Latest / Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement / #014-"Overrun"

Transcript

#014-"Overrun" · Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: One of the highlights of the book, I think, is where I'm kind of talking about agency ICE.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, how it's been handcuffed that ERO they are not allowed to arrest criminal aliens with.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, in most of the country, when law enforcement has one of these guys in jail, uh they won't let them contact ICE afterwards.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back, Blue Grid family.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Man, it's been a uh Yeah.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh before we dive off into this, uh, you guys hit that subscribe button and uh be sure to download us on the pop and the podcast platforms because that's it's kind of how we get measured on our success.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: I know that we think we're successful, but uh we've all got bosses and and we would love to take the analytics back to them and show them what kind of what we're doing.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: So uh hit the subscribe button on your uh YouTube channels, you you watchers out there in the uh plat the uh podcast platforms.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: And we've got a special guest on today.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: This is Tyler Owen, Clint McNair.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: We're in the house.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, hey, Todd Benzman.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we kind of discussed his title a while ago, and and I'm not that intelligent because obviously I'm I'm here with Clint, and so I'm not even going to attempt to uh you know give your title.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to if you want to kind of explain uh who your employer is, you've got a really, really interesting story.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: And just like Clint was saying, uh, you know, we try to give good content, good episodes, and I think uh you know you you are definitely gonna live up to that par.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, Todd Bensman, my uh title uh is Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: And that's it's a think tank, a policy think tank out of Washington, D.C.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: But I stay here in Texas.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And a fellow uh in your role is to provide them accurate, unfiltered, real-time.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what we do is we produce um education policy papers, uh information that lawmakers and the public can use to kind of be educated about uh our issue, which is immigration uh of all sorts, but especially now with this mass migration crisis, we're spending a lot of time on the border and uh looking into the causes and implications and impacts of the whole thing.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: So your your reports essentially would go to the U.S.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Senate, U.S.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Congressman, and you can give the reports to them.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we're always briefing those guys.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: We're on the hill.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's a DC think tank, so you know, it's an inside the beltway.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of it's inside the beltway, but you know, we've got a website, CIS.org.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh anybody who's interested in this um topic can go there.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: Most think tanks, uh policy think tanks are um on the sort of open borders, uh kind of liberal side.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: And ours is like one of the very, very few that's um well our our moniker is uh pro-migrant, low immigration.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now, is this government funded or is this lobby?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean privately funded, we're nonpartisan, uh independently funded uh by you know donors and foundations and nice.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's cool.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's cool.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: You can have your donation afterwards.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Happy to take it.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: No, I've uh uh I'm I my salary is not that good, I promise you.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I guess before we dive off into kind of you know why we're here, uh give give us kind of a background of who Todd is and where you grew up at and kind of what your career started as.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so I'm gonna give up my age here by having all these years of stuff going on, but uh I, you know, born in Houston, raised in Phoenix.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, came back as soon as I could.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh classically trained uh journalist background.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I am a recovering reporter.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um I did um you know, my undergrad was in journalism, and then I got uh one of my masters is in journalism is in journalism too.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then I worked in the field for 23 years through uh 2009 for, you know, newspapers mostly, big newspapers, 10 years at the Dallas Morning News on staff, uh CBS and um Hearst News uh through 2009.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I that's I had a full good career doing all kinds of great stuff down there on the border and everywhere.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: National security, uh covered the Dallas Police Department for years and years.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then in um 2009, I was recruited.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: I was doing a lot of border stuff, and um one of my uh sources at that time was uh Steve McCraw, who's now the current director.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty good source to the city.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, this was before he was a big deal with that.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_03: So uh but so you know, and he was reading me and he was real familiar with my uh work down in on the border.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so then when um he I think he was appointed in July of 2020, and in August, uh, you know, he recruited me in.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: He says he's gonna rebuild his intelligence division.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: They're looking for unconventional backgrounds, right?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: So he says, You're interested?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, Yeah.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what am I gonna do?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: And he says, Well, how about terrorism?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like, hell yeah.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_04: That's cool.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway, I I get onboarded, and you know, he's like, Can you pass a background uh check, you know, that kind of thing, and can you pass a security clearance stuff?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Yeah, no problem.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm clean.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: So after all of that, um I'm on boarded, and I want to say within two weeks was the Fort Hood massacre.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh no, do your shit.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: Two weeks.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: So you know, I didn't really know how to be an intelligence analyst or an intelligent law enforcement guy.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so I just went, you know, the Rangers, we set up this whole, you know, uh, you know, CP and uh making I'm like, I'll show these guys.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: So um within a few minutes I had the name of the shooter and I figured out who his emom was.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: So I called the emom in in um Killeen, get him on the he's a doctor.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, this is Todd Benzman.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm with Texas DPS.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: I need I need to have him on the phone here, ASAP.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: And like next thing I know, I had him on, and all this great intel pouring through.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: I go to the um to the Rangers with my report, and I'm like, yeah, here's what you need to do.