Latest / The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson / Bad Hombres ft. DHS Secretary Chad Wolf

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Bad Hombres ft. DHS Secretary Chad Wolf · The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson

0:00
Speaker 1: A crisis at the border, a crisis within the borders,
0:04
Speaker 1: civil unrest all over the country, and we are lucky
0:08
Speaker 1: enough to have taken a little bit of time out
0:10
Speaker 1: of the day of the man who has to deal
0:12
Speaker 1: with all of it, the Acting Secretary of the Department
0:15
Speaker 1: of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
0:25
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I am joined
0:27
Speaker 1: as always by Senator Ted Cruz and mister Secretary, Thank
0:30
Speaker 1: you so much for taking the time out. I know
0:32
Speaker 1: you're very busy, but certainly a pleasure. Thank you for
0:35
Speaker 1: having me. So is there anything to talk about? I
0:38
Speaker 1: think there are a few things. The world's on fire.
0:41
Speaker 1: The world is on fire, and mister Secretary, you've got
0:44
Speaker 1: to deal with a lot of it. Let's begin all
0:46
Speaker 1: the way on the West Coast in Portland. There has
0:49
Speaker 1: been violence, civil unrest and has fallen on you to
0:53
Speaker 1: deal with it. Absolutely, what we see in Portland, as
0:56
Speaker 1: I've talked about probably over the last several weeks, is
0:58
Speaker 1: very different than what we see anywhere else in the country.
1:01
Speaker 1: We have a community that has fostered an environment of
1:05
Speaker 1: violence in Portland. This goes back to twenty eighteen where
1:08
Speaker 1: we had an ice facility, a DHS facility set siege
1:11
Speaker 1: to for about twenty eight days, and for twenty eight days,
1:14
Speaker 1: the local law enforcement didn't do anything to help our employees.
1:17
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a history. If I remember right,
1:19
Speaker 1: the mayor Ted wheel Wheeler, who's also the Commissioner Police,
1:23
Speaker 1: he announced at the time when when the ice facility
1:26
Speaker 1: was was under assault that the police wouldn't protect it.
1:29
Speaker 1: Is that's correct? That's correct? And what did that? So
1:31
Speaker 1: let's go back to because there's there's a history here
1:34
Speaker 1: that sets the stage. So they're attacking the ice facility,
1:38
Speaker 1: mayor says, police, forget it, you don't get police protection.
1:40
Speaker 1: So what happened then? So it took about twenty eight
1:43
Speaker 1: days and we had to send in federal law enforcement officers.
1:46
Speaker 1: We had to send in a contingent of DHS officers,
1:48
Speaker 1: but we also had some DOJ officers, some marshals and
1:50
Speaker 1: others that went in provided egress entry and exit from
1:57
Speaker 1: that facility to get our employees back and forth, make
1:59
Speaker 1: sure they're that facility was protected. There there were weapons
2:02
Speaker 1: in the facility just to make sure it was secure. Uh.
2:05
Speaker 1: And then we had those individuals. Was there violence that
2:09
Speaker 1: there wasn'tov cocktail starting out the facility. It was damaged,
2:13
Speaker 1: it was vandalized. They did not get inside, luckily, but
2:16
Speaker 1: the outside was vandalized all right. So fast forward to
2:18
Speaker 1: now what exactly is happening in Portland? I guess there's
2:22
Speaker 1: a federal courthouse and a federal building. Is that right?
2:24
Speaker 1: Are there two places in particular that where the conflict is? Right?
2:27
Speaker 1: So we've got about five federal facilities in Portland. There
2:30
Speaker 1: is the Mark Hatfield Federal Courthouse, which is where ninety
2:34
Speaker 1: five percent of the violence has taken place, and that's
2:36
Speaker 1: a working courthouse, like right now, there are cases going
2:38
Speaker 1: on in the courthouse today. There is a grand jury
2:41
Speaker 1: in the courthouse today. And we are being told though
2:43
Speaker 1: that the violent protests they're actually just peaceful demonstrations that
2:47
Speaker 1: are happening at this courthouse. What's the real story, Well,
2:50
Speaker 1: there's both. So what we see is we see peaceful protesting.
2:52
Speaker 1: So then we got all the gook back to the
2:53
Speaker 1: George Floyd death, which is really when all this started
2:56
Speaker 1: in Portland. We see very peaceful protest every day. So
3:00
Speaker 1: for sixty days we see peaceful protests. They usually occur
3:03
Speaker 1: between six and seven o'clock at night, and they run
3:05
Speaker 1: to about eleven o'clock at night, and then there's a
3:07
Speaker 1: small break and about how many people are we talking?
3:09
Speaker 1: Typically we see several hundred, several hundred peaceful protests, their
3:12
Speaker 1: speeches being made, a clus out there. There's a variety
3:15
Speaker 1: of different groups out there that does not make the
3:17
Speaker 1: media that you know. I remember a period during the
3:22
Speaker 1: whole Seattle Chazz schud. I couldn't come up with the
3:27
Speaker 1: new chop. We've been calling it the Soviet Union, but
3:30
Speaker 1: there are other names. But during that whole thing in Seattle,
3:33
Speaker 1: I remember, I think I commented on Twitter that that
3:36
Speaker 1: Portland was quite peaceful while Seattle was had this autonomous zone.
