Latest / World Ablaze with George Fontes / John Carlos Frey - Investigating Border Patrol, Immigration Policy, and Why Immigrants Risk It All

Transcript

John Carlos Frey - Investigating Border Patrol, Immigration Policy, and Why Immigrants Risk It All · World Ablaze with George Fontes

• 0:00
  okay world blazers thank you for coming back to another episode i have an amazing guest i'm very
• 0:10
  glad you took the time to be here this is john carlos fray is that correct i pronounced your last
• 0:15
  name correctly yeah i was hoping i did i don't want to botch that sorry but yeah you're a six
• 0:21
  time emmy award-winning journalist um you come with a lot of clout investigative journalists as
• 0:27
  Well, you do documentaries.
• 0:29
  You have a podcast, The Raid.
• 0:32
  And I was interested to talk to you.
• 0:34
  At first, I think your representatives thought I might have been a little too like MAGA or whatever.
• 0:39
  But if anybody's watched my shows, most of my people know, I talk to everybody.
• 0:44
  I want to get all sides.
• 0:45
  I want to hear everyone's stories.
• 0:47
  Because the thing I see lacking most these days is people don't talk to each other.
• 0:51
  And so I want to hear what you have to say on everything that's happening based on your work.
• 0:58
  You spent a lot of time investigating the border, investigating what migrants go through.
• 1:03
  And you have firsthand experience, I believe, from your mother.
• 1:06
  Is that correct?
• 1:08
  Yeah, I witnessed my mother get deported in front of me.
• 1:11
  And she was here in the country legally.
• 1:13
  She had a green card.
• 1:14
  She was a legal U.S. resident and didn't have her paperwork on her at the time.
• 1:19
  I mean, this is years ago.
• 1:20
  we see that happening now quite a bit with the immigration raids. But back then when I was a kid,
• 1:24
  she didn't have her passport with her. She didn't have her documents with her. She didn't have
• 1:28
  the proper paperwork that would have let a border patrol agent know that she was in the country
• 1:33
  legally. And she was handcuffed in the back of a patrol car and taken across the border back to
• 1:39
  Mexico, even though she had four U.S. citizen children, a U.S. citizen husband, and had been
• 1:44
  in the country legally for 20 years. So that has happened to me as a kid.
• 1:49
  was that part of your motivation and going down this road like all those years you hold on to
• 1:55
  that and that always in the back of your mind motivates you to look into these issues when
• 2:00
  relating to you know if i'm going to be honest with you george i would say yes and no because
• 2:05
  when i was a kid i did not want to be mexican i did not want to be of mexican descent um my last
• 2:12
  name is frey f-r-e-y my first name is john and i went by john frey i dropped the carlos
• 2:18
  I wanted to be white. I wanted to fit in with the kids that I went to school with. I saw Mexican kids being discriminated against, being laughed at, being ridiculed. And I tried to pass. So for a long time, I did not claim Latino heritage at all.
• 2:34
  when I grew up, became an adult and became a man, that all changed. So I would say yes,
• 2:40
  that what happened to my mother certainly informed me as a journalist. But also, I grew up
• 2:46
  with an eyeshot of the U.S.-Mexico border. The cat and mouse game of border patrol agents chasing
• 2:53
  migrants that were crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in the cover of darkness,
• 2:58
  running through shrubs, people's backyards, chased by border patrol agents, helicopters.
• 3:02
  that whole cat and mouse game was a part of my upbringing.
• 3:06
  I even remember as a boy playing army with the border patrol helicopter,
• 3:12
  pretending to be a migrant, throwing up dust in an open field,
• 3:17
  trying to catch the border patrol helicopter spotlight.
• 3:20
  So I didn't know that not all the kids were growing up this way.
• 3:24
  I thought that this was a normal way to grow up.
• 3:26
  So this idea of migration and arresting and all of that is just in my blood.
• 3:34
  Understood.
• 3:36
  So let's talk about your work because you've been investigating this topic, these things, and actually talking to migrants themselves for, I mean, what, over 20 years?
• 3:47
  Yeah.
• 3:47
  Right?
• 3:47
  Okay, so I want to talk about your findings because I think we live in a world of basically everything is so hyper, so max, right?
• 3:58
  In terms of the media.
• 4:00
  And we're only hearing half the story half the time, well, maybe a quarter of the time.
• 4:04
  And there's always a lot left out.
• 4:06
  There's a lot of bias, for example, right?
• 4:08
  So you don't get to hear the whole story.
• 4:10
  I use certain outlets that will give you like the left, center, and right so I can get all sides.
• 4:15
  But most people never hear that.
• 4:17
  So what I'm hoping in this conversation
• 4:18
  that you're able to,
• 4:20
  at least for my audience
• 4:20
  or anybody else who listen to this,
• 4:22
  is expose people to the,
• 4:23
  well, basically just hearing things
• 4:25
  that's outside of the damn bubble
• 4:26
  that they create for themselves.
• 4:27
  Like too many people live in an echo chamber
• 4:28
  and that's, I think,
• 4:30
  what's keeping us where we are right now in America.
• 4:32
  So hopefully can shed light on these things.
• 4:35
  So your work in which you did
• 4:36
  investigating the border,
• 4:37
  like what did you find?
• 4:38
  Because from what I've heard
• 4:40
  from some of your interviews, by the way,
• 4:41
  I know you've mentioned how
• 4:42
  the Border Patrol themselves,
• 4:45
  they're kind of unruly
• 4:46
  at times, or they seem like, you know, I heard your story about how there were shooting across
• 4:51
  the border, right? At actual Mexicans in Mexico. And, you know, you have other stories that you've
• 4:57
  told where it's just like, you know, people getting ripped out of their cars, et cetera.
• 5:00
  And so it's like, can you elaborate on that and just let people know what does happen? Because
• 5:05
  there is a human side to this. And I'm always trying to figure out, well, how do we enforce
• 5:10
  our border policies, enforce the law and our sovereignty, but at the same time, see the
• 5:14
  humanity in people themselves and not just treat them as, you know, just garbage or people that we
• 5:19
  can just throw away and toss aside? Yeah, it's a really complex question. I'm glad you asked it,
• 5:25
  but I mean, it's, you know, I want to go through like 25 parts of it because it's not just one
• 5:30
  size fits all. And I'm not going to do that to your listeners. I'm not going to bore them with
• 5:34
  you, but I am a firm believer in border security. I'm a believer that there is a need for people to
• 5:40
  come across with some form of documentation so that we know who's coming to come through possibly
• 5:45
  a port of entry where you have to show your ID before you get into the United States,
• 5:49
  that you legally have the right to be here. But by the same token, we allow people to come
• 5:55
  by large numbers without proper documentation. There is a large pull in the United States for
• 6:02
  people who are south of the border to work in our fields, to work in our restaurants,
• 6:06
  to work in construction sites.
• 6:08
  And we all kind of pretend that it doesn't happen.
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  As long as you can get across that maze,
• 6:12
  get over the fence, under the fence,
• 6:14
  where there isn't a fence,
• 6:15
  as long as you can go through that maze,
• 6:17
  we'll get you a job.
• 6:19
  We'll make sure that you work in our fields
• 6:20
  for six, seven bucks an hour.
• 6:22
  So there's this whole kind of underground economy
• 6:25
  that pretends we all love border security.
• 6:28
  But at the same time,
• 6:28
  we would really love somebody without papers
• 6:31
  to come pick our vegetables
• 6:32
  and not pay you anything
• 6:34
  and not give you any rights.
• 6:35
  So there's that part of it. In addition to that, there's the U.S. Border Patrol who manages the U.S.-Mexico border. It used to be before Trump 2.0 that Border Patrol only patrolled the border. They only had a jurisdiction 70 miles north of the physical borderline itself.
• 6:52
  We can get into the reasons why that's not happening today and why we see them in Minneapolis.
• 6:57
  But for the most part, it was a force that is paramilitary.
• 7:01
  This is their own description.
• 7:03
  They are trained as military personnel.
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  They have a rank structure just like U.S. military.
• 7:08
  They are armed like U.S. military.
• 7:10
  There are Black Hawk helicopters that fly along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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  There are drones.
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  There are night vision capability.
• 7:18
  There are sensors all over the place.
• 7:20
  So it's kind of like a war zone along the U.S.-Mexico border, and that has amplified since 9-11, and understandably so.
• 7:28
  The Border Patrol posture changed after 9-11 to become more of an anti-terrorism group.
• 7:34
  So they're trained to see migrant, brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, foreign-language-speaking person as the threat, as the enemy.
• 7:45
  And they will shoot first and ask questions later.
• 7:47
  That is their footing.
• 7:49
  That is their training.
• 7:50
  That is how they operate.
• 7:51
  They want to pose a viable threat, mostly to deter people from coming.
• 7:57
  If a migrant comes up to the border and sees Humvees and helicopters and armed to the teeth
• 8:03
  agents, maybe they're going to think twice about coming.
• 8:06
  So that's more of a deterrent strategy that we have there.
• 8:09
  But by the same token, people get injured.
• 8:13
  People get injured a lot.
• 8:15
  Most Border Patrol agents on patrol are by themselves.
• 8:19
  They do not have a buddy alongside them.
• 8:21
  They are patrolling the border, usually in a 20, 30-mile stretch on their own.
• 8:25
  So if they happen to fire their weapon, if they happen to kill somebody, God forbid, it's not investigated for the most part.
