately take them back across the border?
Like, what kind of happens?
So what's interesting about border enforcement is I think what happens with middle America is there's a perception.
I don't know if you've been down to the border or what your take on the border is, but I think a lot of America looks at the border through the eyes of what they've seen on the news.
You look at San Diego, you look at El Paso, and they show an urbanized border.
You've got cities on both sides and fencing and demarcation.
A lot of what the Border Patrol deals with is everything in between, out in the middle of nowhere, rugged mountains, desert.
I've worked in places where there's next to nothing out there in regards to infrastructure.
It's just you and your closest backup is 10 or 20 miles away and you're in the middle of nowhere.
Wow.
And so we employ, and I have to get away from the we because now I'm retired, but the Border Patrol employs a whole myriad of tools, infrared cameras, ground sensors.
We've got one of the largest air fleets in the U.S. government and the law enforcement realm.
So you've got Blackhawks, assortment of helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles.
I mean, you're using all these different assets to track somebody, hopefully to prevent, but to track them once they enter the country.
So if you see someone, say someone's out on patrol, right, on an actual patrol, and then they see someone crossing into the country.
Do they like tag them or like do they?
What do you do?
Like, do you apprehend them?
I mean, it almost has like a freeze tag type of vibe, I feel like, at a certain point.
It is.
It's almost like a game of cat and mouse.
So I'll give you two scenarios.
In an urbanized area where you've got fencing or.
That's like El Paso, you're saying.
Like El Paso.
Even places like Douglas, Nogales, Arizona, San Diego, you've got fencing or a wall.
Under the Trump administration, it changed from fencing to wall.
In those locations, we've got a lot of fixed cameras.
These are cameras that are up on large poles, and so you've got agents that are monitoring and watching.
And some of the technology that plays into these cameras also does change detection.
So if it's watching the fence, then all of a sudden there's a change in that picture.
It'll alert the operator, who then will call the agents out in the field, and then that agent, he or she will respond to the area, or maybe they're watching with binoculars and they see them crossing over the fence through a hole.
So they'll respond and then they'll make the arrest.
It's apprehension and arrest.
It's all the same thing.
And then the second scenario is, as I described, out in the middle of nowhere, and that's more of the norm.
You're out there, and what happens is you may have a ground sensor that goes off somewhere near the border, and you learn, psychologically as human beings, you're looking for the easiest path of resistance.
So you learn the psychology of where people are going to try to cross.
And then you're also dealing with, one of the things that we can talk about this shortly is you're dealing with a criminal element that's very effective and, I'll use the term, they're professionals at what they do, smuggling people.
And so they'll begin trekking north into the U.S. And what agents will do is they'll find a spot where they can make the arrest that's beneficial to them.
And they'll track them.
The sensors are lined up in such a manner that you can track the movement of a person or a group of people.
You may use infrared scopes.
You may call on someone up in the air to track the group of people as they move along.
And then you'll roll in and make that arrest.
So it sounds like there's a lot of capabilities to know when and where people are coming.
So it sounds great, right?
It sounds like all these tools, all these assets.
But until you're out there and you get a true idea of just how it really is a needle in a haystack, because some of the areas that we work in, I'll speak to Arizona, you have these arroyos and canyons and brush.
And so I may have a camera, an infrared camera, that's going to pan this way.
And if the ground was flat and there was nothing to obstruct the view, easy.
But because someone can drop into a canyon, and these canyons can go for miles, or climb up onto a mountain and hide in a cave, your window of opportunity for arrest is very short.
So the agents, when I say they position themselves, they're finding an area where they have great technology coverage and they know the ins and out of that area.
So when they go to arrest these people, if they scatter and run, which happens quite often, they know where to work towards to bring them into custody.
Wow.
You've got to get you out there.
Yeah?
You would love it.
Yeah, I've actually got offered, we had Tommy Laring came on as a guest one time, and she is like, you know, she's like real, she's big on border control, you know.
She's a favorite of the Border Patrol.
Is she?
She's one of the first that went out to the border and invested herself, excuse me, invested herself and got to know the border, the border patrol, what's going on.
She's a strong advocate, and a lot of the agents really, really love her.
Yeah.
Yeah, she's a strong, yeah, she's definitely a strong advocate.
She offered me to go sometimes.
So, yeah, I would love to go sometimes if I have an idea because I just see like snippets here and there, and it seems like a lot of the border gets politicized a lot.
You hear a lot of like, oh, caravans are coming or children are being separated from their parents or their families.
Like, take me into some of that scenarios.
So, like, if you apprehend a family, then what happens?
So everyone who's apprehended, and I'll walk you through from the point of apprehension to getting into the station, and in some cases, criminally prosecuted or released or returned.
There's a couple scenarios.
As soon as that arrest is made, the agent, and what we have to recognize is that we're still dealing with a criminal element.
So just like any law enforcement officer, he or she goes through that whole procedure of pat down, checking bags and whatever else.
And you're dealing with people from not only, well, I think most people think about illegal immigrants as being from Mexico or Central America.
And that's the focus right now.
But the reality is we see people from everywhere throughout the world.
Really?
Syria, Somalia, Egypt, Russia, Ukraine.
You name it.
People from those countries are coming here.
And they're coming through the southern border.
Yeah.
Wow.
And I often say this, what gets lost on the public is border security is truly national security.
We're dealing with cartels, and this is a multi-billion dollar industry.
It's not a couple hundred dollars or a few million.
It's billions of dollars that are generated in trafficking and smuggling of people and narcotics.
Wow.
The power and the leverage that these trafficking organizations have is tremendous.
And we can talk about this in a little bit.
But on the Mexican side, one of the things that we have to contend with is corruption.
And when you have an organization, a criminal organization that's pulling in billions of dollars, dropping $5,000 or $10,000 in the pockets of a Mexican official to look the other way is nothing.
So this multi-billion dollar industry has a drive, has a need to keep that money coming in.
So the agents are contending with, you've got unaccompanied children.
And when we say this, I want to paint the picture.
A lot of these unaccompanied children are young men between the ages of 15 and 17. I'd say about probably half of them.
And then the rest are everything from a 12-year-old.
One of the things I see frequently is you'll have eight or nine-year-old with a younger sibling who's about five or six, and sometimes a two or three-year-old with them.
And they're traveling thousands of miles by themselves to our border and then coming across.
And it blows my mind.
I've got an eight-year-old, and I could imagine saying, here, here's a phone number.
When you get to the U.S., call this number and somebody's going to come and find you.
I couldn't imagine sending my child out on this journey by himself.
Oh, we had a four-year-old when I was growing up that wandered over to our house, like from the neighbors.
They used to do a bunch of drugs next door.
And he knocked on the door.
He said he was going to the dollar general.
He's like four years old.
We're like, you're not going to the dollar.
Like, this kid was out of his mind.
He's like two miles away.
We're like, this guy's, you know?
So we sent him home, man.
but yeah, I can't even imagine like a kid going a really far distance out of it.
And it's hot over there.
I mean, I lived in Tucson for a while, dude.
It is spicy.
Oh, yeah.
And take it back.
So if you're leaving from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, you're traveling a couple thousand miles two to four weeks.
Think about a six-year-old or an eight-year-old doing this by himself.
Or maybe with a group of other kids.
What happens between the moment they leave their house until they get to the border?
And when you get to the border, you're right.
There's the dangers of just the environment by itself, the Rio Grande, the desert, the heat, well, the heat and the cold.
It'll kill you either or.
Yeah, it's a good point.
Then you have people that will take advantage of these kids.
And one of the things that just breaks my heart, because I've seen this countless times, you get kids that are rented because one of the things that happens is if you present as a family unit, here's Roy, mom, a couple kids, I'm going to get released.
And so what we were seeing was kids being rented.
And so you've got a parent back in Guatemala who rents their child for $1,500, and that's a tremendous amount of money in Guatemala.
And so the kid is brought to the border, put in with a pseudo-family, sits in detention, and then is released.
And then a handler, a smuggler picks up this child, flies him back to Guatemala.
Wow.
That's the best case scenario, right?
Right.
What happens with kids that just disappear?
And we saw this happen.
As soon as you identify that child, because it would take one or two, sometimes three times before the system would pick them up, because not all children are fingerprinted.
And once you've identified them and you latch onto this group and you expose it, if you can control and get that child back into the hands of the parent, win.
If you can't, if that child happens to get released with that family and then the smuggling organization realizes that the child is now blown, I don't know what happens to them.
Yeah, it's like, is it worth getting them a plane ticket or a bus ticket back to Guatemala?
Or is it just cheaper for them, especially after they've already been doing a lot of dirty business, to just not care or get them into something else even worse?
It's a business that doesn't care about the person.
It's a business that's driven by money.
So whether it's trafficking, whether it's returning to the family, best case scenario, and or becoming an indentured servant, working in some sort of industry, being sexually trafficked, all of those are realities of what we see at the border.
Yeah, I've met, I mean, I myself have been involved with escorts and that sort of thing.