3:41
Speaker 1: And it was like, wow, when when Portland thinks you're
3:44
Speaker 1: you're doing a bad job in law enforcement, you've really
3:46
Speaker 1: taken a bad turn. And it seems after the Chazz
3:49
Speaker 1: Chop whatever was disbanded, that's that seems to be about
3:53
Speaker 1: the time Portland got a lot worse. Yeah, what we
3:55
Speaker 1: saw over the course of June was progressively got getting
3:59
Speaker 1: more and more violent. We started sending Federal Protective Service
4:03
Speaker 1: officers to that courthouse to provide some additional support. What
4:07
Speaker 1: is the Federal Protective Service officer? What does that? So?
4:10
Speaker 1: Fps Federal Protective Service is a component of the Department
4:14
Speaker 1: of Homewade Security. They secure about nine thousand, almost nine
4:17
Speaker 1: thousand federal facilities, mostly owned by GSA. These are federal facilities.
4:21
Speaker 1: So these are not all enforcement officers that are protecting
4:24
Speaker 1: federal buildings. Yeah, so it's courthouses, but it's also maybe
4:27
Speaker 1: you're so security administration is there, it's where federal benefits
4:30
Speaker 1: are exercised in any given city state, they are protecting
4:35
Speaker 1: those buildings. They'd largely do that with a contract force,
4:38
Speaker 1: but they also have federal officers. So in Portland and
4:41
Speaker 1: I guess there's there's a long history of violence against
4:43
Speaker 1: federal buildings. Obviously, Ted Kazinski blowing up the federal building
4:48
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma was horrific, and I mean that this is
4:51
Speaker 1: not a new threatening thing. It's not anything at all.
4:54
Speaker 1: In fact, under the last administration and Secretary Johnson, DHS
4:58
Speaker 1: secretary deployed federal resources to federal facilities because of certain
5:05
Speaker 1: demonstrations in Baltimore after Freddy Gray's death. He deployed additional
5:09
Speaker 1: resources there because there was violence directed at federal facilities.
5:13
Speaker 1: So this is nothing new. We do this all the
5:15
Speaker 1: time at the department. It's only now getting certain attention.
5:17
Speaker 1: You know. We've been told also, and I think you've
5:20
Speaker 1: run a good distinction here between the peaceful protesters and
5:23
Speaker 1: then these violent anarchists who show up at night. We've
5:25
Speaker 1: been told though, this is a grassroots movement, a sort
5:28
Speaker 1: of spontaneous uprising. You think it's organized, Oh, absolutely, it's
5:31
Speaker 1: absolutely organized. So again we come back. So, for sixty
5:34
Speaker 1: nights in a row, we saw between midnight and five am,
5:38
Speaker 1: these are violent individuals, violent criminals, violent opportunists, violent anarchists.
5:42
Speaker 1: And how many are we talking anywhere from five hundred
5:45
Speaker 1: at the height to about five thousand. Wow, So these
5:48
Speaker 1: are five thousand individuals that are outside of a courthouse.
5:51
Speaker 1: We had to put up temporary fencing. They took it down,
5:53
Speaker 1: they lit it on fire, and they barricaded our folks
5:55
Speaker 1: inside the courthouse. Very very dangerous. So we reinforced the fencing.
5:59
Speaker 1: It did help, but you have violent individuals approaching that
6:02
Speaker 1: fence line every night. They stage in a park, a
6:06
Speaker 1: city park, to city parks across the street, they stage there.
6:09
Speaker 1: They use city streets to come to that facility and
6:11
Speaker 1: then they will stay there for several hours while the
6:14
Speaker 1: city police the state police did nothing. Well. This brings
6:17
Speaker 1: up an important question too, which is a lot of
6:19
Speaker 1: the people who are defending these anarchists are saying that
6:23
Speaker 1: the federal government has no right to go and arrest
6:26
Speaker 1: them if they leave the federal property and they go
6:28
Speaker 1: on to city property. So again, just inaccurate information, they
6:31
Speaker 1: just don't know what they're talking about. So forty years,
6:34
Speaker 1: I can't believe that no nobody in politics would ever
6:37
Speaker 1: say something if they didn't know what they were talking So,
6:39
Speaker 1: you know, the US Code coret you know, passed by
6:41
Speaker 1: Congress statute gives us the ability not only to protect
6:44
Speaker 1: our facilities, but to investigate and arrest individuals that we
6:48
Speaker 1: see that are damaging our facilities off property. So this
6:51
Speaker 1: idea that you can damage a federal facility and then
6:55
Speaker 1: step across the road and say sorry, you can't touch me.
6:57
Speaker 1: It's very similar to if someone walked up to the
6:59
Speaker 1: United States Capital tried to burn the capital down and
7:02
Speaker 1: step across the street and say sorry, you can't touch me.
7:04
Speaker 1: It's not how long would work, It would not work. No,
7:08
Speaker 1: no ideas anymore yeah, not work. And that's what really
7:12
Speaker 1: we were up against for sixty days in Portland. So
7:15
Speaker 1: you have to hold individuals accountable. So DHS, along with
7:19
Speaker 1: the Marshall Service started making a rest because state and
7:21
Speaker 1: local law enforcement refused to. So how much violence are
7:25
Speaker 1: we talking about? Is this one guy taking a swing
7:28
Speaker 1: at somebody? I mean, I mean, what help people understand one?
