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SINISTER: Cartel Child Trafficking Network Exposed by Investigative Journalist w/ Hollie McKay · Man in America Podcast

• 0:15
  Seth Holehouse: Welcome to Man in America, a voice of reason in a world gone bad. I'm your host, Seth Holehouse. What happens here in America oftentimes is that we see these stories of events that happened in third world countries or third world cities within our own country or across the border Mexico. And oftentimes, these stories are difficult to watch or difficult to even look at. Stories of torture, of gangs, of criminality.
• 0:47
  And it's difficult because while I don't think that we should focus on the evils of humanity, I also don't think it's good for us to be trapped inside of a bubble, where we're only focused on the comforts around us. And in a lot of ways, I think that's how our country has gotten to where it is right now is that we've been focusing too much on Monday Night Football and the new Netflix show, and we've been pacified and lulled into a place where we're unaware of the just the dark things of the world. And that's one of the things I try to do with this show is to show you what's happening in the world and not to do it in a way that I'm focusing only on the evil of mankind and look how bad everything is because I think there's a lot of beauty and there's a lot of goodness that's happening in this world. But I also think it's very important for us to be aware of what's happening around the world, in our own country, across the border. And so today, I have a very special guest, which is her name is Holly McKay, and she's a an independent journalist.
• 1:46
  She's a war correspondent. She's someone that has been in some of the most deadly dark hell holes around the world, whether in in Africa where there's been genocide, in The Middle East, in Mexico. And the focus of our topic today is primarily gonna be what she's seeing happening in Mexico. Because, obviously, we have the the closing up of our border happening under Trump. We have a lot of cracking down, but it's I feel like that we've maybe fixed 1% of the of the actual problem of this the the criminals, the human trafficking, the drugs coming across our borders.
• 2:20
  And so, Holly, someone that has been on the ground in Mexico dealing with these cartels, interviewing the the women, the mothers that have lost children, have found their children dismembered. And so it's a darker topic, but I'll give you a quick warning about that. However, we we conclude the discussion with the importance of having this information and being able to have empathy and to be human again. So it's a very important topic that I'm I'm very thankful to have Holly on to talk about. Before we jump in the show, there's a a few quick messages.
• 2:52
  One thing is that, this is a big warning for everybody. There are a lot of spam and fraudulent accounts posing as me. Whether it's people in the comments on Rumble or other social media or on Telegram or Twitter, you'll see these comments, and they'll say, hey, you know, glad you like the show. Send me an email here, and I'd like to talk to you about something. And what happens is that some people, see me on screen and think, wow, Seth is talking to me.
• 3:20
  This is great. But the problem is that these criminals take advantage of that. And I've had people email me and saying, hey, Seth, were you selling some sort of crypto? And I I respond saying, no, that wasn't me. And and people have been robbed.
• 3:35
  They've had money stolen from them. So I got a really disturbing email recently of someone that, thankfully, their spidey senses went off and they didn't go through everything, but they had emailed one of these people. And I think the email was maninAmerica@USA.com perhaps. And what I'm gonna show you is gonna shock you, but one thing I will tell you is that I have one official public email that I will tell you. It is hello@maninAmerica.com or hello@mia.news.
• 4:08
  Alright? They're both the same email, just have different domains on them. So those are the two domains that I have. It's m I a, man in America, dot news or maninAmerica.com. So if you see someone that is emailing you or they're requesting you to contact them and they're giving you an email of something other than maninAmerica.com or mia.news, it is a fraudulent scam artist.
• 4:32
  Probably some guy maybe it's some cartel member for all we know. But please, please be so careful. Be so careful about this because I hate seeing you guys taken advantage of and you being lied to and stolen from. Now the email that I received recently that was so disturbing is that these criminals are now using AI to imitate me. And so even if you think, well, maybe is this really Seth?
• 4:58
  Maybe you'll say, hey. Look. Well, how about you send me a voice note, or how do I know it's really you? I want you to listen to this. So this is a this is a voice note that someone sent me that was not me, but listen to this.
• 5:11
  So some criminal used AI to replicate my voice to gain trust with people. I'm gonna play just a few of, you know, ten, fifteen seconds of this. Listen to this, though. This is absolutely insane. This is not me, but listen to this.
• 5:26
  No need for the the apologies, Oliver. I remember the first interview I had with Jonathan Otto. If you tuned in the latest episode, you'll know who I'm referring to. So he as well was a skeptic. But after a series of conversation with him, we were all good.