• 8:31
  There have been numerous shootings, killings, sometimes, as you mentioned, firing their weapons across the border into Mexico, sometimes hitting people, killing people.
• 8:42
  To date, the U.S. Border Patrol itself is about 100 years old in its establishment.
• 8:47
  There's not been one agent who's ever been arrested and convicted of firing their weapon in a negative, bad way, or killing somebody by accident or murdering somebody.
• 8:59
  It's never happened.
• 9:00
  So every time they fire their weapon, it's been supported by the U.S. Border Patrol itself.
• 9:05
  They investigate themselves and they adjudicate their own shootings.
• 9:08
  Very much like what happened to Renee Good and what happened to Alex Credit.
• 9:12
  there isn't an investigation, at least from the Department of Homeland Security,
• 9:16
  into whether or not that was a viable shoot, whether or not they should have fired their weapons.
• 9:20
  That's not even being investigated. And that happens along the border all the time.
• 9:24
  I could go on for your entire podcast, but I'll stop there.
• 9:27
  I mean, you can take us wherever you like, John.
• 9:30
  I'm open to discussion. And of course, I'll have some data as well.
• 9:34
  And whatever I say is not just to oppose you, by the way.
• 9:38
  It's just to have the conversation. So I just hope that I'm just going to set that precedent.
• 9:42
  and I agree with you what happened with the whole thing in Minnesota.
• 9:46
  We're talking about Renee Good.
• 9:48
  We're talking about Alex Pretty.
• 9:49
  So first off, Renee Good, everyone can see that a certain way
• 9:51
  depending on how you saw the angle of the cameras.
• 9:54
  Regardless, should she have been killed?
• 9:56
  No, I don't think so.
• 9:58
  But we can't ignore that the vehicle can be seen as a weapon.
• 10:02
  But at the same time, none of us were in that guy's shoes.
• 10:04
  We have no idea the reaction time or anything that he had to go through.
• 10:08
  Alex Pretty, that was an entirely different story.
• 10:10
  There was no explaining away.
• 10:13
  There was no explaining away.
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  They shot him.
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  And they even asked where the gun was.
• 10:17
  There was a video out where they were asking, where the hell is the gun at?
• 10:20
  Because the other agent already took it, walked off with it.
• 10:23
  The communication wasn't there.
• 10:24
  There was a huge breakdown in how they even handled that situation.
• 10:26
  It was just bad training all the way around.
• 10:28
  Those were Border Patrol agents.
• 10:30
  Those were not ICE agents.
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  Those were Border Patrol.
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  Those were the paramilitary that fired their weapons first.
• 10:35
  My beef with the whole thing, I wasn't there.
• 10:37
  I don't know what video angles that everybody is seeing.
• 10:39
  there isn't an investigation it's a closed case agree agree i agree with you and honestly uh um
• 10:45
  i've said this and i think it was crazy how they had uh bovino stepped down put home and in but
• 10:51
  then christy noem just got away with i mean her initial statement was automatically defending the
• 10:57
  uh her people instead of saying we're going to do an investigation and you know we're not gonna say
• 11:03
  anything until that's over like basically we'll figure out what to do they should have suspended
• 11:06
  everybody, put them on her investigation, then move from there.
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  But they didn't. And I'm
• 11:10
  surprised she's still where she is. Personally,
• 11:12
  I thought she should have been demoted or removed.
• 11:15
  That's my opinion. But that's
• 11:16
  the way I see it.
• 11:19
  So yeah, I agree with you. It's sad.
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  It is very sad how things are handled.
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  So let's talk about
• 11:24
  the feeling anyway.
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  That Border Patrol...
• 11:28
  Okay, so with
• 11:30
  everything that you've investigated, is it necessarily
• 11:32
  the view that it is
• 11:34
  Border Patrol specifically targeting Baron
• 11:36
  people or is it the sentiment that the people in the U.S. in general are just targeting brown
• 11:42
  people? I think it might be a little bit of both. Well, who do you go after? Let's say right now
• 11:48
  there's a quota to grab as many undocumented people in the United States and deport them.
• 11:55
  I think there is a quota. I think they have a number and a target that they want to reach.
• 12:00
  I'm probably, if I'm a U.S. Border Patrol agent, I'm probably going to want to grab brown people
• 12:04
  who speak Spanish who work at a car wash. Chances are pretty good that those people might not be in
• 12:10
  the country legally. So I'm going to do a dragnet. I'm just going to scoop people up, and then I'll
• 12:15
  go ahead and select them out later and see which ones are here legally and which ones are not.
• 12:19
  So that is the targeting that's happening. They're going to Home Depots where people,
• 12:24
  day laborers, hang out. They're going to car washes. They're going to neighborhoods for the
• 12:28
  most part. There was a study done in LA County, which is where I live, where 70% of the neighborhoods
• 12:34
  that were hit by ice during the immigration raids that were happening in LA, we're brown.
• 12:38
  We're brown communities. We're Spanish-speaking communities. That kind of makes sense.
• 12:43
  The Supreme Court has given them a little bit of cover. They're doing their job. It's the same
• 12:48
  thing at the border. If I'm in and around near a border fence right at the borderline of the US-Mexico
• 12:55
  border and the border patrol agent hears me speaking English I not going to be bothered I just not going to be targeted They going to let people who are speaking English who look American who look white they going to let them go by a checkpoint There are
• 13:08
  checkpoints all along the border when you're driving on the roads near the border to make
• 13:12
  sure you're not harboring anybody or carrying any contraband. The brown-speaking people with the
• 13:17
  Mexican license plates, even though they might be in the U.S. legally, are probably going to be
• 13:21
  targeted. That is part of their protocol. That is part of their training. Kristi Noem said that.
• 13:26
  That is part of their training to single out people they suspect are in the country illegally.
• 13:32
  I would choose a brown person. I mean, it's logical.
• 13:36
  It's logical, but that is also, when it comes to police work, it's also racial profiling,
• 13:42
  because there are a lot of people who've been wrapped up who are here illegally. So just because
• 13:46
  I have brown skin doesn't necessarily mean that I'm in the country illegally.
• 13:50
  so you have that problem as well yeah i don't disagree with that at all i have friends that are
• 13:55
  all mexican look i i mean you'll know my background i i was the minority white guy in mexican
• 14:01
  neighborhoods to be honest i was the guy that was always jumped and beaten everything else so i was
• 14:05
  always called you know the asshole white kid the gringo wet all that shit so i grew up like that
• 14:11
  you know i was the one getting jumped by the by the gangs and so that that was my background that's
• 14:16
  how I grew up. But my friends are Mexican. I know a lot of people from Mexico. One of my very good
• 14:20
  friends, he's still trying to get his wife over here. He went through the system, did everything
• 14:23
  the right way. His uncle brought him over. He has a computer science degree, has a great job.
• 14:28
  His wife's still in Mexico. He's going through the process trying to get her over here legally.
• 14:32
  I think they fast-tracked. Hopefully, she'll be here soon. So I've seen those sides. I've heard
• 14:36
  the stories also from people who are from Mexico and have families that have immigrated here.
• 14:40
  My father, I mean, all my father's side, they're Portuguese. They all came here from the Azores.
• 14:46
  So it's like, you know, I have a little bit of an idea.
• 14:51
  I'm not necessarily a brown, so I guess I'm not targeted every day.
• 14:54
  But, you know, I went through my side of things.
• 14:56
  And, you know, I think it's important for me to say that because a lot of people will think that, well, you can just throw a blanket out there and make a statement and say, you know, white people hate brown people and we're targeting brown people and all of that.
• 15:05
  And that's not really the case.
• 15:06
  And everybody that I know in my circle, honestly, even conservatives, to be honest, we don't hate immigrants.
• 15:12
  We just want them to come through the right way.
• 15:15
  but but but i know i know you probably have something to say about that but let me let me
• 15:19
  let me circle back let me let me go ahead and um touch on something that i heard you say on an on
• 15:27
  an um on an interview and you know it's it kind of parallels to what i'm talking about how it's
• 15:34
  kind of lost my train of thought slightly there but it's it's basically parallels to what i was
• 15:38
  just saying about how you know people are being targeted for their for their skin color right i i
• 15:44
  I think it's wrong that we see someone who's from Mexico, for example, and just automatically
• 15:50
  think they're just taking advantage of the system.
• 15:52
  They're dirty and they're lazy when that's never my experience.
• 15:55
  My experiences are tough, hardworking.
• 15:58
  I mean, there's something in the DNA because I'll tell you what, they are definitely tough
• 16:01
  as they can be.
• 16:02
  And they definitely put the work in to try to succeed and survive.
• 16:05
  And the older generations from what I deal with is they're always trying to make sure
• 16:09
  that their sons and their daughters don't have to go through what they went through.
• 16:11
  So they're trying to make them come up, get educated, and move on and make a good life for themselves.
• 16:17
  But again, where I'm going with this is I think that the targeting is there because the percentage is, what is it, about over 40%?
• 16:27
  Actually, I think I pulled it up if you don't mind me saying.
• 16:29
  Yeah, between 30% to 40% of immigrants come from Mexico.
• 16:35
  It's the largest source, you're right.
• 16:37
  Yeah, so it's easy to target brown people, I guess is what I'm saying.
• 16:40
  I'm not making an excuse.
• 16:41
  I'm just saying it's like just by that number.