We had a sex worker on here one time.
I've met girls before that have been presented as escorts and that I've just been like, oh, there's something is not right with this scenario.
You know, this is not somebody who's involved in this because they want to be involved in this.
You know, that kind of stuff is kind of sad to see.
And it's interesting because we'll have such adamant people speaking so outspokenly about sex trafficking in America, but the same people, it seems, will be speaking about opening the borders up.
And it's like, it just seems so, I don't know.
It's like, how do you know that the people coming across aren't like, yeah, it could be pretending that that's their daughter, you know, or pretending that that's their mom.
Like, you just don't really know the scenario, huh?
No, and the thing about it, when I talk about these criminal organizations, each trafficking organization, cartel owns a certain segment.
They've got cartel bosses that own plazas.
They're plaza bosses.
So, you know, it could be five miles or 10 miles of an area.
And so when you come up to the border, you're paying a tax in order to cross in that area.
On that side?
Yeah, from the Mexican side to the U.S. side.
So, I mean, and when I talk about billion-dollar industry, so a Mexican national, he or she is going to pay between, the cheapest would be about $2,500 all the way up to about $5,000.
Central American, five to ten grand.
An Indian national...
Well, this is to get smuggled, right?
Oh, this is smuggled.
So you get to the border.
This is part of your smuggling fee.
You're paying a total fee of, let's say it's $10,000, right?
But then when I show up at the border, this plaza boss says, I know you paid Roy to come across, but you haven't paid my tax yet.
So now you owe me $500 or $300, $800 to cross here.
So you have to keep that money on you, on your person while you're going that distance.
It's a little bit of both.
You'll see folks that travel with money in their hands, in their pockets hidden away, and then there's a lot of money that gets wired.
It's a huge industry, money being wired into Mexico.
So I think it's either number three or number five, but part of Mexico's GDP, their gross domestic product, one of the largest GDP earners is remittances from the U.S. into Mexico.
And it's the same thing in Central America where you've got folks that are sending money back.
So they'll wire a smuggler, you know, here's the 300 bucks that I can cross in your plaza.
Wow.
It's just, it's big bucks, but like an Indian national, it's going to pay $20,000 to $40,000.
Chinese, about $50,000.
Someone who's from a country that may be perceived as being a terrorist country, not that they're terrorists, but could be perceived as such, easily $80,000.
And the smuggling organization or the coyote is going to charge.
And the organization in and of itself is very disciplined in that you've got folks that they do the recruitment.
They're all over social media.
So you can go onto Facebook and find sites that'll offer smuggling.
And then so you've got the recruiters, you've got the handlers on the Mexican side that they house you and feed you until you're ready to be crossed.
You've got the folks that will just get you across the border.
And then you've got those that will cross you once across the border into the U.S. And then you've got logistics teams that do the transport.
So there's all different.
So depending on how much money you have is the type of treatment you can get along the way, kind of?
Kind of, sort of.
I mean, you're going to pay a lump sum, but each segment, someone's getting paid.
Right.
The thing is, with each segment, as you're getting paid along, well, you're not, in other words, I'm paying you, you're the organizer, right?
You're the smuggler.
I give you my 40 grand, and then that smuggler, as the person's being moved along, pays Roy a portion.
Okay, I see.
Somebody else a portion.
So he's breaking everybody off.
You kind of have the guy that's the bank.
Yeah.
Exactly.
We had a question that came in from a young lady right here.
Let's pull that question back up if you don't mind, Sean.
And if you can hear birds, this is our new studio.
So this is our first attempt in this new place here.
Gorgeous.
Thank you.
We got some robins nesting outside.
Hey, Theo.
Hey, Roy.
I'm visiting the great free state of Texas from Michigan.
And my question is, what is one thing that you'd want people to know about the border that the media won't tell you?
Gang, gang.
Gang, maybe.
So that's a good question.
Yeah, what's something that people don't know?
What's something we don't know as a regular citizen?
Unfortunately, there's so many things.
But I mean, realistically, the greatest thing that I think the public needs to understand is that it's not just about illegal migration.
It's not just kids or families.
It's the greater threat that's posed by these criminal organizations.
I mean, when you've got a multi-billion dollar organization that controls the border, that can move people, commodities freely, that's problematic.
It feels very problematic as someone who's just in a place like, yeah, it'd be scary if I left a window open at night and I knew that people outside of the window had a very strong business and wanted things to come in my window.
Oh, absolutely.
And they're going to do whatever it takes to get it done.
Wow.
These aren't, they're not doing it for altruistic, you know, good-natured purposes.
They're doing it for the mighty dollar.
Do you ever have compromised employees on your side?
Yeah, unfortunately it happens.
The reality is, again, give back to it.
It feels like it'd be hard to do.
So I'll give you two scenarios.
The reality is the money is there.
And so people that are recruited in the Border Patrol, and we've got people from all over the United States, some of which, such as myself, who were born and raised near the border, and you work in the border environment, you've got folks that come from back east, Michigan, places like that, that have never experienced the border.
And they get down there, and it's just this culture shock.
And in Border Patrol parlance, we used to call it a 10-4 scenario, which is police code for everything's okay, 10-4.
But you call it a 10-4 because here I am, I'm a four walking into a bar, and this 10 comes up and starts hitting on me.
Well, what she's doing is she's working you to corrupt you.
And so we've seen a couple circumstances where that's happened.
So the reality is, is there corruption or can corruption happen?
Yes.
But it's easier in Mexico than it is in the U.S. simply because the pay is different.
It's also culturally accepted in Mexico.
One of the sayings down there is plumo o plata, give me a silver or give me a bullet.
So silver being money.
And so Mexico has been changing, working towards getting away from corruption, but it's still a reality of the environment down there.
Wow.
It's up against a real dark force over there.
You're not really just up against the people that are coming across.
You're up against the possibility of those people not just being like people fleeing for a better life.
You're up against the possibility of those people being criminals.
And then you're up against both of those being fortified and supported by billions of dollars, by really a strong running business.
By dirty money, but yes, absolutely.
Wow.
You know, the other aspect, too, is we've had cartels pay people to join the Border Patrol, clean record, get them to join the Border Patrol, and then use them for information, enforcement routes, and stuff like that to pass goods.
So it's an everyday threat.
It really is.
So what about like...
So that was like a thing that was really big that he spoke a lot about.
Did they start building the wall?
Do you feel like the wall was going to be effective?
So looking at Trump's wall, again, 32 years of doing this, when I first came into the Border Patrol, there was very little infrastructure along the border.
It was strands of bobbed wire.
If it was even up, right?
I remember being in a high-speed pursuit, and I'm driving down off the freeway.
We get into the dirt, and we're driving through these ravines and stuff.
And had it not been for another agent yelling out to me to stop, I would have driven right into Mexico.
Oh, really?
Because there was nothing to demarcate the U.S. and Mexico.
Wow.
This is late 80s, early 90s.
So it was a different world then, kind of?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
We were arresting anywhere from a million to a million and a half people a year.
And every night it was high-speed pursuits, foot chases.
We were catching a thousand people a night, and that's just in one little station.
I used to laugh because when I first joined the Border Patrol, I remember walking into a station, and there was somebody had a shirt for sale, and on the back of it was an agent laying face down with footprints on his back.
What does that have to do?
And he's like, just get out in the field and you'll see.
And sure as heck, you were just getting overrun every day.
It was crazy.
Absolutely crazy.
So almost like playing Red Rover or something and they're just coming?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So if you Google it or look on YouTube and you go back to late 80s, early 90s, in San Diego, that was the epicenter of everything illegal migration.
And what the migrants would do and the smugglers would do is they'd line up on the Tijuana side of the border and they would watch the agents.
There weren't a lot.
When I came to the border, we told them there were about 2,500 of us.
When I retired in December, there were about 20,000 of us.
So we've grown tremendously, but even that's, you know, it's just not enough to cover the border.
So it's increased by almost 10 by 10fold, and that's along the entire border?
Yeah, both the southern border and the northern border.
So we've got about 16,000 agents on the southern border and just under 2,000 on the northern border.
That gets forgotten too.
There's a threat up there on the northern border.
Wow.
It's different, but there's still a threat up there.
Right.
Do you, when you have like a family that comes in, oh wait, let me get back to that, just to the Trump wall.
So the wall, was it being built?
It was.
Right.
So one of the things, and this is often, I think we talked about the media, and you get a certain soundbite.
So the media doesn't give you the full understanding or picture of what we're talking about.
When we were talking about the border wall, what it is, it's a border enforcement system.
It's the wall, but more importantly, it's access to the wall.
It's infrastructure.
It's a road that leads to the wall.
It's a road that parallels the wall so you can patrol.
It's power.
It's technology.
It's this full package.
And so people often, again, they think about the border as being this urban area that you can just drive right up to and patrol very easily.
When you go out into the mountains and the deserts, you need access.
And what building the wall did was it gave us access to certain locations.
So looking at Trump's border wall, there was some new wall that was built.
