Ep. 391: Border Patrol

pistol pack and bagpipe players. I mean, I know you guys play bagpipes, but you guys, I'm assuming you packed pistols at work. Yes, sir, pistol packing bags players. Okay, I want you to douce yourselves. My name is rich Fortunate. I'm the acting Chief Patrol Agent to have their sector Border Patrol Sector. Want to say that real slow? Richard Fortunado the acting Chief Patrol Agent of the Haver Sector

Border Patrol Sector. So your patroling the northern border I'm patrolling. Actually, the a O R for Haver Sector is is Montana, east of the Continental Divide, Idaho, east of the Continental Divide, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. So we were looking. We do work throughout that entire area. Colorado. I hope you catch them before

they coming from the north, I imagine. Well, yeah, so the stuff that we try to do down in the states, in Wyoming, in Colorado is is more of a task force working with other law enforcement partners and working on that type of traffic the borders. The border next to stuff is obviously in Montana. God, yeah, I got a bunch of questions about the northern border. I've been the Quiet it's the I don't know the Quiet border. Wow,

I wouldn't see it's quiet. I would say that it's uh, it's different, right, So it's it's the traffic that we have in the southern border is definitely different from the type traffic that we have on the northern border. So obviously the stuff that they see, uh down south is Central American South American based and the stuff that we see on the northern border is more based in Eastern European Romanians. And yeah, okay, we'll get into that, Sir.

Hi Charles trost Um, currently the Tusson Sector public Leans Leaders on Agent US Border Patrol, just finished up a three year detail as a National public Leans Leaders on Agent program manager. Okay, so so get I get it, but but get approach it with a different set of words. So UM. Basically, UM I served as the first point of contact for our land management agency partners UM. You know, being the border patrol. You know typically we're along the border,

that's we're working. UM. But we don't actually own any property any land out there. So the areas that we're patrolling, it's other people's property, if you would, you know, UM SO, and that's typically along the border. That's Department of Interior, US Department of Agriculture being for a service land so BLM land and for a service land well and not just BLM. You have fish and wildlife service refugees. You have UM. You know, you have the national conservation areas

with with BLM. You also have National parks UM that are along the border areas and so you know that's just part of it. And then you also have ben yeah Big Bend National huge one organ piped National Cactus Monument another big one UM Core not a national memorial. I mean there's a whole lot thecmement Wilderness UM in California.

There's all kinds of areas and so UM. You know, those land management agencies when when we're patrolling, you know, if there's an issue I'm usually one of the first person, either myself or within the sector there's a p l l A that they would contact and they would work out that issue along with that. Though it's not just issues like if we have UM technology deployments that we're working on, we would reach out to them and it's usually the p l A that's UM, you know, helping

to initiate that conversation and work through that UH. And then we find, you know, different collaborative work to do UM you know, cross agency training because a lot of people don't really know UM about the areas that they're working in. Most border patrol agents they don't typically come from the area that they're assigned to you and so

you're coming to this new land. So one of the things that the p l A program helps to do is not only UM improve the the knowledge of the border Patrol agent of the area that they're working in, but we also reach out to the public lands managers and we teach their new employees about what the border patrol is because they may not have any interaction with BP, and so we kind of try to teach them, hey, this is the work that we do, so they aren't

just thinking we're out there roaming across their property, you know, infringing on their resource. Like there's there's a method behind the stuff that we're doing, and we try to broker that and and just kind of makes or that we're all on the same page that we're out there trying to protect the resource as a whole. We just have different approaches to doing it and the end result being that the area is safe and that people can enjoy the resource for what it is. Uh, you are all

you guys former military. Um, I think I'm the only one got it, Brody, former former trivia master. Look at that scoreboard, Brody Henderson, why board over there? And by day I was quite all be decided, all be decided. That's right, the playoffs are coming up. Are you ready? I was gonna want to keep doing my old man brody things. Crins here, Uh, Phil, And then uh, James, go ahead, Hey, James Searle. I'm an assistant chief assigned to Board headquarters in Washington, d C. And Uh, my

portfolio is worked for the Recruitment division up there. And my portfolio includes UM brand engagement, sponsorships, Canada developments, and virtual outreach for things just like this. To reach out to communities and find unique and different audiences to UM

communicate what the border Patrol does. UM, not just through what people see uh on the lens of mainstream media, but actually you know, find uh, find more intimate settings to communicate who borders all agents are UM and UH and engage with the public and you know, provide additional transparency and tell them all the other things that we you know, you're not going to see just by watching big news. UM. Tell you know what, what's what's in

the gravy that makes up border security. And like Charles explained, working with you know, three letter agencies to on on various lands to to do our job and border security mission, but also in further their missions as well. Uh. Was it was you that reached out with like a thing like you guys talk about stuff that is that has implications, has border implications. Absolutely, and you had a many many a very detailed email of many episodes where we bordered

on the borders. Yeah. First first paper, first paper I wrote on reaching out to you guys was back in seventeen and uh and when uh, it's just different times, sir and uh, I wrote a paper internally to my organization on doing outreach with with me eaterback. I thought you meant that, Um, you tried to get ahold of us and called you back. That's happened two more recently. But uh had a phone friend. I had a phone

a friend. Uh, I believe that you're you're the team and haven't reached out back in early summer, I think, And but just through the like the regular website contact and uh, you never know who you're gonna get. Yeah, probably wound up in a junk box. People need to get ahold of he can say it, but he got hold of Kran. You should put never mind. Uh, all right,

we're gonna cover a bunch of this stuff. So let me of a couple of for instances though, and then we're gonna we're gonna talk about a couple of things. Wait and Yannis here, Oh sorry, y good morning, Yanni. Play your real quick play your daughter doing the um. This is great. Yanni's daughters learning how to gobble like a turkey. But he's got a video. And when he showed me the video, she's sort of dressed up real nice and facing the camera. I thought she's gonna sing

the Lavian national anthem. A turkey gobble, A couple of turkey gobles. You've never seen a cuter. How does she? She's eight. A few of the episodes that that we talked about where we got into the we got into the landscape of what the Border Patrol does. We had episode one seventy nine, the weed warden Um. In James's words, this episode touches on cartel smuggling to support illegal marijuana

grows on public lands. While this focus is on state conservation officer enforcement, US Border Patrols part of the largest uniformed law enforcement agency in the nation that on an average day seizes four thousand, seven thirty two pounds of drugs, much of which crosses through or seized on public lands. Did you guys see that video Hefflefinger posted when he was hunting in Arazon recently, uniformed like uniformed smugglers in matching carrying back. He thought he does a bunch of hunters.

He realized, oh ship like they were like decked out like uniforms. It's fairly common. Yeah, he was, he was. He was impressed by the professional you'd be. You'd be surprised on on the on the level of copycat with with not even just uniforms, but vehicles of of what folks will try to do. We've seen more control, We've seen FedEx, We've seen ups, a whole number of different things, vehicles that that smuggles will try to use to get their their product. You guys almost bust me in Yannie

one time. Remember we're driving around and Douglas trying to find a place to go. We're kind of lost in Douglas and we're in a rental van and eventually we got pulled over by board as soon as they looked in the window and we're like, they're like, what do you guys? We said, they're just basically get out of here, but we're kind of lost, stopping and starting and well, yeah, because we had to, Uh, I forget we had maybe we're going to leave a gun that we didn't have

the proper proper permit for. We're doing a firearms delivered. We yeah, stashed firearm for a week while we were while we were in Mexico and then come back and get it on the way just at a buddy's mom's house, you know, and uh couldn't find her house, found it. I just quickly run to the house, drop off a gun, come back, and yeah, that got us flagged. It makes you wonder if they were falling into the whole time

we got into. We did a wild horse episode and that touches you guys in a handful ways, which is internet. We're getting into that breaking wild horses used for border patrol stuff. Uh. The episode James words focus on impacts of wild horse overpopulation to public and tribal lands and efforts of the BLM Wild Horse and Burrow Program, which US Border Patrol is a consumer of US Border Patrol employees wild mustangs for horse patrol operations in strategic locations

on both the northern and southern borders. That's a trip, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, I guess can tell me again what you guys pay for one of those horses. I don't know the exact dollar amount, but compared to like buying a bread quarter horse, it's you know, pennies on the dollar from want to understand, and a dog is eight nine thousand bucks. Yeah, trained, trained, trained, trained horses three or something five? Maybe yeah, Um, I

don't know what that says about dogs and horses. We we said we covered episode one oh two l Surprise, Oh the gray ghost touches on dangers acrossing the border hunting near the border in Cartel Country head on Chairman Rob Bishop former Chairman Rob Bishop, uh exploring the potential impacts of infrastructure on public lands. US Border Patrol owns the requirements that inform the development of barrier systems along the southwest border, often referred to as the Wall. Let

me ask you. Let me ask you a quickie if you guys had to rate, Okay, one being ten being laying in bed with your spouse at night, and how you might feel at liberty to talk about your opinions. Okay, that's ten. One being you're with the president tracking where do where do you sit in your liberty to express opinion right now? Um? I think it depends on the question. Okay, So so i'd say low. Again, I wouldn't say that.

I mean, I think it just depends on the question, right because obviously what we're a branch of the executive government, so we're bound by by the administration. But uh, um, my opinion, uh kind of falls along with with that direction. But it just depends on the question. Okay, Well we'll see maybe that beyond rate, how honestly felt the replies, Okay, but I feel like I don't know if you did a good job of setting the parameters, cause I feel like you have to be honest with both your spouse

and the president. No, dude, if you if you let's say you're one of these fellows and you get invited to the White House, you're not gonna go in there and let me tell you what I think gonna go in there and be like, you're gonna go there and be like, sir, take a picture and you're Okay. I'm not going to go in there and be like, Hey, from a personal opinion perspective, but at night with your wife, just I'm the most fucked up thing iver, you know

what I mean? Like, whatever, Charles, what would you say? Um, I just finished my details, So I think I'd be more at liberty to just let you know, no. No. But now I think with with all of us within within the patrol um, you know, I feel comfortable saying that, you know, just like what she was just talking about, you know, I mean we do have that that executive branch. But along with along with that, I mean we all overall we have the mindset of you know, we want

what's best for the country. Overall, we want to do what's right not only you know, for our our fellow agents, but also for you know, our fellow man and woman you know and child, for the country. We're all looking at what's best for creating a good um set up for national security um although within the border patrol you have additional things that you need to be concerned about. What's best for the technology deployment, what's best for recruiting

and maintaining our caudre of agents. For for me, within public lands, not only what's best for national security, but it's what what's best for the relationship we share with our land management partners and our stakeholders. And so it's it's trying to find that that good balance and then being able to deliver that balance, you know, in a way that's palatable to both sides, to to understand and to um accept, collaborate on and move forward from. You're.

The only area I'm gonna really care about the level of honesty is when later I ask about based on experts, based on opinions of being around, when I ask about any insights you guys might have around the question of wildlife migrations in the border wall. Yeah, So I'll be the only no, no, don't do it now. But I'll

just say this. I would say that if I was asked to going to the president and provide my opinion on on X topic, I would provide my opinion and whether he decided to take it or not would be completely up to him. So the thing is it really accurate? Is it? And so I the question would be, is is if if you were to ask me a question of if if walls work, my statement to be yes, we have data that says they work. If you were to ask me, um, in my opinion, do I support walls?

I wouldn't answer that question because I'm in line with what the administration wants to do and that my opinion as a leader walls work because the data says that walls work. Whether or not I agree with walls or not is my own personal opinion, and I think it's good business to keep my personal opinion out of professional So like you're interested, you're you're you're comfortable with an opinion around or not an opinion, You're comfortable with objective analysis,

but not like subjective opinions. Absolutely, okay, Uh so what I want to ask, But I don't want to spend a ton of time on this, but I think Karn spoke to you about my my desire to get a person to come in here to minister a lie detector the mediator office fish highest mystery. Well, I got a new lead on last night, no good lead. It's no, no, no, not the crime. So now who stole my fish? I got a good lead on getting a detector person in. How much how much exposed you guys have to in

minister in lie detectors? Me personally, I mean I led the recruiting division before I left headquarters and James worked for me over there. So I haven't a little bit of information on on the CBP polygraph But I was in law enforcement in Colorado and have taken many polygraphs. So do UM sure of having one of them polygraphs? What's the Do you guys have a hot tip from from being an enforcement a hot tip about how to

tell when someone's spinning your yarn? Well, I would say that the best way to be and and we'll talk a little bit about read techniques right when you're he asked somebody a baseline of questions, right, if I'm talking to honest second asked, hey, where were you born? And he would give me that response, and I'm I'd be watching what he's doing. So it's like whether or not he has a lie detector hooked up to right. Well, not, you don't even need a lie detective hooking up to him.

So if I was to ask Johnnie, what was the do it with? What was the greatest hunt that you ever had? Oh, that's when I went with Steve to Kentucky and we killed squirrels. So and that would be based on on on the baseline questions right where I'd ask and watching his eyes. So historically, when people access a part of their brain that's truth, they'll look to that side of their brain. So when they go to tell a lie, they look to the other side because

now their eyes literally literally move. What's the true side? Well, you'll have to do That's why you asked the baseline questions, things that you know are true. What's your name, where were you born? You know how old are you? And you watched their eyes? Yeah, So a follow up to that would be uh to to determine truthfulness would be so, Yanni, you know, what would you say to someone else who wants to go on a hunt in Kentucky for squirrels

with Steve. Would you recommend that? Did I asked the question about his st if you want, I asked my question. So I'll just give you I'm just part of a test here, bro what I asked him what his greatest hunt was. His eyes actually flittered to my right or his left. But when he asked him the other question we was going to make something up, they dotted to his right and my left. So that's how you can determine whether or not they're being honestly. Yeah. I use

it with my kids all the time. They ate me. So Steve, if you give, you know, if we get a couple of more tips, maybe you could actually, you know, be the question er. But if you start wearing shades around here, you get a situation. Let's say you just encounter you en connor someone and you and you just talk to him. We had a cop on the other day, but he wasn't here as a cop. He was here as a Walleye tournament person. But I said to him, man, you gotta spend half your time having people tell you

telling you bullshit or whatever. And he said, yeah, but you probably spend half your time people telling you bullshit because it's just it's everywhere. It's not like it's just in my world, you know. But how do you, uh like, how quickly do you know someone's not being fourth right?