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: You got this guy, that guy.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: He's he knows all the people on the phones, and uh so they dispatch a couple of cops to go get this guy.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: And next thing I know is I'm being hauled into the office.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: Who the hell is this Todd Bensman guy?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: What the hell is going on?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: Call those cops back.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: This is FBI, so he's tampering with a witness, he doesn't know, he's not so apparently you're not supposed to, you know, I didn't know I was being a journalist in an intelligence role and untrained.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: But my boss at the time is the Navy SEAL came up to me afterwards and he's like, hey man, don't worry about it.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: Better better to beg for with me, better to beg for permission than to I mean, beg for forgiveness than to ask permission.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, absolutely right.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I knew I was in the right place, and I stayed there for nine years over there here at Austin.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's how I got to Austin.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm still here.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So the Colonel recruited you away, that's really cool, and he was wanting unconventional backgrounds.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of times we can get tunnel visioned on things, or cops are very similar.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I guess he was looking for someone that looked at things through a different lens or a perspective, or would look at things w from a different background, I suppose.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and you know, I I had been covering uh national security issues since 9-11 because I was covering my job on 9-11 for the Dallas Morning News was the uh FBI, and I'd been covering law enforcement for years already.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so a lot of people don't know, but the center of gravity for that investigation was Dallas, Texas, because of American Airlines is based there and all the planes were Northwestern Airlines.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, many other so the the FBI office that I covered mostly was like sucked into this whole thing.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so from that point on, I was covering terrorism.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: They were they were rolling dudes up, they were uh doing you know, closing mosques, they were doing prosecutions, there were immigration guys were hauling guys into I mean, they were really rounding up.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there were a lot of bad guys in Dallas, I'll just tell you at that time.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, I just never quit doing terrorism coverage and um came down to the border and started doing terrorism coverage at the border, and that's what kind of caught their attention.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in Dallas, for whatever reason, uh the Fountain Place Plaza.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, 2010.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: 2010, they were gonna destroy the tall, for our listeners, the tall green building in Dallas that kind of goes up and makes a peak.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful, usually a green color at night.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's got the green outline on it.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was uh there was a plot in 2010 to bring that to the ground um through a bombing.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um much like the first attempt at the World Trade Center.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: For whatever reason, Dallas has been there was another guy in Lubbock that was gonna uh attack George W.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're in Dallas.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: For whatever reason, Dallas, I guess, is a hotbed for we've had all kinds of stuff here in Texas, believe me, and they we still do.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: Houston, Dallas, Austin, everybody's got them.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_03: Bailey.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_03: I mean it's good.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just them either.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I was doing um counterterrorism.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: They let me form a counterterrorism uh unit that had um, I think uh we had maybe 12 people analysts in that thing.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: We're all civilians, but we're overseen by uh commissioned guys.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_03: So um, you know, for nine years we were doing great work with the FBI and ICE and every police uh department in the state, you know, county governments, county sheriffs, marshals.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: We had a fusion center, which is right over here.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um and we had 15 different federal agencies in there.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: So uh we we were the for counterterrorism, we were the group that brought in our our our terrorism related material to the feds and vice versa.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: And we had a lot.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: We have our own we had our own um proprietary intelligence database that had lots of stuff in it that everybody wanted.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: So we were the guys that did that.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So journalists are kind of fact finders and diggers and cops are fact.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Was that a pretty natural trend?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or was it was it was it really weird and took some time to you would be surprised.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I mean, there's a there was it's different.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot to learn about it.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, there's a chain of custody issues and you know, there's all sorts of uh copy things that when you first you know join up, you don't I mean, I'd been covering police and prosecution for years, so I wasn't a complete newbie.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: But when you're on the inside of investigations and inside of cases and there's wiretap stuff going on.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: How soon after you became integrated with DPS you say, oh shit, a couple years ago, I probably would have rethought how I wrote that report or you know covered that story.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Did it change your alter your mind?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, yeah.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: And there were so many.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: I I'll just tell you, I mean, the first thing I did when I got my security clearance, is there were stories that I had done, I had written for years.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: I went right in there and just dug it all up, and I was like, oh, that's what the thing was.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh my god, look at that.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I couldn't do anything with it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, but I'm not sure.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: I got access to um like the real the real deal behind the scenes stuff.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and probably a really unique.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've not heard of a lot of people transitioning from journalism to a role like that.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um it doesn't, it occasionally, you know, it's it's a really good match, really.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you have journalism skills, they translate really well to intelligence, collection, and analysis.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the fact is, too, I mean, the journalists are nosy.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: Media's who people who are in media are nosy, and that's what makes a badass cop is the fact we're nosy.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome cop, they have to be nosy in order to do their job.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Relentless and digging up.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so that that one trait probably mirrors each other, and that's probably why they compliment each other.