And then more importantly, there was a replacement wall.
And I often laugh because people are like, well, it's not wall.
It's not new wall.
Well, when you get a new pair of shoes, you don't call it a replacement pair of shoes.
It's a new pair of shoes.
So we have a new wall built.
It was about, I think it was 450 miles of wall that was built.
Oh, wow.
That's a decent amount.
It's a decent amount.
And the thing about this, too, is what the wall does, and we looked at and we analyzed the border patrols, where can we put wall that effectively shapes the environment for us so that we can make, A, we deter people from coming into the U.S. And then more importantly, if they do elect to come into the U.S., where can we shape it so that it's advantageous to us to make an arrest?
Right.
Yeah, because there's so much cost, too, that go into like just getting people out of like the middle of nowhere and getting them back to a location.
Man, I just can't even imagine all the costs that go into a lot of that.
So the wall now, are they finishing the wall?
Are they stopping the wall?
Do they know?
No, so when Biden came into his presidency, the new administration put a stop to all wall building, which is very short-sighted.
And I say it because of this.
So in building the wall, it's not like they start at point A and then to B and then to C. What they did is it's A and B here and M and N over there.
So you have areas that are open.
So they'll go and they'll clear out existing fencing or they'll grade for new wall.
And then they're building in certain segments and building to finish the wall.
So we've got just in Arizona itself, probably about 300 gaps, some of which were as small as 50 feet, some as wide as a quarter mile.
And other areas where the wall was built up to a point where you put a gate in, and you need gates to go back and forth because you have to do maintenance on the fencing and the walls and sometimes rescues.
And I'll talk to you about that here shortly.
So they didn't finish these gates.
So now you've got 300 gaps in the wall, which means 300 vulnerabilities.
Wow.
300 places that smugglers can push people across.
And one of the tools that smugglers use, and this really upset me.
So when we had families and unaccompanied kids coming across, what these organizations would do is they would charter three to six buses.
They'd drive them out to the desert because on the Mexican side, their freeway parallels the border.
On the U.S. side, other than the cities, there is nothing on our side of the border.
Nothing, you know, anywhere from, geez, I would say 30 to 80 miles before you hit any sort of infrastructure from the U.S.-Mexico border.
So these smugglers, they'd charter these buses, they'd drive up 100, 300 families and kids, and they'd drop them off in the desert and push them into the U.S. Knowing that our technology was going to pick up this event, and then it would take us 24 to 48 hours because it's, again, in places, they were dropping off in places where we had very little access or infrastructure.
So it would take us 24 to 48 hours to get four by four vehicles into these areas, load up the kids, load up the families, drive them to a place where we could then get a van or a bus and then drive them to a station.
And so when this happens, and it's done strategically, again, this is about making Money, right?
It's done strategically.
So you drop this group off here, and then I've got to close operations for in this particular location.
I shut down a whole station, which is about 450 agents.
And I dedicated all of those agents to getting these kids and these families out of the desert because what's going to happen?
The heat or the cold is going to kill them.
And so when your manpower is dedicated to this, then you get segments of the border that are wide open.
And what happens?
They run drugs through there.
They run criminals through there.
So it's all about making money.
It's a cat and mouse game.
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Oh man.
Cracking in a little bit of you know.
Liquid death.
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So sometimes the people, humans, will even be used just as a ploy to then run more expensive products over.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
One of the things we were witnessing, too, is I was in San Diego prior to going to Tucson, and San Diego at one point was accounting for about 60% of all hard narcotics, meth, coke, fentanyl.
Oh, wow.
San Diego.
Dang.
It's crazy.
A lot of it come through the ports and then some of it come between the ports.
But in Arizona, it started to pick up.
And the difference in Arizona is they were making these little blue tablets, fentanyl tablets, which is much easier to smuggle and transport than bricks of the stuff.
So you would get, and the way these guys operate, it's just phenomenal.
So the scenario I described, right, here's the diversion.
I send a group of three guys, three to five, all of them with a backpack, all of them carry, well, the way they would work it is the first guy would have 20, 30 pounds of marijuana, right?
The next guy, food and supplies.
The third guy would have the fentanyl, and he would be carrying probably 10 to at the most 20 pounds of fentanyl.
And then the other two guys, maybe meth, coke, something else.
And so this group of five would come running across the border.
We would hope that we would pick them up.
What we try to do is not get so distracted that we completely avoided everything because, again, we had air assets, technology.
And so you'd see this group and then the group had the five guys.
The first guy, his job was to get arrested.
Right.
So that you had been dealing with him.
And the guy with the fentanyl, his job was to get away.
And the other four guys would do everything in their power to make sure that he got away.
Dang.
It's like playing against the Business City Chiefs almost, kind of.
It's almost like playing against Andy Reid.
You know what I'm saying?
They're coming with a plan.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Man.
You know what's crazy about this, too, is thank you again for the opportunity.
I mean, there's so much that goes on at the border, and I'm trying to spit it out here, and my mind's racing because there's so much I'd like to say.
But, you know, I talked about the industry, but one of the things that also happens, like these five guys that are coming across, they're going to hike for 30 to 80 miles through the desert.
So these cartels have logistical waypoints along there where they pay somebody to haul in food and water, fresh batteries.
And so they're set up in the desert, in the mountains there.
So as this group comes along, they're watching.
So they got two jobs.
One is to resupply, and then the second job is to watch us.
And it's a bear to catch them.
I mean, in order to arrest these guys, at one point, we did surveillance for probably four to six months, identifying all the spots.
And then we brought in a whole slew of air assets, Blackhawks and everything else.
And we brought in our Bortak, which is like our SWAT team, and Borstar, which are our search and rescue team.
All these guys are badass.
And so we pinpointed all these locations.
We coordinated with the Mexicans.
And I mentioned corruption.
So we had to coordinate with Mexico City to bring out a vetted unit that we could trust.
And so they did the blocking on the Mexican side so these guys couldn't run south and get away.
And then we flew all these teams in at each of these spots and they'd rappel down and they'd run in the mountains and make these arrests.
But the amount of money and effort that goes into it is tremendous.
But the unfortunate part is you give it a week, maybe a month, and then they're right back in business.
And so then you have to replicate this.
You have to start watching them and tracking them.
And it's just crazy.
Can you tag them or something or shoot them with like a dart so you know where they are?
They don't allow that?
No, no.
See, that's ridiculous to me a little bit.
Like, it's almost like, especially for the guys who are doing the smuggling, can you, because we'll tag a goose, you know what I'm saying, to find out where he's having an egg, but you won't tag somebody who's freaking just running, you know, like anything across the border.
Do they have, what about the smugglers?
If you catch a smuggler, can you prosecute them?
Is there prosecution against them?
There is.
So one of the things that's evolved over time is it used to be the smuggler or the guide would come across with that group and you'd make the arrest and then you could work towards a prosecution.
You have to recognize that we're competing with all the other federal agencies to get a prosecution.
So probably one out of three cases gets prosecuted.
Why?
Because some of them, and there's water right there too, if you need it right.
So you're competing with them to get a prosecution?
Yeah, in other words, so the U.S. attorney, his or her office can only, they only have so many attorneys, so they can only present so many cases.
So they're looking for the best of the best cases.
And you're competing with DEA, FBI, U.S. Marshals.
But they all want the clout from it, you mean?
Well, you want a winning record, right?
If I'm a U.S. attorney, I want to have a record that's 100-no.
I want to win every doggone case I present.
And I also want to take the sexiest cases.
I don't want the simple Joe Blow case.
I want a case that gets headlines.
I want a case that's going to make me look good.
So when you've got in every day, I mean, you've got a tremendous amount of cases you can come up with.
I'm going to hand pick.
I'm going to cherry-pick the best case because I want to win and I want to get a good name behind myself.
Oh, the smugglers.
So they'll try and prosecute the best smugglers.
The best smugglers or a smuggler that's tied to a particular organization.
So again, this is back in the day when you get these guys and these smugglers.
Now what's happened with technology, everybody has a cell phone.
And some of the locations, the cell phone service has gotten to the point that it virtually touches every part of the border now, which means they can communicate, they can pull up, they can track as they're moving along.
So smugglers will sit in Mexico and they'll text, okay, you're going to walk for a mile, I'm watching you.
When you get to this point, you're going to turn left.
You're going to walk for three miles and then you'll get to this mountain.
You're going to get rid of the four dash.
Like, yeah, it's just getting rid of it.
It's crazy.
And, you know, we try to employ technology, and there's certain types of technology, some of which I can't talk about, but that we employ when we're ready to go.
And we're jam cell phones and stuff like that?
Stuff that can jam cell phones, track cell phones.
And more importantly, one of the things that happened with the Trump administration is he, so the president gets to declare his top priorities.
And for the longest time, immigration and border enforcement was, it wasn't even on the radar screen.
With President Trump, it was in the top five.
I think it was number three.
And as a result of that, we got access to a bunch of agencies that have techniques, skills, tools, technology that goes well beyond what we've ever experienced.