So you just like I said, when you established that baseline of questions, you've got an idea where they're gonna look, and then you start something you go to and then when you start digging down to the questions, then it's the other non physical things they can control. They cover their arms because they're they're creating a barrier between you and them, or they push themselves back, they lean back, they put their feed up, They create barriers. So whenever

somebody's lying to you there they don't sit comfortably. They physically can't control themselves, so they create barriers. So when you talk to people, you can see them starting to do those kind of things. You should be telling people this dead straight on and I'm gonna lean toward the person unless there's an absolute sociopath work in the media.

But isn't it like, isn't it if you are looking like dead straight that you're not able to hold that consistently And if like someone is being questioned and they're trying not to lie, they'll try to do the opposite of the thing that's anticipated of them. So if Steve is looking you, looking at you dead center too much, that might signal something and you're breaking the tension of a gaze would be a would be a you know,

a nonverbal queue. Well what does that mean? Break? And I know what it means, But what does that tell you? If I mean, if they're locked on and they can't they can't look at you straight while actually telling something that's false. They can't physically take the tes of looking you directly in to tell you that. It's easier for people to hold the gaze telling the truth. It's easier

to tell him, yes, yes, you're you're gonna be. Someone who's truthful is going to be actively engaged in the conversation, probably like remembering, pointing at things the cooler was here, uh this, And they're because they're recollecting things that actually happened, where someone who's lying is going to be searching and

breaking that that tension. So there's actually a video out there Manuel Noriega back in the in the late nineties where that he was being interviewed by somebody on on the news and they were talking about a bunch of things and he had exactly where you're talking about, where he had this stet set gaze and they got to the question, well, how much money do you really make? And you can watch the video, his eyes go from here,

this is how much I make. I can't tell him that all the way over here to this is what I'm going to tell him, And that that video is actually out there on YouTube. So if you go and find that, he'll give you a pretty good idea of to the video where he's locked in and they asked him a question and he looks in that you can see that whole eye movement back and forth. Nick Nixon in the in the White Waters, the famous videos, he has a tell he oh yeah, right, like before he says,

you know, I didn't there was no misconduct. He says like three different things. To prepare the national audience too, you know, listen to me. I want you to hear me clearly. He's like, I'm preparing the nation to for what I'm about to lie to you about it. And he's trying to like re encourage everyone that what I'm about to say instead of just telling the truth. He

prepares everybody for what he's about to lie about. Incidentally, Bill Clinton did the same thing on the whole Monica Lewinsky thing, come out and said, I want to tell the American people, can you talk about this this triangle signal templing when you're when you're when you're templing your you're it's like a make a show up dominance, Like I am, It's like, I'm over you. Can you describe what that is? Like your pointer describing to me over

the phone. I thought it was Clinton's signature deal where he like, imagine you make a fist. So I'm just just to the audience. Imagine you make a fist that's sitting vertical, so your knuckles are lined up vertical. Clinton would then roll his thumb over the top so it left so his thumb would rest on the middle knuckle of his pointer finger. I think it was like, I

think he must have had a pointing habit. I think he did that in that you know I did not and like driving the point fold yeah, and I think that someone said don't it's too aggressive, and so he started to go up in that. But he would then roll that pointer finger and he'd have that little thumb

pointing out and it was widely parodied. So when criminals talking about Clinton's hands, I thought she was talking about that, But you're talking about him making up some and I guess him putting his fingers together, making a little church. It's like templing, is what I believe they call it. Yeah, it's a it's a show of dominance over who you're

talking to. Apparently it's a subconscious thing. Yeah, I think I did bring my kids, but I associate it was trying to like calm myself down where I'm like, listen, look me in the eye. Yeah, I'm establishing dominance for sure. Yeah. Uh, gotta plug our trivia tournament. We're gonna crown a trivia champion three tournament episodes. So the way it's gonna go,

it's gonna be like an elimination thing. I'm trying to think of a good sports analogy, but I can't help me out any playoff, playoff, any bracket ever start with you guys play along the mediator trivia. Ever, it's unfortunate we're not we're not having one today because we were all prepared. I came in thinking we probably were. Yeah, you're him in trouble. I continue to hear from Tommy Edson, the blue collar scholar who always sends me his scorecard on his steering wheel because he does it on a

lunch break or something at work. And of course he said me the other day he had to not tell me Gus thinks he's be the randing champion. But then we had him here and he didn't win. I don't know what, I don't know. I gotta get him back here. He's always telling me he won this and one that. Um, we're gonna start with four teen players and weed him out as we go a lot of drama and surprises along the way. Well, Brody NDErs, Um, you know I'm not I'm not talk to hr about this age is

and thing going on while you're doing it. You know I'm gonna go down there with you. Yeah, because you know what I learned His age is. Um. Did you know that you can't dog on someone for not knowing technology? M that's ages. Um, you can't say, oh, he's not tech savvy of a person of my age, and that's all anybody does. His goof on me. I get skinny shamed, I get tech shamed. YEP. So yeah, let me know

what that age. We'll go down there and I'll be like, Brownie has some complaints about me, and I have some complaints about everybody else. Was it inappropriate for me to say Phil sounded twice his age? I don't know. Yeah, that's that's kind of complex. Come down business here. Now, I'd like to tell you complaint about these podcasts. Guess we had to get your take on something. Oh, this

guy wrote it. Really See, I'm telling you I got two stories for you, guys, but they're they're appropriate because they both border on law enforcement and lawbreaking kind of. So a guy, a guy rode in. It takes a lot of um somethings like that takes a lot of I don't know, gumption. Let's say, yeah, we use a lot of you. Oh, I was wrong on a Yiddish word recently, making love is to stop. Oh, I didn't know that stuck. It's stuck stuck and uh someone wrote

in to correct me. Will so check this out. Will from Omaha, Nebraska. This is an insane story. He's hunt a piece of land. So he's in Nebraska. He's hunt a piece of land accessible only by boat on the Missouri River. Okay, he had decided to take. So he's going out scout and he wants to take down his own dear stand because he's got a camera out and there's no action on the trail camera. He says he had noticed that there had been a stand that had been sitting in the same spot in the woods for

three years, on the same piece of public land. In Nebraska, a stand becomes legally abandoned after February, Right, So if you put a stand in public land in Nebraska, you got till February take it down, at which point it's it becomes part of the public property. He decides to, as he put it, acquired that stand, and he froll sees to go down do some scouting, and that's I think that's like a good thing to do because he's not only acquiring his stand, but he's cleaning cleaning the

woods up. Oh man, there's one I got my eye on on a chunk of state land. It's been there for three years. Well talk to this guy first. Where the story gets crazy. He also had set out a line for catfish, so he goes to check out his line for catfish. He's messing with his catfish line and another boat pulls up, asked him if he's seen anyone in the area because they just had a stand stolen. He says, cool. I messed up by panicking and not confessing that it was me and tried to play it

off like I didn't know. He then he was looking to the right side of his brain, like I was shocked. This guys after this guy's writing in about this. He says, they then decided to check my boat and found their stand. They went into a fury, and when I tried to explain my reasoning, it made no difference to them. They demanded, under threat of violence, that I showed them my I d and then asked if I had taken a ship

by their setup. I had, he says, they had. He says they had a whole illegal camp set up with two by fours nailed into trees to make a windbreak, and a picnic table and a fire pit. But he thought this stuff was from years past and it was obvious they had been there a long time, so nature called I took a dump there. They then demanded, once again under threats of kicking my ass, that I pick up my ship with my bare hands, and so I did what I had to do to not get eat up.

Then left was told to not come back there again. I'm still gonna hunt there because I did see some nice scrapes. And that's man dedicated to the cause right there. He wanted to get our opinion on it. I don't have no opinions. I have one opinion. He's a service shitter. Oh that's bad. Oh yeah, that ainion. Yeah, but the other guys the wrong too. Right sorted out with the game Warden. Two wrongs don't make it. He should have buried his uh ship and then he wouldn't at least

would have had half the problems that he had. He Um. He says, Also, I'd like to serve as an example of how even if you're not breaking the law, you can still find yourself in trouble, and once caught, just tell the truth because if you don't, nothing you say after that half will be believable. Also, don't ship in other people's camps. Um, here's what I want to bring up. But it's this is gonna this is gonna take some production skills. Yanni, do you remember long ago what episode

number was that Double Digits Episode sixty. We recorded an episode in Guyana with a mkushi man named Roven Alvin. I do remember this. Do you remember what Roven told us was going on with the local white lipped peckery population.

I remember something about that he told us. He told us that they were having a problem because there was a village down the river that was jealous of his village's prosperity, and they had a shaman who had locked all of their packery's in a mountain, And they had a young shaman in their village that they were hoping would get trained up and developed the necessary skills to unlock the packers from the mountain because they hunt white

lipp packeries. The other day, I'm looking through my emails and there's, uh, I subscribe to a news list and there's a email there's an article, a study called the case of Latin America's mysterious disappearing and reappearing white lip packeries. And it gets into how so they look very similar to a ha alina, which is a collared packery, but they run in herds of two. I mean, there's there's a video attached to this article that just is like a cross, like a a trail along the river and

it just goes on for seven eight minutes. My kids love it. It's just seven eight minutes of white lip peckeries just flooding through across this trail. Uh. And it goes on to talk about this research to document large scale white lipped peckery disappearances and wild population cycling across the range in Latin America, and it alludes to indigenous people's mythologies that were built up to explain how it could happen that one minute there's hundreds and you're living

off them. In the next minute they're just gone. And the article talked about that very thing. Um. Other More, what would you used for it? Not a cult? That's not the right word spiritual X. I don't know is that the right word? Spiritual explanations? What would you say? Other worldly explanations? Maybe spiritual explanations for a phenomenon that

researchers are just now trying to understand. It goes on and on, but I think we should revisit that story um from Rovin as much as much as as possible, and then think about that where this paper it goes on and on about these wild population migrations and fluctuations and talks about this being a long standing puzzle among indigenous people's roban. We talked about something privately, and if you don't want to talk about you don't have to.

But would you mind talking to a public audience about what happened with the packeries or is that something you don't want to discuss, like why you're not seeing them right now? Well, um, we have sha men. They are like the I would say, they're like the doctor's northst Livory you would call in your country. But here we have like shamans. They are knowledgeable, they have the power of using we call it a Marian science. They can't do anything to a fish the river, to animals such

as pickery is um twelve. Approximately twelve years ago, we used to have lots of peckeries coming close to the village feeding a white white lit packer. Would you come like a one hundred or two hundred of them at a time. Yeah, they're like a hog pig. Yeah, we call it white. We call havel. We have the collared packer, which is called Havilina. This is a bigger, louder, more gregarious Havilina species of colored white let packery. So this this hugs white hugs. Pickery is used to come and

feeding in the end of the ponds. We didn't fruits not warm. And as you go trout up the river you can bump into them. You can head them up a destance. You can't even smell them. It's a fine. So we to have a lot of fun like shooting, and we have like meat. You can barbecue lots of barbecues fresh meat. Now in order I'm ranging villages. They have people that have very knowledge, like you said show men, and because of we um having a lot of food

and where they don't. Now there's like jealousy if forever, if I'm jealous of Steve, Steve is accurately shooting, I would do my highest science on Steve and next time he would shoot accurate. Anything should is like miss keep missing a curse on them. Yeah, So because of my I use my high science on him. So people are like like that here. So what they do is like this top the pickeries, they lock them up somewhere well I don't were, but somewhere in the mountains. I have

no idea using their highest science. Now to get the pickers to come out from there, we have to get another another shalman that could do the highest science to get the pickers out from there because they are lacked out there. Now, if we have one like that, we could get the speakers out now they will be all over again. But that's that's how the pickers had me stopped. How did they showman get that get to that level? Well, is there someone training or you know what I mean?

They learn from their parents. Their parents like it was like a shaman and smoke, tobacco, trades, nose and you know that these a lot of things. They can bring them like a fish spirit by shaking the bush in the house and doing their things and stuff like that. And then they can bring them like a picker is h pickery is leader. I would call it that way. Now, hey, you know, gab with him, take shout of local drink,

you know by spirit. And then if the shaman said, okay, what I want to luck you up here for a while to three years, four five years, how many years and be there, I don't come on, I want you to be there. I want you to stay there. That's how the shaman works. They have like a little power designs. They are working so they are like good and bad ones. So I don't know if you are here and you said, the picker is but we used to have a lot of pickers here. We have to have a lot of myths.