• 13:12
  unknown: Yeah.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean it really is a I mean, I'm surprised there aren't a lot more journalists doing it.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: Journalists make great intel people.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and but but you may not know this.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, I'm I'm a bit younger than like Clint was up.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: Clint worked at Garland PD, I worked in East Texas, and the perception of younger law enforcement is that the the media is the devil, and journalists are the devil because of the of you know the ongoing situations that that that that are going on across the country.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you can use those resources just as you know McCrawl did to you, and have good contacts in the media and trust those contacts, that's what makes a good marriage.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's what makes good friendships.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and then you know, he must have seen something in me.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I I was uh a friendly, you know.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I wasn't one of those guys out like to burn cops.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: I like cops, I like what they do, always did, and he must have seen that I was like one of the you know, kind of like already, you know.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: Trustworthy.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: I never burned them, I never burned anyone.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I certainly wasn't going after police departments like they do now.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: So nine years in DPS, yeah.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: All in the intelligence unit, all at the fusion center, and terrorism and border issues?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: Mostly terrorism, but we did a lot of border stuff.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, my unit did well, we had people coming over the uh border from uh the Middle East.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: So Iraq, Syria, Iran.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: We had guys coming in from every terror country on the planet coming over the border, and quite a few of them were true blue bad guys.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: And the governor always wanted to know like who was coming over, and the there were the alleged guys always wanted to know who's coming over, and so we started to dig into that, and I'd done it, I'd done that work as a journalist.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: I went um, I did a whole series of stories uh down there about uh Iraqis and Pakistanis and Somalis all coming over the southern border, and that it was in it in the context of it as a national security threat.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: Who are these guys?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and what do we do about it?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: And when I got over to Intel, we did that.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: We worked that.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and everything that I thought that I had reported uh publicly about all that was like completely true.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, they were calling me a crazy like that.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: My stuff was crazy, Arabs, terrorists crossing the border.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: This guy's full of it.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: No, I wasn't.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: And and I found that out as soon as I got to the to the other side.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: And uh we did a lot of programs.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: For example, one thing I noticed was that ICE Intel, uh, they're supposed to, and and the FBI, they're supposed to interview every they call them special interest aliens, uh, the guys that are coming from a 40, 35 designated countries.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: If they cross in, they're called an SIA, they get a little stamp on the forehead that nobody can see, where the FBI or ICE Intel or somebody from the feds are supposed to go down and like do a face-on-face, eyeball to eyeball interview.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: Who the hell are you?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but I realized that they were doing about maybe a third, 30% of them.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I stood up a program where I trained all my guys to do interviews, put them through training, got our best polygraph guys, and we went through training and then we collected that intel.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: So we'd go down into the iced detention facilities, uh, all of them, from El Paso to uh Isabel uh every week.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: We were down there collecting the intel before they could bond out and disappear, right?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then we would share that with all of our uh partners.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: So we were my unit was very involved in that stuff.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes there'd be a report on Fox or somewhere like terrorists cross the border, and you know, in the middle of the night I'm getting a call from the big boss.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Yeah, the governor wants to know about this like right now.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: Who is that?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: Is that a true thing?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: Is that true?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: Most of the time it wasn't, but sometimes it was.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I I I think it's super important.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of people non-law enforcement that watch and listen to the show, and I think it's super important that people in general, you know.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: My my sweet mom lives in a bubble and and thinks most people in the world are good, and in her mind, probably immigration is Hispanic people from Mexico coming over for a better life, or coming over to to work in the fields and and do things like that.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's super important for people to understand there is that going on.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it's as one of the terms is OTMs, other than Mexico people coming over.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: People from Syria and Iraq are not coming over here to pick watermelons in the fields and and work in the crops and and you know, trying to look for a farming lifestyle, or that's not why those people are and so the immigration oftentimes gets made into perverted into something that it's not.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about the people coming over here trying to to do better.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the mechanism to control so we don't have terrorists coming across or people with ill will.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Something you care to share on that?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it how important that is?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, first of all, it's important to make the distinction between legal and illegal immigration.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's not all just immigration, and I think that happens too much.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um what's happening at the border is illegal immigration.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: And the problem with illegal immigration is that most everybody coming over is a stranger until we meet them.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: And then even when we meet them, they're a stranger.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're coming at, if you're looking at this from a law enforcement, like from a protection, from a public protection, public safety standpoint, like I think all three of us do, right?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that's a major problem.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know who's coming in.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know what what their history was.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: Did they rape somebody back in the homeland?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh did they murder a bunch of villagers somewhere?