• 5:42
  I managed to send him some of the equipments he current uses on the show. Now you can see it's a little bit sloppy if you're really listening, but for a lot of people, they think, wow. Seth just sent me a message, and and he said my name. They think it as much as he says, hey, Jimmy. This is Seth, and I'd love to introduce you to this other crypto platform I've been using.
• 6:01
  I think you're gonna make a lot of money on it. They're they're leveraging the trust that I've built with you to steal from you. So, again, just a a very important reminder. Be so careful. This isn't just the the thing that was happening 10 ago where you get the email from the Nigerian prince, and it's like, oh, wow.
• 6:20
  I've inherited $10,000,000. Sure. I'll send you a Western Union for a thousand dollars to get $10,000,000. I think for a lot of us, we've become aware of those scams, and we're careful with them. But as the AI gets more developed, you might even literally, like, they might even send you a video that looks like me that's talking to you.
• 6:41
  So, again, just be so careful. So very, very careful. And look, if I ever have to, say for some reason I have to validate my identity because occasionally, I'll contact you if I see a comment that's really important or something, or I just called someone recently. He had a question about, you know, gold silver. Actually, I I called him.
• 6:59
  I had another person had a question about red light, so I called them. So, look, if I call you and I can have a conversation and you can tell that it's me, it's really me. Okay? But if someone sends you a voice note or a video, there's a chance that it may not be actually me. So, again, please be careful.
• 7:16
  I hate to see you losing even a penny to these scam artists. So just my there's my public warning for you, so please be careful. Alright. Let's go ahead and jump into today's show now with Holly McKay. Got an important question for you.
• 7:30
  Do you ever look up at the sky and think, wow. What a beautiful shade of chemical gray? Yeah. Me too. Remember when the sky used to be blue?
• 7:41
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• 8:13
  So if you're tired of pretending that this is all fine, go to makeskiesblueagain.com right now and grab yours. That's makeskiesblueagain.com because awareness looks good on you. Holly McKay, it is an honor to have you on the show. Thank you very much for joining us today.
• 8:32
  Hollie McKay: Thank you for having me.
• 8:35
  Seth Holehouse: So one thing that I I love about what I do is that I get the opportunity to talk to the people that oftentimes are living or have experienced on the ground the stories that everyone else just sees mentioned in a three minute clip on Fox News or something of that sort. And so you are a a seasoned war reporter or, you know, war correspondent or, there's, you know, two different names for that. But let me let's start by just having you give a little bit of your background, because I think it really helps us to understand your experiences, especially in dealing on the ground with the cartels in Mexico. So I'll hand it back over to you to start.
• 9:10
  Hollie McKay: Yeah. So I've been a journalist for almost twenty years. I was sponsored when I was was very young and came to America. And sort of since then, I've I've worked in more than 50 countries in many different conflict zones and also just places that are really kind of crucial from a foreign policy sort of point of view. So I've worked everywhere from Afghanistan.
• 9:38
  I was the only American who stayed there through the fall and lived there and I spent a lot of time sort of throughout that occupation there as well. I spent a lot of time in Syria and Iraq, a little bit of time in Burma. I recently came back from Sudan, so I spent a bit of time in Africa over the years. And then Latin America constantly kind of mixed throughout there. So time in Mexico as well as Colombia, Venezuela, and and sort of some areas surrounding there.
• 10:08
  So it's been it's been an interesting mix. And unfortunately, there's always some sort of war or conflict going on. I would love to be able to say that I have no work. Let's move on to another chapter of my career. But right now, there is so much going on in the world.
• 10:25
  And and for me, I spent the last four years as an independent journalist, which has beautiful pluses and and some terrible minuses. But but for me, it's really about some of those untapped places and untapped stories that aren't necessarily making the headline news that I feel very strongly to to try to continue to cover. And and I think also why I'm so committed to to being a writer, especially in this very sort of flashy multimedia world, is it's really the only medium that I found, you know, beyond, say, a full length documentary that you can really go into detail, that you can really paint a very vivid picture where you can spend hours and hours or days even with a subject and get to know them. And they open up to you, I think, in a way that maybe they don't when there is cameras kind of on their face. And so that's for me being able to get really into those granular details and understand the way people think and even understand the way, you know, our, quote, unquote, enemies think, the people that the terrorists or the Sicarios or whoever it may be.
• 11:40
  But I think that's a really important part of journalism. An important part of on the ground journalism is is getting different points of view because I don't think we can come up with a comprehensive picture of what is really happening if we don't understand, you know, what evil looks like or what the enemy thinks. And I and that's something that I've I've tried to do to the best of my ability while keeping safe, obviously.