We used to have a lot of fun. But now there's no white pickories. We just have the colored ones around. Did the did the shaman or the other village that use the high science to lock up the packers? Did they tell you that they were doing this or did the packers just disappear? And then you you you speculated that that's why they We we know, we know, we know because for a while we didn't any pickeries and then we have our shaman. And the village is not perfect,

but at least you can get some experience. But he could already could tell you what is happening. He knows what happened. So he said, ah, there's somebody locked them up there, so they're there. That's what anymore. Even the fish like, if somebody like do something to the river, you will hardly get some fish, hardly get some turtles, otters, kinmons and so on. So that is how the shaman works. There are gooddons and bottons, you know, they could do

any anything. I understand whoever, like I understand why someone would be jealous of rewild village because it's a beautiful village that's wonderful to visit. So I understand how someone that had a bad village that wasn't this way and this friendly and such great people. Um, I see how they would get jealous. Yeah, but I don't think that you. I don't think that that that that that I hope that your packery's come back. Yeah, I hope they come back soon. Some day I started to shan wanna being

like briandad. I hope that I hope that they come back. Guy wrote in why I always say that pronghorns smell like freedom lay corn chips. It's a bacterial him. Dogs get him, Dogs can get him. It's not harmful, but that dogs need the same bacteria. It makes them smell like corn chips. If I wasn't lying, When you guys round up those prong horn, do you ever get a whiff of freedo smell? Um? Yeah? What does it smell like? It smells like the desert. Yeah, I can't say that

I've ever smelled corn chips. Smells like not just corn chips, Freedo lake. Well, because I was I was thinking about a while back, I can't remember which guest it was that you had had um. He was talking about how like one of his favorite smells is like when your dog is sleeping and you know it's a really good sleep because your dog gets up and it smells like corn chips. And he said I was in my car listening to that, and I was like, oh my god, I'm not the only one that's ever smelled that, like

I thought. I thought for sure I was the one that was crazy, like because I talked to my kids about it and they're like, I don't think I've ever smelled that from the dog's dad. And I'm like, I swear like sometimes when the dogs sleep, if it's a really good sleep, they and it smells like corn chips. And I just heard it somebody else, somebody else has a dog that does that, and I was super psyched that, Okay,

I'm not crazy like this is. And now there's scientific information that backs up my dogs can smell like corn chips, and it's okay. I actually think that's on the it's on their paths at the feet's on the path. It's not harmful, but it can spin out of control. It talks about dogs control their body temperature by paintings, since they don't perspire. The only place dogs have to cool

downs on the bottom of their feet. Chip sizes This veterinarian emphasizes that the friedo smell is completely normal and doesn't mean that your dog has a bacterial or fungal infection. However, he's a it goes on, he's older, they can get out of control and uh, your dog can get unhealthy feet bumps, redness, swelling, or changes in your dog's behavior, So watch out for that. All right, Do you guys want to start with the southern border of the Northern border?

How are you supposed to do this? Mm hmmm, I guess like rock, paper scissors? Yeah, where's the wind blowing today? Is it coming from the north? STI I was gonna say north. I don't know why it's my decision, but something start. Let's start with the north. I feel like

the south is the carrot. What patrol in the northern border? Um, I made a joke about it being sleepy, but what are the primary what are the primary things that were like, look, what are the primary elicit activities that happen along the northern border? So in reality, so just a quick one

on one on on on border patrol. Border patrol is one component within Customs and Border Protection UM, and I want to make a clarification that there are there are three law enforcement components within side Customs and Border Protection or can you can you touch on Department Homeland Security comes into this department and Homeland Security is the mother agency. So uh CVP is basically an agency withinside the Department of Homeland Security, which is basically the don't do all

the acronyms. Yeah yeah, So DHS or Department Homeland Security is the cabinet level and then UM the agency level is Customs and Border Protection. A better analogy would be Department of Justice and FBI. So FBI is a is an agency withinside the Department of Justice, and so that's where CBP falls in. UM. Border patrol is a component of CBP. There are three law enforcement entities of CBP. Aaron Bury Aaron Brens are the folks that fly all the helicopters and do all the deep water stuff right

out in in in the Atlantic Oceans. I've never heard of that, well, probably because most people don't. Most people when they think about the border patrol, they think about the people that you encounter a crossing the border. It's called air and marine Aaron Marine, Yeah, Aaron Breene operations, and they are they are the component they fly all the not coastguard. Coastguard is an entity of DHS. So do they run like the edge of US waters and

international waters? Like is that the extent of their range or they do along with border patrols. So the separation of what we call deep water and brown blue water and brown water. So me being a sailor, right, I'm a blue water sailor. Coastguards or brown water sailers because they hug the they never get out out of side

of the shore. So are Aeron marine folks? Those guys go into the deep water because that they have the bigger boats and go out and interact, uh stuff like you'd see the Cuban refugees and things coming across in Miami. And then our border patrol agents still operate air and marine boats, but they operate in the coastal water raise the Great Lakes and things like that, and they operate within about three to five miles of the coastline. So

can Aaron Marine operate in international waters? Um? I have to do? You remember back in your days. Uh, from the on the on the water now, I don't think so. I think they get out far enough in the water.

But in the air, Uh, they have a lot more liberty, right for some of their operations they do, so I would say the historically they probably stay within federal federal waters right and if they are operating outside into into international waters, they're probably working in with the Coastguard because Coastguard has that ability to do that type of stuff. So Aeron Marine they handle like I said, they're all our pilots. There are UM and they handle all the

all the deep water blue water UM activities. UM Office of Field Operations. Those are the blue uniforms. Those are the folks that you're going to encounter at the port of entry and trade and at the airport. So their responsibility is between the confines or within the fence line of the port of entry. That's what OLD does. So when you guys go to Mexico or go to Canada and come through a port of entry, you're interacting with with officers from field operations and then the Border Patrol

is the entity. Those are green uniforms. We operate in between the ports of entry. So all that traffic that comes in of the legal entries is what the border patrol is encountering and working on. Got it? Okay, that's what you need. Okay, let's say you're crossing. I know, we're back to I just can't. I'm going to go to the southern border from it. You're crossing at the Argo creator Douglas Crossing. You're when you're in that customs process,

you're not dealing with border. You're dealing with Field Office of Field Operations customs and different different color uniform, different components within If I go off, if I go east or west twenty miles and try to do the same thing. If you're hunting south in New Mexico, you find yourself up on the line because you're tracking something and you across the line, then you're gonna be dealing with the border patrol because you've just made an entry at a

place in time not designated as a border ventrol. Do you know all that, honey? I do not. It makes sense? Okay. So that's how that's basically the one on one of border patrol, and we operate between the ports of entries, and somehow I've lost the question. So what um on that on that wide open, lonely border, the northern border between the US and Canada. What kind of dark, shady

stuff goes on up there. Uh So the difference between the northern water and southern border on the northern border, because obviously we're dealing with weather and uh the geography is a little bit different along the northern border. Obviously that not that Arizona doesn't have mountains, but the mountains are bigger in in in Colorado and Montana or in Montana than there are in Arizona. See, the traffic is a little bit lower, but you deal with what we

call a little bit more exciting things. So, um, this year recently, we had a a gentleman from from Canada kidnaped his his living girlfriend and their two children, and he was a sex trafficker and ended up coming south Eline. He came through a place not designated port of entry and we ended up with a task force. We apprehended them.

I don't know why this guy went to to Sturgis, South Dakota at the time of Sturgist when they had every cop in the world there, but that's where he ended up going, and through a task force, we ended up apprehending this guy. This guy was his his girlfriend had some mental incapassibilities. Um, but his goal was to take the children to use for child pornography at Sturgist. For whatever reason he went to Sturgist. I don't have to struggle for reasons why he would have. Obviously he

had no intelligence. That's the last place I would go during during bike because of the law enforcement coverage. But that's a handful. Yeah. So it's those type of cases that we run into and and uh, the other stuff that we get right now, guns are super super popular in Canada because of the gun laws and things in Canada Canada. So a a weapon, a polymer eighty right, those those glock clones that we buy here for what a couple of hundred bucks, there's someone for five and

six thousand dollars a piece in Canada. So that's the stuff moving the other That stuff moving the other day. Is that your responsibility U pushing borders out the border troube. We want to be partners with with all law enforcements and and our focus is on and what I would call border security and more along homeland security and pushing those borders out and making the entire border safe, and we can only do that by working with our Canadian partners and our Mexican partners. So so yeah, I never

thought that if you're at the border, you're also looking southward. Yeah, so that's the concept that we are like that we're working on in have Her. Like I had commented early, we go all the way down to Colorado and Utah. Our focus is on homeland security entities, right, those things that have an impact on on the entire homeland security.

Try thinking of children trafficking and people smuggling weapons. And I don't need to talk about Fenton, al. All you gotta do is turn on the news and see what's happened in fentanyl. So, with the Border Patrol and our law enforcement capabilities with Title eight, Title nineteen, and Title

twenty one, which is UH. Title nineteen is the Customs and Tariffs law, Title twenty one is the Narcotics law, and Title eight is the overall criminal statute for for the United States, we have authorities and all three of those titles, so that gives us the ability to interdict all that traffic. So that's what we're trying to do in the Border Patrol is go after those things that are that are dangerous to the country, Like, I mean everyone is child traffickers off off the streets, and we

want to get fountainl off the streets. And that's the direction that we're trying to go with The Border troll is not so not be so much focused on the border. We're focused on the border, but we want to focus on those on those things that have an impact throughout home, homeland security or public safety. How do how do people move how do people move guns? Ac Like, if you're trying to move guns into Canada, how do you see it done? Do you see it done at you see

it done at not at crossings? Oh, you actually see a mix right. So again, the like we talked about earlier, smugglers go through great, great stinch to try to hide whatever product they're trying to trying to smuggle. Um, we've seen we've seen narcotics on aptrack coming from Seattle going to New York or to Minneapolis, and then the cash

that that's coming back. We see in most cases a lot of that stuff is probably happening between the ports of entries where they've go out, just like you would hunting to go out and scouting area to see where traffic is where they can actually get across, and they bring across through either smuggling through a port of entry. They use hidden compartments in vehicles, um for narcotics, to use body carriers, a whole gamut of things that they

try to do. Do car tells ever move because it do drug traffickers in South in Columbia wherever South and droll America? Do they ever get stuff to Canada and then into the US from Canada or is that just add a lot of complexity? Um, Well, again, I think, like I said, it's this new paradigm, right, we're seeing We're seeing smugglers go through different stents to try to

to try to make money. Right. I mean when we talk about when we talk about people trying to come to the United States, there's always somebody out there that's gonna prey on that person. Right, They're gonna they're gonna they're gonna drive him into his slavery. So they're gonna say, i'll smuggle you. It's gonna be twenty dollars per person. So this person brings him in there his five family members,

so now he's he's in destitute to the smugglers. So he doesn't have that money, so they put him to work to work for them, and and so they're working for him, but they're also having to pay the smugglers rent, They have to pay the smugglers the electricity and all that stuff. So all the money that they make to try to pay back being smuggling, they never touch because they're they're hitting him on all these other factions of absolutely, so they're they're they're just destitute to do in that.

So that's the type of stuff that they do. I think that um Nar cartels are gonna do whatever they can to make money, and if there's a way to make money to take a product to Canada and come south, they will. Um In fact, they think that I wouldn't be surprised to see it with with Mexican nationals. I mean, Canada has a very liberal visa waiver pro program. So the visa waivers, the countries on on on the visa waiver list for Canada are like three hundred or four

countries are on there. All you have to do is be from that country. You come into Canada and you're given automatic status in Canada as a non immigrant, and they give them money to live and survive for approximately twelve months, So I wouldn't good first step. Good first step is to make it into Canada and then utilize those social work programs and then when that's done, then

you can come south. Or if you can get Canadian citizenship, then it's a free broke right because we it's open borders for just as its open borders for us to go to Canada, it's open borders for Canadian citizens to come south. Canadian citizens, whether they're naturalized or born Canadians as they can come back and forth. So because that entities out there, the things that we look at is there's a possibility for somebody to come up, utilize the

programs and then be smuggled back down south. A lot of the nine eleven hijackers flowed through Canada, all four of them. It was a whole lot more than four. All four crews, the four, the four on the planes all came through. Oh actually came through Swanton, Vermont and h who. Just the other day, I had a conversation with someone where they're telling me that they had gone black bear hunting in Canada. Okay, like many people do.

There's places around like bear bait factories, in Canada and so many you know guys got to hunt bears in Canada. And he was telling me, and it's the thing I hear all the time. He was telling me that they told him you can't bring the meat home. No, that's that's not true. I know. There's so much confusion about if you ask ten guys, you're gonna get ten different answers about how it works with it. You can't bring your gun, you can't bring meat. You can't drive from Alaska,

even though I know you can. You can't like take Alaska meat from Alaska into the Lower forty eight because of the who's um, who's bidding, like, who's setting those rules? So those rules are those are the the AGG specialists that actually worked for OFOS off Office of Bild Operations. The guys at the port of entry. So if you come into a port of entry and you see somebody at at the at the primary and they're wearing a weapon,

that's a that's an officer. They also have folks that aren't on their non law enforcement types and their AGG specialists, they're the ones that set those responsibilities. So moose is a perfect example. You can go up and hunt moose in Canada. The only thing you can't bring south is any of the contents of the head because of the cw D. Yeah, so so with let's tell me it can come across without a problem. So tell me what

someone would need to do. Uh, you go bear hunting in Canada, UM, and you want to drive up with a gun, and you want to come back with the bear meat and the bear hide and everything. So if you follow the proper stuff, there's no reason you can't do that. And and and and I just did it in my personal capacity to I went up to I went up to New Brunswick, shot of black bear and just did just as past September and went through that entire process. UH. Can't bring can't bring the baculum back. UM,

can't bring ball bladder. UM. And and quite quite frankly, it's the it's the UH. I don't know they're what their official name is, but it's basically their version of us fashion wildlife, the Canadian Fishing wildlife for lack of a better term. They're the ones that actually did the rigors inspection on the way out of the country on their side, UM, to make sure you weren't bringing down stuff that has a black market and and extreme you fill out of survey, they do a deep dive into

what outfitter you're used. They we were talking about investigative techniques. They investigated. They separated me and my best friend who was the driver, talked as just to see if we're telling the same story, but asking us about what altfreder we used. Uh, did the outfit ter got the animal in the field? Did the outfitter himself take anything back from the gut pile when he came back to camp?