And that really enabled us to start painting a better picture along the border.
Everything from looking at it was very frustrating because you would look across the border because a smuggler sits here and he's watching you knowing that you can't do anything to arrest him.
Unless, I shouldn't say that.
Very far and few in between do you get to arrest that guy because you have to work with the Mexicans and like I said, some of these guys are paid off and then you have to build up a case, go to Mexico City, and then sometimes you get the arrest.
But the ability to do is just, I wish it was better.
To be able to actually process guys?
Yeah.
Because really, it's just a lot of return.
So is it a lot of just returning them?
It is.
So going back to the beginning of our conversation, unaccompanied children, there's a process for them that we take their information.
A lot of them show up.
They have a phone number written down somewhere or a piece of paper.
And you'll contact that person.
And then you start, and you work at the consuls of those countries, whether it's Mexico or Guatemala.
And you start backtracking to identify who the child is, if they have family in the U.S., and how you can connect them with that family.
And then they're released from our custody into another organization that does the housing and the feeding until they can get them into a relative or a parent's hands.
And in some cases, when it can't be done, then they work towards getting them back to their family in whatever country they're coming from.
That's kids.
Family units are usually processed and then they're released into the U.S. So like if a mother and a couple of two children come in and a father, then they're processed and released into the U.S. Yeah.
And do they have to go back to Mexico or they can just stay?
So, and this is what's looking at 2014, thinking about the viewer's question there, one of the things that's happening right now is that up until about 2010, 2014, I think is more realistic, most people coming across are single adults.
Right.
So they're arrested, some are prosecuted, some were just simply returned back into Mexico.
In 2014, people began to realize that they could exploit the asylum loophole.
In other words, I come here and I say, Theo, I want asylum.
And because of that, I've got to process you and then I've got to release you.
And when I release you, now you have access to state aid, you get a work authorization, and you may not have a hearing for five years.
And that's if you elect to show up.
And a lot of people don't show up for their hearings.
So they don't necessarily qualify for asylum.
And I think that's one of the shortfalls of this because you've really bastardized the definition of asylum.
And for those that truly need asylum, now they've become one of a million people asking for it.
And you've taken that away from them.
And at the same time, now these folks are using the system against the system in order to benefit from it.
And so the family units, they come in, they ask for asylum.
They get into the U.S. and they disappear.
Your criminal aliens, they get prosecuted.
And again, we have folks that are robbers, rapists, narcotic traffickers, you name it.
And they'll get prosecuted for what's either illegal entry or re-entry or being an ag felon.
And they can get anywhere from a year to some, upwards of 10 years.
In prison?
Yeah.
But then that's a prison that we have to take care of.
It's still on the American tab, really.
Yeah.
Have you had to release people that you know or release people just into the country and you're like, I should not be releasing this person.
But there's nothing I can do about it.
It's out of your...
You're going to do everything in your, if you've got a hardcore criminal and you know that's a bad dude, you can do everything in your power to make sure that he's either returned to Mexico or there's some legal resource you can use, i.e.
maybe he's got a warrant in some sheriff department or something, so you can get him picked up and held and then prosecuted.
You do everything in your power to do that.
But I think what, like looking at today, right now with the situation at the border, it's a crisis.
Is it a crisis?
Oh, absolutely.
And I'll tell you why it's a crisis.
There's a focus on kids.
There's a focus on family units.
So in 2019, we had a border crisis then.
And what made it a crisis was these two populations, families and kids, what they do is they cause the system to just come to a complete grinding halt.
Because there is no law enforcement entity in the world that's designed to house or care or feed children and families.
So we often heard negative backlash about, oh, it's inhumane treatment and X, Y, and Z, but nobody's situated for that.
But when you get, I think it was almost 200,000 family units and something like 80,000 unaccompanied children, when you put that into the system that's not designed for it, it just stops, it's gridlocked, and then everything else falls apart behind it.
You can't prosecute.
You can't house criminal aliens.
So the system will collapse.
It's a crisis on multiple fronts.
First and foremost, because it's not being addressed, the flow is going to continue.
The unfortunate part for the Border Patrol, we're apolitical.
We worked for 32 years under different administrations.
Every administration, you give them the facts, you tell them what you think is going to work, what's going to benefit, and then you step back and then you fall in the line.
This administration was briefed on if you reverse these programs, if you take these steps, this is what's going to happen.
And unfortunately, sure as shit, that's what happened.
So we're in a space right now where it's, do you feel like it's how bad is it right now compared to what it's been like during your tenure?
So in 2019, so you mentioned the caravan earlier.
And that was the first of its kind.
We had something like 20,000 people.
This is a few years ago.
You remember that Honduran caravan?
There was all of this, like, there was pictures and there was like, some of the pictures were even stolen images from Hotel Rwanda.
I remember, I remember seeing one.
It was like a bunch of black guys with machetes.
And I'm like, I don't think this is the same thing.
But that was a big thing.
How much of that was just like a political football kind of being kicked around?
And how much of that was like an actual group of people on the way?
So it started out, it was multiple groups of a couple thousand.
And then the biggest group was something like 8,000.
And then they convened together.
First it was Honduras, and then El Salvador got on board, then Guatemala.
And so when these groups convened together, they were close to 20,000.
When they hit the Mexico border, and this is when the U.S. put pressure on Mexico, Mexico made an effort to stop them.
But it wasn't a concerted effort.
It wasn't like we're absolutely going to do it.
And then there was some rioting at the Mexico-Guatemala border, and then eventually the crowd pushes through.
And then what happened as they progressed through Mexico was cities decided that they didn't want, you know, who wants 20,000 people camped out in your city?
So cities started chartering buses, and they would start moving these folks along.
And then when they got to Mexico City, they housed them in a big stadium there, El Estadio, and medical care, food, everything else.
And offering them jobs.
That was one of the things that they did was, hey, look, if you're looking for work, we've got work.
We'll give you a work permit.
We'll get you set up.
And everybody was pretty much intent on getting to the U.S. So then they began, and this was all being organized, and it was, I mean, Facebook, and people were giving them cell phones.
So then they got on the move again.
So wild.
And La Bestia, the train that comes up from southern Mexico to the tip of southern Texas, McCallan, Rio Grande, in that area, that's what this group was planning on taking.
Free ride, dangerous as hell, but free ride to the border.
So we got the Mexican government to stop the train.
Wow.
And then that caused this group to rethink what they were going to do.
So they started moving towards Arizona and towards California.
And so when they got to California, I was in San Diego at the time.
They got to San Diego.
It was along the way they had broken up.
Some went into South Texas.
Some went into Arizona.
And then a large group went all the way up into San Diego.
And it was about 12,000 strong.
And they were held up in Tijuana.
A lot of the Mexican people didn't want them there.
Wow.
And again, it's just, it's this large group of people that are showing up on your border that you're having to house and feed and care for.
And then what comes with it, crime.
And some of it's directed at the migrants.
I mean, it's a population that can be easily exploited.
So, you know, when we talk about what are some of the things that happen, I certainly worry about, you know, it's a population that we're having to contend with.
We're going to have to arrest, but you also worry about these people because human beings.
And a lot of times what I saw in the span of my career, when I first came on board of the Border Patrol, we were kind of vilified.
There were Coridas, Mexican songs written about these hard-ass Border Patrol agents.
And fast forward 30 years, before I left, I was at the border with some of my agents, and there was a group of Hondurans, and this mom and her two daughters came across and brought them into custody.
And I walked up just to talk to them.
I want to get, you know, right from the horse's mouth in regards to what was it like.
And I started talking to mom, and she starts crying.
And the little girls run up and they grab my leg.
And, you know, they choked me up thinking about it.
It was, and after she calmed down, I said, why are you crying?
And she goes, because I know I've made it, and I know that I'm safe because I'm in your arms.
So the mentality of these folks is they're doing this dangerous trip from wherever they're coming, but they know that the minute they get into our custody, the minute they see the Border Patrol, they've made it to the U.S. and that they're safe and going to be cared for.
And it was just, it was the craziest experience for me because, again, when I first started, it was like, whoa, I don't want to be there to the Border Patrol.
And two, I'm running for you.
And I'm embracing you.
It's just crazy.
Man, it's, yeah, it's so tough because it's like, I have so much human empathy, you know, just like you know, like sometimes almost too much, I feel like.
And then it's also tough, like, you know, a business that doesn't, because America really is a business, you know, as much as we like to think that it, it's also a group of people who are trying to, you know, it's a society, it's a structure, but it definitely has its ledgers for sure where everything is, you know, accounted for.
But then you get into this, it's, you know, this, it feels like just a lot of inventory that nobody kind of really is writing down, you know.
Are we getting a lot of people in that we don't really know, that, you know, we don't have like paperwork on?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
So one of the things that you have to look at is you're talking about an unfettered flow of migration into the U.S. Prior to 2018, 2019, annual apprehensions were 3,000 to 400,000.
Okay, a year.
A year.
Across the whole border.
Across the whole border.
Okay.