• 12:04
  Seth Holehouse: It's a good point. It's actually even though I'm sitting in a studio and in the comfort of my own my own home, I I certainly agree that going deep is really important. And I try to in the ways that I can. That's why I don't like doing the here's the ten minute news clip type stuff. I I like going into an interview and exiting two hours later, like, oh my gosh.
• 12:23
  What happened? Like, that was just a wild ride.
• 12:26
  Hollie McKay: Podcasters, it really incredible form to be able to do that. That's something that really wasn't a thing, you know, ten years ago, and now it is. And I'm I'm a big fan because it is another really great medium to be able to to go into detail for those of us who are looking for more than just the headline.
• 12:44
  Seth Holehouse: Exactly. So you before we get into the the cartels and Sicarios and what's happening on the border, you mentioned that, you know, one thing that you're you're trying to do is find the stories that aren't necessarily in the news headlines. And, of course, we're talking about some news headlines today as it relates to Mexico. But before that, what do you think are some of the most important or the most important story from your through your lens that's not being discussed or that's not going viral on x right now? Like, what do you what do you think that story is?
• 13:13
  Hollie McKay: Well, having this return from Sudan, from Darfur specifically, what's happening there is just incredibly painful, incredibly frustrating what these women are going through, know, what is happening in terms of their land being erased, their homes set on fire, they're being run out of these communities that their tribes have lived in for many, many generations And what people don't recognize and what, you know, it doesn't just not make the headline, but there's many components to it. You have, well, these weapons are not coming from anywhere, so the weapons are coming from an ally to The United States. And to me, that is a big problem, and that's why we don't see con condemnation of it. And that is that is deeply concerning, how those weapons get in. And that's the only way you stop a conflict is stopping that weapon supply.
• 14:07
  And then Which airline?
• 14:08
  Seth Holehouse: Where where are the weapons coming from?
• 14:09
  Hollie McKay: That is The U The UAE. The UAE is very brazenly funding these Arab militias, and I think this is a conflict in very simple terms that is Arab versus black Africans. And this is a racial conflict, and this is what people are afraid to say. This is a racial conflict. This is Muslims versus Muslims, but it is Arabs verse bursting the the Africans.
• 14:35
  And sort of what has gone on there and what has transpired really since the fighting was renewed in Darfur in June of twenty twenty three is some of the most horrific abuses that you can possibly imagine. And we don't hear about it. You know, maybe isn't a super vested interest, you know, to The United States when there are other things going on, but but we do have a a certain hand in that. And The United States is still the the superpower that has an ability to to put an end to a lot of these things. And, unfortunately, things are a lot more complicated from a diplomatic point of view.
• 15:13
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. I think we saw a lot of that with the the exposure of USAID that what's happening around the world, and you see these conflicts, and you start tracing it back. And it's like, oh, so the CIA was in there controlling the drug trade. They were also running the weapons to there to create conflict to overthrow a regime that we put in place fifteen years ago, but it's no longer towing the American uniparty line. And you start seeing it's like, oh, okay.
• 15:41
  This this goes a lot deeper than it's not just these tribal people that you hate each other for a thousand years and are hitting each other with with machetes and and shooting each other. It's it's oftentimes that much you trace it back up and you realize, okay, there's a there's a handful of chess masters that are playing chess and the the cannon fodder are just the average people like you and I that end up suffering. Yeah.
• 16:03
  Hollie McKay: And this is a very resource rich land, which is why Gulf countries want it because it's it's a lot of gold, a lot of copper, a lot of things that are very beneficial to the world that we live in today, whether it's our mobile phone or electric car or whatever it may be, these resources are incredibly valuable, much more valuable than say they were twenty years ago. And so there's there's always an underlying motivation for why these conflicts are continuing to happen.
• 16:33
  Seth Holehouse: Absolutely. So jumping into Mexico, I wanna pull up an article here. This is, you know, for about a little bit less than a month ago. Says nearly a dozen students found dismembered by Mexico Highway after vanishing on a vacation. So kind of looking through here really quickly, I read through this, and and it's just, like, just shocking.
• 16:51
  So nearly a dozen dismembered bodies allegedly belonging to missing students vacationing in is it Oaxaca? Is that how you pronounce that? O a x? Oaxaca. Okay.
• 17:01
  Mexico were found on Sunday near the side of a highway. The body parts from at least nine people were found inside and nearby an abandoned car hidden under a blood covered tarp. A bag containing eight pairs of hands was also located. It continues the car was allegedly found in San Jose, I'm not gonna try it around, it's at the border of the these two regions. But continuing here, it says that the shows the vehicle, you know, had been driving.
