Bad Hombres ft. DHS Secretary Chad Wolf

you're very busy, but certainly a pleasure. Thank you for having me. So is there anything to talk about? I think there are a few things. The world's on fire. The world is on fire, and mister Secretary, you've got to deal with a lot of it. Let's begin all the way on the West Coast in Portland. There has been violence, civil unrest and has fallen on you to

deal with it. Absolutely, what we see in Portland, as I've talked about probably over the last several weeks, is very different than what we see anywhere else in the country. We have a community that has fostered an environment of violence in Portland. This goes back to twenty eighteen where we had an ice facility, a DHS facility set siege to for about twenty eight days, and for twenty eight days, the local law enforcement didn't do anything to help our employees.

So there's a there's a history. If I remember right, the mayor Ted wheel Wheeler, who's also the Commissioner Police, he announced at the time when when the ice facility was was under assault that the police wouldn't protect it. Is that's correct? That's correct? And what did that? So let's go back to because there's there's a history here that sets the stage. So they're attacking the ice facility, mayor says, police, forget it, you don't get police protection.

So what happened then? So it took about twenty eight days and we had to send in federal law enforcement officers. We had to send in a contingent of DHS officers, but we also had some DOJ officers, some marshals and others that went in provided egress entry and exit from that facility to get our employees back and forth, make sure they're that facility was protected. There there were weapons in the facility just to make sure it was secure. Uh.

And then we had those individuals. Was there violence that there wasn'tov cocktail starting out the facility. It was damaged, it was vandalized. They did not get inside, luckily, but the outside was vandalized all right. So fast forward to now what exactly is happening in Portland? I guess there's a federal courthouse and a federal building. Is that right? Are there two places in particular that where the conflict is? Right?

So we've got about five federal facilities in Portland. There is the Mark Hatfield Federal Courthouse, which is where ninety five percent of the violence has taken place, and that's a working courthouse, like right now, there are cases going on in the courthouse today. There is a grand jury in the courthouse today. And we are being told though that the violent protests they're actually just peaceful demonstrations that are happening at this courthouse. What's the real story, Well,

there's both. So what we see is we see peaceful protesting. So then we got all the gook back to the George Floyd death, which is really when all this started in Portland. We see very peaceful protest every day. So for sixty days we see peaceful protests. They usually occur between six and seven o'clock at night, and they run to about eleven o'clock at night, and then there's a small break and about how many people are we talking?

Typically we see several hundred, several hundred peaceful protests, their speeches being made, a clus out there. There's a variety of different groups out there that does not make the media that you know. I remember a period during the whole Seattle Chazz schud. I couldn't come up with the new chop. We've been calling it the Soviet Union, but

there are other names. But during that whole thing in Seattle, I remember, I think I commented on Twitter that that Portland was quite peaceful while Seattle was had this autonomous zone. And it was like, wow, when when Portland thinks you're you're doing a bad job in law enforcement, you've really taken a bad turn. And it seems after the Chazz Chop whatever was disbanded, that's that seems to be about

the time Portland got a lot worse. Yeah, what we saw over the course of June was progressively got getting more and more violent. We started sending Federal Protective Service officers to that courthouse to provide some additional support. What is the Federal Protective Service officer? What does that? So? Fps Federal Protective Service is a component of the Department of Homewade Security. They secure about nine thousand, almost nine

thousand federal facilities, mostly owned by GSA. These are federal facilities. So these are not all enforcement officers that are protecting federal buildings. Yeah, so it's courthouses, but it's also maybe you're so security administration is there, it's where federal benefits are exercised in any given city state, they are protecting those buildings. They'd largely do that with a contract force,

but they also have federal officers. So in Portland and I guess there's there's a long history of violence against federal buildings. Obviously, Ted Kazinski blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma was horrific, and I mean that this is not a new threatening thing. It's not anything at all. In fact, under the last administration and Secretary Johnson, DHS secretary deployed federal resources to federal facilities because of certain

demonstrations in Baltimore after Freddy Gray's death. He deployed additional resources there because there was violence directed at federal facilities. So this is nothing new. We do this all the time at the department. It's only now getting certain attention. You know. We've been told also, and I think you've run a good distinction here between the peaceful protesters and then these violent anarchists who show up at night. We've been told though, this is a grassroots movement, a sort

of spontaneous uprising. You think it's organized, Oh, absolutely, it's absolutely organized. So again we come back. So, for sixty nights in a row, we saw between midnight and five am, these are violent individuals, violent criminals, violent opportunists, violent anarchists. And how many are we talking anywhere from five hundred at the height to about five thousand. Wow, So these are five thousand individuals that are outside of a courthouse.

