Texas Is At It Again

had to allow this to happen. To agree, is that fair to say?

were trying to build a wall. They've been wanting a wall there, but the people in that city, I believe it's equal pass is that they, you know, they don't want a wall there. That's the city park and they just don't want a wall right there. And so Greg Abbott has sent in Texas National Guard to put up all the razor wire, all the you know, plotation devices with she would call it a saw blade on the

middle of it that they claim saves lives. All this stuff apparently is rescue technique stuff, and they claim it it saves more lives than it hurts. And so the people that put out this stuff to injure people or claiming that they didn't allow people to drown. So I find that hard to But at the same time, the Border Patrol is the Border Patrol is always silent, you know, they're always silent about this. They let CBP talk to talk for them. They'll let the administration talk for them.

The Union is claiming that Greg Abbott is the best thing in the world. They think it's great that he stopped their own agents from rescuing a woman and two children. So apparently three of the people got back to shore on the Mexican side, and then the woman and two children ended up drowning and their bodies were found on the Mexican side. Texas military is claiming that when they were notified that people were in the river, they went and they shined lights and they looked, but they didn't

see anything. We did have the I don't know if it was Texas Military, it was in the area of the state of Texas on the same Rio or Grande, where some either National Guard or Texas National Guard or military or somebody just was sitting in a boat in front of a woman with a child and she was starting to sink into the sand because it's like quicksand over there, and they wouldn't rescue her, and Border patrol drove by really fast and put away, So it's not

surprising that they wouldn't go rescue them. This is the first time that they publicly said that they've had a confrontation with a border patrol. But I don't think the Border Patrol tried very hard to rescue them. I mean they do have boats and stuff.

and rightly so for this, for this scene. But yet at the same time, what the Border Patrol does every day, Their deterns policies every day, kill people every day, So the Border Patrol is not doing anything different so to act like, oh my god, we didn't get out to save these migrants and we really wanted to is kind of like, well, I mean, people die probably every hour crossing that river and you haven't cured before, and we've

been doing it since nineteen ninety four. So it's kind of it's kind of hard to get really upset at Greg Abbott, who's doing nothing but what the National Border Patrol has done for you know, thirty something years. And at the same time, the victims are always the migrants that you know, That's what we should be upset about, is that our policies, whether federal or state, are killing people who are seeking asylum and seeking safety. That's what it is.

But it's like, you know, you guys never cared about how many people were dying before, and now sudden you're like, you're killing more minents than anybody else. Are you jealous? What's the deal?

not as wet as previous winters. But just in my just in this week, I've seen people in extremely dire medical distress, and I've seen border patrol scream at those people and scream that people trying to help those people and not do anything to help. So I'm finding it hard to buy that this is all Greg greg Abbott's fault,

not that Greg Abbott is't a piece of shit. Yeah, I think we're in agreement on that, but like, yeah, the the attempt to lay all the blame at Greg abbts feet and suggests that there isn't complete bipartisan agreement it seems on killing migrants even like we don't see in the Trump era, we saw you know, AOC turn up and cry at the you know, unaccompanyed children or the other separation of family separation attention, and we don't even see that anymore, Like we don't have any ear

of that, and that's refected in the press. Right, we don't see anywhere near as much coverage of the brutality at the border as we used to. One thing that you've mentioned before we started with that you had there's some like there's pretty clear case law or Supreme Court decisions at least about like what BP could have done or what their rights are visa VI the National Guard, could you explain some of fat well.