• 16:44
  Oh, I get it.
• 16:44
  I get it.
• 16:45
  If I were a Border Patrol agent, I would probably do the same thing because it's my training.
• 16:49
  That's what I'm told to do.
• 16:51
  Yeah.
• 16:52
  I'm told to suspect the Spanish speaker.
• 16:55
  I am taught to suspect people in particular jobs, dishwashers at a restaurant, construction workers.
• 17:02
  I saw a video clip the other day of a Border Patrol agent jumping on a roof to get a brown Spanish-speaking guy who was doing some roofing work.
• 17:10
  and the guy's jumping from roof to roof on the houses
• 17:13
  and he nabbed them, you know?
• 17:15
  But he wasn't going for the guys that were on the ground
• 17:17
  that didn't look like the guy that was on the roof.
• 17:20
  That's part of their training.
• 17:21
  I'm not saying it's right or wrong.
• 17:23
  I'm just saying this is what they get in the academy.
• 17:26
  This is how they are trained.
• 17:28
  This is specifically what they are doing.
• 17:31
  And it does look when it, you know,
• 17:33
  there's a difference I suspect,
• 17:35
  and maybe this has brought it all out into the open
• 17:37
  and your point is very well taken.
• 17:39
  police work in the interior, your city cop is not trained this way. And he would probably be fired
• 17:47
  if he only went after brown people and arrested them and considered them to be criminal first.
• 17:53
  You know, we have this idea in our country that you're innocent until proven guilty,
• 17:57
  that you're not supposed to be racially profiled and be arrested just because of the color of your
• 18:02
  skin. No American would ever stand for that. But that's what's happening when you bring border
• 18:07
  patrol agents who are trained that way, and they're trained that way because they have a
• 18:11
  different militaristic footing, they have a paramilitary footing, they're going to look at
• 18:15
  enemy. They're going to look at suspects first. They're not considering these individuals to be
• 18:21
  innocent. That's why they're breaking in car windows. That's why they're dragging people out
• 18:25
  of their cars. This is part of their training. This is their academy training. This is how they're
• 18:30
  trained along the border because they have the idea that there's a threat of terrorism
• 18:34
  at the border. So everybody is suspected that way.
• 18:38
  Okay. So to that point, and I knew we were going to get there eventually,
• 18:41
  I've already interviewed DEA agents, FBI agents. I even have two people that are in the intel
• 18:46
  community that I still stay in touch with. And I'll tell you what, there is a real threat of
• 18:50
  terrorism against the United States of America. And just in 2025, there was over 4,000 terrorist
• 18:55
  encounters at our borders. That's enough to put over 80 terrorists in every single state of the
• 19:01
  United States of America. That is a terrorist cell in every state. Okay. So far, I think it's
• 19:05
  less than that. I think it's 3,000 something thus far. Let me look. Yep. In 2026, so far,
• 19:10
  just 2026, we're not even at the end of the year, they've already encountered 3,927 terrorists.
• 19:15
  And it doesn't matter what skin color they are. These are just actual terrorists that were caught.
• 19:20
  That doesn't account for gotaways or what they call getaways, which I know you know what I'm
• 19:23
  talking about. So if we take that data, I mean, we can't say that there is not a threat. There is a
• 19:30
  threat. And maybe what's happening, and I'm not taking away from anything you said,
• 19:35
  because I also agree with you. I think the way they're going about enforcing policies is not the
• 19:41
  correct way to do it. I mean, it's pretty obvious if someone has a job and they've been here 15,
• 19:45
  20 years, and there's always an argument saying, yes, they were here illegal. But I think at some
• 19:49
  point it's like, look, let's reel this back. Let's start over. Let's give you this chance.
• 19:53
  And there's a difference between those people and people who actually have a criminal record.
• 19:57
  And I've always said that.
• 19:59
  And most people I know have this, they feel the same way because it's not right.
• 20:02
  You've been here 20 years.
• 20:03
  You have a family, but you've never done anything wrong.
• 20:06
  Let's give those guys, let's reset it.
• 20:07
  Let's go, okay, here we are.
• 20:09
  Let's talk about it.
• 20:10
  And let's give you a chance to get everything going.
• 20:13
  And let's make this legal.
• 20:14
  Let's just make you a citizen or whatever we got to do.
• 20:16
  I think they should give them that those chances, not just suddenly go, okay, you're out.
• 20:20
  And I don't think that's right.
• 20:21
  That's just my opinion.
• 20:22
  But if we're going back to the data here, I mean, how do we then balance enforcing the
• 20:26
  real threat to the United States and enforcing our border and still being
• 20:31
  empathetic and sympathetic to people who are looking for a better life.
• 20:36
  It's not an easy task.
• 20:38
  I think there are two parts to this.
• 20:40
  I'm in full agreement with you that there is a threat.
• 20:43
  I have never said in my reporting,
• 20:46
  in my personal opinions or when I've editorialized about this issue,
• 20:50
  I am pro-immigration for the most part.
• 20:53
  I think it's a fuel to our economy.
• 20:55
  I think our country is founded on immigration if it's done the right way.
• 20:59
  And I've never, ever sort of tried to expose the hypocrisy that there is no threat.
• 21:08
  There is a threat.
• 21:09
  And I know the threat personally.
• 21:11
  It's not just the threat of terrorism, which is real.
• 21:14
  And there are, as you say, there are people who are trying to do harm to the United States.
• 21:19
  I'm not going to deny that as well.
• 21:21
  There's also a drug threat.
• 21:23
  There's also an organized crime threat.
• 21:25
  There's also a human trafficking threat. I know these personally because I've reported on the
• 21:30
  threat about a little less than 10 years ago, maybe eight years ago now. I got involved with
• 21:37
  the Mexican drug cartel because I wanted to see what it took to get across the border illegally
• 21:42
  to pay cartel to cross as a migrant. How much does it cost? How do you get across? How do they get
• 21:49
  you across? What is the underground system to get humans across the border? And I went on that
• 21:55
  journey. And I did. I met with cartel members, the people who will slice your throat, the same
• 22:00
  cartel heads that were just assassinated by the Mexican government with U.S. aid. These are real
• 22:07
  criminals. These are real threats. These are people who kill first. That's part of their business.
• 22:13
  And they have a very large enterprise south of the border in Mexico to get migrants across the
• 22:19
  border. It's almost impossible now to get across the border illegally without papers unless you
• 22:24
  go to a cartel. And you have to pay them, and they know the routes. They know the Border Patrol
• 22:29
  agents. They pay them off, or they'll get them through in a vehicle, under a fence, through a
• 22:36
  tunnel. There's a bunch of ways that they get them across, and it's expensive. I went on that journey.
• 22:41
  So I have reported on exactly what you're suggesting, that there is a criminal threat
• 22:46
  and a criminal element. And it's not just people that they get across. Most of the people that they
• 22:50
  get across are workers, people who have family members that they're trying to feed, and they're
• 22:56
  coming across and they're paying exorbitant amounts to cartel to get across the border so that they
• 23:00
  can find a job in the United States. The same routes that they use to get people across, they
• 23:04
  use to get drugs across. Sometimes they use the migrants themselves as mules to get their drugs
• 23:09
  across. So I know that whole story because I've been through it. I, as a matter of fact, was
• 23:14
  deposed by members of Congress telling them where the routes are, telling them the cartel names,
• 23:19
  telling them exactly how they get it across. It's highly sophisticated. It's highly organized.
• 23:24
  And there is a battle between cartel and U.S. law enforcement and who's going to win that sort of
• 23:30
  thin line along the border and who's going to get their goods across and who's going to stop them.
• 23:34
  So I am with you on that part. The part two of this is that we have not legalized a pathway
• 23:45
  for workers to come from Latin America in a way that's sane, sober, safe. We've asked them to come
• 23:54
  and work in our fields, but you're going to have to cross the desert. You're going to have to come
• 23:58
  illegally. You're going to have to pay a cartel head to get here. So I know Canada, it's a much
• 24:04
  smaller country. They don't have a big agricultural industry like we do, but they fly Mexican workers
• 24:11
  from small towns in Mexico
• 24:13
  to come and harvest the crops.
• 24:15
  They give them a plane ticket.
• 24:16
  They give them a visa.
• 24:18
  They work for three months in the fields.
• 24:20
  And when they're done with their three months
• 24:21
  of labor in Canada,
• 24:23
  they fly them back home.
• 24:24
  Don't we have that program in place though?
• 24:26
  Don't we have the H2A?
• 24:27
  Sort of, but most people don't want to use it
• 24:29
  because it's expensive.
• 24:30
  It's clunky.
• 24:32
  Who doesn't want to use it?
• 24:33
  The farmers?
• 24:34
  Yeah.
• 24:34
  Oh, yeah.
• 24:35
  SB visas, yeah.
• 24:37
  Yeah.
• 24:37
  It's easier to have them there illegally
• 24:39
  and not give them any sort of
• 24:41
  overtime or workers' compensation or any rights.
• 24:44
  And I know this.
• 24:45
  I've had an immigration lawyer on before,
• 24:48
  and she actually discussed that very same problem
• 24:50
  that you just brought up.
• 24:52
  And it's very, very true.
• 24:53
  They're trying to circumvent the system,
• 24:55
  not pay proper wages.
• 24:57
  They don't want to house them.
• 24:58
  They don't want to feed.
• 24:58
  There's a commitment that they have
• 25:00
  so that they can be part of this program.