• 17:28
  It says the bodies allegedly had bullet wounds and signs of torture. And so we don't have continue going on that. Here's another, different story. This is earlier this year, at least 56 bodies found in Mexico in unmarked graves near US border, local prosecutors say. So, here, says the remains include some bodies, some complete skeletons, and other partial remains as well as clothing and bullet casings.
• 17:54
  They were exhumed earlier this week in the Chihuahua state, which lies along a drug and and migrant trafficking route to The United States in a military aided operation that lasted several days, the statement said. So in these I feel like these stories you see, unfortunately, pop up every couple of weeks. You'll see this. They they've discovered a mass grave or they've discovered these, you know, three local officials hanging from a bridge or headless or whatever it is. And so, am I correct to understand that you've you've spent a fair bit of time in Mexico?
• 18:26
  You understand the cartels. So I I think that with with today's the the focus for today's show is to help us understand what what what it's like on the ground. Like, why are why are they finding these mass graves? Why are these students going there on vacation and ended up, you know, disappearing and not just killed or not just held as you know for ransom, but you know cut into pieces, tortured. How do you make sense of this?
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• 20:34
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• 20:38
  Hollie McKay: So the cartels are absolutely ingratiated into the Mexican government at every possible level, whether that be your local law enforcement, your local representative right up into Mexico City Presidential Palace. And that is why we've seen nothing really being done about it for twenty years, that there hasn't been any kind of meaningful action to try to curb the cartels or, of course, arrests get made, and there are certain sort of symbolic activities that have happened, but in terms of really cracking down, we haven't seen that because money speaks volumes and these cartels have a lot of money to give around, lot of money to pay people off, to pay for silence, to, you know, offer protection or and a lot of it is blackmail. If you don't do x y z, we're going to we know where you live, we're going to hurt your family. And so there is sort of a lot of, you know, personal a lot of personal things at stake for a lot of people in different positions. And so the Mexican cartels really rule the roost, and that is that is why you know, that is why Trump has cracked down over the last couple of months and pushed for change because it's not that the Mexican govern government is not capable of doing more.
• 21:57
  It's just that it's been so bought for so long that the cartels and their dominance is kind of the status quo.
• 22:06
  Seth Holehouse: And what about here in The US? Because you you can see, especially, you know, say the the four years we had a wide open border, you saw that there was a lot of inaction, not just inaction on on behalf of our own officials, but even, you could almost say, open support for keeping borders open, you know, really cracking down on cartel activity. So if you look at this is a neighboring country that has a lot of relationships with The United States. What kinda control or what kinda infiltration do we have into The United States? Especially some of these states like California, Texas, Arizona, these border states.
• 22:48
  How how have their these cartel activities extended into our country?
• 22:53
  Hollie McKay: Yeah. Well, the way drugs are disseminated is that cartels have relationships with different gangs and and different runners and and different affiliates or even members that are in The United States. A lot of these people will be dual citizens, so they are completely American citizens. And so when these drugs you know, the whole supply chain is these drugs when they're coming in from Mexico, they have their their people set up to be able to kind of continue that dissemination and, obviously, the money collection. And it's a whole operation on both sides of the border.
• 23:28
  I mean, the Mexican cartels would not be able to make the money they make and function without the demand for their products in The United States and and their affiliations and this sort of whole network that operates in a very kind of complex level. And that's what, you know, we're starting to hopefully see more of a crackdown against that and a little bit more control of the border. I mean, you cut seal off the border completely, and oftentimes these these drugs are getting through through legal routes. They're not going through the kind of obscure over the hills. They're coming through these legal crossings, and I'm hoping that we will start to see some sort of crackdown on that because there are so many lives, that really hinge that are at stake on both sides of the border as a result of of these operations that continue.
• 24:20
  Seth Holehouse: Now what about human trafficking? Because I know that that's one of the the big things, obviously, you have with, you know, the going across the border, but you have a lot of children, a lot of, you know, minors that are are, you know, with their family, but it's very apparent, you know, through a lot of, you know, the border agency interviews I've done that these aren't kids with their parents. These are kids being trafficked. They're coming in. They're being sold, whether it's being sold for sex, organs, labor, any any number of things.
• 24:47
  So what what is the the picture that you're seeing of of the human trafficking operations, especially on the Mexico side? Because, obviously, we can see once they get in The United States, they're being distributed, and there's massive networks here. But, I mean, is it common for, you know, children in Mexico to to go missing? Like, what's what's fueling a lot of this human trafficking trade that's coming up through Mexico?
• 25:11
  Hollie McKay: Yeah. So it's, again, these sort of criminal groups that focus on human trafficking, some of them are are within cartels, other than others are sort of affiliated with cartels. And, again, it's a huge business. It's a huge, terrifying business. And just to kind of bring light to one thing, my last trip there, spent a lot of time interviewing moms whose children had disappeared.