How many days we were there? Um? Huh. So that like that's and because they're trying because of the black market trade for all of the animal parts specific to UH controlled species in Canada, they want to make sure that those things aren't being transported illegally throughout their country or back into the United States. UM. As far as the process of just going over and coming back, it was at this time around, you know, you know, we were kind of nervous because of all the things post COVID,

with the Canadian restrictions on ongoing there. There's a new app you gotta fill out to arrive can and whatnot. We thought it was gonna be pretty difficult, and it was actually really really seamless. Um, all things considered. Uh, the bringing in a gun you can bring up to believe, up to three guns per person. Um. It's a simple form they where you just identify what guns you're bringing up, serial numbers, and I believe you pay a permit fee and you just have to keep it on your person

the entire time you're hunting and on the way back. Um, it's it's just an inspection by Canada on the way out, by their by their Efficient Game Agency to make sure of all those things we just talked about. But taking the meatback taking I had already I cleaned my skull and we boiled our skulls in Canada. So I don't know the restrictions on brain matter for bear, because I don't know if if their brain matter is a disease carrying but not that I know of. It might be

that they don't. It might be that they don't. They create a whole bunch off. You're my experience, and what I kind of sense from them is if you're bringing like the entire the entire animal back absent into kernels, there's a lot less of an issue, whereas if you just like if you try to do things like pull the clause and just bring the clause back. They ding you on that. God, But if you're bringing back the entire the entire hide with the skull inside the hide

and the claws still on everything, no issue. So long as you're not bringing back the restricted items like baculum and gall bladder. I didn't know there was a black market on vaculum. Did you know that? Prior to going you only knew about gall bladder. Yeah. You mentioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Do you guys work with them a lot for like illegal trafficking endangered species that

like is that a big partnership. Yeah, that's that's one of the things that that that we do work with them on, um, you know, not so much on their investigative per the whole investigation side of it, but like some sometimes it's initiation of because of a lot of the training that that we do that that cross agency training and inter agency training. Like when there are um, you know, like certain times of the year when um, there's a lot of herpetology. Uh what's I can't remember

what the we call like her thieves or poachers. Um, so they'll come out and like the fish and Wildlife Service will let us know, Hey, you know, it's springtime, we're gonna get a lot of her poachers out and so we'll we'll get together with them and we'll create like little campaigns within um, you know, within the patrol, within the sectors and stations, to like create little um kind of like posters and emailings out there. We'll talk about it our musters and say, hey, guys, you know,

Fish and Wildlife. You know they're they're going to be out there, but these are some of the things to look out for. And if you happen to see that, you know from you know, while you're out there patrolling, here's the contact information. So they're interested in people smuggling across the border, not not even they're just interested in

people out in the landscape stealing snakes and lizards. And yeah, I guess I guess I was asking more like, when you see a new article like man gets busted with forty seven whatever dangered endangered species in his suitcase or whatever, like, is that, like do you work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service on those kinds of things. So when it's something like that where it's like you said, you know, busted in a suitcase with you know, twenty five you know,

endangered bats or sparrows or something. A lot of time. That's what like what Chief Fortunato was talking about, UM is when it's an agg specialist that's probably caught that at a port of entry, Like they were going through the port of entry and they were inspecting the contents of the bag and then they found that, you know, on the bag or on their person and stuff like that. UM. But again with border patrol, we're working in between the

ports of entry. So like we'll do stuff with like the Land Management l e O for you know, the Wildlife Refuge or the park um you know, or even you know one of their biologists specialists and let us know about something. And I actually think it depends on the area too. So if you get down too, uh the real Grand Valley, there's there's Santana Refuge which is right on the Rio Grand River, which is a very

big populated location for smuggling back and forth across. And I don't know if you guys have ever been down south, but in a very heavily trafficked area that the landing on the on the river side is is destroyed plastic bags, water bottles, these makeshift floatation devices and things like that, and that Santa Ana Refugees is known for a spot for them to come across in that area, and it just riddles the entire public land where people in Santa refuge is a hiking area and things like that where

they have to go down and and see all that type of stuff. So when the when somebody comes across there, it's often a fishing wildlife person that might encounter them first, that would come up and we would encounter them and and and work that direction. So I think a lot depends on on on the area that is in proximity to the border and and things that go along Lada.

I know also in in Rio Grand Valley with the with the river, fishing wildlife is on the river, so there's a lot of times where the they'll jump on a boat with borbatrol and then patrol, which then takes the scope of the scope and authority a little bit bigger. So now you just don't have the scope of authority of the BORBA relib of the scope authority of the fish and Wildlife officers, so that you can do more things. The same thing with Coastguard when we put a Coastguard

person on our boat. We now have all the authorities of Coastguard, so we can do checks and things like that. I gotta here's nother question about the Northern border. What is if you imagine the most out of the most remote areas of the northern border, like say the Boundary waters or okay, I worked there for eleven years, how do you know? Do you know when you've crossed the border? So? So in reality? Right? So? Yes? And no, right, because

we've GPS s and things like that. Um, Like in the boundary waters, right, it's a pristine there's no mechanized there's no but there's no there's no there's no cut line, there is no cut line. Right. So, and the thought process this comes on. And the same thing with the Rio Grand River when you're when you're working at our concept is you can't take water and split it in half and say this belongs to the United States and this belongs to Mexico, or this belongs to Canada, and

this belongs to the United to the United States. They do it all the time, well, they try to. But the reality is, as long as and this is our thought process, as long as you don't make a meaningful entry. And a meaningful entry on water would be to stop and drop acre or drop a fishing line or something like that, and you're just cascading through. If you're on a canoe, and a canoe you're canoeing. As long as you don't make a meaningful entry stop and do something,

then you just keep on going. That doesn't really matter. It's when you actually stop and drop a fishing line or stop me in Canada that means you're now and he made a meaningful entry. Really ye, So if I do just nudge my foot across the border, I've broken the law. Do you make a meaningful entry? So in Rey, in reality and and and James, you worked in in del Rio is probably the same way. We actually didn't consider folks coming across the river when I worked in

mccallen's Exs. We didn't think. We didn't consider them making an entry till they made landfall. If they were standing on the U S side and still ankle deep in water, we didn't touch them because they haven't made a meanful entry. But the moment they come on land, they've made a meaningful entry. Now I'm not saying that people probably weren't grabbed,

because that probably did happen. But the reality is, in most cases you could step and say until they actually leave the crest of the water, they haven't made a meaningful entry. So if you if you stepped out to go to the bathroom, then you made a meaning canoe and bound. Yeah, you they would say that you made a meaningful entry. Let's move whatever. Before we hear this threat in Montana of wild pigs coming down from Canada.

Wild pigs supposedly feral pigs. Supposedly Saskatchewan has like a little population of wild hall game farm Yeah, like capes, maybe even in the rags. There's always like a little blip in there about like if you see, you know, feral pigs when you're hunting up you know in that have her area, you know, on the high line or whatever along the Canadian border, to immediately notify you know,

the local warden. But no, no, no thoughts or I guess there's there must not be that big of a problem if you guys are no, no, no, no, it sounds like a lot of fun um. I would relate it to I don't know. I think that the similarities would be a livestock on the on the Mexican side.

So we have we have tick riders down in in Texas and there's a lot of feral pigs, horses, and cattle that come across the river, and that would be tick riders that would go out and interdict that traffic because of the ticks and things down the tick riders do you remember, I think there are an interior, their deprimate interior. No, what's the US the international? Do they work boundary commis and all are I thought they were at agriculture there, Yeah, it's I don't think it's UM.

I think they work for UM boundary water yea. So they are there. They're law enforcement official. Their sold job. They ride horses. They go out and they look for livestock or traffic or animal traffic that has come from Mexico to the United States to apprehend them, to take them and dip them because of the ticks in in Mexico. Just livestock. I haven't heard anything of live colleagues are real stickers about when you when someone wants to bring a deer cape deer in Mexico and you're looking at

the US border. Okay, so you imagine a tick like an ambitious tick would just but but you want it, you're looking. You can kill a deer inside of the US border, and when you go through customs, you can't have a single tick on that cape. That's part of that. That's why we would not you know, I get it, like you don't know where it came from. Whatever. You gotta do your job. But I would laugh about, well, how many ticks right now are crossing that border on coyotes,

I mean the animal on whatever the hell? Yeah, mule deer, cuse deer like ticks are back and forth. I had no idea that there's someone out actually, yeah, cruising for cruising for livestock to just because of the ticks? Do they got a bad just as ticks? They are They are a law enforcenate. I think the job I actually take their Department of Agriculture and and I'm not sure exactly what they work for, but they are. They are a law enforcement officer, federal officer that works, and that's

their soul jobs. And it's mainly horses and cattle and and hugs. So yeah, wildlife to wildlife, wild just comes

and goes. But if there's a if there's a Mexican cow that comes across and gets through the double tick fence and onto you know, some ranches they have to particularly in Texas is where I know it is, they have they have one basically barbed wire fence right on the water and then another one like like ten yards off of that, and it's to try if anything gets past the first one, a lease is contained in that

one little barrier close to the rapairian zone right there. Um. But then if it gets through that second one, so they try and contain them in that little that little corridor right there, so they don't make you know, in further into whatever property they're on and they start mixing with if the if whatever they're carrying gets with the cattle that these ranchers are are running, it becomes a

bad day. And we we've had situations where like a smuggler's horse gets through and then we have the season and it's it's a ton of paperwork when you're dealing with a with a with a horse from Mexico. It's absolutely What's even worse, is it if because you don't know where they came across. So if you're out patrolling you see this horse or something come on the drag road. You don't know where it came from. They know what's

not supposed to be there. You call a tick rider, and if it happens to be just the local farmer whose horse got out, oh yeah, they get a little fired up. Man. I wish you guys had brought up this tick riding because I wish I knew that. I wish I was the only guy that knew, the only media person that knew about tick riders. To answer your question, I haven't heard anything about Farrell Hawgs coming south from from Canada. Oh yeah, I forgot about. So we're on

the lookout. If you look at where I used to think that hogs would buy sort of like by definition have to be would be confined to the American South. Um, but that's not true now. If you look at like maps of where where hoggs could feasibly you know, without any sort of human persecution, where hoggs con feasibly live, it's the Lord. Did you guys just do a question ridiculous? Number four states have confirmed that's absolutely incredible, and there's

no reason that they. I mean, I guess you could in the northern Great Plains, you could feasibly have like the the landscape would support them. Probably, I would, because you need to be like, well, I thought it'd be too cold, but then you think about where they're at in Siberia. Well, Yannis is up in Latvia. How high is Latvia. It's not that it's like the same latitude as Juno, but it's got pigs. Yeah, oh yeah, that sounds pretty cold. It's got native well I guess, yeah.

And the because I think of Juno is within the context of Alaska, and like the southeast of Alaska is just not nowhere near the extreme temps Buttarctic circle. Yeah, latitude wise, no, they got they could have a trement, they could, they could be there. I think it just be easier to obviously, eradicating hogs on the northern plains would be like a much easier job than out of

heavily Georgia than out of swampy jungly show. I mean, even though even though it's mostly private land, Texas is pretty open and uh yeah they so, oh yeah, I'm real skeptical. We covered this recently. We had a guy we just did an episode in Hawaii and we're on a coffee plantation and you know, all the pigs, you know, they don't. All the pigs cause so much damage. And I asked my body who loves to hunt them? I said,

do you really want them gone? No? Exactly yea. In my personal opinion, I'd say, uh, you mon kind of boys, better start shooting them pigs before they post rigs. Uh. I was saying, if you really hated the pigs. I was telling my friend Danny, who's been on the podcast for I said, if you really hated pigs, you put up a big sign that said please come hunt my land. I said, your pigs be gone. He said, but can you imagine what kinds of people would show up in

my Buddy Callahan said, barbecuers. All right, let's talk about the Southern Boarder. We kind we're already kind of talking about the Southern Boarder with the tick riders. How many tick riders are there? I think they're mainly based in Texas. Handful, It's not it's not a big agency. This article. I was just reading, Uh, they are under the U. S d A. There was eighty six of them sick riders. Not very big, I feel that, but I don't know bad Larry McMurtry's that's still not around it right, like

a thousand page novel. Titilated to the extreme. Oh, you know the double you're talking about, the double fence. I was on a friends ranch not long ago and one of his line fences was a double fence yep. And I asked him why he has why one of the line fences a double fence. And I thought that it must have been some dispute, you know whatever, Like we would go through the trouble putting fences like five ft apart, six ft apart. So I said, what's going on with that?

And it's to keep um, it's from keeping the cattle from stopping through the fence. Look at that stopping with the neighbors cattle, keeping breeding populations away from one another, they'll stoop through the fence. Wow, surprised me. Nature is always going to happen, right, Uh, how long have you guys been? How different is working on the southern border now than it was you know ten years ago, twenty

years ago, thirty years ago. It's not even the same now as it was three years ago, right, I mean, it's just it's just what they're dealing with in in sheer numbers is the human numbers, human numbers. Yeah, they're just the numbers that they're dealing with. Give me a ballpark, like how many people are on a daily basis, how many people are in some way or another flirting with the border? Um? Yeah, and I remember the numbers from last year. I think James is looking. I think we

were for one point border patrol encounters. Fiscal year twenty two is two million, two thousand, six hundred and fifty two, and then I think was one point five one point six point six. Yeah, so in just one year, you know, half a million people. If you had so many border patrol agents that you guys can stand along the border shoulder to shoulder, would that completely stop illegal movement across the border. And so this is gonna be my opinion.