• 25:03
  And it's like, instead of punishing the immigrant,
• 25:05
  why are they not punishing the farmer
• 25:07
  or the company that is doing this?
• 25:09
  The company.
• 25:09
  I never understood why.
• 25:11
  You're not going after the heads of companies, you know?
• 25:13
  Yeah.
• 25:14
  California is wealthy because of agriculture.
• 25:16
  It's the largest industry in the state.
• 25:18
  Yes.
• 25:19
  And 80% of the workforce is here illegally.
• 25:21
  There are undocumented workers for the most part who work in California fields.
• 25:25
  They're not going after the big ag companies.
• 25:27
  They're going after the little guy who's picking strawberries.
• 25:31
  Right.
• 25:31
  So the U.S. is not really taking care of the root of the problem.
• 25:36
  One, go after these heads of businesses, to be honest.
• 25:39
  They should have done that a long time ago, hold them accountable.
• 25:42
  And here's the other thing though, like how, I don't mean to offend, but like, it's, it's
• 25:48
  like we need to also try to work with Mexico or whoever to address the other route of the
• 25:53
  problem which is them needing to come to America for a better wage et cetera You know And I think that the other part of it that we don talk about Nobody talks about that We don
• 26:05
  U.S. policy is not about leveling the playing field.
• 26:09
  Why don't we have some kind of a trade balance?
• 26:12
  Why don't we try to level the playing field?
• 26:14
  Why don't we help Mexico's economy elevate?
• 26:17
  There wouldn't be the need for workers to come here if Mexico's economy was humming.
• 26:21
  You know, so...
• 26:22
  Yeah, I agree with you.
• 26:23
  It's a lot easier to say there's a bunch of illegals taking my job than it is to be nuanced and to work with other countries.
• 26:31
  It's a lot easier to scare people into voting for you, which is a lot of what the rhetoric is.
• 26:37
  It's just fearmongering, scapegoating, and it's about getting a vote.
• 26:41
  Nobody really wants to do the hard work.
• 26:43
  Democrat, Republican presidents and administrations alike.
• 26:46
  I think the problem that we have today at the border and with illegal immigration is all the administrations that have come before Trump.
• 26:54
  I don't blame it all on him.
• 26:55
  I blame everybody before him for not fixing the problem before him.
• 27:00
  He's just taking advantage of it.
• 27:02
  Goes back a long ways.
• 27:03
  But, you know, it's like if we circle back to what we were talking about earlier, though, it's like, OK, sure, the U.S. can help level the playing field.
• 27:11
  But Mexican government also wants to have to work with the U.S.
• 27:15
  And I don't think we have that trust right now.
• 27:17
  That's the other issue.
• 27:19
  And two, if we're not holding businesses accountable for circumventing the system, I mean, they're just going to keep doing what they do.
• 27:26
  If we take that away, I think that would help quite a bit with legal workers and making sure that these businesses are also on a level playing field.
• 27:35
  So there's that too.
• 27:36
  It's like the U.S. government themselves is letting this happen as well by not enforcing the laws here when it comes to business and commerce.
• 27:43
  but at the same time, we can't just step in.
• 27:46
  And I'm not saying, I'm not trying to be the arrogant American here.
• 27:49
  We can't just step in and fix Mexico because we have our own problems,
• 27:52
  but we should be able to work more as partners.
• 27:54
  I mean, damn, they're our neighbors right there in the South.
• 27:56
  It's like, why are we not?
• 27:58
  I know, again, I know a lot of people from Mexico.
• 28:00
  It's like, I don't understand why we're not working more in a joint fashion
• 28:04
  instead of having this, like every day,
• 28:07
  it just seems like they perpetuate the political theater of Mexico versus U.S.
• 28:11
  Mexico hates the U.S.
• 28:13
  U.S. hates Mexico.
• 28:13
  Like, what is all that?
• 28:15
  Like, why?
• 28:16
  There's a lot of political grandstanding.
• 28:18
  I think it's a lot easier to have the system in place as it is.
• 28:21
  We can take advantage of people.
• 28:23
  There's high profit here.
• 28:24
  I've seen politicians lie knowing full well that the solution here is some sort of a worker
• 28:32
  program, a visa system, a legalization program.
• 28:36
  They don't want it.
• 28:37
  They like the fight.
• 28:38
  They like to throw red meat at their voters.
• 28:40
  They like to scare people that you're being invaded, so you're going to vote for me.
• 28:45
  I've seen them do that on purpose.
• 28:47
  It's a political move more than it is about fixing the problem.
• 28:51
  It takes work.
• 28:54
  Nobody seems to want to do that work.
• 28:56
  Yeah, I mean, that's the key to politics, keep people divided.
• 29:00
  Honestly, you keep us on our heels, we can't come together if we're always at each other's throats.
• 29:05
  Right, and we can blame the people coming across the border.
• 29:08
  when I've seen corporations, I'm not kidding, during the harvest season, if there's not enough
• 29:13
  workers in a California field, that large agribusiness, that big corporate head will get a
• 29:19
  bus, will get a school bus, he'll go down to the border and he'll fill it with workers who don't
• 29:23
  have any papers. I have done that myself as a reporter. I have gotten on a job picking grapes
• 29:29
  with other undocumented workers. They never asked me for ID. They never asked me for my name. They
• 29:34
  never asked me for a social security number. They paid me in cash. No questions asked. I got to work
• 29:41
  on the day that I got onto the farm and nobody asked me any questions. And that's how they do
• 29:46
  business. And they prefer to do business that way. But that's also part of the problem.
• 29:51
  It is the problem. I've always said if there were no jobs in the United States for an undocumented
• 29:56
  worker, we wouldn't need a border fence because nobody would come. The majority of the people,
• 30:00
  Border Patrol say 99% of the people who come to the United States without papers are looking for work.
• 30:06
  So if there wasn't a job, if there was a stopgap measure where you wouldn't be hired by any sort of company because you didn't have the right paperwork, you wouldn't come.
• 30:15
  Yeah.
• 30:15
  You wouldn't come.
• 30:16
  Exactly.
• 30:17
  Again, these businesses are circumventing the system.
• 30:19
  And, you know, if the agricultural business was monitored much more closely, I mean, we wouldn't have these low-wage positions.
• 30:27
  George, it's not monitored at all.
• 30:28
  I know.
• 30:29
  I mean, they're hands off.
• 30:30
  I know.
• 30:32
  They're not arresting these guys.
• 30:33
  This is a felony to hire an undocumented worker and pay them under the table without taxes.
• 30:39
  It's a felony, but they're not being charged.
• 30:41
  Yeah, it absolutely is.
• 30:42
  Absolutely.
• 30:45
  Can you give us some more stories of encounters and people you've interviewed?
• 30:52
  Because we've been talking about policy and border patrol, and we're talking about some of the root issues and causes here.
• 30:58
  But can you also give us some of the human side of this, you know, from a migrant's perspective that you've encountered?
• 31:04
  Do you have anything that you can tell us?
• 31:07
  Sure. That journey that I took across the border with the cartel's approval, I documented the whole time that I went.
• 31:16
  I met in my, let me just step back a little bit.
• 31:20
  When you cross the border illegally, you have a coyote, a guide, who will take you across.
• 31:28
  This coyote has two cell phones and a walkie-talkie.
• 31:31
  And he is in constant communication with cartel members and also with a lookout on the U.S. side to see what Border Patrol activity looks like.
• 31:40
  So that when you cross the border, you're usually in the open.
• 31:43
  And you meet up with a small migrant group that this coyote will take across, usually a dozen people or less.
• 31:50
  It's easy to manage a dozen people or less.
• 31:52
  If the group gets any bigger, it gets a little unwieldy.
• 31:56
  I was in one of those groups.
• 31:57
  I was in one of those migrant groups, and I met a 17-year-old boy from central Mexico.
• 32:02
  He didn't even speak Spanish.
• 32:03
  He spoke a native indigenous tongue.
• 32:06
  He was a native Mexican Indian.
• 32:09
  And his mother, who lived in a rural part of Mexico, had no health care, and she was dying of cancer.
• 32:16
  And so he didn't know what to do.
• 32:19
  The only idea that he had in his mind was to get to the United States and find a job and send money back home.
• 32:26
  He called a couple of friends that he knew in the United States that worked at a Walmart cleaning parking lots.
• 32:33
  Guys that get there at five o'clock in the morning and clean up the trash with leaf blowers and just clean up the parking lots.
• 32:39
  And they had a couple of accounts and they said, we could get you a job.
• 32:43
  He was going to North Carolina from the Mexico border to work cleaning parking lots.
• 32:49
  And he had the job.
• 32:50
  And I met him.
• 32:50
  He was 17 years old.
• 32:52
  And he was going to cross the border illegally.
• 32:54
  He borrowed as much money as he could to pay the cartel to get him across.
• 32:58
  And he and I, for five days, tried to get across the U.S.-Mexico border into the Arizona desert.
• 33:04
  We walked day after day in 100-plus degree heat.
• 33:07
  He never made it.
• 33:09
  He never made it.
• 33:11
  He died in the attempt.
• 33:12
  He became dehydrated. I lost contact with him, and I had heard that he had passed because he was trying to cross.
• 33:19
  To me, he is a hero. I mean, I get emotional when I talk about him because he was doing everything right.
• 33:26
  I know it's illegal to get into the United States without papers, but to him, he didn't have a choice to obey the law.