• 25:35
  And and mind you, there are upwards of a 50,000 to 200,000 Mexicans that had just disappeared over the the past ten years that that nobody, you know, that parents are on their own, are trying to find them because they don't get any help from the governmental or law enforcement, and they're trying to locate what happened to their children. In one of the cases, one of the moms I spoke with Jacqueline, her daughter, she she was in her early twenties, also a mother herself. And during COVID twenty twenty one was working in a call center and part of the restrictions for working was that she had to live in a house with with other women that that worked at this particular call center because they weren't allowed to have too much outside interaction. And then one particular case, and she she just sort of started dating a new guy that she'd met somewhere sort of within, that neighborhood, and she left work early one day, and, a new sort of friend that she'd met had texted her and said, you're home early. Let's go out.
• 26:41
  So it she turned out her and her boyfriend and her and Jacqueline's daughter's new boyfriend, were all kind of friends. But sadly, JL, her name was, disappeared and her mother then had to try to piece together that these three other individuals who were her daughter's sort of new friends were part of an organized sex trafficking ring and sort of so what happens when you, you know, refuse to partake or they will threaten you and say, if you don't do this, we're going to kill you or we're going to kill your family? And, I mean, it seems in this case that obviously, JL didn't didn't want anything to happen. She had two young boys, didn't want anything to happen to other members of her family and just in November, so her mother would spend every weekend by, know, with another group of collect as part of a collective of other parents who had missing children, they would go to this big sort of national park in Mexico City and dig for bodies because that was where she'd received a Facebook message, anonymous Facebook message that said your daughter is here kind of thing, the absolute worst nightmare I think for any parent.
• 27:53
  But she spent many years looking and found other bodies along the way, not her daughter's and then late last year she did find a hand and that was identified as her daughter. So that just sort of shows you that these, again, these sex trafficking rings, these people that are affiliated with the cartels, these organized crime groups are just so incredibly ruthless. They don't care what happens to an individual. They are all about money at all costs and again if you get swept up, you get caught up, if you are and they'll often try to recruit children as part of their drug trafficking or as part of this kind of to seem more innocent than maybe an adult would. And if you refuse to to be part of this, it's it's nothing on them to kill you because, obviously, they don't want you escaping and then being able to go and tell other people who was involved or anything to do with those inside operations.
• 28:50
  So you can just be an innocent child walking along the street in Mexico and be swept up in this. And I've interviewed mothers who have had that happen to their own teenage sons who again had disappeared and they're left to, I guess, pick up the pieces of the rest of their life while trying to search without ever getting any kind of closure as to what happened.
• 29:12
  Seth Holehouse: Gosh. It's so hard to imagine. I know you have kids, I do too. And I can't imagine what would happen. Like, say, my four year old daughter, if we're out at a park one day and she just disappears.
• 29:22
  Like, it would be almost the worst part about that would be knowing that she's probably still alive somewhere being trafficked or who knows what. There's no closure. You can't move on with your life. You can't close that chapter. And so this woman so her daughter went to work at a call center.
• 29:40
  Was that call center which required this very isolated way of living? Mhmm. What do you think that call center was was a front for some cartel group, and they use that call center as a way to bring in people?
• 29:52
  Hollie McKay: Yeah. I don't I didn't get that impression. I I mean, I'm certainly, there are many cases where call centers are are fronts for cartels, and that certainly could have been the situation. I didn't get that impression in this case from her mother, but it was more just that she'd, I guess, fallen into the wrong crowd of people. But certainly, in to your point, in many states, call centers are fronts for cartel groups where they'll do scams and manipulate people.
• 30:19
  They're often people in The United States are a target, often older people who are a lot more vulnerable maybe to some of these scams and and they're being told that if they they buy this, they'll get x amount of money, and if they don't put certain amounts in, eventually the threats start to pile. When some of these people who have gone to work at these call centers who are, you know, innocent about what they're doing, you know, realize kind of what's happening. They they try to escape, and they can't. And then there was a case recently last year where a bunch of call center workers who had tried to leave were just shot execution style outside of the building because once you're in it's very hard to leave. I do have, you know, a lot of empathy for a lot of people that have been caught up in this not by their own volition but because, you know, everybody's at the end of the day is trying to feed their families.
• 31:13
  It's a universal language we have in just in trying to survive and get by and how easy it is to be caught into this criminal scam that you cannot get out of.