and things like that. When they brought groups of Chinese women over, then California would label the ball as prostitutes and no good people, and then they would put them in jail and then find the captain of the ship like five hundred dollars a person, which is by today's standards it's like over fourteen thousand dollars, such a lot of money. Yeah, yeah. And so one of the one of the female migrants in eighteen seventy five, so that you had no right to hold us in jail. You

don't have this right. There's nothing that says that you have this right according to US law back then. And so the case is called Chai Cchy Lung Lung versus Freemen. And in eighteen seventy five the Supreme Court decision was that immigration is solely the federal government's right to enforce

and not the States, simply because of diplomatic relations. Also that we have treaties with other countries, and we have relationships with other countries, and they believe that while allowing state to do their own immigration would then hurt the United States in diplomacy with these other countries. And then the other thing that they mentioned was that there have been no due process given to the migrants during the time, and that's sufforded to migrants, whether they're undocumented or not

based on the Constitution. And then recently in two thousand. The most recent time that was brought up was in twenty twelve when Arizona sued the United States. The Supreme Court upheld in that case that law enforcement can question citizenship during a legal stop, but denied other parts of the Arizona law SB. Ten seventy, which allowed their peace officers to act like immigration officers. And they said, the reason why they can't do that, which is what greg

Abbott is doing. The reason why Supreme Court said they can't do that in twenty twelve was because of Article six Clause two, which states that the Constitution federal laws. Treaties made under federal authority take priority over state laws. So it's, you know, the supremacy clause. Basically, it's what it is. And so it's kind of like what Trump did when he was in office, where he starts separating children, and he starts putting everybody he crosses the border, whether

it's for asylum or for nefarious reasons. In between the poorts, he we'd take away their children. And I mean, that was in violation of the nineteen eighty Refugee Act, and yet nobody really fought it on that basis. I'm not

sure why they didn't find it on that basis. I'm not an attorney, so I can't tell you, but at least you know this this decision Chai Lung versus Freeman, It's been around since eighteen seventy five and was brought up in twenty twelve, and the Supreme Court awesome used Chai Lung to make its argument of why Arizona couldn't have certain parts of SB ten seventy out. So what Greg Abbott is doing is the same thing Trump is doing.

Is like, I will break the law, and you can take me to court and we'll see if this court agrees with what the last court said. So they're just breaking the law and then enduring people to take them to court is simply what they're doing. In in the middle of this, obviously the migrants are caught, the humanitarian organizations and everybody's caught. It causes chaos, basically, is what it's doing.

come here. People who can't afford to right that they're coming north directly and it sort of takes us is there, you know, if they head directly north, but that that's where they end up. Taxas has a huge amount of border, of course, then they're the people who tend to be

the ones who are forced across there. And unfortunately that's realotten a much higher, as you said, at my higher death rate, right, Nick, it's do you have a sense of like I suppose it will be hard to tell because we have very little and were proper statistics, but like, what is the most fatal kind of part of the border.

Desert and the Rio Grande River. The other problem with Texas's border is that primarily the majority of the property on the border in Texas is private property, and they tend to be very large ranches which may be no ranch hand or anybody goes out, you know, through the acres to see this and they might never ever find

the bodies. It's kind of like the Sonoran desert and the Po nation and then the bombing range, and then just the fact that the desert will just destroy the bones pretty quickly, especially once the winds cover thinks up that we have a fair amountain Campo, as you know, in the Hakamba Campo Wilderness area and the mountains and the Laguna Mountains. But I don't think it's near as bad because you can look at those mountains and see how bad they are, and most people don't want to

dare across those mountains, but many still do. Obviously I worked out there, You're familiar with that area, and so we have more than our fair share for certain. Yeah, but I would say I would say probably it's between Texas the Rio Grande and then the Sonora doesn't for.

things that people might not be clear w on. We tried to explain them on the podcast before the first is like Border Patrol will always say that all the BP agents are first responders, right, It's this line that they have, And like do they like in terms of rescues, are they sort of like technically obliged to make rescues. I mean, I've seen people in very great stress and I've seen Border Patrol do nothing more times than I

can count. So like I'm wondering, like is there some kind of like technical obligation that they have that they're just ignoring or is it sort of at the discretion of the agent whether they think it's safe. What's there like official policy there?

on the ocean. Yeah, and then obviously along the Rio Grande. All those agents have specific training obviously and swimming. All agents have training and swimming, but not at the level but the agents who are working on the water deck, so you have to go through extra training when you take that position. It's like being on a horse patrol. You have to go through horse training and so forth.