All right, So probably you're shaking your head. No, no, I I if there's money to be made, a smuggler is going to do something. He's gonna try to smuggle something. So that I don't think that we will ever stop of traffic coming back and forth across the borders. It's just not feasible. You got something you well, that's I mean, you could put you could put peoples shoulders the shoulder and they're gonna go to the air or they're gonna go more to they're going to go to concealment rate

you know, through the through the ports of entry. UM. And so it's you know, how how far are we going to dig into you know, inspections more so than we already do at the international borders, you know, try and facilitate legitimate trade and travel UM takes a you know a unique balance of of enforcement and UM and

throughput in order to maintain our economy. UM. So you know what is the answer, I don't know, UM, but putting forth the best the best known practices of of of intelligence, surveillance capabilities UM in order to get you know that that traffic through at the ports of entry, but also block off what's in between the ports the ports of venture like we do is it's it's a

delicate dance. So everything we do, right, I mean, their counterintelligence smugglers, counter counter of tongues just as good as ours. They're gonna see how we're reacting to certain traffick in an area, and they're gonna change their tactics and it's up to us to figure out how they've changed their

tactics and react to it. So, like you said, we can put you know, shoulder to shoulder and they're either gonna fly over because if there's money to be made, they're gonna they're gonna do it, or they're gonna tunnel. You guys have probably we've had a rash of tunnels along the southwest border. They'll dig a tunnel and come underneath, or um they'll they'll expand on their on their their concealment methods, like the tractor trailer down on Larrado. They'll

do different things to try to get them across. If there's money to be made, smuggles are gonna are gonna smuggle it. Is there a part of the agency or a different agency that you guys work with that looks at it on a bigger scale, like a social scale, like what could we do so that there wouldn't be this money to be made or wouldn't be this demand

for these things that cause these issues? Or is there somebody working on it from that angle that questions that endle will be a consequence, right, So actions have consequences, right, and if it's a negative consequence, you probably he won't do that action again. So the the best method of stopping somebody from doing something is having negative consequence on their action, right, um. And and that's the delicate dance.

Right to operate within as a chief patrol age. And I'm given I'm given the left and right boundaries from the administration, and it's up to me to figure out how to get from A to B within those left

and right boundaries to deliver that consequence. I think, well, yeah, what yeah, An, what you're I think what you're more referring to, UM, I would say it does happen if you look at the way that the federal government might try to go down and engage with governments in Venezuela, governments in Columbia about how to improve conditions adjustments that they might make where they're not creating an inhospitable environment for people that then we have to deal with at

our borders. So like, take some of that money and try to go to the root, cause that's going to be more Department of State type activities in order to

eliminate push factors from these from these countries. And we have our International Affairs UH division over in in operational services, another component within customs and Border protection where they work with our foreign partners and try to figure out ways to deliver consequences and and and also to to get other countries to step up and and assist us in these in these actions. How how is your working working relationship with like Mexican government and authorities? Like is it

something you guys work with? It's like, are they helping you prevent people from crossing the border? Is that not? Well? So we work both with with with Canadian and and yeah and South So I think really the relationship is pretty good. But the other thing is too. You have to remember now we're getting into the politics, right, The politics of of Mexico and the politics the United States

are two very very different things. So it's and and those agencies that we work with down there, whether it's Sadeta or any of those other countries, are those UH agencies within the Mexican government. They have the same left

and right boundaries that we do. So there between between the two of us were trying to find the best way to deliver a consequence or help um UH in impede UH traffic coming through right because obviously I think that the country of Mexico wants to do what they can because the impact from South American people coming through Mexico has the same impact on the citizens of Mexico that it does on the citizens in United States. So they have a vested um benefit in trying to work

with us. So it's not like you guys would get a call and be like, hey, well we have we have a group coming, we have folks in heeded, we have folks embedded in in in countries through the International Affairs Program, so that that then intelligent to sell shared back and forth. I was hunting to Havelina in Arizona, UM last February for a couple of days, just messing around a couple of friends of mine, and we had found a big They were showing me just a big trail,

like kind of an unexpected location. It's like a big crossing trail, and there were areas that had We went to this one area they showed me where it had stashes that had been depleted, clothing stashes and water stashes and people would change clothes and an empty water jugs and they're like, oh yeah, they'll have people come ahead and scout and set all that stuff. Then the people come over and they know where it's at. It was.

I took a T shirt that I found, brought it home, gave it to my kid and said, that's a drug runner's T shirt. He got all excited about it. My wife then took it away from him because she's like, he's gonna go to school, he's gonna tell everybody to drug Like, what do you you know? She's like, why do you have to tell him that it's in my

rag bin in my garage now? But she's like, you can't give him like half a story like that and then expect him to probably probably the best place for her to know what to say, you know, this is a drugging shirt. The question I wanted to ask about it is, so we're in the same place for a couple of days, creeping all around the woods, and um, no one talks to us, like, no one comes and checks on us and my buddies like they know what

you're doing. They border patrol. So again, I I'm just gonna speak for myself and and that I think I can tell the difference between somebody laying in and hunting and somebody laying in and do something else. Right, Um, just like just like if I'm working at a port of entry, and James is coming back and he's got a weapon, and I said, well, why do you have a weapon while I went hunting? And I'm gonna go through his car and I'm gonna see that. Oh wait,

he's got some meat. He's also got this guy's been hunting. There's some validity to that story compared to somebody coming and saying, oh, I went bear hunting in Canada and all they have is a bunch of rifles and they

didn't look like they've been hunting at all. So I think in most cases, most portant, most ports religions have a pretty good idea of their of the area that they're working in, and and they also have a pretty good idea of what areas are are high trafficked in hunters and and then are high traffic and other things. Not only that, um, you know, hunters, Borber religions are very pretty good at sign cutting. All of us are are.

It's just that's the one thing they say about a border tril agent is if you need somebody to help track, call a Borber trilogy because they're good trackers, and you alien smugglers or or narcotic smugglers, they go to great lengths to try to brush outside where hunters don't necessarily worry about that, right because the sign you're following is obviously something else. They'll they'll brush, absolutely, they'll brush out the tracks that well. They will wear carpet on their

shoes to try to hide their tracks. They'll they'll walk backwards to make it look like they're going the other direction. They carry a leaf blower, carry leaf blowers, any any number of things. I've even seen them take coves from from cattle and strap them to their feet to make it look like cattle traffic and not human traffic. Yeah, you know the weed warden we had talked about that area where they had an illegal grow and you just thought it was all cattle making little shoes, making little

shoes like that and they're strapping them to their feet. Oh. So, we have a podcast on our network that's by a guy named Clay Newcome called the Bear Grease Podcast. He had a guy on there telling a story recently where he had killed buck and cut the tarso glands off it and tied the car tarsal glands to his shoes and he bout got attacked by a buck. Believe it. He said this buck. He could hear. He kept hearing something behind him, and this buck was coming snorting at him.

He killed it, but he said he doesn't do that anymore. Not, no I did. He said it scared him bad when he turned around there, it was coming for him. You know. Uh, let's talk about those big ass blimps. Oh, aerostats. Yeah, Now here's where you can't. Here's where you're not gonna be able to tell me anything. What's up with those

big gas blimps? Okay, weather balloons. No, we make a real habit of staring at those blimps when we're hunting down there, and we're like that dude he could tell when you're picking his nose and when you're picking your nose. I don't know about that, and I haven't seen the So the aerostats are just let you guys know, in the south west part, they have a great deal of technology between the cameras and the lights and all that

stuff that's gone out there. You guys have probably been down the You've probably seen the scope trucks or the or the trailers that are those kind of things are

always up on the good glass. Yeah, they're causing problems, right, So they're actually gone up and leaned against those the fences around that stuff glass and yeah, so the aerostat is just another instead of having a helo or a plane flying, we can put up an arrow stat and use the erostat like a camera to look at an area to see where traffic is coming or traffic is coming across. Has a way to identify what the traffic is and then give us an idea of how to

interdict it. So one one question that I had for James when we first spoke was all of the hardware and video cameras and such along the border. That's picking up everything that the camera I will pick up. But how is that being used to in your uh feel Charles, like looking at animals crossing you know how that's monitoring wildlife as well. Yeah, that's a that's a great question, really like cool. Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. Actually it is

exactly like that. We've we have actually had, um, there have been a few cases in the past where we've where we have you know, seen big cats um from those things, not not from the aerostat um, but from yeah, through some of our other technology. Yeah, we get some pretty over the years, um that that I've been lucky enough to to be in this position. I've been privy and able to share it with with our land management partners on some pretty unique situations have happened with wildlife

and the border. Oh yeah, I posted I post a picture every month on on the Instagram page for the have Her Sector Chiefs of stuff that we've seen mountain lions and things like that on some of our game camera. So you've picked up uh, you guys have picked up jaguars. We well, I mean we haven't, but yeah, we've had pictures on like on some of our surveillance where we've had jaguars. And do you notify wildlife folks about that? Yeah?

And well, you know we have to go through there there are some you know, security things that we have to go through internally. Um, but we do you know, relay that information out to Fish and Wildlife Service for their and for you know, so they can keep track also. Um. And then you know, occasionally we have some fun stuff that happens, like there was um, I think it was maybe a couple of year is back, we had a bear that climbed the border wall and then would climb

climb one of the light towers. Um that's along the borderer or tried to climb the light tower anyways. Um. And then we had um uh a mountain lion that actually got on top of the border wall and was like walking across the top of the border wall. Oh yeah, what did he end up doing? I end up going south? Yeah, he came. He came from the north, speaking of like what you're going across the north to the south. He went north to the south south, Yeah, and right over

the right over the fence group. Like, I feel like there's just gotta be so much visual information of like interesting critter stories that all of that. I mean, I imagine there's a ship ton of cameras, so just everything that you pick up. Yeah, I mean we pick up, Yeah,

we pick up a lot of stuff. And it's just the more interesting stuff that you know, and and and more unique stuff that will that will share because otherwise, like we would inundate fishing Wildlife Service service with like hey, here's a here's another picture of a bear on this trail, you know, and and follow the bear through the trail that um, you know that they're going on or you know whatever, you know, whatever significant wildlife So it's just

like the more interesting things like our guys know, like if they see a big cat you know, um, you know jaguar specifically, um or you know, a mountain lion in in something a unique case that that gets relate to me, so then we can relay it to our land management partners. Yeah. Let's say an agent has a buddy who's a hunter, great bund and he sees like a a camera. Is there anything wrong with him being like, hey, you know down kind of in that little zone of

this creek there. I can tell you they're tight lip because me and Eddie when we were hunting Haviline and we tried to hit up some Border patrol dudes and they were like, you like, no intel, these guys don't know what's going on. Well here's the thing that hunter that's exactly like one of the things that you don't know where any but one of the things that I think a lot of people, um, you know don't maybe

I don't know. I don't want to say they don't realize, but but sometimes you've got to remember is like our job as a border patrol agent is a pretty I'm gonna say it, sorry, Chief, I'm gonna say this, it's crazy. You're given okay, you're you're hired and you're given you're given training, how to sign cut, how to do this job out and you know, in God's country right, all

across the southern, southern and northern border. Right, you're sometimes you're alone, sometimes you're you have you know, you have a partner to to work with you out there, and you come back and you do it again every day. Right. You gotta be a little crazy to do that kind of job, you know. And at the same time, you also have to be an avid outdoorsman or outdoors woman.

You have to love the environment, have some kind of love and affinity towards working outdoors to do the job that we do, which back to your question about hey, where's this big you know, where's this coups or where's this you know heard at? Well, most of us are hunters too, and so we don't want to give up, but we may know as a good spot more these guys played dumb about the havelin. I'm like, so best, I can tell you've been out here some number of days.

I'll tell you a good thing about bobar T religion and and it's it doesn't matter whether it's because there's a lot of times a lot of ortlins when they're working a load of dope, they'll go down and burn it just so the other bobard t religian doesn't catch it. So it's the same thing when it comes to hunters, right and hunting boblis won't tell you a thing because they'd rather fail and not get it than see you

be successful. Well, now I'll be like seeing any havelina first, I'm gonna be like, so you work for the Border Patrol, and I'll see in his eyes, dude and asked him about the halina. If you let's let's talk about more about wildlife in the in the border. It's still real quick just to interject that the biggest balloons those are those are called the acronym for those tars, it's tethered

aerostat Radar systems UM. Those are actually primarily for UM sensing the low air domain, So for aircraft aircraft sensor. They're not watching you pick your nose in at. There's other stuff quote unquote on their way with other other sensing equipment on those UM, but the primary their primary

role is for is basically low low aircraft systems. You know, spent time in ultra lights, helicopters one that's going on low space and the and then individual uh su ad the smaller V I had a friend of mine in the military. I can't hear if you talk about Iraq Afghanistan, he said they used a lot of those for that purpose.

Absolutely the exact same capability tracking aircraft and drones and stuff. Okay, Um, I've brought a bunch of times over the years to listeners the idea, especially when the idea of the of an impenetrable wall right became an issue, I would bring up. I would bring up when considering all of the factors, a thing to consider is wildlife movement. Okay, not in in people get riled up and they get piste to even mentioned it because how dare you question the legitimacy

of it of the wall. I'm like, I'm not. I'm just saying it's a thing to consider. But the more I think about it, too, I'd have to imagine that there are with just the amount of human traffic, human activity in terms of people crossing illegally, people trying to catch the people crossing illegally. Um, all the vehicular traffic. Then you add in the wall. It has to have big implications for wildlife. Um, I'm gonna answer this little bit in Charles. You can correct me when I'm wrong,

because I'm pretty sure i'll be wrong. I'll just talk about this section in human Arizona. So one of one of the problems you have in Arizona is what's the lizard that's down there that do you have to avoid? Well, I mean there's the the HeLa monster, and yeah, there's there's they have these lizards at all over and we're warrnted, you know when you see him stop the run over things like that. So the wall that that's built in Numa doesn't impede that animal's ability to go back and

forth or or or or in any direction. Lizard a lizard, right, well, I think it or more thinking about large like like it certainly does it affect the the ability for them. So, UM, I don't know. I'm gonna let you answer they because I think I'm going to get into trouble. That's okay, I'm yeah, Um, yes, there's I mean, is there some kind of impedence, Yes, that's I mean, it's a wall, you know. Um, it's a border wall system though. Two.