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, are they a terrorist that they were killing our troops over there and now they're coming over here mad at us?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think that's natural.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like that is there's nothing xenophobic or racist about that.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's just it's protection.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you go to any other country in the world, there are mechanisms and controls in place to understand who they're accepting into their country.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that and that and that's acceptable.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a right to to know who's coming to your house?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, that's kind of how um how I come at that issue.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh are most of them probably just coming in here to work and make money and send home?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: Probably.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: The the issue is that you have in this mass migration crisis, which is the the greatest in U.S.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: history, we have never had this many people ever in US history.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, even all the way back to Ellis Island.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh this is the greatest mass migration crisis we've ever experienced.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's the time period on for a reference of your saying this is the greatest mass migration?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Last six months, 20, 20 months, five years?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, in the book, I I report that it literally started on inauguration day, January 20th, 2021.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: I can trace it to that day.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_03: They poured in by the hundreds of thousands on that day.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: There had been rumors prior whenever Biden was a part of the Obama administration.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I uh we're not gonna get into politics.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna tell you what if I'm Republican, Democrat, independent.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's really irrelevant.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: However, he's not old enough to vote.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I just bet yeah, okay.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but it was rumored that that during Obama's presidency, uh he there there was there was almost advertisements going on in South America where it was inviting uh immigrants to come up and crawl.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: Was that ever vetted?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: Did you ever hear about that?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: I was there, I was in the Intel Center when all of it was going on.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: So that was true.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: Totally true.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: They were they had billboards.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: So do you think CNN was running um news stories explaining in Spanish exactly how you can get in?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: So let's just let's just call a spade a spade, and if this isn't, again, this is not we're not talking about really politics, but you gotta wonder if if if a certain man in office is is a part of a Democratic Party and that's his message, and I'm not I'm not Saying that I'm pro-Trump or anti-Trump or nothing, but now that Biden comes in and he's a part of the Democratic Party and we have this border crisis, is it is it a voting what is the benefit of why this is going on?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Is it just political stents, political views?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: I you know, I don't know.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think that it that what it what it really boils down to is that the Democratic Party of today is not the Democratic Party of like one election cycle ago.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: There are uh uh there's a fringe element of it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: I think kind of the Bernie Sanders left that rose in power with this election and then were put in place over the immigration policy.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: And their ideology is you know, borders are so yesterday.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: We don't do borders that human rights that U.S.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: civil rights apply to the entire world.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you have the right to come here.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: And detention, deportation, law enforcement is immoral, cruel, and must be ended.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's fascistic, and they say this.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: And those are the people that got control of the immigration policy, and I think they just want to see it implemented for the first time.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: This and they they literally just broke down the laws, the immigration laws, and stopped following them, all of them.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: What I thought was fascinating is during the this last governor election when Beetle Rourke and Abbott uh were going at each other, I thought it was funny because he had a different opinion about the border security, and it was completely opposite of what you know Governor Abbott currently has.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought it was funny because he he he plainly outlines that he doesn't believe in a border and he doesn't believe in so forth.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: But when he was asked, he's got a really tall, nice fence around his home, and you know, he's got a border, so it's you know, it's it's it's it's don't practice what you preach, is what I'm kind of getting at with that.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, not to mix politics into the into the show, but you can because it's just a it's a horrible crisis, and I think that the terrorists realize what's going on in our country and they're capitalizing on our political uh really disagreements right now because you are right.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: We have the political parties of do we have Democrats, Republicans, and independents.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: But right now we have the left-wing Democrats, we have the right wing Republicans, we have Republicans, so it's just a huge mixture right now going on, and you know, I think everybody seems to be united front on uh major issues.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, really upset that my fellow Irishman Francis O'Rourke was brought up in this conversation.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Beto.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, Beto.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: This is a whole different podcast.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: We'll come on one day.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: Shout out, Beto O'Rourke.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: You want to come on and tell your side?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: We'd love to have you on, buddy.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, I spent a lot of time in uh Mexico and uh Central America with the migrants.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: The last two years I've just spent huge amounts of time on the ground with them.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I would say every time I go down there, I'll meet some guy named Jose or whatever, or you know, whatever his name is, and he speaks perfect English.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, where'd you get your English?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, I lived in South Carolina for eight years, which tells me he got in trouble, yeah, paid his dues, and got deported.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: So I always ask, well, what'd you do?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's my first my first question.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, you know, I was framed or whatever, whatever it is.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: But the point is, is why are you going back now?