But all agents are trained in just basic CPR, just basic splinting, that kind of first aid stuff, but not all agents are what they call it, not Vortech but four Star, the rescue organization that they have now, and

that's didn't start until like the late nineties. And I didn't even see him when I was an agent, even though I was there until two thousand and one, I didn't see him out in Campo whenever we had a call about a rescue in Campo, at least the old Campo station that was on four Skate Road before they changed it all around. We had to go out in teams and that's the only time we worked in teams.

Otherwise we hiked alone is if we were doing a rescue, especially in the wintertime because it was even more dangerous, and we hiked all night until we found them. So us regular agents just on the line would just move our positions and keep going, and we didn't necessarily have any specific training. We didn't repel a lot of helicopters

back then and do all that stuff. What I think that they started for was because we had a lot of attrition in the nineties and it was more about getting us regular agents that patrol the border away from the border because we were having that's when our massive suicide started, because of all the death that we were seeing. And I think it was an effort to keep the average agent from seeing the brutality of what they were doing, quite honestly, and so like I as an agent had

lots of experience with dead bodies and so forth. But agents today who are on the line, they don't. They sit in their trucks, they watch the cameras, and then when a dire thing comes out that somebody needs to be rescued forced our handles handles it. They might go do perimeter things and help out a little bit, but they're not involved in the actual rescues. You know, in

my day, I didn't know. I didn't know that many agents who had never seen who had never experienced that, And I kind of think in a weird way that that's what makes today's agents so non caring, so non sympathetic to the migrants. We didn't call them invaders. And it's not to say that we weren't racist and we're brutal.

It's just it's gotten even more brutal and more racist since since I was an agent, And certainly I would say that the brutality that may have happened, that would have happened maybe on an individual basis or with certain groups of agents. It's now policy throughout the whole agency, and you're expected to be that brutal. And if you

can't be that brutal, then you can't hack it. So but the idea that they're all first responders, that just means they wear a bat and have a gun and have a car with you know, red and blue lives on it. But they're not all necessarily trained in like the type of rescue that we're talking about in the Hopkamba area in the mountains that takes very physically. I could do it when I was younger, but obviously I can't do it now.

that that that is not unusual at all. This the disdain for coming to the disdain for people's lives right for coming to rescue them. It is extremely obvious, really, and like that's a good It's not someone who has to be located. Like I can give you a GPS reading down to you know, I think it's twenty figures, you know, extremely accurate location.

God to the border. I think people know that that is happening in Texas, but I think people probably aren't aware that there's also a federal mission to the border, right that that encompasses much more than Texas. And what are they National God, Well, I mean they I know they sit outside detention camps in Ukumber shouting at me, But what is their mission in theory at the border? What are they doing there?

would violate it. What they're supposed to be doing is is maybe sitting in a stationary spot operating the scope where they can tell border patrol at night, you know there's a group over here, da da DA, And then the rest of the time, they're mostly supposed to be working in the processing centers, assistant people if they need to go to medical or if they need this or that, and so they're just supposed to help so that the agents don't have to sit around and babysit so much,

so that they can be back in the field. That's what they're supposed to be doing. And I mean lots of presidents have done it. Barack Obama did it, you know, so it's not unusual unusual. What is unusual is that in Texas you have Texas DPS and the military Texas National Guard actually pretending like they are border patrol agents and running around and apprehending people even though they do not have that legal authority. The US government has not

given it to them. And then the other thing I think which is legally the most dangerous is where they push the migrants back into the water. Number One, The law is that if you set foot on US soil, then you're entitled to an immigration hearing if you so choo, and you cannot turn somebody back. Agent cannot legally turn somebody back once they've crossed, So once they're across that middle part of the river, they're in the United States and they're your problem now. So you have to deal

with that, and you have to process them. You have to figure out who they are. You have to friend and records checks and all this other stuff. It'd be interesting. You know, the Biden administration has it pressed abbot on this, and I've always wondered, why are they allowing him to do this and take over immigration as a state authority. Yeah. I think they just don't want to fight it.