That's that's the thing I think a lot of people don't, um don't take into account for, is that, like it's where we aren't DHS isn't trying to put up just a border wall. We're trying to put up a border wall system. UM. And that does so when when you say, oh, well, it's just you know, it's that wall, it's that wall, Well, yeah, it's just we're talking about specifically just that one component of what should be a system, which is the wall.

There is an enforcement zone or you know, some some way for for an agent to traverse that area, along with technology, so all three of those things working together, okay, to to help maintain the safety of the border. It's

essentially of the nation. Um. And and so when you look at just the wall as the impedance, yes, there is that impedance, but Border Patrol, DHS, CBP, UM we are working with the land management agencies to address and mitigate some of that impedance on the environment and the wildlife.

For example, UM, you know in low water crossings, we have you know, gates there so we can allow for the for the sheet flow of the water during rainy seasons or outside of rainy seasons, if there's an event, we can you know, open up those open up those gates to allow for UM for the water to flow, which you know also allows for for wildlife to cross through. UM. Along with that, there's also I just got back UM about two weeks ago, UM maybe a week ago out.

My dates are running and running together. It's been busy, but we just got back from actually ground truthing UM what are called small wildlife patch passages UM. So it's like what Chief Fortunato was talking about in Yuma. It's one of the places where this originated from. As they were putting a putting in. Their border wall system is

along the border UM. Even though they're they're ballard's on the border that are you know about every four four inches UM there's a a circular ballard and so you have a four inch gap essentially that lets the border patrol see what's going on south. So it provides some visual security for us of what's going on south. But it's just a four inch gap UMUS sector started at

the bottom putting in UM larger gaps. I think there's like it's like a six inch by two inch gaps so they notch out a portion every I don't know how many feet of that um uh of the ballard to allow for that lizard to freely go through it wouldn't be impeded in Tucson sector. And they're they're doing it in the in the newer UM border wall system that that they started putting in UM that there was it was placed in on pause on the January twenty but within the system UM we started putting in small

wall life passages. So we in order to even put those in, we got with Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture, you know, being for service essentially, UM Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service,

all the land managers that were along the border. We got with those land managers and we talked with them about, hey, we want to put in these small wildlife passages on the border wall system to allow for to to better allow for wildlife to migrate through the border wall system. And what we did was we let them pick the locations of where they think it would be adequate to

put these UM small wildlife passages in. But then we also got with them physically went out to the border and said Okay, this is a GPS location that you said you would like to see this passage because they had the information on where wildlife would reverse and if you know, there were some places where where they looked and it was already in a wash, there was already a you know, a gate we were putting in there. So we would say, hey, you know what if we

move this up into a little bit higher ground. That way, it's going to be in a place where wildlife can can pass through, and it's not a wasted location because there's you know, there's already a gate at the bottom of this washlests maybe put a little bit higher. When you say small wildlife passage, like what sized animal are we are like a deer could pass through this or not a deer is I wouldn't consider a deer small wildlife. Um, I'm talking the size of the hole wildlife as small

as yeah, the kind of wildlife. So like it's essentially the gap is going to be about eight and a

half by eleven um. So you know, and really when you're when you're thinking about it or when you look at that, that's a pretty significant amount of space because, like I said, the original gap is only four inches approximately four inches, UM, And so I just don't want anybody to go down there and go, oh that trust guy said, it's you know, four inches, and this gap is three point seven five you know, or it's four point two whatever, but it's approximately four inches, right, UM.

So we're essentially making that gap almost doubling the size the width, and then we're increasing it, you know, eleven eleven inches up. Um. So we came to that. It was years back, UM when they actually came to the reasoning why. I'm not exactly sure what the reason why. Essentially, it's that the reality is the reality is that most normal human beings that are going to be coming through the international border, they are going to be able to

fit that. But the amount of wildlife that you can that can fit through that is you know, greatly increased because just from from putting that kind of of um passage allowable for the wildlife to go through. Imagine a chart that has two lines on it. One is UM. Okay, let's say one line is spending spending at the spending on border security, US spending on border security in the southern border, and the other line is um traffic across

said border. They rise in tandem or don't they We're spending more and more and more, but more and more people are coming across. If you like, let's say you drop the spending line with the other line increase even more. The gap would the gap would just increase? It be like like if there was no no obstruction whatsoever you feel it would be like I'm I asking an obvious question, no obstruction at all would be more than whatever million people? Yes, I hop, I mean I have to think so again.

It goes back to that, like I talked about the consequence, right that you have to have the border wall system and and and tied with the consequent system and the criminal and and and being able to charge them criminally. All that is what's going to help bring those numbers down. Without it, it's just going to continue to fly because there has to be a consequence, and that consequence has to be greater than the amount of money that smugglers can make. M that's the reality. Where do you you see?

I don't even want to ask because you won't be able to answer it, but I think I was gonna ask you where we sit right now? On consequence? Um, I'm doing the best job I can within the Haver sector a R to deliver the highest consequence possible to all those that break the laws that I'm authorized and forced and Title eight, Title nineteen and Title so we

we levy Title twenty nine UH fees. If you come across you and you illegal, you come across the border, if you're Canadian, you come across the border through POE, we apprehend you. We're gonna deliver your consequence either through Title forty two or title to Title eight. So Title forty two expel them back, or Title eight charged them with illegal entry in the United States, and I'm also gonna hit you with a five thousand dollar fine for

evading inspection at the port of entry. So we're doing everything we can to deliver the highest possible consequence that I can, knowing that the U. S. Attorney in the State of Montana is going to charge. They have they have their responsibilities, and they have their prosecution guidelines. I have those prosecution guidelines, and I do everything I can to prosecute and deliver consequence to anybody that enters or any crime that's committed within my a O R within

those prosecution guidelines. Do you get more in trouble do you getting more trouble from crossing the northern border than you do the southern border because it more illegal? No, I mean a board or whether you cross, whether you cross in Mexico or whether you cross in Canada, or whether you for whatever reason, if you can do it, you can aid going through customs that you know, the international airport. It's it's all the same that the laws of the same. You're gonna get treated the same way.

You can get treated the same way. Really really, yes, why are you so skeptical? I just feel like some dude, like with neferry, like some do with nefarious intentions, snuck across the northern border and gets picked up. I just feel like it's gonna be he's gonna have a different outcome than someone that did the same thing on the southern border. Well I wor yeah, I would have to think, because it's just gonna be Like I just feel like

it's gonna be worse. No. So again that goes down to the problems you'll be given a trial date and turned loose. Um. I guess it depends on on the on on the parameters of the case. Right. So in some of those things, right, So as as the chief of the Border Patrol. The only thing that I can do is interdict and charge and and build the best case that I possibly can for that person to be actually be held in custody. That responsibility falls to the

Director of Immigration UH Customs Enforcement. So the Director of of Immigration Customers Enforcement is housed in Salt Lake City. It's his responsibility to find space for whoever I apprehend. If he doesn't have the space, he has the authority to release that person into the into the country with a with a court date. So I have no control over that. I can utilize whatever network I have and whatever arm twisting I can, or whatever pleading I can,

whatever relationship I have with them. Hey, this is the one guy I think I need, that you really need to hold. But ultimately it's his decision on whether or not he holds him. And then the same thing when it comes to the actual consequence. I have no control whether the Assistant U S Attorney in in in Missoula, Montana prosecutes that person that we have that we apprehend it in charge. All I can do, and this is what I tell my agents all the time. Our responsibility

is to to protect the home land. And if somebody violates that protection and violates a law. Our job is to apprehend them and charge them. Once we're done with that, our bullets downrange. Everything else that happens after that, we have zero control over They whether they get held is up to somebody else's responsibility. And whether or not they get charged, or whether that that charge is dismissed or whether that charge is plead out. Is that the responsibility

of somebody else. I hear from friends of mine and law enforcement that sometimes people will develop, like people in the field will develop a little bit of fatigue about doing their job and not seeing not being happy with you mentioned the down the downrange bullet. Yeah, what happens to it wants it gets downrange that it leads to fatigue and a little bit of ambivalence. Well, it's and I'm just gonna speak for for the agents that I supervise and and and have her and and it's probably

typical of most border choices. Is probably even the four of us sitting in this room as a border of tal agent. It's just not good enough to apprehend them the charge and we want to see, we want to see something happen to them. And because we're all type a personalities, and and because we believe in protecting the homeland, and and we believe that that as part of doing that job is is bringing a consequence to somebody that

breaks the law. And and yes, that the fatigue does come in because all in all, and you guys correct me if I'm wrong, an agent gets sick and tired of doing the best job that they possibly can to see them just walk away with so uh and and and it's not just the border of trolles like you said, it's it's happens all the way across law enforcement agencies. It even happened when I was a police officer in Colorado.

You would charge things, and you know often the attorneys that that decide how things go besides the the ultimate they that happens with that case. So I know that that is one of the big challenges that were facing in the Border trol is that our Borbatrol agents are working hard every single day. And and they voiced to me that there they're sick and tired of working hard and and not seeing a consequence delivered. And that's my job is to try to make sure that those consequences

are delivered. I gotta I know where this happened. I don't wanna get too many details, but I got a friend who, uh his body owns some retail space and he had a woman leave. Uh. He rents his retail space to a major um drug store. Okay, he watched a customer of his leave the store and get mugged and have her bags and purse stolen. And he couldn't get the cops that were there interested, and that this

is there is nothing to do with your department. He couldn't get the cops interested, and the cops said to him, oh, what would you like me to do? Apprehend him? Well, I can tell you the apathy, right yeah, And I get that that's that's a police officer he's haven't talking

to I can. I can honestly say that if that of a board of Chile Agion was standing there, I guarantee that person would have been apprehended, whether they were on dude or not, right James, Right, Charles, they would have jumped in and they would have that guy would have been apprehended. Steve on your on your what you described as far as like budget investment versus you know, the the increasing flow like they're like they kind of go hand in hand with one another. I don't think

it's there. And and anyone could look up the CBPS as custom board protraction statistics for every fiscal year. Um, you know budgets. Uh, I'm just just speaking plainly. I'm sure. I'm sure government budgets for all matter of departments go up year after year. That's just seems to be the

way I think the federal government. But you know the apprehensions and encounters that we see um in the war patrol and CPP wide, it's it's very much is related to the push factors from where people are leaving from, whether it's socio economic, environmental Uh. You know a lot of you know, communism, issues of communism Venezuela right now, an earthquake in Haiti, when any one of any one of a combination these factors can push a large population

in people out to find refuge someplace else. Um. Combined with how whatever political parties in power in the United States any one time, how their priorities are loaded against the laws that are on the books, which typically do not change. It's just the priorities that they put in place on how those laws are enforced. It is what becomes the poll fit. That's an interesting point. Yeah, this interesting point that the laws don't change, it's just how

you how you prioritize them changes. Well. So while while budget probably increases year after year, I would say, at least for homeland security because of of what it means um the the the the encounters will vary upon the combination of those push and pull factors. So it's not necessarily a correlation between budget goes up apprehensions encounters are going to go up. That's not necessarily the case. It

will flow depending on those factors. Do agents that you guys know, do people start to feel a little bit of whiplash about changing priorities year to year? Is it? You know what I mean? Is it? Is it a cause of I've been in just about twenty five years now. I think I'm used to it. I've I've kind of chameleoned to what what we're doing. It's nothing, I guess I'm just used to it. And and and it's you know, that's that's just the way a government. We're not the

only people impacted by this. It's every single agency. Uh, I know, you guys have had a myriad of of of land management experts on on the show over the years, and I'm sure they have. Uh you know, how long has it been since since for service or BLM has had like a budget to sustain roads and whatnot? I mean like the Department of waiting decades just because things like homeland security and and international terrorism when I probably got in the way of those budgets being fulfilled and

who knows how long. So it's it's just not it's just not us. So every every every every department and agency, even the federal government has has has to evolve to whatever the priorities are. Yeah, and I think it does. It just comes down to the length of time and service. Again, I've been in almost twenty six years and in twenty six years, I've seen what five presidents, So that change of response of of has happened that many times as as compared to somebody has only been in the agency

maybe three or four years that come into it. This is all they know. They just don't have that concept of of it's an ebbs and flows kind of thing. It's it's uh, the reality is is that uh, you know, how we how we can deliver, how we work comes in in line with what the agents with the administration wants us to do. So a lot of that does

come into link the service. Those guys that are younger are those agents that have been a little bit less amount of time struggle with a little bit more than folks that have what they perceive as a real change in direction. Right, do you have a hard time finding agents? Is a tough recruitment. Um, So recruitment has has has been a struggle, not just for the border troll but I think law enforcement, uh nationwide. Right, it's uh the border of trolling particular, Like Charles said, you have to

be a borda tal agent. You have to be willing to go out and work in the outdoors and be outdoors and not be not being next to bathrooms and and be willing to to lay in with ticks and scorpions and spiders and god forbid snakes and all those other things that come along. And it takes a certain

kind of a person to want to do that. And Um, the other thing that we're running into is this is this is a generation issue right now, right, Um, the generation of folks sitting around this table have a concept of hard work and true grit, and they're willing to go out and do that type of work. The generation nowadays is not that they don't want to work hard. They just want to work as hard as they can for as little hours as possible and get as much money as right, so that they can go do that

so they can go enjoy life. Right. They don't want to they don't want to live to work. They want to work as little as possible and make as much money as they possibly can so they can go fish and go kayaking, go hiking, world travel, do those kind of things. So trying to find people that want to do both of those things is becoming difficult. Speaking of that is there is there places around the country that are like choice posts for border patrol agents or just

employees in general. Places. Yeah, like places like that's the place, So I guess it depends on the person. Right. There's a lot of folks that are here in Montana. Part of the reason why they wanted to come to Montana is because of the of the ability to do that kind of things. Um, I think a lot of folks live in Arizona so that they can have those kind

of concept. There's a lot of folks that want to go to the Rio Grand Valley because their fishermen they want to go do the offshore fishing and things like that. Um um, so yeah, there's a lot of folks that want to do that. The problem with the border, which told that most law enforcement agents don't have, is we're constrained by geography and that when you come into the United States Border Patrol and you get hired, you're going to one of the nine Southwest border sectors for your

first assignment. So yeah, you're not don't You don't start now. And in fact, in fact I went north to to Graham Array, Minnesota in two thousand one. It took me six years to get there. They said, they send you to the south. They yeah, you go to the south. So when you come on and the difference between now and and when we all came in, I didn't get a choice. I got a fed X men saity, congratulations, you're hired by the U. S. Bard Patrol. You're going to McCallan, Texas. And I had to look on the

map and said, where the hell is McAllen, Texas? On

an atlas, on an atlas, not on my phone. I had to look on an atlas to see where McAllen, Texas was um, but nowadays they get a chance to pick so as they go through the process, and of course they have the technology at the tips of their fingers, they can look on and see while you know, I don't want to go to Presidio, Texas because all you gotta do is look on the map and see where Presidio, Texas is and realize it's eight hours from anywhere, right,

So well, I'd rather be in San Diego, California, right. And so that comes down to the mentality too, because we're going out and and cabin these kind of people, and and and we've got folks and it happens today that are from New York that don't even have a driver's license. They get a driver's license to get a job as a board troll agent. So they've never driven a car until they go to the board troll Academy and we teach them defensive driving and high speed tactics.