• 33:32
  He wanted to save his mother's life.
• 33:34
  And if he needed to cross that border illegally to get that minimum wage job at a parking lot in North Carolina of a Walmart, he was going to do it.
• 33:44
  Come hell or high water, he was going to risk his life.
• 33:46
  And by God, he did.
• 33:47
  So that story stays with me all the time.
• 33:49
  I think about him quite frequently, that he was sweet, kind, innocent, family man, you know, no criminal nature as far as who he was as a human being.
• 34:01
  He just was desperate.
• 34:03
  and he was going to do anything he could to save his mother's life.
• 34:07
  So I don't know that if I were in his shoes,
• 34:09
  I would probably do the same thing.
• 34:12
  That's a sad story, but it also goes back to what we're saying.
• 34:15
  It's like, why are people risking their life to that degree?
• 34:19
  So let's just be honest, what would be considered an entry-level job, right?
• 34:23
  It's not a high-paying job, but to him,
• 34:25
  it was worth his life to get over here to have that opportunity.
• 34:30
  He would have made 10 times more a day working that Walmart job
• 34:35
  than he could have found in his village in Mexico.
• 34:38
  He was making about $3 a day, maybe a little bit more,
• 34:42
  $3 to $4 a day in his village in Mexico.
• 34:44
  That was not enough to pay his mother's medical bills.
• 34:46
  He was going to be making about $40 a day at that minimum wage job.
• 34:50
  It's crazy because when you look at, I mean, like if you look at Mexico City,
• 34:53
  so modern, like so much going on, such a beautiful city.
• 34:56
  and you always hear about these towns
• 34:58
  on the outskirts of Mexico or in these
• 35:00
  villages where it's just poor
• 35:02
  and they're treated so badly.
• 35:03
  The majority of the population in Mexico is below the poverty line.
• 35:06
  The majority. Not 10%,
• 35:08
  not 20%, the majority of the population.
• 35:12
  What in your mind can
• 35:13
  for example, us
• 35:16
  as neighbors, what can
• 35:18
  we actually do to work with Mexico
• 35:20
  to help with that?
• 35:22
  Because we mentioned it, but we didn't really get
• 35:24
  into what can be done.
• 35:27
  It's a very good question.
• 35:28
  You know, we're a capitalistic society,
• 35:30
  so we want to pay the least amount for a tomato or produce
• 35:33
  or whatever comes from Mexico.
• 35:35
  So we're going to drive those prices down.
• 35:38
  We have the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico,
• 35:40
  so we can trade freely, but we can also bargain for low prices.
• 35:45
  So we pay Mexico wages to grow our produce,
• 35:49
  to manufacture our television sets, build cars for us,
• 35:53
  but we pay them Mexican wages.
• 35:55
  We keep them poor because it's to our benefit.
• 35:58
  We go to China and we do the same thing.
• 36:00
  It's cheaper to manufacture in China because the labor costs are lower.
• 36:04
  So there would have to be not a free trade agreement with Mexico if you wanted to elevate
• 36:09
  their economy.
• 36:10
  There would have to be a fair trade agreement where you would have to elevate the standard
• 36:14
  of living by paying just a bit more.
• 36:16
  I don't know if this is true.
• 36:18
  I've heard economically if you were willing to pay an extra 10 cents for a head of lettuce,
• 36:23
  Let's say it's a dollar.
• 36:25
  You are willing to pay $1.10.
• 36:27
  It would elevate wages enough for everybody to make a good living in Mexico.
• 36:31
  So it's not a lot, but we would have to pay a bit more for what we buy.
• 36:35
  Yeah.
• 36:36
  And depending on what store you go to, it seems like you're paying way more than that for some reason.
• 36:40
  Today, we certainly are.
• 36:42
  You're right.
• 36:43
  Well, I get your point, though.
• 36:45
  And you're not wrong, but part of that agreement is also Canada.
• 36:49
  So is Canada doing enough, for example?
• 36:51
  you know um and then if we if we're not just talking mexico we're just let's just talk about
• 36:56
  all the countries in the south you know we have guatemalans we have so so many other people
• 37:02
  honduras el salvador like everybody also trying to get through mexico to get through the u.s
• 37:07
  border so it's not it's not just mexicans but it's it's like the the whole south or south america
• 37:14
  is just it just seems like it's latin america is a disaster yeah most of latin america is a
• 37:19
  disaster. There's another issue that we're not addressing a lot, and I've reported on recently,
• 37:25
  at least in the last couple of years. Most of Latin America, a large portion of Latin America
• 37:30
  lives off the land. It's an aggregarian agricultural society. They grow their own crops.
• 37:36
  They feed their livestock with it. They sell the extra for a little bit of money. That's pretty
• 37:40
  much the system. So when crops fail, when crops fail in a lot of Latin American countries,
• 37:46
  especially Central America right now, the economy falls apart. I mean, there's not a lot of
• 37:52
  foundation under it. There's not a lot of diversity in the economy. So when crops fail,
• 37:56
  the entire system fails. And right now with climate change, especially in Central America,
• 38:01
  they're losing crops left and right. There are hurricanes upon hurricanes that they've never
• 38:05
  experienced before. There's flooding, there's drought, there's all kinds of systems that are
• 38:10
  really wreaking havoc on a system that relies on produce and relies. So when the crops fail,
• 38:18
  you see this big influx of people coming from Central America and South America to the United
• 38:22
  States because there's no way to make a living. There's no infrastructure. There's no government
• 38:27
  that will support them. Right. It's either agriculture and the fishing industry,
• 38:34
  a lot of fishermen off the coastlines and whatnot, and then also tourism. And those are the only
• 38:39
  things and if you can't have any of those working together then I mean all
• 38:44
  their economy is based on just those three things really mostly it's hanging
• 38:47
  on by a thread you're absolutely right and when it fails there's there's
• 38:51
  hundreds of thousands of people without work and what are you gonna do where are
• 38:54
  you gonna go oh the US is a wealthy country I gonna give that a try I want to I want to go back to the Yeah sorry John I didn mean to cut you off I wanted to go back to what you touched on when you were talking about that
• 39:06
  yes, there's a drug problem and things like that as well.
• 39:10
  So the Mexican cartels have, and I know you did some actual investigation on this,
• 39:16
  but the Mexican cartels have become more emboldened and more dangerous,
• 39:20
  and it kind of goes back to what we're talking about in terms of a terrorist threat
• 39:23
  they're classified as terrorist organizations.
• 39:26
  By all means, everything they do
• 39:27
  literally falls under being a terrorist.
• 39:30
  But people just talk about...
• 39:32
  This is how big they are, okay?
• 39:34
  People just talk about what's going on
• 39:36
  between the Mexican cartels and the USA
• 39:39
  in terms of the drug trade.
• 39:40
  A lot of people aren't talking about
• 39:41
  the 300 tons of cocaine
• 39:45
  that is confiscated in Europe
• 39:48
  that comes from Mexico as well.
• 39:50
  They're a global organization.
• 39:52
  they're working in the middle east now um they're sending their their uh paramilitary
• 39:59
  their paramilitary right people to war zones to get trained you know there were some that went
• 40:03
  over to ukraine to get training and so it's like we can't we can't treat these mexican cartels as
• 40:09
  just something that is local to mexico anymore i mean they are a world problem um and so with
• 40:15
  everything that just happened like when they just took out uh was elmencho i believe was his name
• 40:19
  when they just took them out and then the retaliation that happened in Mexico.
• 40:24
  And what I found interesting is if you look at, well, if you believe social media, number one,
• 40:28
  but it seems like a lot of people were saying, nope, everything's fine in Mexico.
• 40:33
  There's nothing going on.
• 40:34
  There's no explosions, no attacks, no retaliation.
• 40:38
  And do you know if that's true?
• 40:41
  Do you have a different take on that?
• 40:44
  The only thing I can compare it to, and having done reporting on Mexican drug cartels
• 40:49
  for a chunk of my career and also the Colombian cartels when there was a war on drugs during the
• 40:56
  Bush years. It's basically the way they communicate is through threat, through terror,
• 41:03
  through burning of buildings, through burning of cars, through assassinations, mutilating bodies.
• 41:07
  It becomes their calling card. So if they go ahead and they knock off a kingpin, the head of
• 41:14
  one of the largest drug cartels in Mexico, which just happened a few days ago,
• 41:17
  they're going to retaliate in kind. They're not going to retaliate any other way. They want you
• 41:23
  to know how big they are, how threatening they are, how dangerous they are. So sometimes when I
• 41:29
  see those things happen, I almost think it's probably the wrong approach because all you're
• 41:35
  going to do is escalate. All you're going to do is embolden them. You're going to deepen their
• 41:39
  hatred. You're going to deepen their retaliation. I think Mexico has become an unsafe place overnight.
• 41:45
  Mexican cartels are entrenched in government in Mexico. Mexican government is a corrupt system.
• 41:53
  It is not necessarily run by the cartels, but there are heads of state in Mexico that are cartel
• 41:58
  members. The police forces in Mexico are cartel. So you have to be very careful where you poke the
• 42:05
  bear because they're going to roar. So I don't know that killing the kingpin, although it's a
• 42:10
  feather in Trump's cap because he kind of took ownership of that in his State of the Union
• 42:16
  address that he had a hand in it. But I think it comes with a big cost to civil society.