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because whatever you did um was bad enough that you got brought to the attention of law enforcement, you probably were convicted.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: So why are you coming back now?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: And the answer is because I can get in.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: You're letting us in.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: I can I can run it.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so the problem with this border uh breakdown, I guess you would call it, one of the big problems that there are a lot of criminals coming back uh through it.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: And we the administration ended interior deportation.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you know that, but there is no more deportation happening from the interior.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: So they know if they get past that hundred-mile mark, they're in.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: And what we're seeing is a lot of recommits, a lot of recidivism happening with those people.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Now, if we can catch them, and DPS catches them, uh, we thank God they're they're getting caught.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: Some of them are getting caught, but about a million and a half have not gotten caught.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh runners, we call those.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: And so those runners are gonna be a high concentration criminal pool.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Which affects the men and women of law enforcement, and they're no longer in border problem, they're a on the street, men and women on the street facing.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we have I there's no doubt in my mind that there are a lot of criminals that are re-entering the border because it's it's wide open.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: They pulled the Border Patrol had to pull off most of its men and women from the front line to do processing duty for all the people they're letting in.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: We had Chris Kabara on if you if you were aware of that a while ago.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um right now.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: It was was is was it within the last two years, I believe.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: They lead the national law enforcement uh agencies in suicides.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: The men and women of Border Patrol, and I'm not saying that you you you suggested any different, but they want to do a good job.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's just their hands are tied right now with this administration and and they and their struggles right now are real.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, they're handcuffed.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: The horse whipping accident incident because they had reins on their horses, and they are they are completely handcuffed.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: They're a segment of law enforcement that was demonized uh along with everybody else, maybe worse than than regular cops.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh because they were characterized as Nazi thugs and um like something in detention as concentration camps and that sort of thing.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: For years they got that.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then when this the this government got into office, you could feel that they're looking at their border patrol that way.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_03: Demonized, demonized them.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: And when that thing happened in Del Rio with the horses, that was a perfect example.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: They just threw them all under the bus immediately from the top all the way to the top.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: All the way to the top of the world.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Which was crazy, because anybody with any experience interacting with horses knew what those long split reins were, they're just long split reins.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: All you had to do is a Google search on that, and you would know.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: Or you know what?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: There were there was there were guys that had drones right overhead, and the drone footage was published.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like they they didn't touch, I mean, the all anybody had to do is just look at the footage.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Can't let the truth stand in the way of a good story.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um go ahead.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: You you spent some time in Central America and um my time as a cop.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the most ruthless, violent gang members I dealt with were not American.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't bloods or crips.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were from Mexico, Central America, Dorans.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, is that is that something you've interacted or have some knowledge on?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, well, for one thing, you know, the border, the Texas border is mostly, I would say it's like 90% controlled by the cartels.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody comes over, nothing comes through that that's worth any money where they don't get their they don't get a their uh percentage, yeah, their peso.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and in this particular mass migration situation, they are just raking it in.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like it smuggling was like a side hustle for the cartels for most uh anytime I was with DPS all those years, it's like, yeah, I mean, we'll charge, we'll make some money on it, but we're gonna let these ASOs, we call them uh area, like they were smuggling organization, little locals, you know, coyotes and stuff.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_03: They'll handle it and they'll pay us.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: But this thing is so voluminous, so many millions of people coming over that they are like directly involved now and have whole divisions dedicated to it.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: And they um, you know, you there are whole areas of the border I noticed right away in like March 2021 where they they were so swamped they put in place this inventory control system where if you wanted to cross the river, you had to buy like at a water park, you had to pay your money and then get a uh wristband.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: Every single one of them had a wristband, and even the babies had them on their legs.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: So they've turned into like travel agency.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_03: The cartels is like a travel agency and well organized, like six flags, well organized, and they're charging them like$2,500 each.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: So the cartels were just making just uh I I saw um testimony on Capitol Hill from ICE uh Intel where they said the before this started, cartels might have made maybe half a billion a year on human smuggling, but that in the first year they made 13 billion that first year, and 2022 was way bigger than that first year.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: 2023 is going to be way bigger than that.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: So they're just the money is uh like it's nobody can even imagine the money they're making.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: They're just and what do you think they do with that?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: They're buying weapons.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: They're buying weapons.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and as they as the OTMs come over with combat experience from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, it's my understanding they're teaching the Mexican cartels how to use vehicle-borne IEDs, how to accurately they're sharing information on how to carry out their craft.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um I know there's been some car bombings in Mexico, not to the extent that there has been overseas.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, we had to we had to study that over at DPS.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: That that fell to us.