We had to put up temporary fencing. They took it down, they lit it on fire, and they barricaded our folks inside the courthouse. Very very dangerous. So we reinforced the fencing. It did help, but you have violent individuals approaching that fence line every night. They stage in a park, a city park, to city parks across the street, they stage there. They use city streets to come to that facility and then they will stay there for several hours while the

city police the state police did nothing. Well. This brings up an important question too, which is a lot of the people who are defending these anarchists are saying that the federal government has no right to go and arrest them if they leave the federal property and they go on to city property. So again, just inaccurate information, they

just don't know what they're talking about. So forty years, I can't believe that no nobody in politics would ever say something if they didn't know what they were talking So, you know, the US Code coret you know, passed by Congress statute gives us the ability not only to protect our facilities, but to investigate and arrest individuals that we

see that are damaging our facilities off property. So this idea that you can damage a federal facility and then step across the road and say sorry, you can't touch me. It's very similar to if someone walked up to the United States Capital tried to burn the capital down and step across the street and say sorry, you can't touch me. It's not how long would work, It would not work. No, no ideas anymore yeah, not work. And that's what really we were up against for sixty days in Portland. So

you have to hold individuals accountable. So DHS, along with the Marshall Service started making a rest because state and local law enforcement refused to. So how much violence are we talking about? Is this one guy taking a swing at somebody? I mean, I mean, what help people understand one? Actually you see kind of images online. You see some fires and people pulling on fences. But what's what's really

going on? I say, initially, I would say the most I would say lease violent that you would see would be bricks being thrown at law enforcement officers. That's the least violent. That's the least violent. Bricks you see, frozen water bottles, anything that's hard, hard can food you see being thrown at law enforcement officers as they come out and try to protect the facility. It then starts to ratch it up. We've seen molotov tales, officers have taken

sledgehammers to the head. We see IED's being thrown up there. You're saying people are hitting police officers in the head with sledgehaders. Correct, How many officers have been injured during the core support for DHS. We've had over two hundred and forty seven different injuries to law enforcement officers, about over one that's just Portland. That's just Portland. Holy crap, that's just Portland. Two hundred and forty seven different injuries

to law enforcement officers. About over a hundred officers have individually been injured. And Portland, by the way, is not the only site of this violence. We've been seeing it in other cities as well. We see a little different violence in different cities, you know, whether it's Chicago, Kansas City, Albuquerquet, even Seattle. That's more street crime. There is some organized violence as well, but Portland is very different than any

other city we've seen. As I indicated, thousands of folks every night for sixty days come to a fence line around a federal courthouse and want to burn it down. There's their video on that. What are they doing with lasers? I mean, that's that's harmless, right, That's just a pointer like putting its No, not at all. They there's some

pretty powerful lasers they're using. So as the law enforcement officers come out of the building to protect it, they will shine the green lasers in their eyes and unfortunately, we have about three officers that are going to have some probably permanent damage. When you say permanent damage, they're facing partial or total blind We're waiting for medical to

come back. But that's that's what we're hearing at the moment. Yes, okay, so it's not I mean I can see people thinking, oh, you know, I play with a pointer at home and my cat chases it. That's that's That's not it aiming real and powerful lasers at the eyeballs of officers and you've got three who are seriously injured. We do so, we've taken corrective measures. We've given them some eyewear that

protects against that. But this is a new tactic from these individuals that we have first seen here in Portland. And I guess one of the challenges is a lot of these guys are dressed in all black. They're wearing goggles, are wearing a mask. And so if you have someone throw a brick and it hits an officer and he's bleeding, you have someone right point a laser and it blinds an officer, you can't always tell who did it. I mean, they're all dressed the same. I mean, is that part

of what they're trying to do. Absolutely, it's very difficult, and they do that on purpose, and they we see tactics that they use that are very similar to law enforcement. They try to obscure their movements. They do a number of different things that make it difficult for law enforcement to engage with them. Now we have our own tactics, we are able to identify certain individuals that are lighting fires throwing. We've seen barbecues being tossed over the fence.