• 42:23
  I would be afraid to be in Mexico right now. One of the things that we don't address is the
• 42:29
  drug use in the United States. We're the largest consumers of illegal narcotics in the world.
• 42:35
  We can talk about that.
• 42:36
  There's a market here.
• 42:37
  We can talk about that.
• 42:38
  There's a market.
• 42:39
  Sure.
• 42:39
  But, you know, let's go back.
• 42:41
  We said about Trump taking, you know,
• 42:42
  Feathern's cap, State of the Union.
• 42:44
  Realistically, all we did was help in supplying intelligence.
• 42:47
  I mean, we didn't go out there and put boots on the ground.
• 42:50
  I mean, it was important intelligence,
• 42:52
  but, you know, Mexican government actually took care of things.
• 42:55
  So I don't want to take away from that,
• 42:56
  but also let's also discuss, like,
• 42:58
  you say the cartels don't run the government officially,
• 43:01
  but the cartels have been a problem since the late 70s.
• 43:04
  I mean, this has been an ongoing thing.
• 43:08
  This is, George, what happens when you have a failed government.
• 43:11
  Somebody steps in in the power vacuum.
• 43:14
  And if it's not the cartels, it'll be the gangs.
• 43:17
  Of course.
• 43:17
  In El Salvador, for the longest time, gangs ran the show.
• 43:20
  They were the government.
• 43:22
  Gangs fixed pipes and roofs and roads and built baseball parks in addition to extorting people and assassinating people.
• 43:30
  So it is a need that is filled by a void of a failed government that isn't bent on law enforcement, that is corrupt.
• 43:38
  I don't know where you could go in Mexico and not pay off a cop to get out of a ticket, to not be arrested.
• 43:46
  I've done most of my business in Latin America by bribes.
• 43:50
  I'm not proud of saying that, but I've paid off officials to let me go and let me do my work.
• 43:56
  And it's a corrupt system.
• 43:57
  So corruption breeds corruption.
• 44:00
  We have hopefully still a rule of law in the United States.
• 44:04
  I'm not saying it's not corrupt, but probably not as corrupt.
• 44:08
  Right.
• 44:08
  Oh, there is corruption.
• 44:09
  We know that.
• 44:11
  Of course.
• 44:11
  Okay, so let's talk about the drugs.
• 44:13
  You were just saying that there is a market, a demand, and it's driven by the people in the United States, right?
• 44:23
  It's the largest market.
• 44:25
  I don't want to say that they're the cause of it all, but I don't know.
• 44:29
  go to any corner in my city, I can score just about anything I want. I can get you some pot.
• 44:36
  I can get you some Coke. You want pills. You want meth. What do you want? I can call up a dealer.
• 44:43
  It's not hard. It's not hard to find drugs in the United States.
• 44:47
  It isn't. Okay. So cocaine was introduced when in the United States, roughly around early 80s,
• 44:52
  somewhere around there. I would imagine. I'm not quite sure, but that sounds about right.
• 44:57
  I believe this is when it was late 70s, early 80s.
• 44:59
  It was introduced.
• 45:01
  So there's two things we can say about this.
• 45:04
  Yes, people in the U.S. are too damn addicted on stuff.
• 45:07
  They need to just stop.
• 45:08
  I mean, let's just be honest.
• 45:09
  But we also can't ignore that the market has been created and fueled and pushed and expanded by those who are supplying.
• 45:16
  So it's a two-way street, unfortunately.
• 45:19
  Absolutely right.
• 45:20
  Let's not just talk about the U.S.
• 45:22
  Let's talk about what happened in Venezuela and everything that came out about that.
• 45:26
  Now, I can go into all the geopolitical stuff about Venezuela and Iran and China and their
• 45:31
  involvement and everything that happened going on with Peru.
• 45:33
  You name it.
• 45:34
  I can do that if you want.
• 45:35
  I have a lot of knowledge on that.
• 45:37
  But we also can talk about how they were literally shipping 250 metric tons of cocaine only,
• 45:44
  not all drugs, just the cocaine side of it, to Europe.
• 45:48
  Okay?
• 45:49
  Only 25% of that went to the US.
• 45:51
  were also just,
• 45:53
  actually I just mentioned
• 45:54
  there was 300 tons of cocaine
• 45:56
  that was being stopped.
• 45:57
  This isn't everything that went through,
• 45:59
  but being stopped in Europe
• 46:00
  coming from the Mexican cartels.
• 46:02
  So the drug demand is very global
• 46:04
  and Asia is now becoming the market.
• 46:07
  The Mexican cartels right now
• 46:09
  are literally trying to get into Asia
• 46:12
  because it's such a bigger demand.
• 46:14
  In fact, cocaine goes for twice the price
• 46:16
  than they can get here.
• 46:19
  So there's a demand everywhere.
• 46:21
  and if you're talking about countries that do it legally like okay let's talk about portugal it's
• 46:26
  legal right anyone you can do drugs you can't say there still isn't a black market there because
• 46:32
  even though they legalize for example marijuana or weed in many states here there's still a black
• 46:36
  market in those areas because those legalized drugs are expensive so it's like is is it is it
• 46:43
  a u.s problem is is it is it because people are addicted or we just have a human problem where
• 46:47
  people just like they cannot shake being addicted drugs because they take them to a place other than
• 46:53
  where their lives are it's like it's like what came first chicken or egg right cart before the
• 46:58
  horse i i mean i'm not sure we know i think george if you don't deal with it holistically
• 47:02
  all you're doing is is is kind of trying to chop the head of medusa she's just going to grow two
• 47:07
  more heads you know yeah yeah you're just going to kill the kingpin but you're not going to deal
• 47:13
  with the demand or you're not going to deal with the corruption, you're just exacerbating
• 47:18
  the problem.
• 47:19
  It has to be a holistic approach.
• 47:20
  It has to be an all-encompassing approach if you really want to deal with this.
• 47:24
  Yeah.
• 47:25
  But making it legal doesn't work.
• 47:26
  Making it legal doesn't work.
• 47:28
  And then you have the legal drug trade.
• 47:30
  We're talking about the opioid epidemic in the 90s, et cetera, and it's still going on.
• 47:34
  So it's all a big mess.
• 47:35
  And when I talked to one of my DEA friends, he said that he believes that the drug trade,
• 47:41
  the way it exploded and how the cartels got so big.
• 47:44
  I mean, we can talk about other things.
• 47:45
  A lot of it came right off the coattails of the opioid epidemic
• 47:50
  because people became more addicted to a substance.
• 47:54
  And then they started chasing other means and methods to keep chasing that high.
• 48:00
  So we want to blame anybody.
• 48:01
  Yeah, let's blame the drug manufacturer.
• 48:03
  That's where it started.
• 48:05
  Of course.
• 48:05
  I think if I want to have a good client or a regular customer,
• 48:10
  I'm going to make sure they're addicted to this stuff.
• 48:12
  I'm going to manufacture it in a way that I have a customer for life.
• 48:15
  That's on purpose.
• 48:18
  All right.
• 48:19
  We're not going to solve the problems.
• 48:21
  I need that bottle of champagne that's sitting behind you.
• 48:26
  I mean, I was going to have a beer, but I'm on the coffee right now.
• 48:29
  But yeah, I hear you.
• 48:30
  Hey, listen, I kind of got away a little bit of why you were here.
• 48:34
  But I appreciate this conversation because I want your perspective.
• 48:37
  You have done the work.
• 48:39
  you know, you investigated these things.
• 48:41
  So I did want to hear what you had to say on it.
• 48:44
  I kind of want to hear,
• 48:45
  let's talk about your podcast too.
• 48:46
  Okay, you've done some documentaries.
• 48:48
  You also have the podcast, The Raid.
• 48:49
  I've heard a few episodes where you're actually,
• 48:51
  you know, shedding light on migrants
• 48:54
  who went through getting deported
• 48:56
  or dealing with what you said earlier
• 48:58
  about being targeted just for being brown, et cetera.
• 49:00
  And also, you know, you talk to people
• 49:02
  that can explain the legal aspects of the situation.
• 49:05
  Can you tell everybody about your work there?
• 49:07
  and maybe some stories or encounters from that podcast that really stuck with you?
• 49:13
  I have found that doing a podcast probably like you have too gives me a lot of freedom.
• 49:18
  I have worked in mostly national television for most of my career and it's for shit.
• 49:24
  National broadcast news today is for shit on all sides.
• 49:28
  It is salacious.
• 49:31
  They want only the headlines.
• 49:32
  They don't inform the public in a way that's necessary, that you and I can come away from a news report feeling like we've learned something.
• 49:40
  It's all about tit for tat, headlines, grab attention, all of that kind of stuff.
• 49:45
  It's all to attract advertisers and to attract viewers.
• 49:48
  And the audience is left basically just hating each other and shouting at the television set because they hate America or they hate their government or whatever it is.
• 49:57
  It's just to get people kind of emotionally involved.
• 50:00
  So I've stopped trying to pitch my stories to the broadcast outlets, which was my entire career for a long time.
• 50:07
  So the podcast is born out of that.
• 50:09
  I'd rather have somebody sit down like you are right now, somebody who knows what they're talking about, whether it's an immigration lawyer, whether it's somebody who's being detained, somebody who works at a detention facility, a politician who might be trying to pass legislation.
• 50:24
  Everybody who's involved in this big immigration mess, I put them on the podcast and I let them speak and I let them have their platform.