So again, looking back to 80s and 90s when it was over a million, million and a half, tremendous improvement.
Right.
And now we're almost, we're in that 700 to a million a year again.
So this is this unchecked, unfettered population surge that's coming across every year.
And that's what we encounter and apprehend.
Right.
You know, it's hard to guesstimate what's getting away from us.
You know, when you're distracted, when you have agents that are distracted on families and kids that are giving up and then caring for them, what's getting by us?
Right.
So every year there's probably minimally 500,000, maybe upwards of 2 million people that are coming across illegally and coming into the U.S. that we don't know who they are.
One of the things with the current situation in COVID is we also have to recognize that COVID has impacted these countries probably much more severely than it has the U.S. You know, the medical capabilities aren't the same as they are here in the U.S. Right.
So you're getting a population of people that are coming into the U.S. We're not doing COVID testing on them.
So you have the potential of another resurgence of COVID in the U.S. Part of what happened when COVID started back last year is we implemented what's known as Title 42, which is the ability to, when you come across, I make the arrest and I expel you immediately.
I don't bring you into a station.
My goal is to get you back across the border and out of the U.S. as quickly as possible to minimize that exposure.
And that started during COVID?
Yeah.
Okay.
So prior to that, you're arrested, driven to a station, processed.
And with COVID, you don't even come into the station and we get you out of there as quickly.
Was that kind of nice?
That's great.
But the only problem with it is that, so when I came to the Border Patrol in 88, we were just arresting people and you'd process them and you'd return them right back to Mexico.
And then you'd see them again in the same shift or the next day.
So it was just a constant revolving door.
With Title 42, we're kind of there again because all the courts are shut down.
So there's no prosecution.
There's no deterrence.
You can't house them.
So you put them back on the border and the smuggler says, hey, I'm taking you back across.
You know, you paid me.
I'm going to get you back across.
And they just keep on doing this.
So until we get the court system turned back on, and then I think unfortunately until the Biden administration recognizes that their actions and their words are having an impact.
They're driving illegal migration.
Until that changes, this is going to continue.
So when we talk about crisis, I mentioned the system coming to a grinding halt, but the bigger issue is that there isn't enough from this administration saying, you can't come here.
You're going to be prosecuted.
The reality behind this whole thing is, and people may find this quizzical thinking, here's an enforcement officer, but our immigration system has to be revamped.
And you have to think about this as it's a whole system, the enforcement part and the legal part.
If you fix the legal part, then that enables the enforcement part to focus on the true criminals, the really bad elements.
When you have a legal system that's messed up and is not working well, that's when you get all these people that take the illegal route, and then it just burdens border security.
So I'm a strong advocate of whether it's this administration or the next one, somebody has to come in and fix our immigration system as a whole.
Really?
But they can't do it half-assed.
You can't focus on the legal part, not the enforcement part, or you can't take apart the enforcement part and then bolster the legal part.
You need to do it simultaneously so that you've got this immigration system, this umbrella that works well.
So it's really a two-arm deal, huh?
Oh, absolutely.
Does it feel futile sometimes?
How do you guys maintain that morale if it seems, yeah, does it feel futile?
It does.
One of the things, I've been talking to some of the agents that are still out in the field, and it's the antithesis of what you've been trained and what you've been doing for your careers, arresting people and removing them from the country or prosecuting them.
And now you're arresting them and you're releasing them into the country.
The other thing, too, is when you release them, a lot of what's not being reported is the impact on the border communities.
Right.
Oh, I think about that a lot of times.
Like, if you're a family that has a house there 20 years ago or something and you worked hard in a town and you provided for your family and you bought a home, and then what's that like for them?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I mean, you have the potential of driving the value of the home down, but the greater impact is when we look at the Title 42 thing, it was also about preserving our medical system in the U.S. Because we wanted to make sure that we had ample medical care for U.S. residents.
Right, right, right.
If you allow this population to come in, it can overwhelm the medical system.
But when we have people being released at the border, so now you have to house, feed, care for, you have to provide medical care for them.
So some of these border communities, they're not equipped for that.
They're not equipped for a surge of 1,000 or 20,000 people coming in on a daily basis.
And so it overwhelms them.
They don't have the deep pockets to pay for this stuff.
And right now, the government's not doing anything to help them out.
Oh, man.
Here's a question we have that came in right here from a fella right here.
Theo, what's up, bro?
This is a question from Roy out here in Johnson City, Tennessee.
Just wondering, what's the biggest danger that you go through on a daily basis out there?
If it's certain wild animals or cartel.
Just curious.
Gang, gang, brother.
Gang, baby.
thank you for that question, man?
Yeah, bro.
What do you think is like, yeah, what's kind of a danger when the guys leave on their details or on their, what's some of the biggest dangers that you guys face?
And it could be physical, it could even be emotional dangers that you feel.
So there's a whole realm of dangers.
I mean, honestly.
So the cartels, the criminals, that's one in and of itself.
You're dealing with the environment.
So if you're out there in the desert and you're hiking around, dehydration, hypothermia, tragically, I've had a number of agents that have died from dehydration, had age and hiking up Patagonia Mountain, had a heart attack and died.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
So, I mean, the elements in and of themselves are danger.
And then you get the criminal aspect.
Some of these guys...
Oh, yeah.
They don't want to be taken into custody.
And at one point, particularly in Arizona, we had rip-off crews.
These were gangbangers coming from Phoenix down to the border, laying in the mountains or the deserts out there to rip off the mules coming across with the dope.
And so we had an agent who got caught up in the middle of a firefight and got killed.
And then he mentioned wild animals.
Man, we're dealing with rattlers out there, pumas.
There's some serious animals out there.
Yeah, some buzzards.
Oh, yeah.
And then you got the, you know, go down to Texas, you got the Rio Grande.
In some places, you walk right across it.
Other places, it's dangerous as hell.
So, I mean, there's a whole bunch of things that can, unfortunately, law enforcement as a whole is a dangerous job, but there's a bunch of things that can kill you out there.
Is it hard for Border Patrol agents like some of them, whether they're to set aside any political beliefs they may have and just do their job?
Do you see any of that?
Or most of the guys, like you said, administration just changes over time and you guys just kind of stay on the task at hand.
You know, it does bother you personally.
Of course, you want somebody that's supporting your endeavors, but you don't take it to work.
Because every four years, you have the potential for working for a new boss.
And the rules can change every four years.
I think what's fortunate for the agent in the field is that you're tasked with enforcing the laws that have been legislated by Congress.
And so even though the president may not like those laws, it's the law, and it's hard for him to change it or her to change it maybe someday.
So you try to stay apolitical, but it certainly bothers you when you're not getting support.
So obviously laws have to change and it's a lot for things to actually change that would affect the way that you guys operate.
But you're saying that if it's not like maybe more vocal support from the media or from a president or from an office, then it like if they see border, say if I'm a coyote or a smuggler or someone who, you know, one of these plaza kingpins who's helping run guys through my district or whatever to cross the border to make more money.
If I see this, I know that the system's taxed and I know to attack more.
I know to ramp it up.
Is that the kind of thing that happens when you see that there's a border crisis?
Absolutely.
They take advantage of anything.
They'll exploit any opportunity.
So the current situation, absolutely.
They're looking at if I've got family units and kids over here encumbering the agents, then I can run over here to the right of them.
It's such a, it's interesting.
It's a business.
It really is.
It is a business.
And as a young man, I started out in San Diego.
I worked at a checkpoint.
And we would see these cycles that you're always trying to get a hold of what the next trend was.
So when college, you know, college season, late August, when kids are going back to school, you'd see kids smuggling dope.
Oh, yeah, we used to smuggle it.
Dude, I remember one time we took, we went down to Mexico.
I remember one time we all went down there and bought pills because that was like something you could do in Mexico.
You could buy pills.
And we all took them.
Then we all got so, we ended up stealing everybody's pills from each other.
So now we're all sitting around in a room.
We'd each stolen each other's pills and we're all lying.
Everybody's looking for their own pills and had stolen the other person's pills.
And everybody's just lying that they had stolen.
And then one time we got steroids and we couldn't find a way to, so we put them in like a shampoo bottle.
And I remember for a couple months back in Louisiana, we literally would just like put like a syringe into a shampoo bottle.
Like, I mean, like we were horses drinking out of like a soapy trough, you know?
Oh, my gosh.
I remember the weights just kept slipping out of my hands for about three months.
So yeah, I mean, it's like, I mean, there's definitely like, you know, it's interesting because there's like an allure for it when you're an American kid growing up.
There's an allure to go down to Mexico.
And it's almost like there's just less laws, less regulations, less infrastructure.
So you kind of have carte blanche to kind of get into just more trouble is capable.
Oh, absolutely.
So you see it, so you're saying sorry to interrupt, but you saw some people, so at certain seasons of the border, it's just spring breakers coming back across.
You'll see college kids smuggling because, you know, looking for tuition, books, whatever money.
Oh, yeah.
And at one point, you know, as soon as you catch onto that trend, then they shift to something else.