• 31:24
  Seth Holehouse: With everything that's happening in the economy, it feels like we're all walking on shaky ground. Prices are stuck at really high levels, and it seems like nothing is affordable anymore. It's no wonder that many people are relying on credit cards to cover the gaps. Credit card debt is skyrocketing, and it's leaving a lot of people stressed out. But if you're a homeowner, you don't have to face this uncertainty alone.
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• 32:36
  Hollie McKay: The impunity levels in Mexico are something like 98%. So you can can be a hundred murderers and out of those a hundred murderers or a hundred sex traffickers, whatever it may be, two may be convicted of a crime. The rest will walk free.
• 32:54
  Seth Holehouse: It's just insane. And so with this woman's daughter, is it presumed that she was kidnapped, sex trafficked for some degree of time until maybe she was no longer cooperative or they lost control or
• 33:06
  Hollie McKay: Yeah.
• 33:06
  Seth Holehouse: Maybe she got caught escaping or something, and they just then they killed her. But why I guess maybe I, you know, I can't hear it's not easy for me to imagine the mindset of a sociopath, you know, someone that I think, you know, the studies I've done, you know, or the research I've read, roughly around four percent of the population, you know, that they've estimated are are sociopaths, meaning that these are people you mentioned that they can kill somebody with the same amount of emotional triggering as brushing their teeth. Right? They they they literally lack that that ability to have any empathy for the suffering that is put upon other people. So her daughter, was she just then probably killed when she was no longer useful?
• 33:45
  Then then why why bury a hand somewhere? Is it just part of what they do? They're just so sick?
• 33:51
  Hollie McKay: Yeah. They typically will dismember a body. That obviously makes it more challenging, you know, to then kind of locate or find them. And a lot of the times also it's important to note that these bodies won't be found because the cartels, one of their modus operandi is to dissolve bodies in acid. Sometimes when people are alive, I mean, this is sick sick stuff.
• 34:16
  And that's why, you know, it's very hard to to kind of ever find a trace. And and Jacqueline, her mother, believes that she was burned and then kind of dismembered. And one of the things that, you know, I when I talked to her and, you know, compared to a lot of the other mothers who are living in just limbo where there's been no trace of their child since they disappeared. In some cases, it's been fifteen years. And when I asked Jacqueline, you know, do you have a sense of, you know, maybe closure in the sense that you do know that your daughter is no longer here?
• 34:54
  And she said no. She didn't have that closure until she was able to find the rest of her daughter's body and also some accountability. So that pain lives on, that anger, that frustration and knowing that these, you know, at least in in her her research, that these three particular individuals are still out there. They're still walking free. They're still sex trafficking.
• 35:16
  They're still, god knows, you know, who however many other lives that they're forsaking in this process. And so I think living with that is so difficult. And another just to sort of compound what these these mothers and these parents are already going through is that, a, you're not getting any help. B, they're then threatened when they're looking. Because if you're out every weekend digging, goodness knows what you're going to find and so they will receive a lot of different threats and there have been many cases where mothers have then been murdered just for the looking for their own child because these groups don't want anybody kind of spotlighting again their nefarious activities.
• 35:56
  And then in addition to that, you are typically if your employer finds out that your child that you have a disappeared child, they will then fire you because they know that you are going to be too distracted to do your work well. So a lot of the time you know these mothers are cleaning homes or they're doing sort of domestic jobs and then they lose their jobs because their employer is like no you're going to be too distracted you need to put your energy into finding your child and they do, they devote their, you know, their waking hours to doing that but then they have other children to support and it was really sad in one case where the mom, her teenage son had gone missing when he was just, you know, walking over to a friend's house one night, and she has two other children. He was the middle child, and she just said, my children don't have a mother anymore because this is all I do. And, again, she'd lost her job too when when her son disappeared. And so you have these collective groups, these collective groups of parents and mothers, and they are, you know, just trying to support each other to get through, and to survive because, again, how can you go and work full time when you know it's a full time job to try to find your child?
• 37:14
  And it was just heartbreaking because when I went to this woman's house and she printed a t shirt with her son's face and her son's details and his name is Axel and about him missing and that just broke my heart, know, that she just was exercising everything that she had to try to find him, including a t shirt, you know, a self printed missing t shirt, and just listening to her story and and just knowing that there is nothing that that I can, you know, do about trying to help you. And I just can't imagine what these parents are are kind of living with every day. And, again, just going back to things that are under often underreported, and I I think about the pain that I'm sure a lot of these these mothers that are going through whose children are being or were being held hostage in Gaza and how awful that is. And then I think about this happening, like, in such a astronomical scale in in Mexico, you know, right in our in our backyard, and that many of us don't know about it. It never makes the news and and nobody cares.