• 50:33
  Whether you believe them or not, whether you think they're full of shit, I get those comments all the time.
• 50:37
  I'm a liar.
• 50:38
  I'm a bot.
• 50:39
  That's okay.
• 50:40
  You can do that.
• 50:41
  I know what I'm doing.
• 50:42
  Some of the people who stood out to me the most, for example, there was a young man who was in Oxnard, California, which is a big agricultural community, was going to work in his truck.
• 50:53
  There was an immigration raid right where his work was, and he had no idea what was happening.
• 50:58
  This is when the raids were starting in California in the summer, in June.
• 51:02
  And he's a brown-skinned guy, and he got pulled into this whole mess.
• 51:07
  And he got his windshield smashed in, his driver's side window smashed in.
• 51:12
  He got pepper sprayed.
• 51:14
  He was tear-gassed.
• 51:16
  He was pulled out of his vehicle.
• 51:17
  He was arrested.
• 51:18
  He was handcuffed.
• 51:20
  He had eight, and I've seen the photos.
• 51:22
  He had eight U.S. Border Patrol agents on his back, one on his neck.
• 51:26
  He could barely breathe.
• 51:28
  And he was detained for three days.
• 51:30
  He's an Iraqi war vet.
• 51:32
  He's a U.S. citizen.
• 51:34
  He told the guys every single minute he could have a breath that he was a U.S. citizen.
• 51:39
  He didn't look like one.
• 51:40
  He didn't, quote, look like one.
• 51:42
  He got involved with a whole group of farm workers that they were arresting at the time.
• 51:48
  And the Border Patrol agents wouldn't take his word for it.
• 51:51
  While he was arrested and detained, he was not allowed to call a lawyer.
• 51:55
  He was not allowed to call his family.
• 51:57
  It was his daughter's third birthday.
• 52:00
  going to go after work to buy her her gift.
• 52:03
  He didn't get to celebrate her third birthday.
• 52:06
  So, you know, he had a platform.
• 52:10
  He's actually testifying in Congress a few times
• 52:13
  to try and change the way that ICE does business.
• 52:17
  But those are the kinds of people
• 52:18
  that we're looking for on the podcast.
• 52:21
  That's good.
• 52:23
  And you're presenting people's perspectives
• 52:25
  who actually went through these situations.
• 52:27
  So, you know, and like you said,
• 52:29
  like, I'm just gonna put out there,
• 52:30
  whether people believe it or not, as I told you when we were putting this together and we're
• 52:35
  discussing earlier, I think we need to have these conversations. We need to hear these stories. And
• 52:42
  honestly, I'll say it again. I am so tired of the echo chamber phenomenon. It's ridiculous,
• 52:50
  and especially prevalent in podcasting and social media. So it really drives viewership or
• 52:57
  listenership. I mean, they want to stimulate the algorithm. They want to get people upset.
• 53:02
  But you know what? Our country's falling apart here. If you don't have real informed citizenry,
• 53:09
  it's really hard to vote for someone that you know whether or not you're voting for the right
• 53:13
  person. It's really hard to make business decisions. It's really hard to love your neighbor
• 53:18
  if you think they're out to get you. So this misinformation and disinformation and sleight
• 53:24
  of hand is crap. I'm really sick of it as a journalist. I got into this business to inform
• 53:29
  people, period. I'm not trying to give them a slant. I'm trying to give them a perspective
• 53:34
  that they may not know because I'm the person on the ground and they don't have to go there.
• 53:39
  I'm the person that's going to share those kinds of stories and then they can make up their minds.
• 53:43
  It's not up to me what they do with the information. It's just my job to give it.
• 53:47
  Justin, talking to you, it sounds like you take journalism, you take pride in it
• 53:53
  And you come at it with integrity, where we don't see that too often.
• 53:59
  It's part of democracy.
• 54:01
  The very First Amendment is freedom of the press.
• 54:04
  I mean, the founders of our country knew very well that politicians and people in high positions of power and wealthy people are going to try and get away with things.
• 54:13
  So you need a media that is a watchdog and is the fourth rail and holds people to account.
• 54:20
  That whole system has been shot.
• 54:23
  What about the division you see, though,
• 54:25
  where it's become so polarized politically in media?
• 54:28
  Because, I mean, you've been in media and journalism for so long.
• 54:33
  Have you seen it shift in a...
• 54:35
  100%.
• 54:36
  Okay.
• 54:37
  So it's worse than it ever was, in your opinion?
• 54:39
  Because I kind of think it is.
• 54:41
  Absolutely.
• 54:41
  I have no doubt because I've been in it,
• 54:44
  and it's the reason that I've left it.
• 54:45
  I made a nice living being on television and working in broadcast news.
• 54:49
  So I don't want it anymore because I know in order for me to tell a story today, it's not about whether or not it's credible or that the public needs to know about it or that it's important information.
• 55:01
  It's whether or not it's going to sell advertising.
• 55:03
  Right, right. No, that's exactly what it is.
• 55:06
  So it didn't matter. I had a very hard time telling stories about the border because for the most part, it's about Spanish speakers.
• 55:14
  It's not it's really important information that we need to know about border security.
• 55:17
  But if it features a brown person, I don't know if we want it on the air because I don't know if I can sell, you know, I can't sell advertising to car companies or whatever it might be.
• 55:28
  You feel it's that way still, even now?
• 55:31
  Of course. It's worse. It's worse.
• 55:33
  There's competition for advertising.
• 55:36
  It's the media outlets have conglomerated.
• 55:41
  There are fewer and fewer independent stations that can do really good work They all kind of joined together and they mighty They all buying each other up There a merger deal going on
• 55:51
  right now for Netflix to acquire
• 55:53
  Warner Brothers
• 55:54
  and CNN.
• 55:57
  What the hell does Warner Brothers
• 55:59
  have to do with CNN?
• 56:01
  They're going to impose their entertainment
• 56:03
  values on CNN
• 56:05
  to be more flashy, to be prettier,
• 56:07
  to be sexier, whatever it is,
• 56:09
  and news is going to go out the window.
• 56:11
  I mean, I call CNN children's news network, so it's already bad.
• 56:18
  So do you think there is more value in people who are considered more center these days?
• 56:26
  It's like the Democrat Party of old, to be honest, I'm just going to say this.
• 56:30
  The Democrat Party today is not what they used to be because I used to be a Democrat.
• 56:34
  A lot of my people from, you know, a lot of us Gen Xers used to be Democrats.
• 56:38
  And then we look back at the party and what it's become now.
• 56:41
  We're like,
• 56:41
  I don't know where it's going.
• 56:43
  I'm not bashing.
• 56:44
  I'm just a bash.
• 56:45
  If you are Democrat,
• 56:46
  whatever,
• 56:46
  I'm just saying that we see that party go one way.
• 56:49
  And now let's just be honest.
• 56:51
  Conservatives are in power and they're starting to do everything.
• 56:53
  They said that they didn't like,
• 56:54
  they're going the opposite direction.
• 56:56
  So it's like,
• 56:57
  it's like,
• 56:59
  how do we,
• 56:59
  how do we decipher and get through all the bullshit that's being thrown at
• 57:04
  thrown at us in,
• 57:05
  in the media today,
• 57:06
  in your opinion,
• 57:07
  from someone who's on the other side of it.
• 57:09
  How do we decipher the bullshit?
• 57:11
  How do we cut through the middle of it all
• 57:13
  and realize these guys are just playing team sports
• 57:16
  and they really don't care about us?
• 57:18
  They are playing team sports.
• 57:20
  It's the best description I've heard of it.
• 57:22
  They are playing the game.
• 57:23
  It doesn't matter if you have an R next to your name
• 57:25
  or a D next to your name.
• 57:27
  You're trying to raise millions of dollars for your campaign
• 57:29
  and you're kissing this baby and that baby
• 57:31
  and you're playing the game.
• 57:32
  It really doesn't matter.
• 57:33
  you know i i'm i'm gonna uh you know deliver all the epstein files except the ones that i'm in
• 57:40
  you know um so so it's the same on both sides it's the same on both sides i i'm not really
• 57:47
  for any politician or any any political slant i'm for the facts i'm for the truth and and if
• 57:55
  you're a truth teller and if you're a fact teller i'm on your side as far as the public is concerned
• 58:00
  I don't know how you're going to discern who is telling the truth and who is spreading lies or rhetoric.
• 58:07
  I am a big fan of citizen journalists.
• 58:09
  I love people with their cell phone cameras who are out there, who are documenting, who are sharing information that looks real because they've recorded it on their phones.
• 58:19
  Podcasters, I think, are the new news organizations.
• 58:22
  I love you and the stories that you carry.
• 58:26
  Whether I agree with them or not is not news.
• 58:30
  You don't have to agree or disagree with facts.
• 58:32
  You're just supposed to take them like you're vegetables.
• 58:35
  It's just information.
• 58:37
  So it's not about whether I hate liberals
• 58:39
  or whether I hate conservatives.
• 58:42
  That's not news.
• 58:44
  That's just propaganda and rhetoric.
• 58:45
  And I do believe that people are trying to fuel those,
• 58:49
  you know, fuel those disagreements between us
• 58:52
  and the truth and the facts get lost in the middle.
• 58:55
  So I'm trying really hard to just give you information.
• 58:58
  I get pinned as a left-leaning, immigrant-loving liberal.
• 59:04
  Fine.