I've seen senior citizens.
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah.
You know, they're supplementing their income.
You know, the Clint Eastwood movie, The Mule.
Yeah.
That's real.
Two years ago, I was in Arizona, and we caught a guy who was 68, 68 or 68, 69, I can't remember.
Old guy.
He was a mule, smuggling dope.
And we were talking to him.
He said, I've been doing this for years.
You guys, you look at an old man, you don't think of a drug smuggler.
Nah, man, that colon cane, baby.
Are they putting cocaine, like, are they doing the balloons still?
What are people doing, man?
I'd be worried about, yeah, that colon cane.
That used to be the big thing.
People would like swallow cocaine balloons.
Do people still do that?
Oh, yeah.
So every mechanism.
When I was working in El Centro, this is Southern California.
So every day across the border, and the borders, it's such a dynamic place.
If you haven't been there, you Need to go down there, experience it.
But every day, hundreds of kids cross the border to go to school.
And so, what these organizations had done is they took their school books, they hollowed it out just big enough to put a key in there.
And so, here come these little kids every day.
They'd walk across, they'd walk a block down, and there was a car.
You know, they tell the kids, you walk down, there's gonna be a red Mazda, window's gonna be down, shove your book in there.
On the way home from school, walk through here, there's gonna be a blue Mazda, doors open, grab your book.
And so, you would see this, you know, until you catch on that trend.
Right.
Here's these little kids dropping off a book.
You know, it was an astute agent who's like, what the hell are they doing?
Went over, looked in, and there, you know, a dozen books in there.
Yeah.
So kids get used a lot, huh?
Yeah.
Because they're not going to get prosecuted.
So they'll get used to bring that stuff over.
What's unfortunate is in these kids that, you know, they migrate to the next level.
Right.
Because they're already caught in the game.
They're caught in the game.
Yeah.
And it's not a pleasant game.
It's not the type of game where you can be like, yeah, I'm not going to do it today.
You know, there's consequences on this other side.
And these aren't nice people.
Yeah.
Man, it must be such a trying position that you guys are in then because you're the human element that's right there at the front.
So you, it's like, do I have to follow these laws, but sometimes you're going to have to turn a kid over to an organization or to a country, to an environment, to a structure that doesn't really care about it as much.
Is there enough, like, by allowing like some of the leniencies that we have here, are we making it harder?
Do we make it easier on these countries?
Like, do we make it less responsibility on these countries to police their own, like, not really police, but to run their own societies well?
Like, are we alleviating pressures on them to, like, if we stop things, are they going to have to deal with, would that leave more on their plate to deal with to actually get a better act together?
Yeah, so there's cause and consequence.
Sorry, it took me so long to ask, too.
I just, it's hard to be smart sometimes, man.
It's hard.
It hurts my neck.
There's certainly cause and consequence.
And one of the things you have to understand also is there's a culture there.
You're dealing with a culture that doesn't necessarily match up line for line with the U.S. culture.
What's acceptable there may not be acceptable here.
Migrating here from Mexico for the longest time, it was just part of growing up.
You hit 15, 16, you're expected to migrate to the U.S., start working, and send money back home.
So there's a cultural thing that we're dealing with.
And then anything we do on the U.S. side certainly has a trickle-down effect.
It's going to have some sort of reaction to Mexico.
I dealt a lot with, again, Mexican government from their U.S. Attorney's Office, their federal police.
Mexican military has a big part on border enforcement down there.
One of their complaints was when you do enforcement, it's very one-sided and it has been for years.
And I felt guilty when I finally recognized it.
It was a Mexican general.
We were in a meeting in Tijuana.
And I got to tell you, I always loved meeting with Mexican generals because it's a different world and the level of treatment you get.
And we'll talk about culture in a second on that.
But he says, hey, Roy, we focus on what you want.
I need you to focus on what I want.
Because all we do is look at stuff going north.
You don't take the time and look at what's coming south.
In other words, we're going to send drugs north, and this money is coming south, and these weapons are coming south.
And the combination of the weapons and the money which buys the weapons is messing up my society.
And Tijuana was just, it was a horrendous place for border violence, for cartel action.
There was just deaths every day.
And so he's like, you need to help me.
Do something to stop some of this from coming into my country.
And it wasn't until then I kind of realized that.
Yes.
God.
It's crazy.
I mean, it's just such a do you feel like there's a solution?
Do you feel like what would help?
Like, what do you think could help?
Oh, man.
There are so many things that could help.
Okay.
So the border crisis is a now thing.
Okay.
And we need the government to step.
Not the government.
We need Congress and we need the White House, but I think Congress more than anything, kind of to get in the game.
If I can be blunt, Congress needs to get its hat out of its ass and start doing something.
They have the power of the purse and the power to legislate.
They need to apply the purse towards addressing this, helping with the kids and the family units.
They need to legislate.
They need to revamp the entire immigration system.
And I applaud the Biden administration for looking at what do we do to invest in the source?
Where are these people coming from?
That's great.
And we've always tried to do economic redevelopment in these countries.
But they have to recognize that you can't put a billion dollars in El Salvador today and expect it to stop this flow.
You have to recognize that it's going to take 10 or 20 years before that plan comes to fruition.
So in order to make things better, it's revamping the immigration system.
It's helping some of these sending countries, but it's also having a very strong, effective immigration system that includes the border enforcement.
You can't undermine it.
And whether it's technology, more agents, more infrastructure, whatever it may be, you need to secure that border.
Man.
So you have to have the border.
You have to have the actual boots on the ground.
They need help.
And then the legislate.
You have to have better ways to legislate and just process things.
Congress has to do its job.
I mean, it really hasn't done anything towards addressing the problem.
And a lot of what's going on right now is Congress's fault from the last two or three years because a lot of the funding that was earmarked for detention, for remodeling detention facilities, was removed from the budget because part of the intent was to ensure that people were being released.
So now you fast forward two years and what's happening, we can't hold these people, so we have to release them.
So it's a vicious cyclical game.
And I would just hope that our elected officials just focus on the problem.
Not only for the humanity of these kids and these families, but also for the bigger aspect of the border security.
The one thing we didn't touch was terrorism.
I assure you, And I can't speak to specifics because there's classifications behind it.
But there are folks that have terrorist ties, terrorist training, that are intent on hurting us that have come across our southern border.
So you definitely see people that you're like, oh, this is not a Mexican person looking for asylum.
You see.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, and I mentioned the amount of money that's charged.
These guys are paying big bucks.
And for like right after 9-11, a lot of the smugglers refused to have anything to do with anybody that came from the Middle Eastern country just because they kind of painted everybody with a wide brush.
You're probably a terrorist.
Right.
So even the smugglers had like a...
Code of honor.
But you get away from 9-11, we kind of forget about it.
They're like, man, if you smuggle that guy in, he's going to blow up the country.
We'll have no place to smuggle him.
Exactly.
But now it's just really open range, huh?
It is to a degree.
I mean, there are, it's funny to think about this because to a degree, it's almost a symbiotic relationship.
Because we do have some smugglers who, one thing that everybody despises is a pedophile.
Right.
And if they know you're a pedophile or you do something in their miss and they're hurting a kid or something, if they don't beat your ass or kill you, they'll shove you across the border with a little note letting you know who he is.
And you guys know?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
I've seen that on a couple occasions where somebody's left on the other side of the border tied to a tree or cuffed up and with a little note, hey, this guy's a check your records.
Wow.
So there's a little bit of street justice, a little bit of ethics on there, but they're still driven by the almighty dollar.
And I would hope that if it related to terrorist stuff, that they would still refrain from it because it harms both.
Yeah.
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Here is a, let's get the one that came up a minute ago by the military guy in the white shirt.
Theo Vaughn, what's up, man?
It's Patrick Bryant.
I'm out of Kentucky, but I'm over here at Joint Base Lewis McCord right now.
I've got a question for your man, Roy.
How did he feel about the military joining up with the Border Patrol a few years back?
I was down there with them out of Fort Knox.
I just wanted to know what his opinion on that was.
Oh, gang, brother, thank you, man.
Do you, yeah, what was that like?
Is it nice when other organizations are on board?
Does it get a little sticky?
Is there like kind of like a lot of posturing or is it pretty fun sometimes?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
So it's very sticky.
So, you know, we've got posse comatatis, which prevents the military from taking any sort of enforcement action.
So anything that they do for the Border Patrol is support.
So when I say support, they can fix our vehicles.
They can run our scopes, like our infrared cameras.
They can do LPLPs, listening posts, outposts, where you'll put a group of, it's a great training environment along the southern border.
So sometimes they'd send out snipers and they'd put them up on a hill and they would stay there for two weeks at a time and they would just report stuff to us.
But everything they do is just about support.
It's not actually putting hands on or anything.
So to answer the question, absolutely loved having the military on the border because it freed up agents to go and actually do patrol work.
Plus, it was a great training environment for our military.
So that mission readiness for them when they go across the pond.