he doesn't want to look like he hates unions. He always wants to look like he's strong on unions because he's a union politician, and he refuses to get rid of him. But the fear and the reason why that law exists is exactly what we see them doing now, where the union representatives who are border patrol agents, they have national security information and they're actively working against this current administration. So that's why we have it. But he's just weak and he won't do anything about.

certainly it seems for support for Trump. Kind of these people seem to have his ear on immigration and they seem to want the same things, right, So I'm wondering Biden has been bad. His border policy has been objectively bad, and it's very hard for me not to see it as racist. Like it's very hard for me not to see his immigrate policy is specifically favoring white people and specifically disadvantaging black people. And I don't think I could

be persuaded that's not the case. What do you think, Like it seems that immigration policy only moves one way and it just gets worse and worse, and border policy does the same. What are they like demanding and what do you think is sort of at stake in the upcoming election this year's election regarding the border.

their goal. They want bodies, black and brown bodies coming over that fence, and they want the optics of it. That's what I think is going on, and that's why I think that they're picking specific cities to have a lot of the migrants come through. I think that that's the reason why they have like specific cities, because you saw like a couple of weeks together, they're like, oh my god, the border's being overrun, and oh my god,

what are we going to do? And this and that, and then you realize it's just like three or four suctors, and even within those sectors, it's just one or two areas. It's not the entire border. Is it problematic? Is it chaotic? Is it a human rights disaster for the minors? Yes? Is it that for the Border Patrol? No? I think

the Border Patrol is adding to it. And in fact, when I do the numbers and you compare like the staff that we have back when I was an agent and the staff that they have today, they're not even apprehending half the amount that each agent apprehended when we were in the patrol back in the day, and so you know, for them to apprehend the group. Now, when I see them apprehend a group of life, even ten people, twelve people, they will take five agents to apprehend twelve people.

I have apprehended one hundred people by myself, and that's not safe. I shouldn't suggest that people do that, but I have apprehended. It is normal for a border patrol agent to apprehend twenty to thirty people by themselves, including a female agent who's at the time was super skinny and super small. And the reason why is because the vast majority of migrants aren't criminals and they're not trying to hurt you. So that's why a single agent can

apprehend so many people. But today they use like six or seven agents to apprehend groups, and so I'm not sure why they're overwhelmed. Quite frankly, they should be able to handle three hundred, four hundred thousand people a month in the border patrol if they have to.

And indeed, like it seems that Biden has floated like a return to a title forty two as a compromise to get funding for Ukraine. So like, yeah, this inefficiency doesn't just like even when people are apprehended, their failure to do their jobs hurts people right like it puts them at greater risk.

You need a serious four by four to get it into some of those areas, and then just our policies are deterrence policies. You know, when I was an agent in the nineties, it costs you know, probably somebody from Central America costs about eighteen hundred dollars to get here. Now it's ten thousand or more dollars. So we've made it profitable for people to smuggle people in and cross

them illegally. Illegally, We've created this entire situation ourselves. I mean, I don't have any doubt that other countries that maybe don't like as you know, all the migrants coming across, the destabilization that will cause. With people who are racist or who don't know anything about the border, they all see that as a bonus. But the fact of the matter is is that people who are crossing they still

need asylum, They still have serious needs. Just because you know, I've seen some people floating around that people are pushing migrants across our southern border to destabilize US. I don't know if that's necessarily true. We don't have any proof

of that. But even if they are, isn't the better attitude to have because asylum is legal, isn't the better attitude to have, well, how can we better, you know, help these people and not let this destabilize who we are and make them part of our communities and so forth. I think that's a better choice than sending them out to the desert or to drown in the rivers. Yeah.