7:31
Speaker 1: Actually you see kind of images online. You see some
7:34
Speaker 1: fires and people pulling on fences. But what's what's really
7:37
Speaker 1: going on? I say, initially, I would say the most
7:41
Speaker 1: I would say lease violent that you would see would
7:43
Speaker 1: be bricks being thrown at law enforcement officers. That's the
7:45
Speaker 1: least violent. That's the least violent. Bricks you see, frozen
7:48
Speaker 1: water bottles, anything that's hard, hard can food you see
7:52
Speaker 1: being thrown at law enforcement officers as they come out
7:56
Speaker 1: and try to protect the facility. It then starts to
7:58
Speaker 1: ratch it up. We've seen molotov tales, officers have taken
8:02
Speaker 1: sledgehammers to the head. We see IED's being thrown up there.
8:06
Speaker 1: You're saying people are hitting police officers in the head
8:08
Speaker 1: with sledgehaders. Correct, How many officers have been injured during
8:12
Speaker 1: the core support for DHS. We've had over two hundred
8:15
Speaker 1: and forty seven different injuries to law enforcement officers, about
8:18
Speaker 1: over one that's just Portland. That's just Portland. Holy crap,
8:22
Speaker 1: that's just Portland. Two hundred and forty seven different injuries
8:26
Speaker 1: to law enforcement officers. About over a hundred officers have
8:29
Speaker 1: individually been injured. And Portland, by the way, is not
8:32
Speaker 1: the only site of this violence. We've been seeing it
8:34
Speaker 1: in other cities as well. We see a little different
8:36
Speaker 1: violence in different cities, you know, whether it's Chicago, Kansas City, Albuquerquet,
8:40
Speaker 1: even Seattle. That's more street crime. There is some organized
8:44
Speaker 1: violence as well, but Portland is very different than any
8:46
Speaker 1: other city we've seen. As I indicated, thousands of folks
8:49
Speaker 1: every night for sixty days come to a fence line
8:52
Speaker 1: around a federal courthouse and want to burn it down.
8:55
Speaker 1: There's their video on that. What are they doing with lasers?
8:57
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's harmless, right, That's just a pointer
8:59
Speaker 1: like putting its No, not at all. They there's some
9:01
Speaker 1: pretty powerful lasers they're using. So as the law enforcement
9:04
Speaker 1: officers come out of the building to protect it, they
9:06
Speaker 1: will shine the green lasers in their eyes and unfortunately,
9:09
Speaker 1: we have about three officers that are going to have
9:10
Speaker 1: some probably permanent damage. When you say permanent damage, they're
9:14
Speaker 1: facing partial or total blind We're waiting for medical to
9:18
Speaker 1: come back. But that's that's what we're hearing at the moment. Yes, okay,
9:21
Speaker 1: so it's not I mean I can see people thinking, oh,
9:24
Speaker 1: you know, I play with a pointer at home and
9:26
Speaker 1: my cat chases it. That's that's That's not it aiming
9:31
Speaker 1: real and powerful lasers at the eyeballs of officers and
9:35
Speaker 1: you've got three who are seriously injured. We do so,
9:38
Speaker 1: we've taken corrective measures. We've given them some eyewear that
9:40
Speaker 1: protects against that. But this is a new tactic from
9:43
Speaker 1: these individuals that we have first seen here in Portland.
9:45
Speaker 1: And I guess one of the challenges is a lot
9:48
Speaker 1: of these guys are dressed in all black. They're wearing goggles,
9:51
Speaker 1: are wearing a mask. And so if you have someone
9:54
Speaker 1: throw a brick and it hits an officer and he's bleeding,
9:56
Speaker 1: you have someone right point a laser and it blinds
10:00
Speaker 1: an officer, you can't always tell who did it. I mean,
10:03
Speaker 1: they're all dressed the same. I mean, is that part
10:05
Speaker 1: of what they're trying to do. Absolutely, it's very difficult,
10:07
Speaker 1: and they do that on purpose, and they we see
10:09
Speaker 1: tactics that they use that are very similar to law enforcement.
10:12
Speaker 1: They try to obscure their movements. They do a number
10:14
Speaker 1: of different things that make it difficult for law enforcement
10:17
Speaker 1: to engage with them. Now we have our own tactics,
10:20
Speaker 1: we are able to identify certain individuals that are lighting
10:23
Speaker 1: fires throwing. We've seen barbecues being tossed over the fence.
10:27
Speaker 1: They're on fire. A barbecue grill, yeah, like a like
10:30
Speaker 1: a Weber grill, yeah, tossed over. Do they at least
10:33
Speaker 1: put burgers? And something tells me they're not that courteous.
10:36
Speaker 1: We see mortar style, commercial grade tofu. They wouldn't be burgers.
10:41
Speaker 1: That really, I gotta say in Texas, those are fighting words.