• 59:05
  You can categorize me any way that you want.
• 59:07
  But I know my facts are sound.
• 59:09
  I hear you.
• 59:10
  I have a few things to say on that.
• 59:13
  And it reinforces what you said.
• 59:15
  I have always said people live on the surface of information.
• 59:19
  Literally.
• 59:20
  They never go past the headline.
• 59:22
  They don't dive any deeper.
• 59:24
  And I think that's part of the problem that we have.
• 59:26
  You know people keep their heads down They buried They busy They taking their kids to soccer whatever it is And they like oh that what happened okay that what i believing and you know i don need to i don need to hear anything else they don have time for it they don want to have
• 59:38
  time for it don't make it it's as if they don't care themselves because they don't realize
• 59:44
  the implications of what is happening around them and how it affects them you know and then uh the
• 59:51
  You know, you say, you know, you've been labeled or pigeonholed into be called, you know, a leftist, whatever.
• 59:58
  Well, you know, I get the same thing.
• 59:59
  I'll be honest with you.
• 1:00:00
  I'm the hardcore MAGA guy, whatever.
• 1:00:01
  But, you know, it's like the problem is we only get these things because they don't conversate.
• 1:00:08
  You know, they don't sit across from each other on this case, Zoom, because we're not in front of each other.
• 1:00:12
  But, you know, they don't want to do this because they don't want to be offended.
• 1:00:15
  They don't want to be challenged.
• 1:00:16
  And I think that's bullshit.
• 1:00:18
  And again, you don't have to agree with everything.
• 1:00:20
  I don't have to agree with everything you say either, but at the same time, I think we can both come away with this learning something and maybe seeing something from a different perspective.
• 1:00:27
  I'm not trying to change your core being, but at least we're having a conversation to where we can say, hey, I never thought of that.
• 1:00:35
  Or, well, I didn't know that story.
• 1:00:36
  Maybe I'm looking at this wrong.
• 1:00:37
  And that's what's important to me, not what team you support, right, left, blue, red.
• 1:00:43
  I love hearing you say that.
• 1:00:45
  I don't find that on broadcast news.
• 1:00:47
  I find people in their corners shouting at each other.
• 1:00:50
  And that's, that's now what is the substitute for news.
• 1:00:53
  I can't tolerate it.
• 1:00:54
  I just can't tolerate it.
• 1:00:55
  And you know what, John, that's why I like, that's why I like having these conversations.
• 1:00:58
  I know, I know everybody, like I get a lot of emails, people saying, interview this person,
• 1:01:02
  interview that person.
• 1:01:03
  And I'm not too, I'm not that, I'm like, I'm nothing compared to your career at all.
• 1:01:07
  Believe me.
• 1:01:08
  And I understand that.
• 1:01:09
  So I appreciate you being here.
• 1:01:10
  But what I'm trying to get at is I don't like interviews.
• 1:01:13
  I like having conversations like this because we get to know who you are and we get to actually get to some of the questions that most people would never ask.
• 1:01:21
  So I hope more people would do that or do what we're doing.
• 1:01:24
  The whole 15-minute, okay, tell me about yourself.
• 1:01:27
  You're not getting down to the bottom of anything.
• 1:01:29
  You're just scratching the surface.
• 1:01:30
  I mean, it's just so played out.
• 1:01:33
  And I just hope that stuff goes away and people actually have conversations again.
• 1:01:37
  I really do.
• 1:01:38
  Do you want to add anything else to that?
• 1:01:40
  I'm hoping that we do.
• 1:01:40
  i'm i'm enjoying this conversation i i never thought of myself as wanting to be in the podcast
• 1:01:48
  world um but for me it's the only place that seems to be given good information or people
• 1:01:54
  who have platforms on social media i listen to as well i kind of get my media from a large group
• 1:02:00
  of people and sometimes i think i just call well that doesn't sound factual i might check myself
• 1:02:06
  I always put my resources and where I'm coming from whenever I post something on social media or on the podcast.
• 1:02:13
  I let people go read the newspaper article themselves or the document that I'm referring to.
• 1:02:18
  So, you know, there is a lot of misinformation and a lot of crap out there.
• 1:02:22
  I'm not hopeful that we all are getting the right kind of information, but you're right.
• 1:02:29
  Let's have a conversation about it.
• 1:02:31
  Let's not hate each other before we even get to know each other.
• 1:02:34
  Right. I agree with you.
• 1:02:34
  Of the documentaries you've done, what is the one you would tell people to watch?
• 1:02:40
  There's one out right now which is kind of about what we're talking about.
• 1:02:46
  I did a documentary for HBO a couple of years ago.
• 1:02:49
  It sat on the shelf for a couple of years.
• 1:02:52
  It reveals a cover-up of a murder of an undocumented immigrant at the hands of Border Patrol.
• 1:02:58
  Border Patrol brutalized this guy.
• 1:02:59
  They beat him up so badly that he died from his injuries, and then there was a cover.
• 1:03:04
  They lied about what had happened.
• 1:03:06
  They tainted evidence.
• 1:03:07
  They planted blood evidence.
• 1:03:09
  They lied on official reports.
• 1:03:10
  And I investigated the Border Patrol cover as well as what happened to this individual He wasn supposed to be in the country He came across illegally but he didn deserve to be beaten to death which is what happened to him
• 1:03:24
  And HBO decided to do a documentary based on my reporting.
• 1:03:28
  The documentary is about this particular case.
• 1:03:32
  And HBO was afraid to release it.
• 1:03:34
  HBO sat on it for over a year.
• 1:03:37
  And I pounded the table and said, this is information that people need to know.
• 1:03:41
  people need to know about what their government is doing and not doing. They need to know about
• 1:03:45
  corrupt cops, whether it's good or bad. We need to know who's a bad cop. And that's what the
• 1:03:50
  documentary did. And they sat on it for over a year and then they tried to release it on December
• 1:03:56
  29th, which was a Monday, which nobody's watching documentaries. They tried to bury it because they
• 1:04:01
  didn't want to piss off the administration and they didn't want the administration at the same
• 1:04:06
  time to ruin their merger deal. So just like I'm telling you, it's all about business. It's all
• 1:04:12
  about making sure that the money changes hands in the right way. It's all about 80 plus billion
• 1:04:18
  dollar mergers, which is what the merger is valued at. And they try to let it go under the radar.
• 1:04:23
  So I went to the LA Times and we did a big expose on HBO trying to bury the documentary.
• 1:04:30
  Anyway, the documentary is sound. It shows how Border Patrol needs to be reined in. There is
• 1:04:36
  no oversight. They can kill someone like Alex Preddy and cover it up and pretend nothing bad
• 1:04:42
  happened here. And that's what the documentary is about. It's about how the U.S. Border Patrol
• 1:04:46
  manages its own. It's about how they're trained and how they go out into the country and do what
• 1:04:54
  they do. It's really relevant to what's happening today. It's called Critical Incident. So it's on
• 1:04:59
  your HBO feed right now.
• 1:05:01
  Critical incident.
• 1:05:04
  Why don't you tell everybody else out there where they can follow more of your work?
• 1:05:10
  I know you have a website.
• 1:05:11
  If you want to tell people about the website, obviously.
• 1:05:14
  And the podcast.
• 1:05:15
  Mostly the podcast.
• 1:05:16
  I mean, we're doing three episodes a week.
• 1:05:18
  So The Raid, just like the Immigration Raids, the podcast is called The Raid.
• 1:05:23
  And it's at theraidpodcast.org is our website.
• 1:05:26
  And anywhere that you get your podcasts, you can find The Raid.
• 1:05:29
  And we're talking to everybody.
• 1:05:31
  We're talking to everybody who has a hand in what's going on with the
• 1:05:35
  immigration rights across the country.
• 1:05:37
  Awesome.
• 1:05:38
  If you don't mind, John, I'm going to wrap this up.
• 1:05:41
  Great.
• 1:05:41
  I actually enjoy talking to you.
• 1:05:43
  I just, you know,
• 1:05:44
  I've got to call it somewhere, right?
• 1:05:47
  You've got to end it sometime.
• 1:05:48
  But no, hey, I appreciate you really do.
• 1:05:50
  I really do appreciate you taking the time to be on the show.
• 1:05:52
  I do.
• 1:05:52
  I'd like to stay in touch with you.
• 1:05:53
  And if anything else pops up, you know,
• 1:05:55
  I will be in touch and hopefully you feel you can do the same with me.
• 1:05:59
  absolutely I am
• 1:06:01
  I am so respectful of your work
• 1:06:03
  and what you're doing and as a fellow
• 1:06:05
  podcaster now that I'm in that space
• 1:06:07
  I tip my hat to you
• 1:06:09
  thank you so much for your time
• 1:06:11
  you're just being nice
• 1:06:11
  no I've enjoyed it I can't even believe
• 1:06:15
  that we've been talking as long as we have
• 1:06:17
  the time has gone by
• 1:06:18
  thank you John
• 1:06:19
  you have a great day I'm going to sign off now
• 1:06:23
  and I encourage everybody to definitely listen to the raid
• 1:06:25
  I've listened to a few episodes myself
• 1:06:27
  and I'm going to check out that document for sure.
• 1:06:31
  Appreciate it. Thank you.
• 1:06:31
  Devils hide behind redemption.
• 1:06:35
  Honesty is a one-way gate to hell.
• 1:06:57
  Bye.