And then the bigger aspect is there was always this exchange of information and know-how because some of the things we'd learned from them.
But the biggest part was the building of infrastructure.
I mean, they'd come in and they'd fix our roads or build roads for us.
And again, to be able to get to the border helps win that battle.
Yeah, it's just so interesting to hear you say that about that wall, about the fact that it was going to also provide like that there was that there was electricity with it, that there was like just a little bit of infrastructure, especially out there in the middle of nowhere.
That probably just would have helped so much.
I'm telling you, I'm inviting you.
Come out to Arizona.
I'll take you out there.
You'll be shocked.
We'll drive from an urban area and we'll drive three, maybe five miles out, and then all of a sudden you're in the middle of nowhere.
And there's no border infrastructure.
There's no power.
There's nothing.
And again, I think middle America just has no concept of what the border really means.
I mean, you're out in the middle of nowhere.
I mean, I've driven through West Texas and that even gets like, you know, even on I-10 or whatever that is.
Yeah, it's like that gets harrowing.
I mean, I know there was like one point about 45 miles where there's just no exit.
You know, there's no, if you need gas or something, you already should have got it.
So yeah, I can't even imagine what it's like when you, I mean, and that's along an interstate.
So I can't even imagine what it's like when you get kind of in a, in a, in a, you know, you're out in the middle of nowhere.
I mean, it's you.
Maybe you have a partner.
Sometimes you're partnering, sometimes you're not.
Your partner could be 20 miles away and it's pitch black.
You're relying on your radio if you have radio reception.
You know, and I've got agents that they're using four-wheel drive vehicles, ATVs, motorcycles.
Sometimes you're just hiking out on foot.
You park your vehicle and then you just hike.
UTVs, you name it.
I mean, they're out there and they're doing the job.
In Texas, they're on boats.
And we still use horses.
People laugh, like, why would you use horses?
But they get you in and out of places that you can't do it with a vehicle.
great resource.
And the horses, I laugh because to them, it's almost like a game.
They get to the point where they're smelling and they hear people and they start getting giddy.
You can fill them tents up.
A good friend of mine was on the horse patrol, and he wasn't paying attention.
He wasn't paying attention to his horse and let go of the reins.
He was sitting there bullshit with another agent.
And his horse heard a group of people over the next little hill, took off.
He fell off, broke his arm.
By the time they got up to the horse, the horse had circled up and basically made the arrest.
Yeah.
The horse is up there learning Spanish and he's fixing his arm.
So yeah, with the kids, it's just such a, God, there's just such a, there's so many little elements going on there.
It's like, it must pull on your heartstrings sometimes, but are there other times where you just feel like the kids are being used and it's not about an actual like getting a better life for a child?
Is there that that happens also?
Yeah.
You know, the everyday at the border, there's so many different stories.
I think for those in law enforcement, you go from being a social worker to a caregiver to the cop, right?
You run the full myriad of things you have to do every day.
And with kids, it's just, it's different because you're when you walk up and there's three little kids, it's a 10-year-old and a six-year-old and their two-year-old sibling, it just blows my mind because you're realizing that this group of kids just traversed thousands of miles by themselves, walked out in the middle of the Duggon Desert, or I shouldn't say walk, I mean, somebody drove them up there and pushed them across the border, and they're left out there exposed.
And sometimes they may have that phone number in their pocket.
Sometimes, and I've seen it when they break it out, it's gotten washed away because they, you know, they were dirty or soiled or went through a river.
And then how do you find their parents?
You know, we've had cases where infants, newborns, just, you go out there and you find them, they're there.
And what do you do?
How do you track back the parents of this child?
And we've also had some cool stories where this was in San Diego where I don't know why mom did this, but she handed her baby off to another guy.
And they're coming across the border.
And the agents went to make the arrest.
And she runs left and he runs right.
She didn't know who he was.
We end up arresting him.
She ends up running back into Mexico.
And start the processing, asking the questions.
And he says, this is my baby.
I don't want, you know, here.
I don't want it.
And all of a sudden, here we are with this newborn.
And we're thinking, where do you find mom?
Wow.
And this is when you work at the, you know, in this case, it was the Mexican consul and she happened to be from Guatemala and the Guatemalan consul.
And you get the word out.
And then you get the word out to, on the south side of Mexico, there are organizations, non-government organizations that help these people, whether it's food, housing, whatever it may be.
And so you put the word out and you hope that mom is there.
Right.
Or that maybe if mom actually made it into the U.S., maybe she gets a hold of the consul and, hey, we found a baby.
In this particular case, it took two days and mom finally came up and said, hey, that's my child.
Describe the child to a T, what the baby was wearing.
And we're able to reunite them.
But, you know, that doesn't happen all the time.
Yeah.
You know, and tragically, every year there's 200 to 500 people that die along the border.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
It's full of frequencies.
It's a lot of exposure.
Exposure, the dehydration, hypothermia.
You know, when they get to the border, they're not fully equipped.
And a lot of what they're told by the smugglers is, take a gallon of water, you're going to walk a few hours, and you're going to be fine.
And you get to the border, and it's like, okay, you're walking 80 miles.
Be very cautious with your gallon of water.
Not prepared for it.
Some people just chug it right in the beginning.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, we've seen cases where aliens have gotten to the point that they're drinking their own urine.
And I mentioned agents are out there in the same environment also.
I had an agent who he had hiked all night.
He was tracking down a group.
His radio went dead.
Beginning of summer, he ran out of water.
He starts to get disorientated.
And this is, so this shift started at 4 o'clock.
At about 10 in the morning, he realizes that he's just in dire straits.
Dang.
And his radio is dead.
And so he goes out in the middle of the road, writes a letter to his wife, takes off his uniform, folds it up, sets it down in the middle of the road, and he goes over and he gets under a bush because he's just expecting to die and he's looking for any shade.
And he's hoping that the uniform is going to be seen by somebody flying over.
And when you lose communication with an agent after a certain, we do what we call welfare checks on our agents.
Right.
And we couldn't find him.
And so we started this massive ground search and air search.
And thankfully, so this is like 10 o'clock.
I think it was about one in the afternoon.
We found him.
And he said, I was ready to go to God.
Dang.
Yeah.
So it's a dangerous place.
But going back to the kids and the fact that there are 200, 500 people dying on the border.
Yeah.
That includes little kids trying to swim across the river.
That includes little kids walking through the desert.
And it's just, it breaks my heart.
I can't express to you that you get a little bit desensitized to it because you get exposed to it so often.
But there's just so many times when, whether it's out in the field or I'd walk into a processing station and I'd see these kids sitting there, and it would just break my heart because I would envision my kids.
Right.
Is it the desperation of the families for a better life in the U.S.?
And we got to admit, we have the best country in the world, Barnan, right?
But is the desperation such that you're going to put your child through this and expose him to this?
And it just boggles my mind.
Yeah, that feels like such an intense move because I've been to some countries where, I mean, I think I've been to most of the countries where there's a lot of poverty and there's a lot of like not much structure and even some where there's a lot of danger and fear.
But you still often see families just moderate that the best of their abilities.
And also they don't know any better a lot of times.
And yeah, I just couldn't imagine that that would be such a desire, you know, especially if you had children.
Yeah.
Like I would almost be like, let's just manage what we can here and be together then take this.
Or come across together.
That's one of the things that I understand.
If you're going to send your kids, go with your kid.
Particularly right now, not that I'm advocating this to anybody, but if you know that families are being released, why don't you come with your family?
Yeah, how much of the responsibility ever falls on the parents, too?
It's like, I hate to say that, but I don't really.
It's like, I would be upset as a child, I think, if there were not responsibility kind of taken by my mom.
And I know every instance is different.
Yeah, look at the culture, too.
there's this expectation, but not for a two-year-old, a four- or six-year-old.
Yeah, a four-year-old can't even work at Walmart or anything.
No.
Yeah, and you asked about the trafficking aspect.
Two years ago, there was a case that came out of UM, Arizona, where they identified something like, I think it was just under a thousand kids that were being trafficked or cycled through.
And here's one of the things that I think a big misconception is what happens at the border does not stay at the border.
It's coming to every part of the U.S. It's here in Nashville, it's in New York City, it's in Florida, it's in Kentucky, you name it, it's going there, whether it's narcotics or illegal immigrants.
And in this particular case, these kids were being trafficked, and then the family units were also part of this trafficking.
And so when they were getting released, usually either the mom or the dad, they were putting a bracelet on them.
And then what we were finding is as soon as they got to the Greyhound station or the airport, they would cut it off.
But we were tracking them.
And so we tracked them to three different locations.
And in each location, they would arrive.
So if they didn't cut it off near the border, they cut it off when they got to the state that they were in.
And they would get there, and then the smuggler would bring them in.
And, okay, now you're part of this landscaping team.
You're part of this construction team.
You're going to be a maid.
And you're going to work off this $10,000.
Wow.
So, I mean, slavery, modern-day slavery, right in the midst of us.
And the kids were part of that.