to destabilize this country. But I think even if you don't care about their rights, every single advance advance is around word, right, but increase in surveillance, every single increase in state violence, every single incursion into individual rights starts at the border, but it doesn't stop there, right, Like, if you've protested in twenty twenty, you were surveilled by

technology that came from the border. You were sometimes targeting by Leslie for weapons that were first issued to border patrol, Like you're the intelligence that police now gather began with border patrol. Like so much of the even the stuff that we see used at the border today, or the stuff that we see using surveillance today overwhelmingly comes from either border patrol or the Israel that as a border. And also most of these things are the same companies, right,

Companies that do one also do the other. And so like, I guess if people are talking to people who don't seem to care about the rights of migrants, which is a worryingly large amount of our society, like this will come and bite someone else in it, like to include the people who decided to storm the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one. Right, Like, lots of the efficient technology that bit them in the ass came from the border and the people they hated.

to come to Iowa or Illinois. So that but I say, in the fact that the surveillance has come in to you because you know, I mean, you know, in San Diego we got street lamps out here that can listen to US and video US YEP and track wherever we're going down the street, from lock to block. And it's ridiculous. You can't even walk your dog without being surveilled around here. And yet we're far from them, twenty miles from the border, north of the border, and it's still surveilled around here.

And so all of that surveillance, yes, that's being used on American citizens. And when you go to places like McAllen, so the Rio Grande Valley sector right now, it's really slow. They're getting about a little over one thousand, maybe two thousand apprehensions a week, which is really slow from the prize of the sector. And they're like, you know, they have so much surveillance, Like you can see there's a tower,

there's a tower. There's a tower there, and it is all this Israeli technology and they can listen to cell phones and that usually needs a warrant. But apparently down here on the border, and I've had current border patrol agents tell me the Fourth Amendment doesn't exist down here.

It's like, what is that one? The teaching here in the academy now doesn't exist down here, And apparently that's what border patrol agents think, and they think they have I do anybody that they see, and all this other stuff, and it just it's it's interesting how much this is spreading, how much the checkpoints are spreading. And you know, like in Minding, we didn't do invasive searches if it wasn't obvious,

we didn't stop them. And nowadays they'll do on full body cavvy searches at a checkpoint and I'm like, what I heard that, And so all this stuff is just gonna it's just getting further and further into the anterior of the United States, like we saw on the trip nustrition, Like you said, yeah, it's going to be brought back out for sure.

needle to a more humane place? Like this is one of the places where like I think, like we should do whatever we can to make this like even if it's something that would normally be this tasteful to us, but like yeah, what is it that we can do to either like maybe change people's minds, Like I'm sure you yourself have changed your mind on what we need to do on the border and to because the conversation around the border is not only toxic, but it's also

so deeply rooted in ignorance and lack of understanding, and like, I don't think we were talking about this before we started back. Like I encountered a three year old girl the other day who was extremely cold. She had her feet have been wet and cold for hours days and she was the cold beyond shivering, and we were trying

to warm her up, and it was very disstressing. I don't think many people have seen that, And I don't think even you're like sort of hardest border biggert Facebook uncles would want to look that in the face and be like, yeah, that's what we should do. Damn, I'm really proud of this country. So how do we move this to a better place? Do you think?

hearted individuals on immigration and they were too soft and they didn't understand border security. One of the things that Biden should have done was start educating Americans about why the asylum system is so important and what the benefits are that it brings to us. And they have never done that PSAs about it. There's nothing and I don't know if NGO's do it on that large environment on cable news or whatever, because they don't really watch mainstream

news and stuff. But Americans have just astonished it. Like when I started doing the TikTok videos and explaining, you know, border patroling, the people in green cbps and blues people didn't know just the basic things. The majority of Americans who feel that they have a very a very specific view on immigration, whether they hate it or they love it, they don't know much about immigration. They don't know how