When when I showed when I showed up in Dorio from the Bronx New York, the everyone and del Rey always asking me, you know you drive, and I'm like, I'm driving to some sixteen what are you talking about? In the opposite side too. I'm from I'm from Colorado, grew up and it was born in Reason, Colorado, and I went to becoming Texas and one of my classmates

sitting on the plane with he's freaking out. It was the first time he's he's twenty eight years or first time in twenty eight years he's ever been on a plane and left the state of Texas. Huh, never been out of state of Texas in twenty eight years until he got on a plane to fly to Charleston, South Carolina to go be a bordual agent. I read that he's true, man, that someone from like a citizen of Texas is more likely to leave the state than the citizen of any other state or some ship like that.

But didn't make sense. I thought about what about people Rhode Island who can't go get a cup of coffee without leaving the state. Yeah, I shouldn't need harung it up. Yeah. So the recruitment, I have a high likelihood of going on vacation or something I do. So recruitment is tough because we're trying to we're trying to have that dynamic of folks that want to go out and work in the outdoors, and and and and and encountered large groups

of people. Right as as a police officer in Colorado, you know, the largest apprehension arrest I have ever made was maybe two people at a time. And after going down to McCallen, Texas, when I first apprehend hundred and fifty people. So how do you go from and you're the only one, right, So how do you go from maintaining control of a hundred fifty people? Because let's be honest, if they want you, they're gonna take you. So it

was kind of funny. You can do things like So what I did with them is the first thing I want to do is identify whether from Mexico from another country. So a hundred and fifty people walking out singing the Mexican national anthem just to keep them occupied, because it's the only way I can control a hundred and fifty people. I had two sets of handcuffs. Who am I gonna pick? Right? You just get them all singing the national anthem as you're walking out out of the trail too for the

bus to come pick them up. So it's it's you gotta It's an interesting dynamic to find people that really want to go out and step in and do that type of law enforcement work, especially when they can go work for Bozeman p D and patrol here in Bozeman, or even working in Denver, Colorado, or Kansas City, Missouri and and just patrol and have backup thirty seconds away for us, backups in in a lot of cases minutes, ten,

fifteen minutes away. So how many agents do you guys lose on like every year in the line of duty, the ebbs and flows, we lost almost fifty two CBP wide. Uh, probably because of COVID in the last couple of years. Um, I think we're at two or one. I think we're at one or two so far for for this year. So it's it's it's up and down, right, It's up and down. There's there's no way for us to depict that. What's uh, what's the pathway into that line of work

to board patrol? You know, like how do people how do people flow? Right? Um? So Uh, you wake up one day and he'd be like, man, I want to I want to join the U. S. Border Patrol. There's a variety of ways that people people get involved into it.

Mean myself, I mean I grew up in a in a you know, in a neighborhood in in New York City where I mean most of the guys that I knew you grew up became a cop, fireman or or construction And I was going after the police route and taking police exams all up and down the East coast, the North Atlantic coast, and uh and Boordahl just happened to be the first one to to send me a letter of acceptance. So I jumped in blind and it

was the best thing I ever did. UM. But I mean there's there's there's you know, there's uh c J programs across the country that that you know, try to try to place their students into different different law enforcement paths. Um. And then for us, I mean, the third of our workforce or or our veterans, so it's a natural about third of our war of the cbp A workforces is veterans, and so it's a natural transition. Plus they carry over

a lot of their benefits whatnot. So if they're mindful of that, they're able to bring over their federal benefits and time and service from the from their armed services to the board. You need to add that to your retirement, Yes, oh, no, kid. Yeah, and we we had a lot of folks that want to jump from state or or or local law enforcement the federal. So the pay is a little bit better

on the fideral side it is in the state. But to your point about recruiting, it's a it's it's a like all I think was a referendum on on law enforcement goes without saying, you know, nationwide, it was it was a you know, it forced agencies to take a look at what law you know, policing in general meant were no exception um, and you know, uh and and and focusing on how to bring in uh. You guys look at reactivating hunters. You know, it's one of your tenants that you guys, we were very much in the

same situation. Actually, I think all industry is looking to trying to get people out of back to work in some form or fashion. But we're no, we're because of how scrutinized law enforcement as a whole was from now. Um, it's made it tough and and whiles you know, as

they say that the economy is kind of difficult right now. Um, the you know, my daughter, you know, good better and different, had the choice of of uh you know, going to school, uh go finding a blue college job, going to college, or trying to get on YouTube and make a million dollars a year or or something like that. Like that, that's an actual viable option, which blows my mind nowadays.

Um so uh not only competing about the changing sentiment towards law enforcement and enticing people um to go in that career field, but also uh making it a viable option to all these other things that are that are you know, we've never would have perceived we're at their disposable to make money uh thirty years ago or something

like that. So uh but but I think anyone who has that sense uh for us a particularly speaking bores, anyone has that sense of adventure um uh or or wants to you know, all the all the areas that

we talked about. Charles mentioned God's Country. If you want to make that you're offer since this is a natural way to a natural way to live in that in that kind of office environment every day where you get to experience these the great outdoors and protect it, even though maybe maybe that's not your primary mission is to protect the actual land, but just by this, just by your actual presence on the landscape, you're protecting it and and it takes the rights type of person to do that.

And there's still a lot of those folks out there that have that, that are wired towards that that career field. So if you wanted to get a job riding horseback through uh Big Ben National Park, there's a way to do that. And they get the camp out actually spoken does a lot of a lot of details where that where they go remote with horse patrol for weeks at a time. If you want, if you're gonna go camp out in in in the Glacier National Park here in Montana,

we got details you can do that. If you want to spend time in the b w C, the Botder Water Canoe Area in Minnesota, there's an eight you can go out there and spend I've spent ten days because I spent I spent ten days odds leading through the boundary waters. Really yeah, as an agent, as an agent because it's not because it's non motorized, because non motorized,

no mechanized. And what was you what's the craziest thing in those ten years that you spent up there that you encountered as far as something crossing the border that you had to interdict. Um, the craziest thing would have been body carries with diamonds in the boundary waters. In the boundary waters. Yeah, what did you call me again? Body carries? Body carriers carrying diamonds. So trying to dodge terror?

Are they well? Because they could They were getting head at the port of entry, so they were taking them to the one section and on the Canadian side where they can actually get vehicles to and then they were bringing them across in in canoes. But it's not illegal to have a diamond. They're trying to avoid what the customs, the taxes? No kid? Yeah, were they in canoes. They were in canoes. Econom in canoes. They're in canoes. Did they seem they knew? They seem why they knew what

they were doing? Uh? Could you pick them out from a mile away? You're like those guys I'm sticking out. I believe they beat us nine times before we caught them. Really back to that, Yeah, yeah, I have no clue, but they I believe when we caught them they were shocked to see us. So they had been successful on

multiple occasions. M Yeah, I want another like a couple of highlights or like craziest events of my career on the border was in Texas, so a lot of those high fence, high fence ranches down there with all sorts of animals small over the planet, and so getting attecked by EMUs was one of my early and finding out they like to pull your buttons off your shirt. Yeah, it's a strange thing if you ever never seen one

before you're all the wild. But as you can imagine, all the you know, the manner of things that that they put on those ranches is out there that we have to patrol on and you know, seeing a zebra or or a you know, a kudu for the first time driving around, it kind of blows your mind. M hmm, yeah,

I think. Um when actually when, when Sammy and I were back in Laredo working together, there was one night and it wasn't me that um that made the apprehension, but but we were working one night and we got a call and because they didn't the guys in the field didn't know who to call um, and we didn't know either. We got a call from from an agent and and they're like, hey, we're we're out here with a group Okay, what's the big deal. You know, you

guys got thirty and whatever. And then they're like, yeah, we have this group, but we have a tiger, remember that. And and we're like, what you have a tiger? And yeah, we have a group of thirty and one of these guys has a tiger. I real, yes, it was a baby cub tiger. He was bringing it across because I apparently the black market trade and stuff. He was going to sell this tiger to Somebody's happen a bunch of times. Parents.

Parents are real popular in southern part of the parents to cans, monkeys, foot traffic, yeah yeah, foot foot and and at the bridge trying to the bridges, but but also through just carrying in a duffle bag across the border for sure. Huh. Kind of monkeys, those those little I don't even know what they're called. But the friends ones that the confus like a little like a little like like I don't know, it's kind of longy that

you can jump on your shoulders. Yeah, yeah, not like a not like a little many tiny you know, you know, monkeys from Africa and things like that they were trying to bring in. Really, yeah, how could be enough money and that to make that worthwhile. If there's money to be made, there's trying to sell it. Unfortunately, you know, just just and I don't know, we're probably getting off topic.

In South Texas use clothings and big things. You see palletts of of us clothing, so clothing we would throw away, they put in and bind in a pallet and they smuggled at south to Mexico. The same thing with chicken raw chicken raw, chicken go south because in Mexico they charge attacks. They never charge attacks on chicken trying to get out of the tax. So they're smuggling chicken south into into Mexico. And then we call it rope saw to use clothing going south into Mexico for people to buy.

Use clothing. And funny story in in McAllen Um, we had clothing going and we were tired of him, right so we said, oh we're gonna, we're gonna bust your palates. We we cracked the palletts hundred thousand dollars cash wrapped up inside one of the bundles, which was a mistake because then every bundle going south was getting cracked open by bordal chodes and there was used clothing all over the border just turned out to be a nightmare. But yeah,

that's the kind of stuff that happens. So whenever something's going north, cash is going south. M hmm. When you guys found all that money, you probably party that night. Avocado is also a big thing, Avocados coming north. People smuggling avocados to avoid to avoid tax well to avoid taxes and then alvas. The avocados in Mexico are actually quite a bit bigger than than you can the California avocados.

So in Texas avocados are are are pretty big. People smuggling avocados cross so if you go you can go to Mexico and buy an avocado, but they take out the bone. It has to do with the bone. There's some sort of agriculture or some disease that's in the seed or so they does that by smuggling north because they can get more money. And obviously if you hold the Mexican avocado next to a California Texan avocados like a softball to a baseball. It's so avocados are really popular.

Cigarettes on the northern border now, cigarettes on the northern ord, especially over in in California in New York going north or coming south? Uh, both both. They call them two nis. You can you go into the Agnosasi territories and buy It's really kind of crazy. It's it's the equivalent of a of a cart and cigarettes, but they're they're just

thrown in a bag because they're nondescript. No, my buddy had a girlfriend in Canada who had she only had one leg, and she would put all kinds of cigarettes in her fake leg every time she went across she was she'd come, she'd come over to the US and then fill her fake leg with a cigarettes to go back to Canada. No buddy mind fellow named Kurt. So there's if there's money to be made in smuggling it, they're gonna do it. We all thought it was funny.

I never thought the report her. I've just semi harmless. And then we start talking about Western boots and things like that. Of course, reptile styles and things like that. A lot of those things are restricted from coming. And you'll see loads of boots coming across, and reptile belts and things like that, like wildlife trade. Huh do you ever see um when we're down there? Across and they have a thing about all the cats like awes lots

you know what else they got their turtle shells. You a big poster, I know the post you're talking about. I can't remember all the there's a bunch of birds on it. It's just like the wildlife trafficking business. The stuff that we the stuff that our counterparts, the office field operations, ladies and gents at the bridges that that come across the agg specialists that have to go through people bringing in fruit and all that stuff. And usually there,

you know, most of the stuff their time. They're looking for pests, you know, anything that any kind of you know, beetle or larva or something that's in with like a dozen roses or some kind of whatever fruit you're bringing over.