10:44
Speaker 1: If you throw a barbecue with nothing but tofu and
10:46
Speaker 1: veggie burgers, it's just route. It's just that's the only
10:49
Speaker 1: thing that commercial grade fireworks are being thrown in and
10:52
Speaker 1: so as those explode several inches from officers, it can
10:55
Speaker 1: become very very dangerous. They get burnt. This is not
10:59
Speaker 1: somebody light in a black cat like a mortar style
11:02
Speaker 1: firework that gets shot from across the street, inside the
11:05
Speaker 1: park into the facility. Mister Secretary, the scene that you
11:09
Speaker 1: are describing, and I think the scene that a lot
11:11
Speaker 1: of us have seen on television is one that we
11:14
Speaker 1: would expect in a foreign country in the Middle East,
11:17
Speaker 1: in a war zone. This is not the sort of
11:19
Speaker 1: thing we would expect within the borders of the United States. Absolutely,
11:23
Speaker 1: and I've been saying that for almost over a month
11:26
Speaker 1: now that the violence that we see in Portland. People
11:28
Speaker 1: have to understand it's not a few protesters who are
11:31
Speaker 1: getting angry and deciding to bang on offense. These are
11:34
Speaker 1: violent individuals that are organized. They have supply lines. This
11:37
Speaker 1: is an organized entity here that is doing this. And unfortunately,
11:43
Speaker 1: despite our request, we have state and local law enforcement
11:46
Speaker 1: up until recently, for sixty days, refused to engage these folks.
11:50
Speaker 1: So are the cops behaving differently now? Are they politicians?
11:53
Speaker 1: Let them actually do their job? They have so at
11:56
Speaker 1: the middle of July, I want to say, I place
11:57
Speaker 1: phone calls to the Mayor of Portland as well to
12:00
Speaker 1: the government of Oregan and I basically put any any
12:03
Speaker 1: resource at the department at their hands, you know, for
12:06
Speaker 1: them as they addressed the violence, they had the full
12:08
Speaker 1: resources of the department. Their response was no, thank you,
12:11
Speaker 1: and please leave Portland, which of course we didn't do.
12:14
Speaker 1: And if you'd left Portland, what would have happened that
12:16
Speaker 1: the facility would have burned, the courthouse would have burned.
12:19
Speaker 1: But you're saying what the mayor and governor were saying
12:22
Speaker 1: is just abandoned the Federal court absolutely and let the
12:26
Speaker 1: mob burn the courthouse to the ground. That's that was
12:28
Speaker 1: their request of me. Well, you know, this ties into
12:31
Speaker 1: the same strategy we've heard from the same people on
12:35
Speaker 1: the international front, which is, don't enforce our border with Mexico,
12:39
Speaker 1: allow the border to be totally open, allow people to
12:42
Speaker 1: come in. And DHS has been a particular object of
12:46
Speaker 1: those criticisms. What is DHS. It's a pretty new new agency.
12:49
Speaker 1: What all falls within the umbrellas. So we have about
12:53
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty thousand employees across the enterprise. Are
12:56
Speaker 1: y'all the biggest civilian agency so other than DoD, I
13:00
Speaker 1: leave the Veterans Administrations a little bit bigger. Interesting just
13:02
Speaker 1: from a pure side standpoint. So within the department, we
13:07
Speaker 1: do everything from aviation security, so the commercial checkpoint security
13:12
Speaker 1: that you see as you get on commercial aircraft, we
13:14
Speaker 1: do that TSA. TSA, so TSA reports to you TSA
13:18
Speaker 1: Customs and Border Protection, so we talk about border security.
13:20
Speaker 1: They're certainly along that border. You know, when they do
13:24
Speaker 1: the groping at the stands, it'd be really good if
13:28
Speaker 1: they could like just do the lower back a little
13:30
Speaker 1: more an official request. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, look,
13:33
Speaker 1: if you're got to get it, I got to sore
13:35
Speaker 1: muscle down there. Well, they got to. They have to
13:37
Speaker 1: continue to do their job. I say thank you to
13:40
Speaker 1: them every time. I'm a diplomatic. As long as we
13:43
Speaker 1: don't have any incidents in the skies, I'm happy. Customs
13:46
Speaker 1: and Order Protection ICE Immigration Customs enforcement is also inside
13:51
Speaker 1: the department USCIS. Which so what's the difference between Customs
13:54
Speaker 1: and Border Protection and ICE. Sure, CBP A customers and
13:57
Speaker 1: mainly protecting our border southwest border, northern border, m border.
14:02
Speaker 1: So those are the guys in green, they're they're not
14:04
Speaker 1: they're in the Rio grand They're absolutely they're not only
14:07
Speaker 1: the men and women in green, but they're also in blue.
14:09
Speaker 1: So as you come to a port of entry and
14:11
Speaker 1: you're legally coming to the US, you're going to have
14:13
Speaker 1: to go through several officers and go through a process,
14:16
Speaker 1: so they do not only legal but illegal entry into
14:19
Speaker 1: the US. Okay, So that's CBP and then ICE is
14:22
Speaker 1: what ICE is, Immigrations and Customs Enforcements. So these are
14:25
Speaker 1: the individuals. We have both ICE E r O, which
14:28
Speaker 1: is our removal operations, So these are individuals that will
14:31
Speaker 1: go into communities, identify criminals, identify other individuals that have
14:35
Speaker 1: no legal right to be in the US, and remove them.
14:38
Speaker 1: We also have homemade security MS thirteen absolute gang members. Yes,
14:42
Speaker 1: you've got ICE officers going in arresting them, and some
14:47
Speaker 1: of these guys can be pretty violent, very very dangerous,
14:50
Speaker 1: very dangerous. The large majority of I would say targets
14:54
Speaker 1: that we get are actually from individual jails and courthouses,
14:59
Speaker 1: so it's in visuals that have probably have gotten picked
15:01
Speaker 1: up on another criminal charge, come to find out very
15:05
Speaker 1: illegally here in the US. We would then go in,
15:09
Speaker 1: you know, ascertain them, and then start removing. There were
15:13
Speaker 1: now widespread calls among one political party to abolish that
15:18
Speaker 1: entire enforcement agency. So it's not just the removal operations.