They're on fire. A barbecue grill, yeah, like a like a Weber grill, yeah, tossed over. Do they at least put burgers? And something tells me they're not that courteous. We see mortar style, commercial grade tofu. They wouldn't be burgers. That really, I gotta say in Texas, those are fighting words. If you throw a barbecue with nothing but tofu and

veggie burgers, it's just route. It's just that's the only thing that commercial grade fireworks are being thrown in and so as those explode several inches from officers, it can become very very dangerous. They get burnt. This is not somebody light in a black cat like a mortar style firework that gets shot from across the street, inside the

park into the facility. Mister Secretary, the scene that you are describing, and I think the scene that a lot of us have seen on television is one that we would expect in a foreign country in the Middle East, in a war zone. This is not the sort of thing we would expect within the borders of the United States. Absolutely, and I've been saying that for almost over a month now that the violence that we see in Portland. People have to understand it's not a few protesters who are

getting angry and deciding to bang on offense. These are violent individuals that are organized. They have supply lines. This is an organized entity here that is doing this. And unfortunately, despite our request, we have state and local law enforcement up until recently, for sixty days, refused to engage these folks. So are the cops behaving differently now? Are they politicians?

Let them actually do their job? They have so at the middle of July, I want to say, I place phone calls to the Mayor of Portland as well to the government of Oregan and I basically put any any resource at the department at their hands, you know, for them as they addressed the violence, they had the full resources of the department. Their response was no, thank you, and please leave Portland, which of course we didn't do.

And if you'd left Portland, what would have happened that the facility would have burned, the courthouse would have burned. But you're saying what the mayor and governor were saying is just abandoned the Federal court absolutely and let the mob burn the courthouse to the ground. That's that was

their request of me. Well, you know, this ties into the same strategy we've heard from the same people on the international front, which is, don't enforce our border with Mexico, allow the border to be totally open, allow people to come in. And DHS has been a particular object of those criticisms. What is DHS. It's a pretty new new agency. What all falls within the umbrellas. So we have about

two hundred and forty thousand employees across the enterprise. Are y'all the biggest civilian agency so other than DoD, I leave the Veterans Administrations a little bit bigger. Interesting just from a pure side standpoint. So within the department, we do everything from aviation security, so the commercial checkpoint security that you see as you get on commercial aircraft, we do that TSA. TSA, so TSA reports to you TSA Customs and Border Protection, so we talk about border security.

They're certainly along that border. You know, when they do the groping at the stands, it'd be really good if they could like just do the lower back a little more an official request. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, look, if you're got to get it, I got to sore muscle down there. Well, they got to. They have to continue to do their job. I say thank you to them every time. I'm a diplomatic. As long as we

don't have any incidents in the skies, I'm happy. Customs and Order Protection ICE Immigration Customs enforcement is also inside the department USCIS. Which so what's the difference between Customs and Border Protection and ICE. Sure, CBP A customers and mainly protecting our border southwest border, northern border, m border. So those are the guys in green, they're they're not they're in the Rio grand They're absolutely they're not only the men and women in green, but they're also in blue.

So as you come to a port of entry and you're legally coming to the US, you're going to have to go through several officers and go through a process, so they do not only legal but illegal entry into the US. Okay, So that's CBP and then ICE is what ICE is, Immigrations and Customs Enforcements. So these are

the individuals. We have both ICE E r O, which is our removal operations, So these are individuals that will go into communities, identify criminals, identify other individuals that have no legal right to be in the US, and remove them. We also have homemade security MS thirteen absolute gang members. Yes, you've got ICE officers going in arresting them, and some of these guys can be pretty violent, very very dangerous,

very dangerous. The large majority of I would say targets that we get are actually from individual jails and courthouses, so it's in visuals that have probably have gotten picked up on another criminal charge, come to find out very illegally here in the US. We would then go in, you know, ascertain them, and then start removing. There were now widespread calls among one political party to abolish that entire enforcement agency. So it's not just the removal operations.