• 32:28
  unknown: Wow.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a scary thought when car bombs were.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and one of the stories I was reviewing is they would take just some crackhead, put him in a police uniform, kill him, put him at the scene next to a uh vehicle-borne IED, call for the police.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, the police are gonna come running because they think there's a law enforcement officer injured.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then when all the first responders arrive, they clack off the the V-bid.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when that comes to America, that's a game changer.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a problem if that starts uh because it's on our front porch.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: It just hasn't crossed the threshold to hear.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, my concern is is that, you know, to to date, I mean, they do there are incursions, but uh they are worried still uh that we would ask the Mexicans to crack down if they got out of hand, if they crossed too many red lines.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: But my worry is that they are now so powerful and moneyed that that if we did ask the Mexicans to put the smack down on them, that the Mexicans wouldn't be able to.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: In which case in which case we have no leverage on them.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: We'll see.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: We'll see.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's a you know, those guys are a Texas problem.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: We at DPS we spent, we had a ton of resources dedicated to that.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: We had cops, we had informants, we had analyst groups that were dedicated because they it's a cross-border thing what they're involved in.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: The trans uh transnational criminal organizations, TCOs, we call them.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, we had to stay smart on them all the time because they were doing things.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: They were killing people over here, they're beheading people, they're doing um money laundering, they're having money uh moving through Texas back south over.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and Texas plays a huge role.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think people realize how big a role we play.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Texas law enforcement in all kinds of border-related uh criminal activity.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: And it's complex stuff, cross-border stuff that requires federal agencies and um cooperation with even uh Mexican uh intelligence.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, man, you actually just published a book that came out recently, Overrun How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: history.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, you've kind of touched on some some obviously some border issues.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: We've just talked about it.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh give us some kind of highlights on the on the on the book and and then uh kind of go into get you know detail on where people can find it, our our our viewers, watchers, listeners, and uh just talk about the book, man.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: So the book is uh just published uh Tuesday last week.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's like one week fresh.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's on bookstore shelves, it's out there, you know, it's like a you know on Amazon and anywhere you you want to find it.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: And um this is uh kind of a compilation of all of my reporting for the last two years down on the border and beyond it.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and trying to explain to people how this thing got started, why it why it started, why it's continuing, uh, why we can't seem to shut it down, uh, they don't want to shut it down, and what the implications are of it for the country, because this is transformational.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: The numbers of people coming into the country is just gonna change everything, uh, soup to nuts in this country, especially after another two years of this.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: We should have somewhere in the neighborhood of um maybe eight to ten million new people in the country.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and a lot of them are, most of them are gonna be low education, low-skilled, um, non-English speaking peoples that need help, that need support.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: Significant.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: And significant, and um, there's going to be a uh I write extensively about this, there is going to be a criminal problem.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: We're already seeing it everywhere.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and and not like normal crime.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: Horrendous, horrific, you know, you know, little girls tied to the bed kind of stuff.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm not saying that it's just all of them are criminals.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just saying that that that we have a lot of people who have re-entered the country that are dangerous.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: Who are dangerous.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because the floodgates are open.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: Because the floodgates are open and we're not deporting.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_03: We're not deporting the criminals.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: We won't deport the criminals.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and one of the highlights of the book, I think, is where you know, I'm kind of talking about the uh agency ICE and um how it has been handcuffed, the ERO uh detention and removal guys um were systematically handcuffed.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: They are not allowed to arrest even even criminal aliens with with removal orders on them.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um in most of the country, when law enforcement has one of these guys in jail, uh they won't let them contact ICE afterwards to say, come get them, they're getting out Tuesday, this guy's got a detainer, come get 'em.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: All that's off the I was shocked to hear, I learned probably two months ago that I I worked in the jail when I was a kid.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if I got somebody that came in, had no information, no ID, clearly spoke no English, every indication was that they were here illegally.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: I had a number I'd call IS guy that'd be like, cool, I'll be buying a little bit or I'll be by in the morning.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: He'd go back to there, he'd come back and go, put a detainer on him.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll as soon as he bonds out, I'll I'll take him.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody told me That's over.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is completely so I said, even if I even if I know without a doubt he's here illegally, he's like, you can't call and they won't come.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: That's exactly right.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: So that's just one one uh part of a really broad uh rainbow of uh you know operations that no longer happen between ICE and and and the police.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: So um let's just call it what it is.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's just failed protection.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that that's what it is.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's what it is.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's a theme.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're saying that ICE is handcuffed.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Chris told us they're completely handcuffed.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a theme.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: Mayors and DAs and you know, people of cities, you know, officials in cities just shut it down too.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: You will not, you will not it in Democratic Austin, for example, good luck.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: If you're in the Travis County Sheriff Department and you've got a real bad guy coming out of jail, don't even bother.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: They're not gonna come pick them up.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: And and and a lot of times, you know, those folks come out of jail and they go right into a crime, right into from jail to crime right away.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so that kind of thing is what I'm talking about when I say transformational uh uh uh in law for law and order in the United States.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna change.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna start seeing this.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: You already are, you already are uh really weird crime.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like like foreign kind of crime, you know.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um the other thing about the book is you know, it's got a um a full-throated chapter about what Texas has been doing down on the border.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, good.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh whether it's um to the to the benefit, uh whether it worked or not, you know, I reported it and I've been down there and I know DPS.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I was there for all of the years of Operation Strong Safety.