15:21
Speaker 1: We have homemade security investigations, which a transnational criminal organizations
15:25
Speaker 1: drug trafficking. They do a variety of national security missions
15:28
Speaker 1: that are part of ICE. So part of what they
15:31
Speaker 1: want to ambolish our criminal investigators protecting communities from a
15:36
Speaker 1: varide variety of threats. So I think it's an interesting
15:39
Speaker 1: arc of development because a couple of years ago, the
15:42
Speaker 1: Democrats seized upon abolish ICE. I mean it started with AOC,
15:45
Speaker 1: It started off with a few kind of fringe characters,
15:48
Speaker 1: and then it expanded and some of what you guys
15:51
Speaker 1: faced in Portland with Ted Wheeler refusing to protect the
15:55
Speaker 1: ICE facilities was a manifestation back then that they were
16:00
Speaker 1: saying get rid of ICE. That's now transmogrified into abolish
16:05
Speaker 1: all police that that that that it's not just ICE that,
16:07
Speaker 1: but it's it's anyone with a badge and a gun
16:10
Speaker 1: is apparently now the bad guy. Um what so Nancy
16:15
Speaker 1: Pelosi has called your officers stormtroopers. Yes, it's what do
16:20
Speaker 1: you what do you make of that? Well, she's not
16:22
Speaker 1: only called them stormtroopers. I heard him be referred to
16:25
Speaker 1: as the Gestapo or thugs as well. Uh, completely irresponsible comments.
16:29
Speaker 1: I've called on each of those members of Congress that
16:32
Speaker 1: have said those terms to apologize to the men and
16:34
Speaker 1: women of DHS, these are civil law enforcement officers, get
16:38
Speaker 1: up every day, put on a badge, put on a uniform,
16:40
Speaker 1: protect their communities. So these are cops. They're federal cops,
16:42
Speaker 1: but they're they're law enforcement officers protecting us. Absolutely, they do.
16:46
Speaker 1: They go to training, they establish, they have procedures that
16:49
Speaker 1: they follow, they have authorities that they follow, and to
16:52
Speaker 1: call them stormtroopers, to invoke that kind of imagery is
16:56
Speaker 1: just shameful. And for the recording, is an arrest kidnapping
17:00
Speaker 1: because that's the language they're saying is apparently you're now kidnappers. Yeah,
17:04
Speaker 1: So it's again, I think it's individuals that don't understand
17:07
Speaker 1: what our mission is. So they're in Portland because you
17:11
Speaker 1: did not have state or you didn't have local law
17:13
Speaker 1: enforcement making arrest. So night after night after night, hundreds
17:16
Speaker 1: of individuals are committing criminal acts with no consequence. And
17:20
Speaker 1: DHS said, well, we can't have that. That's not how
17:23
Speaker 1: law enforcement works. So we have the ability to go
17:25
Speaker 1: out and arrest individuals, and we started doing that within
17:28
Speaker 1: a two to three block radius of the courthouse. And
17:31
Speaker 1: then that's when you know a number of individuals said, well,
17:33
Speaker 1: how can you do that, how can you arrest individuals, Well,
17:36
Speaker 1: they are committing criminal acts, that's how you arrest individuals.
17:39
Speaker 1: You're making this point about Nancy Pelosi and a lot
17:43
Speaker 1: of other Democrats in the House. It's an election year.
17:45
Speaker 1: They're heightening up the rhetoric. They're going after abolish iz
17:48
Speaker 1: abolish law enforcement. But there's another very hot political issue
17:52
Speaker 1: that they're also talking about, which is immigration. Illegal immigration
17:56
Speaker 1: that the border. This was a central plank when President
17:59
Speaker 1: Trump was running for office. What's the situation down there
18:03
Speaker 1: on the border wall, on enforcement, on making sure our
18:06
Speaker 1: country security. Is there a wall? Absolutely? Absolutely. We just
18:11
Speaker 1: eclipsed about two hundred and sixty five miles of the
18:13
Speaker 1: new border wall system under President Trump. So so there
18:16
Speaker 1: was a wall to begin with. We had we had
18:18
Speaker 1: several hundred walls, several hundred miles a wall initially, and
18:21
Speaker 1: we built about two hundred more, I would say initially
18:24
Speaker 1: as we came in. We had different forms of fencing,
18:27
Speaker 1: some of it about six feet tall, some of it
18:29
Speaker 1: maybe up to eight feet tall. Maybe easily scalable, easily defeated,
18:33
Speaker 1: no impedance and denial there any type of barrier. What
18:37
Speaker 1: you want for our border patrol, the men and women
18:39
Speaker 1: in green on the border. They want something that's going
18:42
Speaker 1: to stop an individual or at least to slow them down.
18:45
Speaker 1: So that's the impedance and denial aspect of coming into
18:48
Speaker 1: the country illegally. The bigger the barrier, the more effective
18:51
Speaker 1: the barrier, the easier it is for them to do
18:53
Speaker 1: their job. What we saw with six foot high wall,
18:57
Speaker 1: you could scale it, you could be over disappear, very
19:00
Speaker 1: difficult for border patrol to do their job. The new
19:02
Speaker 1: border wall system that we're building in many cases is
19:04
Speaker 1: thirty feet high. It has ground sensors, says lighting, it
19:07
Speaker 1: has radar, It has a number of things that if
19:09
Speaker 1: you can, if you can defeat it, very difficult too.