• 38:23
  And even Jacqueline said to me when I left, she's like, you know, nobody's ever come to ask me my story. And JL disappeared in in 2021, so almost four years ago. And nobody, not even a Mexican journalist, had ever come to ask her about what happened. And that just, I think, probably killed me more than anything.
• 38:47
  Seth Holehouse: My goodness. It is interesting because I think that for people, especially I can say a lot of Americans, that we do live in a bubble. We have this perception of reality, and there's no threat. Obviously, we have some threats, there are bad things that happen everywhere. But it it's nothing like what's happening in these second and third world countries where, you know, kids are disappearing and no one's even talking about it or, you know, your husband gets murdered one day and and they they find his head somewhere.
• 39:13
  Like, we we have a hard time understanding that. I think for a lot of us, a lot of Americans, we tend to wanna avoid even looking at those things because it's uncomfortable. And it's like, oh, okay. Yeah. Like, even some things I've covered, you know, some shows I've done on human trafficking or child sex trafficking.
• 39:29
  And I see the comments, and I see some people even saying, look. I can't even handle this. Like, I'm out of here. Because, like, we don't even wanna acknowledge that. And I think that there's there's good in being able to do that.
• 39:38
  Right? I I don't think it's good. Like, there's some people I know that they they love watching serial killer movies on Netflix, and it's like, I I think it's there's something wrong with you.
• 39:46
  Hollie McKay: I can't even do it. I feel like I I deal with that in my real life, and it's it's always like a big debate between my husband and I because he loves those movies through crime war, whatever. And I I just cannot do it. I cannot find entertainment out of it. And that's just a reflection of yeah.
• 40:03
  Seth Holehouse: You you know what it's like, but I'm curious to just ask. Is there one interaction or one situation that you were in in Mexico that that still haunts you to this day? If you just say, what what's what's one experience you had there that was so stirring that maybe you were even questioning being there or or or whatever it was. Can you can you recall anything like that?
• 40:26
  Hollie McKay: Yeah. I mean, I had I wouldn't say I mean, to me, the things that haunt me are the interviews, interviews with the the mothers, the people that have lost their children, the people that are living this nightmare day in and day out, the people that were going about their daily lives when somehow were swept up in some of this. And those are the things I lie in bed thinking about. I have had my own sort of experience several years ago being kind of chased and had a gun pointed at me from a cartel just being in a place I knew I shouldn't have been that was run by a sort of a Mexico City cartel called the Union Cartel in its tapeto, and they were very threatened, obviously, with me being there, and the situation escalated. Anyway, I was okay, but I'm sort of used to that from my my work in a war zone.
• 41:19
  And I again, I entered that situation. I put myself in that scenario. And so I those things don't really plague me so much as maybe they maybe they would plague other people because I recognize that I that was my doing and that I was able to, you know, exit safely. And and I I never want to The story is not about me. You know, I've I've never really even told that story because it's just it's not about me.
• 41:47
  My story is about the other people who are living with this day to day. And just like people in a war zone, people in Mexico are just consumed by the you know, their whether what neighborhood they're in, what is happening, and just how again, how easy it is to be sort of swept up into a situation that you never ever thought your your family would be embroiled in. So it's it's those stories, it's those women, it's those the incredible bravery of these people to continue to look, to continue to fight, to, you know, not give up despite the passage of time and looking for their child. That those are the things that haunt me because, you do. You feel incredibly helpless.
• 42:31
  And I think that is one of the hardest things to reconcile with as my earphone as a journalist is you sort of sit there, people it's and it's a real privilege for people to share their stories with you and and some of the, you know, deepest, darkest, hardest things to talk about. And you go away and you write it and again, you don't know how many people care, how many people want to read it. I mean even with my Mexico mother story, I'm waiting on a particular publication to publish it, but they've been sitting with that for weeks now and it's obviously not a priority for them. And that's hard to sit with too because you are so emotionally attached to it. And you and I believe so strongly in these stories being told.
• 43:23
  But as an independent journalist, that can also be hard if the interest isn't there. And so I'm I'm constantly trying to find a way to bridge this kind of gap and division, and I I really firmly believe in journalism and leadership and the power of empathy. And that is my my big calling card at this sort of chapter of my career is it doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter who you vote for. But empathy is something that is not is not in a finite.
• 43:57
  This is something that we all can have and can share and and and think stories that happen, you know, whether it's next door to where we live or something that happened 6,000 miles away, we can care about that. And I think there's there's just a lot of division in in today's world about what it is we can and can't care about. And that often, you know, it becomes sort of a a a political turmoil, and I'm just I'm hoping that in my work, in avoiding, you know, being too political that I can just get people to remember, first of all, what it is to be human.