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: My analysts were constantly having to rotate down there, and um, you know, we were focused on the border back during that time.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: And they're doing the same thing now, but in like quadruple the money, quadruple the manpower.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um and the chapter really discusses um Operation Lone Star, and um I'm a I'm a kind of I'm a fan of Operation.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'll just tell you, I I like Operation Lone Star.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: I've been there on the front lines, I'm with the guys uh on the ground, and the the program does something really important.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things, and and people criticize it, if you read the media, my my colleagues, my former colleagues, they're just pillorying, pillaring this thing, yeah, this program left and right.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, they're not, it's not what they say it is.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: They're you know, they're they're you know tormenting these poor immigrants.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: And but what happened in this mass migration crisis is that the administration invited most nationalities to cross and give up.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: And then if you give up, we're gonna put you on a bus in a day or two with a paper and you're free.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that requires administrative duty.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: So they brought all the Border Patrol off the line.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: Let's say 3,000 people cross at some spot in Eagle Pass or whatever.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they got to bring in every Border Patrol agent for 100 miles to deal with this for two days.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: That means there's nobody on the line.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: That means that those criminal aliens I was telling you about, the guys that speak perfect English because they lived in South Carolina for eight years, are coming in.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_03: That means that the drug cartels are moving dope.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_03: That means they're moving guns, they're bringing money.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's just wide open.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's the Wild West there.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_03: What Operation, the beauty of Operation Lone Star is it puts somebody there.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody's there.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Deterrent.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: Deterrent, and they're they're they're uh dry they're you know, picking up loads, they're hauling um, they're you know chasing guys, there's uh I mean they're moving, they're arresting uh criminal aliens that would have gotten through otherwise.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: They give those to Border Patrol and they kick them back.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: So they're doing something really important, uh, in my opinion.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: Now, did Greg Abbott do everything great?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, some of the programs that he's some of the things he's done and said are just seem like they're kind of empty.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: They're they're kind of stunty, you know, putting migrants on buses and shipping.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: It was funny for some of us, but it got some folks' attention.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: It got attention.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: It drew it was political uh theater, but but it didn't really do much.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: So so let me ask you this the floodgates are wide open.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Chris used an analogy when he was on the other day.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: If your sink is leaking You don't just keep bailing water with a Dixie cup.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: You turn the water off, you fix the issue, and then you turn the water back on.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: You d otherwise you're just gonna bail water with a Dixie cup for the rest of your life.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: The floodgates are wide open.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: How do we walk this back?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Can you walk it back?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what's Todd's opinion of the controversial wall?
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I'll get remind me about that.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: But the r the this can be walked back overnight.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: This is not complex policy stuff.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: It works like this, and I know this from interviewing probably five hundred immigrants.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and I I I don't even I didn't count 'em, but I mean I'm had to be at least five hundred uh just for this book.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so what what drives their uh decisions to move on the border is if they know they're going to get in and that they're gonna get to stay in once they're in, they'll drop ten grand on smuggling.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_03: So what the Biden administration did is they put policies in place that guaranteed that their money was gonna pay off, and that they were gonna get in and be able to pay that back, and then multiples.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the risk is low.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: They pay their money, they're gonna get in.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's like a game, it's all about the cal the a gamble calculus.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: And what they did was they they just um made these exemptions, carved exemptions in Title 42, which was this pushback for the pandemic pushback policies, and they said all of these nationalities get in.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: These ones don't.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_03: All of these demographics of people get in, right?
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_03: So everybody in the world who fit those nationalities and demographics poured in uh and spent the money.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: They laid their their bet on the felt and they had a 99% chance of getting the payoff, right?
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: So to turn that back around is you put policies in place that make their$10,000 a loss.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: You don't get a payoff.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: You're not even gonna bother leaving home.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I don't go to Vegas.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_03: This is a Vegas lesson.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_03: But it's a human I mean, it this is basic hu human behavior, right?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: Risk reward.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean when if if you get a uh you know a police policing offer from you know someplace in Chicago, you're gonna going to sit down and you're gonna go, if I do this, will I make more money over time?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: Will my retirement be better?
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: Will my life be better?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, all those things, that's what they're doing.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_03: And what they don't want to do is end up stuck in Mexico with with a debt to maybe bad guys.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so it's really that simple.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: And there are policies that Trump had in place that did that.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they were removed immediately.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_03: Put them back in and reduce the odds that you're gonna get a return on that investment, and it's over.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's I mean, it's literally over.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you gotta read the fine print.
• 47:11
  unknown: Yeah.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, uh, and you said the air you you can get these on Amazon and and at bookstores.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the book.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I haven't been to a bookstore yet.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna go over to the one here in Austin and see if it's on the shelf.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: That'd be cool to walk in and see if see your own book that you haven't seen, I haven't seen it yet.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'll never get to experience that.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: There's no doubt about it.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: Clint, Todd's thoughts on the wall before we leave that.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: On the wall.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I was there the day construction stopped.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: I have a whole chapter on that.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I went to the it was in like in the middle of New Mexico and I found the spot.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I was there watching, and they were packing up all the stuff and you know, driving away.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_03: And um, you know, I interviewed a lot of Border Patrol guys.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh everywhere I went on that trip, I was like, hey, how's this wall helping you?