19:12
Speaker 1: If you can defeat it, you have border patrol waiting
19:14
Speaker 1: on you as you get to the other side of
19:17
Speaker 1: that of that border wall system. All right, So I
19:19
Speaker 1: gotta tell a story, Michael. I spent a lot of
19:21
Speaker 1: time with CBP in Texas and they're incredible men and women.
19:24
Speaker 1: And several years ago I joined them down in Real
19:29
Speaker 1: Grand Valley for their midnight muster and then went out
19:32
Speaker 1: on midnight patrol with which is very cool. And so
19:34
Speaker 1: we're going out and they arrested a number of people,
19:37
Speaker 1: and so they go into this one stash house that's oh,
19:40
Speaker 1: probably two hundred yards in from the river, and they
19:44
Speaker 1: go in and kick the door down, and there are
19:46
Speaker 1: a bunch of bunch of people there that they're apprehending,
19:49
Speaker 1: and there's some pretty rough look at characters coming out
19:53
Speaker 1: of the stash house, including one guy I remember who
19:58
Speaker 1: was big. He was probably two sixty two eighty pounds,
20:03
Speaker 1: was wearing sort of a raggedy undershirt covered with tats,
20:05
Speaker 1: I mean tats everywhere, and the agents kept saying Senator, senator, Hey,
20:10
Speaker 1: come over here, senator, come look at the Senator. I'll
20:12
Speaker 1: be back here. Thanks now. And I'm like, xnay on
20:15
Speaker 1: the editors stay, just just call me Bob. Guys like
20:20
Speaker 1: that is, you know, I think that's probably typical. Though.
20:23
Speaker 1: We're dealing with, to use the President's term, tough embres
20:26
Speaker 1: down here, and I don't know, to hear the rhetoric
20:29
Speaker 1: coming from the left right now, it's as though these
20:32
Speaker 1: are the most wonderful people in the world and the
20:33
Speaker 1: villains are the law enforcement officers who are trying to arrest.
20:36
Speaker 1: It's it's disgraceful. Really. Again, we have. DHS is the
20:41
Speaker 1: largest law enforcement agency in the country. We have over
20:44
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand law enforcement officers in the department doing
20:47
Speaker 1: their job every day on the border. Every day they're
20:50
Speaker 1: building that wall, they're stopping individuals from crossing into the
20:52
Speaker 1: country illegally, and I would say, in a pandemic environment,
20:57
Speaker 1: stopping individuals crossing into the country illegally takes on a
21:01
Speaker 1: more important mission, of course, not just stopping immigration by
21:04
Speaker 1: a laters. We're stopping individuals that perhaps could have COVID nineteen,
21:09
Speaker 1: could be coming into the US and infecting Americans. We're
21:12
Speaker 1: told that we're not allowed to leave our homes in
21:14
Speaker 1: many cases, but it's perfectly fine to have foreign nationals
21:17
Speaker 1: who obviously are not being tested across that border illegally.
21:20
Speaker 1: But actually, Center, you raised this question for me because
21:23
Speaker 1: your job is to make the laws there are. Your
21:27
Speaker 1: job is to enforce the laws, and there are regulations
21:30
Speaker 1: that you all and my job is entirely to make
21:33
Speaker 1: fun of the list. But it occurs to me if
21:36
Speaker 1: we're now four years into an administration, we were told,
21:39
Speaker 1: big beautiful wall. We know that people want to build
21:42
Speaker 1: the wall, and yet I think a lot of people
21:44
Speaker 1: listening will say, only two hundred or two hundred and
21:46
Speaker 1: fifty miles of wall, what's the hold up in It
21:49
Speaker 1: strikes me there are other people who make the laws
21:51
Speaker 1: as well, outside of our perhaps constitutional system. Yeah, so
21:56
Speaker 1: we are not only stymied by congressional inaction. You know,
22:02
Speaker 1: the President has been very clear about a border wall system.
22:04
Speaker 1: We've had to find that funding internally to the administration
22:07
Speaker 1: over the last several years is Congress. Certain members of Congress,
22:10
Speaker 1: I would say, are not supportive of that. But we
22:13
Speaker 1: also have courts and we have lawsuits that we have
22:15
Speaker 1: to deal with. But again, as far as building the
22:19
Speaker 1: border wall system, we're going to reach three hundred miles
22:21
Speaker 1: by the end of August. We'll be We're here in
22:24
Speaker 1: early August. They built two hundred miles of wall. We've
22:27
Speaker 1: got another hundred miles coming into August month or so, right,
22:32
Speaker 1: and I think is the goal by the end of
22:34
Speaker 1: the year, four hundred and fifty fifty to five hundred right, right.