And again, it gets back to some of the kids being rented.
Some of those kids would get there and then they'd be flown back.
And when we brought that organization down, there was a female who was responsible for those kids.
And it brought me so much joy to see her get prosecuted.
Man.
Oh, it's a lot.
It is.
Again, I appreciate the opportunity.
There's just so much that goes on with the Border Patrol.
And we haven't really talked about what the men and women do, the tools they use.
We've talked a lot about the criminal aspect, what's driving it.
There's so much that goes on there.
And again, it doesn't stay at the border.
It's just.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that's the part that really definitely starts to scare me, too.
It's like, you know, it just seems futile.
Like, if we're going to spend money to have this, and, you know, like we have a military that's not sitting around a lot of times, but on a lot of basis, they're, you know, they could use probably details and things to do at times.
I'm sure some of them would love the opportunity to even just go see the border and see what it's like.
And if that would help relieve you guys, it's just like, yeah, why don't we try and use our assets better?
It used to feel like when I was growing up that there was a pride in like, we're America and this is like, you know, we stand for our borders and that they mean something.
And then it feels like that that's kind of gone away or the media at least has also like really pushed that, you know, everyone has a right to be in America, this sort of thing, which is hard to contest because it's like, how'd I get into America, you know, or how did you get, how did any of us get here?
But at the same time, it's like if you don't have some system of checks and balances where like some inventory, you know, there used to be a program, I think, where you could sponsor a family, like a family that came in, another family would sponsor the family.
And so then you had like a tour guide into America kind of.
And there was like, I feel like at least then there's some like social accountability within like a fabric work of the society.
But I don't know, man.
I mean, what do you feel like is some type of a solution or something moving forward?
It's the legal aspect.
It really is.
It needs to be revamped.
You know, what you described about programs, refugee programs are well established.
So where you're sponsoring refugees as they come in in a different category from an asylum seeker.
But there are programs for that where it's whether it's a church group or a particular individual that supports that refugee and then helps them assimilate and become part of America.
Really, the key is legal migration, but it's got to be a system that's just much more effective and efficient.
The reason people start coming across illegally is you may apply legally, but it's going to take you three to five years.
And then the categories, again, a lot of what we have are unskilled labor.
I agree with one thing that President Trump did talk about was if we're going to bring people in, why aren't we bringing in more skilled labor?
We're not the country that we used to be 40, 50 years ago where we had a great demand for unskilled labor.
We have a greater demand for skilled labor, your technology folks, stuff like that.
So if we're going to do this, it has to be revamped so that it's addressing the particular types of skills that we need, but it's also done in such a manner that it's just effective.
We live in a world where we want things now.
Nobody wants to wait two or three years.
And that's part of what's driving this illegal migration is if I apply legally, A, I may not qualify.
B, it's going to take me forever.
Dang.
And then C, right now, if I come across illegally, I'm going to get released.
At least that's the mindset.
That's what we're seeing on social media and chatter and debriefs that we do with the folks we encounter.
And that's some of the stuff that's really the worst because that's how people are learning about it and getting inspired, really.
Like, now's the time, you know?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, they're on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
It's out there.
They feed this.
And I mentioned earlier, smugglers use those avenues to promote it too.
That's so crazy, man.
So I worry like a lot of times, like in my life, it's hard to make things fair in the world, you know?
It's really tough.
And I'm sure in your job, you guys have this real semblance of like, what's fair here, you know?
But then also, it's like you have the laws that you have to uphold.
But I start to worry like if a lot of people come into the country and they are allowed to be here and then eventually become citizens, then it really just kind of favors the Democratic Party to let them in because then eventually there'll probably be Democratic voters, it feels like.
Which I'm not saying that like no shade against either a Democrat or a Republican or libertarian or Paul Revere or anybody, you know, but or Poncho Villa, anyone, you know.
But it doesn't seem fair, kind of, like it almost seems like it would behoove like a more like leniency by the Democratic Party to have the border be more fluid because then eventually those statistically the people coming over are going to vote in their party and in their camp.
Is that like a realistic possibility or no?
You know, yes and no.
I think back it was 1994, Bill Clinton, and that was the first time that there was a true focus on border security.
We started to build fences, started to increase manpower and invest in technology.
And he was Democrat.
And he was a Democrat.
Yeah.
So anybody can do it.
Anybody can do it.
Absolutely.
You mentioned the potential for a support base, i.e.
will these folks eventually vote Democrat?
It's possible.
A lot of them getting into unionized jobs that tend to lean towards the Democratic Party.
So absolutely.
Maybe that's too big of a jump.
Well, I mean, they can go either way.
But what I've seen, a great example.
My mother immigrated here legally decades ago.
And when she first came across and then legalized, and she's a naturalized U.S. citizen, her viewpoint on illegal migration is she's absolutely wrong.
This is not the way to do it.
Do it legally.
But her political viewpoint went from probably more liberal towards conservative over the span of time living here.
And I talked to a lot of the folks that have immigrated here legally, and they have the same mindset.
I think it depends upon your experiences, your education, and truly it's that sense of if there's a legal process, why is it not being realized?
I don't know what's driving the Democrats, but they certainly don't want to recognize that there's a crisis at the border.
They don't want to recognize that their actions are actually impacting this and driving it.
Yeah, it seems like, well, I mean, it's nice to know that anybody, so any party can help, no matter who's in leadership.
But that, yeah, but that we do have a real, these are real issues.
Oh, absolutely.
But it gets back to, they're our elected officials.
They have a job.
Yeah.
They need to fix this and get away from right, left, right?
Fix this.
This is real shit.
These are real people.
These are real servicemen and women that are going to work and trying to do their jobs.
Like let's at least, if we can afford to have the support for them and afford to have systems that work a little bit better, we have these systems.
Yes.
It's like, let's get them functioning.
Back in the 60s, it was the Bracero program.
You mentioned about programs.
I was just thinking about this.
It was you applied for the program and you came across and you worked in the U.S. for six months or a year and then you went back to Mexico.
A lot of these folks, you know, they're proud to be Mexican.
They're proud to be Honduran, wherever they're coming from, but the economic opportunities aren't as great in their home countries.
They'd prefer to come here, work for a short period of time and go back.
I mean, we deal with, even in the U.S., we deal with a transitory workforce.
You bring that program back, you may have some tremendous success in that.
Now you've got a legal mechanism which allows these people to come and work here for short durations, contract work basically, alleviates the flow at the border of illegal migration, which then enables the agents to focus on all the bad people that are trying to come across and the bad crap that's coming over here.
Because they're there.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, I think that's my biggest thing is I like, there just has to, you have to have a system of inventory.
You have to, like when a teacher calls roll call at the beginning of a class, it's like you have to know who is here.
You know, you just have to.
And you have to know why.
And especially in a day and age when we have so much ability to keep tabs on everyone.
Yeah.
You know?
You know, the one thing, too, is you talked about accountability and knowing who's coming here.
One of the things, and I'd mentioned earlier, it's not a huge flow, thankfully, but there's certainly a terrorist threat there.
And some of the folks that come across, you know, there's an initial scrubbing, then there may be more deeper scrubbing down the road.
Some of these are bad folks that we have to keep tabs on or get out of our country as quickly as possible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Look, I totally agree, man.
And it's nice to just hear like a lot of what's going on.
And I think you did a really good job, Roy, just like sharing a lot of information and just sharing it in a comfortable way where people can really just kind of hear that it's a severe thing.
It is.
It is.
And it's, man, you guys go through a lot.
I commend you guys, man.
I commend all these guys and ladies out there.
Men and women, some of the best women in law enforcement are U.S. Border Patrol.
My wife's also in law enforcement, and I applaud them there.
I got to go, man.
You promise you'll take me out there?
Absolutely.
You come on down.
I'll take you out there.
Yeah, my mom's moving back to Tucson, man.
So I'll come on down.
Yeah, I'll go get in a fist fight at this car wash by Santa Rita, and then you and me will go out there.
Roy Villarreal, thank you so much for your service and for being here today just to kind of open some of our eyes and get some direct from the frontlines information, man.
It's really helpful.
Hey, another resource, too, and I say this, the Border Patrol finally got into the social media realm.
Look them up on Instagram, Twitter, because they'll send stuff out on a regular basis in regards to what's happening at the border, whether it's narcotics, terrorist ties, kids, whatever it is.
Because you're not always getting the full story for the media.
You're getting little snippets.
At least this way you can get a broader picture.
Go to the source.
Yeah, no, we'll share that.
And we'll share that whenever we post about the show.
It's fascinating, man.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
Really appreciate your time.
Appreciate it.
Now, I'm just floating on the breeze.
And I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of mind.
I found I can feel it in my bones.
But it's gonna take a little time For me to set that parking brake And let myself unwind Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you my stories Shine on me
And I will find a song I will sing it just for you I've been moving way too fast on a runaway train with a heavy load of past.
In these wheels that I've been riding on, they're walls so thin that they're damn near gone.
I guess now they just weren't built to live.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure your partner.
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