it works. They literally think people just get off their couch and go, let's just go to America and they just hop over the fence and they all have money and they're all getting free stuff and this and that. So this administration, the government has done nothing to explain what is happening and why it happens. And I always

say that the system is essential to national security. What we saw in the Biden administration when he first opened up the ports of entry to allow specifically Haitians to apply at the ports of entry, we saw the amount of Haitians go from the crossing in between the ports it regularly. We saw it going from you know, thousands

down to like one hundred and something. So the idea is that you have to have a robust and humane asylum system where you're processing people where they don't have to wait so long that they're going to give up across it regularly. Because the vast majority of people who believe that they have a legitimate asylum claim. And I do think that what constitutes the asylum needs to be revisited because it's outdated, especially now that we have client and change. But is that you want those people to

come and be inspected. We want people to come and stand outside the port of entry and wait and be inspected by CBP. If we're going to have a border and we're going to have all this, we would want that so that then we could say, Okay, we've checked them. They appear to be okay. They're going to this place.

Now they have an immigration hearing before a judge. We're going to make sure that they get the system and you know, and then see it more as a system that's a benefit to us, instead of creating enemies, which

is what we're doing now. Every time a migrant turns around, even if they do are able to get into the United States the quote unquote legal way at a port of entry, they're still met with you can't work for one hundred and fifty days, and then you can't do this, and you can't do that, and you have to show up. And so we're constant. Everything is punishment. Everything is punitive in our immigration system, and we can't do that. We want these people to become citizens. We want these people

to become part of our our society. We need it, and so we have to We have to have somebody bold enough to explain this to the American people. If you close the asylum system, everybody's going to cross regularly just like they did in title forty two, and you're going to get tons and tons of bodies coming across the wall. We need to be bold enough to say we want a humane and robust asylum system where families

can wait together and be processed. And then, you know, I mean the decision between should we fund detention centers and home people who are crossing just waiting for their immigration hearing in detention, or should we fund you know, humane services like Let's get you into whatever city you're going to. Let's help you find a school for your kids, Let's help you learn English, let's help you find a job. Let's help you and you can hire and pay people

to do that instead of putting people into attention. It doesn't have to be a punitive system. We've just made it that way because the people on the for profit prisons before Trump was supposedly elected, they were lobbying Jeff Sessions and Steven Miller when he was working for Jeff Sessions and so G Group and all them. They're the ones that decided this is how we're going to go. And the fact of the matter is is, I know, I think we're on a disagreement with open border versus

you know, or having border patrol at all. But I always say an open border is just as dangerous as a closed border. And when when you close off the asylum system, that forces everybody to then cross in between the ports of entry, and that is what does overwhelm border patrol. So if you don't want to overwhelm your border patrol, then you have to pull them back and you have to start processing people like they're supposed to

be processed at the court of entry. The other thing people forget about is we've had four years, literally four years of the asylum system being shut down because of MPP and Title forty two. Those are current policies. It took by no while to get through all those. But what do you think all those people that were sitting around for four years are doing. They're waiting, they're turning

to get over there. So we have a backlog not just the people in the United States waiting for the immigration, we have a backlog of people in Mexico waiting to come across. So they created this whole thing themselves. I find it very interesting the depress never mentions that basically what TRUP did was close the whole immigration system down. And kicked the can down the broad Yeah.

I've walked those trails. They're not easy, and they're certainly not easy when you're carrying your kid and it's raining and it's dark, but it's I've also been in Syria, in Iraq and in other places where these people are coming from, and I understand why they're doing it, and I would do it too if I had a family

and I wanted to escape that. So I think we're laughing if we think that we're going to I mean, we've tried to make our border as unpleasant as those places, and it's deadly as those places, right, and fortunately we failed, And so that doesn't mean people will stop coming whatever.

in the United States of America. Even though we have a lot of problems and we're possibly losing our democracy in our country right now, it is still far better than the places that these people are coming from, and we should be thankful for that and just figure out a way to protect ourselves as first as we can, you know.