22:37
Speaker 1: And that's a new wall, this is or replacing previous
22:41
Speaker 1: So it's a great you know, this is what the
22:43
Speaker 1: other side, you know, our opponents usually say, is you're
22:46
Speaker 1: not actually building any new wall. So in many cases
22:49
Speaker 1: we are tearing down a five to six foot fence
22:54
Speaker 1: and putting up a thirty foot wall, and in any
22:56
Speaker 1: case that is a new wall. It's very much like
22:59
Speaker 1: if you were to tell you another story of this,
23:01
Speaker 1: just on on the five to six foot fence. Back
23:04
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen presidential race. We're down in Arizona on
23:07
Speaker 1: the border and and you know, I've got a whole
23:10
Speaker 1: bevy of reporters following me, and we're doing we're doing
23:14
Speaker 1: something right on the border wall. And it's got this
23:16
Speaker 1: this little sort of vehicle barrier, the Normandy barriers, the
23:22
Speaker 1: Normandy bearrier. Yeah, that's exactly. It looks like the sort
23:24
Speaker 1: of criss cross yes, metal planks. Yeah. Um. And and
23:30
Speaker 1: the reporters are there, and we've got a bunch of
23:32
Speaker 1: sheriffs and folks who are down there with us, and
23:35
Speaker 1: a bunch of the reporters. They want to get a
23:37
Speaker 1: better camera shot, so they climb over the barrier to
23:39
Speaker 1: shoot north. And I'm like, okay, so you just crossed
23:43
Speaker 1: in the Mexico illegally. Uh. And that's how much little
23:47
Speaker 1: of the barrier is. Did you just hop over the
23:48
Speaker 1: damn thing? Okay? I got a better shot here. Maybe
23:51
Speaker 1: we need something more substantial, given that you're, like I think,
23:55
Speaker 1: currently an illegal immigrant in the country of Mexico. They unwittingly.
23:59
Speaker 1: I think of your point on the border, and it's
24:01
Speaker 1: the point we're all making. And yet you're being stymied
24:04
Speaker 1: left and right on building that wall. But again, we
24:07
Speaker 1: have found ways to do that. We have enough funding,
24:10
Speaker 1: We're in a good place, We're in a good glide pass.
24:13
Speaker 1: So again, as the senator mentioned, about four and fifty
24:15
Speaker 1: to five hundred miles by the end of this calendar year.
24:18
Speaker 1: And that's what the operators want. They want that effective
24:21
Speaker 1: border wall system. It's not everywhere on the border. We
24:23
Speaker 1: can't put it everywhere, but we can put it in
24:25
Speaker 1: the places that need it most so that control, so
24:28
Speaker 1: officers can control other hard hit areas well, even even
24:31
Speaker 1: be on the operators. I think it's what the American
24:33
Speaker 1: people wanted. A made that point time and again. Let
24:35
Speaker 1: me make a point also, that's that's interesting and would
24:38
Speaker 1: surprise you. The guys working for Chad, the CBP guys
24:43
Speaker 1: on the border, they need a lot more technology. Yes,
24:46
Speaker 1: so so I've been I've been out with them on
24:49
Speaker 1: their boats on the river. I've been up in their helicopters,
24:53
Speaker 1: which are old. Some of the helicopters are old Hughey's
24:55
Speaker 1: like like you know, out of out of like watching
24:58
Speaker 1: you know, mash growing up, which by the way, they
25:00
Speaker 1: keep the doors open on the side, and you know,
25:03
Speaker 1: they strap you in, And I think the helicopter pilots
25:06
Speaker 1: enjoy doing turns where you're going forward and you're looking
25:09
Speaker 1: at this one little round disk that that is holding
25:11
Speaker 1: your body and if it comes loose, you're following two
25:15
Speaker 1: hundred feet down into the ground. And you're trying to like, yeah,
25:18
Speaker 1: this doesn't bother me at all. I am urinating my
25:20
Speaker 1: pants right now, but no, I'm not not. Yeah, they
25:24
Speaker 1: do enjoy. I would say they do that with the
25:26
Speaker 1: acting secretary as well. I have no doubt. But what's interesting,
25:31
Speaker 1: So Texas DPS Department of Public Safety, I've been up
25:35
Speaker 1: Texas has, for example, it's an eight million dollar plane.
25:37
Speaker 1: It's an amazing plane that I've been up in, and
25:40
Speaker 1: it flies along the border and it has heat imagery
25:44
Speaker 1: where they can look like a mile or two away
25:47
Speaker 1: on the other side of the border and you'll see
25:49
Speaker 1: and we'd look at the screen and be like they'd
25:51
Speaker 1: be like, all right, there's the coyote there. You can
25:54
Speaker 1: see him hiding in the brush and you can see
25:55
Speaker 1: four or five people that he's getting ready to send across.
25:59
Speaker 1: And what Texas SPS will do is call CBP and say,
26:03
Speaker 1: all right, there are five guys right here. They're preparing
26:05
Speaker 1: to cross, and you can see the CBP vans like
26:08
Speaker 1: pulling up on the other side, waiting to apprehend them
26:11
Speaker 1: when they come. The amazing thing, though, is the state
26:14
Speaker 1: has better technology than the FETSI, which is messed up.
26:17
Speaker 1: Y'all should have adequate technology, and it's not your fault,
26:21
Speaker 1: it's Congress's fault. We haven't given it, but it's kind
26:25
Speaker 1: of startling. You don't expect the state equipment to be
26:29
Speaker 1: better than the federal equipment. Well, some of our best
26:31
Speaker 1: partners are obviously Texas DPS as well as in Arizona
26:35
Speaker 1: in other places, so we rely on our partners to
26:37
Speaker 1: do our job. But as you indicated, we do not
26:40
Speaker 1: have an unlimited budget, so there are certain we have
26:42
Speaker 1: a number of air assets as well that we send
26:45
Speaker 1: up along that border to patrol that but we can
26:48
Speaker 1: always use new and better equipment. Mister Secretory we want
26:51
Speaker 1: to be respectful of your time. But before we go,
26:54
Speaker 1: I think a lot of Americans looking around don't feel
26:57
Speaker 1: great about how things are going. You know, they see
27:00
Speaker 1: holdings on fire, they see this unrest, especially in Portland,
27:02
Speaker 1: they see problems at the border. What's the outlook? Give
27:05
Speaker 1: it to us straight, you know, we don't want false hope.