• 44:31
  Seth Holehouse: It's interesting because as we're kinda coming to the conclusion, you already answered my question and what drives you. And I can see it in you what you just told me that that's what drives you. And I couldn't agree more, actually. I think that the the social engineers, the people that I would say are behind a lot of these these bigger picture things happening in our world, I think the the number one thing that they want is for us to be dehumanized and and to us to willingly accept the dehumanization so that we look to the person on the opposite side of the political aisle and we dehumanize them. Right?
• 45:05
  Because if you look at, you know, when when tyranny has taken taken hold in various cultures and various countries, you know, going back under Mao, for instance, when like, what is it that led to children reporting on their own parents and then watching their parents being publicly executed while the children were being forced to sing, you know, the the communist party songs or, or a parent sung their own child, you know, to to to to make, you know, to to eat or any number of things have happened in Holodomor or Cambodia. All these terrible things that happened, and I think that what's central to it is dehumanization is is allowing people to feel like, well, I'm gonna set my own human nature aside for the sake of survival, for the sake of protecting my own. And I and I agree with with what you're saying. That's you know, what I try to do with this show as well is to to remind us is that we're all human. And to me, like, that's the solution.
• 45:57
  Right? The solution to fighting against global tyranny or transhumanism or any number of threats that we have is just to be human again and to have compassion and empathy. Like, there's a reason why, you know, I believe that God gave us these things inside of us. We're not animals. We're not, just these creatures that are operating off this reptilian primal brain.
• 46:16
  You know, we have this frontal lobe. We have compassion. We have self awareness. And I think that with what you're doing, it's very important because even though we live these very comfortable lives, it's important for us to still understand that there's places in the in the in the country where, you know, I I kiss my girls to to sleep at bed every night. Well, there's parents right now that are low staring at an empty bed that and they can't even, you know, they can't even kiss their own other children good night because they're so focused on that empty bed, and their lives are ruined because of it.
• 46:46
  I'm so glad that that you're you're you're driven by that particular mission because it's very, very important right now, especially in a world that I think is more polarized than it's ever been.
• 46:56
  Hollie McKay: Absolutely. And we are in a polarized world, and not everything needs to be political. We don't need to put politics into everything. And at the end of the day, you know, I say, before I'm a journalist, I am a human, and and that is we are human before our professions. And there's just there's so much power to come with empathy and with compassion and with caring about, the things that we say before we say them.
• 47:27
  And I just, yeah, I don't want to see American society be that sort of ripped apart with dehumanization that we just forget what it is to care about our neighbor and love our family and I always say my daughter, you know, being a mom too, it's it's a whole other level, think, of understanding compassion on a different level, even though I was always that, you know, that person that was very empathetic, and that's what drove me into this line of work. But I think, yeah, having having a child and then, you know just seeing you know I would say she's my greatest spiritual teacher because of the what she teaches me about faith and about patience and about love and about you know what what it means to kind of give back to the world. And I just that's what keeps driving me. And I I think people get frustrated and they'll say to me, but I can't do anything about it. And honestly, if I can just tell you, I can't often do anything about it either.
• 48:29
  But when you share somebody's story, you you're seeing them. You're listening to them. You are telling them that they matter. And even though they will never see any sort of accountability for what may have been done to them, in telling their story, in reading their story, in acknowledging that and building your own awareness, you are doing an incredible service in letting people know that they matter and at the end of the day these people who have had everything ripped from them and you know, including those they love most in the world, you know, that that means something. And that is why I continue it to do the work.
• 49:06
  And that is why I hope people continue to read, continue to share, continue to just have an awareness of what is going on.
• 49:14
  Seth Holehouse: And and I commend you for that. So as we're closing, I wanna bring up your website, hollymckay.com. I'll put the link in the description to the show. I also wanna encourage people on here. You've got a great website.
• 49:27
  You've got books. You've got a Substack. Again, encourage people to visit your Substack. Very important, that you could they can subscribe. They can support you there.
• 49:38
  Actually, even right here, I was I was looking at this article before we started recording. They'd say the fight for federal action in the age of revenge porn. It's like there's another thing that needs to be humanized and people need to understand. So, again, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for giving me your time today, and I hope that the people that are watching this can share the interview, go follow your work, your Instagram, all your information's on your website, and I encourage people to go go check out what you're doing and and help support and share it.
• 50:05
  Hollie McKay: Thank you. Thank you for having me, and thank you for the work you're doing in in highlighting these different issues.
• 50:11
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• 51:24
  Again, that's goldwithseth.com or (626) 654-1906. You'll find that information in the description for the show as well.