But they're the ones that run into like the really really wacky stuff from like and like stuff that just shows up that that these people bring because it's a it's a totem or something like that, and it who knows where they got some kind of crazy dried up and endangered frog from down in Chioppa's, Mexico and then bringing up and uh, it's common for for these things to just be um part of part of their kid that they're bringing with them. Oh well you got no,

that's better. What do you guys, what do you guys have? Do you want to add that we didn't get into, Uh, Charles, I think a little bit about um, the efforts on the organ pipe pretty yeah, I think. UM. I mean one of the cool things like we talked about, you know, we you guys, you're you know, you guys talk a lot about conservation and and the use of public lands and and how you know, UM, you know, how hunting

and you know, in general, the general population impacts the environment. UM. You know, one of the things that within border patrol, I mean, there's no doubt about it. Like the job that we do, UM, you know, there is an impact on it. UM and over the years like an organ pipe UM organ pipe Cactus National Monument for those of y'all that don't know, it's it's a huge national monument

on the southern border of Arizona. UM. You know, the majority of it, the whole southern border butts the international boundary UM with Mexico, and UM. You know, there's a lot of stuff that had happened over the years, UM on that property. UM. One of which was the unfortunate death of of UM Chris Sedgley UM and UH and and that came about through UM drug trafficking. I didn't know that was on the that that was on the monument. It was it occurred on the monument UM I believe

in in two thousand three. I believe. I apologize if I don't UM, if I'm getting a date wrong. But because of what had happened UM, it actually Department of Interior actually put up UM a a border fence on

their property. So they they installed a vehicle barrier UM on there because UM Chris was killed from from cross border traffic UM that included a vehicle driving over the or driving through the international boundary UM onto the park and UM and so again Park Service put up that put up that that fence UM and that was just that. Unfortunately that that was one of the biggest events. But it was a common occurrence that people would drive through

UM Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. And so there were hundreds of UM what what they consider UM what Park Service considers you know, UM wildcat roads or unauthorized vehicle roads UM. And the majority of of of organ Pipe it's designated wilderness so there really shouldn't be too many roads unless it's been stipulated within the wilderness designation United Nations Protected Site or one of those UM that I'm not sure of UM for certain, but I know it's

it's designated wilderness. And and there was over the years because of cross border traffic, hundreds of miles of these illegal roads UM. And you know, yeah, did border patrol use them? Did the public use them? Yes? Because they looked like roads from people just you know, driving across UM. We got some funding UM from some from I believe it was the UM Secure Fence Act. UM. We got some funding to work with Department of Interior UH to

do some remediation work along the border. One of the projects that we chose to UM that we chose we jointly worked with Department of Interior National Park Service UM on was to UM do some road remediation on organ pipe. UM. So what that what that basically entailed is we took UH aerial aerial photography of the park. We looked at all these roads. We looked at where UM border patrol had infrastructure, where the park had infrastructure. UM. What roads

were the traffic patterns for migration? For illegal migration or illegal crossings, um. And we overlaid all those. We got together with with Parks are Us and we were like, hey, you know, we got there's all these roads here. We have some money to do some remediation. Let's start closing some of these roads. And so we spent a lot of money on taking these roads where you know, hundreds of miles of roads. And we would see that these roads were going you know, four or five roads going

to the same place. Well, you know, really, what's the need for that. Let's start closing some of these roads. So we use that money to do things like, um, what's called I learned the term vertical mulch um where you you put you put up stuff on a roadway, UM, or you put stuff you you put um, you know, foliage and um landscaping on a roadway, so you make it look like it's no longer a road and you just go as far as like the I can see or so like you know, and then you can put

a sauce. It's it's vertical mulch yeah and so yeah, and I was just like, oh, that's that's interesting. Um. So so we did that on on a whole bunch of roads. It ended up being like two over two hundred miles of roads UM on organ pipe that we were able to um uh you know, to close off and that you know, defragments the landscape. So now the wilderness, you know, the wildlife has more of an area to room. They don't they aren't like running into road every a

couple hundred yards or something like that. There's there's more area for for for wildlife to thrive and the visitors to actually visit and not feel like, you know, they feel that, you know, one of the one of the characteristics of willderness. They feel that solitude, you know, because you are you know, you run into a road when you're in the middle of wilderness, you don't really feel

alone at that point. Sure, right, even you know, even though you may not see somebody on that road, you you know that that moment is kind of if you you know, if you will UM. But yeah, we overall we restored like two over two hundred miles of road UM that year. UM was for me, fairly significant I think for really for for border patrol UM, you know, I I hope it was. It was pretty significant because that year the border patrol was actually UM given along

with National Park Service UM and BLM. We were given the d O I. West Henry Award, which is an award that's typically UM has been given internally UM within Department of Interior for environmental stewardship. Yeah, and so it's it was the first time that they've ever chosen to give it to to an outside agency. UM. It was because of that project, and it was yeah, and that was part of that was the major reason, because of that project, because of the restoration UM benefits from that project.

That ties into what I was asking about just the amount of UM activity in these very remote areas and what the implications are for well I brought up wildlife, but wildlife, solitude whatever, right, just it makes it like a buzz with activity. Yeah. Yeah, and that's and that's what that border wall system helps to do real lis

stically for both sides. It's going to help. It does help to, you know, increase that solitude aspect and the the the I think that the enjoyment of the resource UM when when you have you know, a visitor out there, because now it's a little bit more safer, they can be a little bit more comfortable. Going back to what I was talking about with that road restoration and the

unfortunate incident with with Chris Egley. You know, because of that, the Park Service actually closed like sixty of their park because of that. Yeah, because of the restoration aary efforts that Border Patrol worked with with Park Service, the park reopen. Now, you know, so this area that had been closed for

at that point, you know, fifteen years. Um, you know, we were able to reopen that the end and now not only can the visitors go out there, but Park Service their researchers and biologists can go back out there and do their research, you know, and do what they need to do to help them, you know, catalog you know, the cultural and the environmental significance of that area. That's great. Did closing those roads those roads limit the illegal traffic

or do the illegal traffic just change its method? But it's you know yes, really yes, yes, yes to both. Um. You know, closing it was again just part of the whole system because we have the infrastructure on the southern border that helped prevent the um you know, the vehicle traffic to go over, and then you have agents, you know, we it wasn't just like we we we put up vertical mulch and you know, walked away. It was a

joint effort between us. We put up the vertical mulch, We went to we had park service come to our musters, talk with the agents, tell them about, you know, the significance for the area, why we need to use certain roads. We kept our agents accountable by making um, you know, making them call call in and they call in when they go on um these off road um you know,

unauthorized roads. Essentially we now they're now called temporary tactical infrastructure and they call in when they're going off off that road, so we can keep account of, Okay, are

they you know, are they using them? How often? And if we need to adjust um those and we we still go through every few years, we go through what what is currently there, and we'll close off roads that you don't need to be closed off if we if we need to to you know, create you know, or utilize a new path that's been that that's been utilized.

We work with the land managers to see how we can affect that, you know, so you know, sometimes it's not necessarily a one for one, but sometimes it works, you know, more in part part service favor sometimes it works more VP favor if you will, but there's still that dialogue that we share with with the land manager. Ye. I want to talk about the prong horn rescue okay um because I didn't know that the Border Patrol did

this until I actually got into this program. But it is one of the funniest times that I have and thankfully I get to have it there almost every year. UM. So the Border Patrol works with Fish and Wildlife Service the Sonoran pronghorn um out there in southern Arizona on the Cabeza Pritta National Wildlife Refuge. So UM we meet throughout the year, but their big thing is that um uh there's it's called the prong horn round up UM

in December. UM, before December some sometime we set up I think it's around September October we'll set up boma's and they'll capture some of the pronghorn that are on Cabeza Prietta UM and then in December UM Fish and wild Lifestyle, what does the boma trap? A boma is like, Yeah, it's it's almost like like a trap. There like three

semicircle um enclosures like a yeah, like a corral. So they'll they'll they'll get as many prong horn as they can into this area and then in December we get together we being Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management,

Park Service, UM, Arizona Game and Fish UM. They have UM contracts with various veterinarians to come out and will go in and there's various steps to the process, but we we take out the prong horn one by one, we carry them out, they get UM vet checks, UM you know, new radio callers if they need callers UM, and then will will redistribute the herd depending on where

they where they need to go. Because again going back to that Secure Fence Act funding in early two thousand's UM, the snow and pronghorn was another research UM UH research funding string that we utilize. They're about fifty prong horn um on Cabeza preod at the time UM currently currently, I want to stay somewhere around like four in fifty. A few years back, it was like a little over five dred but there's been droughts, there's been some other issues.

Is it a hunted population It is not. It's not. It's an endangered species UM and so they've been working to re establish in on the Cabezi Prietta. So it's like a restoration. It's a restoration, yeah yeah, and um yeah, it's it is. It is crazy sometimes of the things that that happened, just even just trying to get um these prong horn out because you've got to go in.

There's i'd say maybe anywhere from seven to twelve of us on essentially a tennis net, and you gotta they'll put they try to they try to to take you know, there's eighty in the first boma and then they will let down, so they will let down into the second and then the final. In the final boma there they try to have like two to three prong horn, so you have two or three pronghorn running around. You get this net and you have to go in and you're

trying to to net them, but they're very fragile. They're also super quick and they jumped super high, so a three ft net sometimes not even close to enough. Um. Unfortunately, one time this we were going in and the person that was the lead, the lead netter, he had a catcher's mask on and it was one of my first years doing this, and I was like, why is that guy wearing a catcher's mask, like I got I'm holding this net and I got you know, I got gloves on and a hat, and I'm thinking, why is this

guy wearing a catcher's mask? Where's Yeah? I'm like, what what did I sign up to do here? Right? So then I just I hear that the gate open, and then you've got to be really quiet because you don't want to scare him. And I just hear go co co co co. And so we're starting to we're starting to run run to the door, and the guy slams the door shut, and I'm like, oh my gosh, what happened? Like now we're we all kind of sandwich at the door.

And then they're like, hey, come here, come here. They're calling another vet, you know, a medic, and they go in there and then here some rustling. A minute later, the guy with the catcher's mask comes out. The mask is like on the side of his face, his nose is bleeding, his shirts all caught up, and I'm just standing like I'm supposed to be next, Like what is like I looked at what a prong horn was Is

there really a prong horn in this thing? Or like is this some kind of weird, like you know, interagency joke and oh my gosh, but it turns out it was just prong horn. But they are so fast and so feisty. Um. But it's a you know, it's a

great time. And I never thought when I got into the Border Patrol, I never thought that this would be an opportunity that I would have like pronghorn Yeah well not even yeah, pronghorn wrestling when you when you boil it down, but the fact that like I get to come to work and one of my jobs is to interact with an endangered species and be part of be part of a project that hopefully rehabilitates, you know, and re establishes an endangered species you know, on on Earth,

you know, and in the country, like for some kid from Oak Carbor who went to you know, Washington State University and ends up, you know, helping to re establish an endangered species. Like that's I never thought that that my life would lead to something like that, ye unexpected turns man. Oh yeah, yeah. And that's the great thing I think that with the Border Patrol, um, is that I think people don't often see just how diverse the job can be, you know. Um, they think, oh, you're

just going to be out along the border, you know. Well, yeah you may, you know, for a little bit. But then look, you could be working with these you know, these aerostats. You could be you know, playing bagpipes. You could be you know, you could be you could be working with pronghorn. There's so much when I could see where people would have I don't have it, but I could see where people would have a limited view of

the job. But I guess I've just spent enough time down in border country where I recognized the complexity of the role and all the different you know, I guess if you're down there and you're observant, you just see, um how wide reaching and complex it is. But I think that you could come from a certain very narrow view and and just get an idea of what people are up to. That's a little bit reductive mm of what's going on. I haven't personally felt that way though,

you know, I look at them like that. That's like a lot, there's a lot happening with a lot of ramifications. Man, I'll say this, if you're looking to get into a federal job and make a difference the the the United States border controls, one place where you can do that just because of the the great deal of things that

we do. You can go and you can patrol on boat, you control on a TV, you can patrol on horseback, you control my vehicle, UM, and we have all these other programs that you grow that you can go into and do that you can actually make a difference if something is important to you. So if if the environment is important to you, we have an we have an avenue for that in the Border Patrol. If if wildlife is important to you, we have an avenue for that

in the Border Patrol. And fighting narcotics is important to you, we have an avenue for that in the Border Patrol. So that's one thing the Border Patrol gives it. Most law enforcement agencies don't have is they're sort of they're sort of focused on on one thing where we're trying to focus on, but we have to focus on so many other things just just just because of the virtue of the way we do our jobs. I'll tell you one area you guys aren't focused. UM have Lena Intel

for me and we listen. We might be down in that spot in mid February. I expect it to be a little different when I run into this year. Now that you made that public, and keep an eye in your inbox. Probably I want those guys be ready to air drop way points because like, don't play dumb with me. I want to make sure one more thing we covered before we go. Since we've given you some tools. Going back to your your fish gate thing, here, I'm gonna depute eyes you as a junior board. Here's your This

gives you no authority whatsoever. Wear it with pride, and I hope you find a solution to the fish gate. Oh when I'm doing my fish don't, I want you to be able to display say that for when you get your polygraph, when you hook them up to the machine and you start watching them, they will give you that get Their eyes are gonna be twitching just seeing that. Well, I appreciate you guys coming down, man um. I've always

been real fascinated by it. Again, just like time spent, and like Southern Texas, a lot of time we're spending, uh the Sonora Arizona. You know, just be like, what are those guys up to? Well, we appreciate the opportunity to come on. It's a great opportunity for us to come and show the work that we're doing in the board, which to give give your listeners and everybody else out there and the idea of the things that we do, and give than them a better idea of the things

that we do. So we appreciate the opportunity to come on. It's great, man, it's been educational. Stay safe, guys. Thank you, thank you, thanks for having us, Thanks for having us. Really appreciate it, man, it's excellent. Thanks a lot