27:07
Speaker 1: But but how are things looking as we now move
27:10
Speaker 1: toward the end of the year. Well, I would say
27:11
Speaker 1: what we've seen over the past month, and we've talked
27:13
Speaker 1: a bit a little bit about here when we talk
27:15
Speaker 1: about defund the police or you start attacking law enforcement,
27:18
Speaker 1: I think what we are seeing around the country is
27:20
Speaker 1: the result of that. What you have are criminals at
27:24
Speaker 1: their very heart. They are violent opportunists, and they see
27:26
Speaker 1: an opportunity to exploit their street, their corner of the
27:30
Speaker 1: world because they know the police are under a microscope.
27:34
Speaker 1: And so I think that's very dangerous. What the President,
27:37
Speaker 1: what the administration has been very upfront about is we're
27:39
Speaker 1: not going to let this continue. So whether it's through
27:41
Speaker 1: Operation Legend, which is surging federal resources in to deal
27:45
Speaker 1: with some of this violent crime, We're going to continue
27:48
Speaker 1: to searge federal resources in We're going to continue to
27:50
Speaker 1: protect federal property. We see it almost you know, we
27:52
Speaker 1: get threat and intelligence every weekend. Certain federal properties around
27:56
Speaker 1: the country are being targeted by these groups. We searge
27:59
Speaker 1: resources into those communities to make sure that those properties
28:02
Speaker 1: are protected tybally. When we talk about a courthouse, a
28:05
Speaker 1: seat of justice in a city has to be protected.
28:08
Speaker 1: That's what those country is about. And DHS is going
28:11
Speaker 1: to be on the front lines protecting those all Right.
28:13
Speaker 1: A totally different question to wrap up, how do you
28:16
Speaker 1: get to be Secretary of Homeland Security? Like you're a
28:19
Speaker 1: cabinet member, You're one of the top cops in the country.
28:22
Speaker 1: Like what you know when you were when you were
28:24
Speaker 1: a kid, is this what you dreamed of doing? How
28:26
Speaker 1: how did you get here? Yeah, it's a little different.
28:28
Speaker 1: Actually dreamed of joining the military, and for whatever reason,
28:31
Speaker 1: it didn't happen. To grow up in Texas, went to
28:33
Speaker 1: school in Dallas, had the opportunity to come to DC
28:36
Speaker 1: and and shortly after nine to eleven joined DHS. Nine
28:40
Speaker 1: to eleven for me, I was on Capitol Hill, rushed
28:42
Speaker 1: out of the buildings. It was a significant factor in
28:46
Speaker 1: my life. Basically right when DHS was four. Yeah, this
28:48
Speaker 1: is back in two thousand and one, two thousand and two.
28:52
Speaker 1: So it was a formidable event in my life and
28:55
Speaker 1: really changed my outlook. So I jumped in, started serving
28:59
Speaker 1: at DAHS, took a break during the Obama administration, and
29:03
Speaker 1: then came back in and held a variety of different
29:07
Speaker 1: positions here in the department. I think the thing that
29:10
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of us here in the part
29:11
Speaker 1: we believe in this mission. We believe in what the
29:14
Speaker 1: department does and how it was created after nine to eleven.
29:17
Speaker 1: It's counter terrorism mission, but it has a number of
29:19
Speaker 1: other missions, some of which we talked about that I
29:21
Speaker 1: think the vast majority of Americans just don't know about
29:24
Speaker 1: Federal Protective Service, a lot of our immigration enforcement, and
29:27
Speaker 1: a lot of other things that we are doing here.
29:29
Speaker 1: So it's a big department, one hundred two hundred forty
29:31
Speaker 1: thousand folks, twenty two different agencies that came in. So
29:34
Speaker 1: what do you do for fun? Like when when I work,
29:38
Speaker 1: but you know, when I can, I try to run
29:40
Speaker 1: a little bit and bike a little bit. Well those
29:43
Speaker 1: hobbies notwithstanding, I think you're probably working a lot more
29:46
Speaker 1: of these days. Well, and I do need to clarify
29:48
Speaker 1: it and just say, Chad, thank you for being here.
29:50
Speaker 1: So as we are here, yeah, your base basement is flooding.
29:54
Speaker 1: It is so there's a tropical storm. It's raining like crazy.
29:58
Speaker 1: You're in DC, You're base. Smith's flooding and your wife
30:02
Speaker 1: is calledge. You're saying, Hey, our basement's flooding, and you
30:04
Speaker 1: said I gotta do a podcast right now. I'm just
30:06
Speaker 1: gonna say I'm sorry. I know you're sleeping on the
30:09
Speaker 1: couch tonight. It's my fault, blame it on me. But
30:12
Speaker 1: but you're a great American and please get home quickly
30:15
Speaker 1: and help your wife or or it won't be the couch,
30:18
Speaker 1: it'll be the doghouse. We need to get you back
30:21
Speaker 1: to the basement and more importantly, to the mission. Mister Secretary,
30:24
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. Senator, I'll see
30:27
Speaker 1: you next time. This is Verdict with Ted Cruize. This
30:38
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