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: And in my opinion, the greatest experts on walls in the world are uh United States Border Patrol agents uh who work on the wall.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: They put their 40s in every week on the wall.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like, who else would you ask?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: Why would you bother to ask anyone else whether the walls work?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_03: Some some uh liberal guy in um upstate New York.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Some guy in Iowa probably knows a lot about the wall on the way.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so here's how they explain it.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, well, you know, uh when there are where there are walls, all that pedestrian traffic won't won't go there.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_03: They'll find they'll look for a gap and they'll go to the gap and cross through.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, this when they ended construction, there were gaps everywhere.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_03: I remember flying in a DPS chopper over the border uh doing a thing, and you know, you could just see it look like shark teeth all the way for miles and miles, gaps everywhere.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so they they move to the gaps.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: When there are continuous walls, the only people that cross are Olympiad, you know, athletes in the drug trade who like are you know, you're gonna be able to do that.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they'll be showing you those those videos of the guys coming up, and they're like these young 22-year-old dudes that are just like strong as you know.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh normal people don't do that.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's 30 feet up.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna die, you're scared.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm not going up that wall, man.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: No way.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, unless I'm gonna make about 20 grand on a drug deal, then I might think about it, or they're cutting through it.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: So the walls slow everything down, yeah.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: And they may they deter the vast majority of people from from crossing in.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, I'm gonna get stuck behind that wall and I can't cross it.
• 49:49
  unknown: Yeah.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think they work, and the border patrol loves them.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: If the border patrol loves wall and they're spending 40 down there every week, I love them.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if a wall's good for the White House and many other places, I'm I would assume the wall is a is a great deterrent and obstacle.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: It is.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, brother, I can't thank you enough for coming on.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's been interesting.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Looking forward to reading your book.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what an accomplishment.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is this your first book to publish?
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it's my second book.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh first one was it's called America's Covert Border War.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it's all about those uh jihadis coming in.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's cool.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_03: And by the way, in this border crisis, they started keeping track of the guys that are crossing that they catch who are on the FBI's watch list, terrorism watch list.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_03: 98 in 2022.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and so far this year, 51.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_03: They're crossing in.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they were headed to California to pick strawberries.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you want to do the quick rapid questions?
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do it, too.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: First, uh, listen, I I I I know you weren't a road troop for DPS, but I've got faith that you'll answer this in my favor.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: In my favor.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: Best or your favorite cop movie or line from a cop movie?
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man, I'm not prepared for this.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it's off the cuff.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a pass or fail.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: Every answer's right.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm a I'm a blank on that.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna be terrible at this game.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, we can circle back to it.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Favorite car, favorite model of car or DPS issue or any car, best car you've had.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh God, I had a a Ram, Dodge Ram uh pickup right now.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's got UPU horsepower in it.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: I love that thing.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_03: So that's my favorite one right now.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_03: Ram Rebel.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_03: Ram Rebel.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_03: Ram Rebel.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm kind of partial to the Broncos for those new Broncos guys.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_03: I like the old one.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sesquatch package.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and Todd's drink.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: Adult refreshment, or if you don't drink alcohol, your favorite go-to relax drink.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: Nah, man, I'm a Blue Moon beer guy.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_03: Blue Moon like that.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_03: I've had one in a long time.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Slice of orange or no slice?
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: Slice of orange is good.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: Shock top.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: Have you had shock top?
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I don't think so.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: Shock top's very similar, but yeah.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: Very, very, very good beer.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: First Blue Mooner.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: We've had y'all check out Overrun, Todd Benzman.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the first book is America's Covert Border War.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that one sounds really good to me.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a good one.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's and it's relevant because jihadis are still coming across.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_03: I I just was in Tijuana a few months ago and I went there to investigate a Muslim-only immigrant shelter two blocks from the wall.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I wrote a big huge piece on that.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_03: On the national security applications, uh, I've I've met all these Chechens outside, I interviewed all these Chechens.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, tons of them.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Tajikistanis, um Afghans, Syrians, and they're all going to this place and nobody cares.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_03: They the lady that who runs the place, I asked, has anybody from American intelligence ever approached you and asked you anything?
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, no.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: Which is really sad, the entire culture has changed along the border because when I grew up, I had friends and family along the border that you would go across for the day and eat dinner and goof off and go shopping.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the Marines and I heard Marines back in the days to go to Tijuana.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there's not a there's not an environment anymore where anyone should feel comfortable running across to grab dinner or go shopping, which is really sad because uh I'm 50.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so it wasn't all that long ago where it was a really cross-border environment that was completely safe, and I wouldn't, it's just not a great environment.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's really sad.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I gotta stop doing that.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, again, man, we appreciate you coming on.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I'm looking forward to reading the book.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_02: Is it uh is it on the audiobooks or is it on the not yet, not yet, not yet.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe maybe me and Clint can do that for you.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, you got anything else, Clint?
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hit subscribe, like, uh, shoot us an email, Blue Grit Podcast at TMPA.org.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: TMPA.org.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: Give us feedback, hit subscribe, like, comment.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you got ideas for a guest on here, we'd love to hear it.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: Todd cannot thank you enough for coming on and sharing with us.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, happy to support what you guys are doing and help keep on keeping on.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you, man.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: Check out overrun.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: Go blue.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: God bless you guys, stay safe, and as always, may God bless Texas.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_02: We're out.