We have homemade security investigations, which a transnational criminal organizations drug trafficking. They do a variety of national security missions that are part of ICE. So part of what they want to ambolish our criminal investigators protecting communities from a varide variety of threats. So I think it's an interesting arc of development because a couple of years ago, the

Democrats seized upon abolish ICE. I mean it started with AOC, It started off with a few kind of fringe characters, and then it expanded and some of what you guys faced in Portland with Ted Wheeler refusing to protect the ICE facilities was a manifestation back then that they were saying get rid of ICE. That's now transmogrified into abolish all police that that that that it's not just ICE that, but it's it's anyone with a badge and a gun is apparently now the bad guy. Um what so Nancy

Pelosi has called your officers stormtroopers. Yes, it's what do you what do you make of that? Well, she's not only called them stormtroopers. I heard him be referred to as the Gestapo or thugs as well. Uh, completely irresponsible comments. I've called on each of those members of Congress that have said those terms to apologize to the men and women of DHS, these are civil law enforcement officers, get up every day, put on a badge, put on a uniform,

protect their communities. So these are cops. They're federal cops, but they're they're law enforcement officers protecting us. Absolutely, they do. They go to training, they establish, they have procedures that they follow, they have authorities that they follow, and to call them stormtroopers, to invoke that kind of imagery is just shameful. And for the recording, is an arrest kidnapping

because that's the language they're saying is apparently you're now kidnappers. Yeah, So it's again, I think it's individuals that don't understand what our mission is. So they're in Portland because you did not have state or you didn't have local law enforcement making arrest. So night after night after night, hundreds of individuals are committing criminal acts with no consequence. And DHS said, well, we can't have that. That's not how

law enforcement works. So we have the ability to go out and arrest individuals, and we started doing that within a two to three block radius of the courthouse. And then that's when you know a number of individuals said, well, how can you do that, how can you arrest individuals, Well, they are committing criminal acts, that's how you arrest individuals. You're making this point about Nancy Pelosi and a lot of other Democrats in the House. It's an election year.

They're heightening up the rhetoric. They're going after abolish iz abolish law enforcement. But there's another very hot political issue that they're also talking about, which is immigration. Illegal immigration that the border. This was a central plank when President Trump was running for office. What's the situation down there on the border wall, on enforcement, on making sure our

country security. Is there a wall? Absolutely? Absolutely. We just eclipsed about two hundred and sixty five miles of the new border wall system under President Trump. So so there was a wall to begin with. We had we had several hundred walls, several hundred miles a wall initially, and we built about two hundred more, I would say initially as we came in. We had different forms of fencing, some of it about six feet tall, some of it

maybe up to eight feet tall. Maybe easily scalable, easily defeated, no impedance and denial there any type of barrier. What you want for our border patrol, the men and women in green on the border. They want something that's going to stop an individual or at least to slow them down. So that's the impedance and denial aspect of coming into the country illegally. The bigger the barrier, the more effective the barrier, the easier it is for them to do

their job. What we saw with six foot high wall, you could scale it, you could be over disappear, very difficult for border patrol to do their job. The new border wall system that we're building in many cases is thirty feet high. It has ground sensors, says lighting, it has radar, It has a number of things that if you can, if you can defeat it, very difficult too. If you can defeat it, you have border patrol waiting on you as you get to the other side of

that of that border wall system. All right, So I gotta tell a story, Michael. I spent a lot of time with CBP in Texas and they're incredible men and women. And several years ago I joined them down in Real Grand Valley for their midnight muster and then went out

on midnight patrol with which is very cool. And so we're going out and they arrested a number of people, and so they go into this one stash house that's oh, probably two hundred yards in from the river, and they go in and kick the door down, and there are a bunch of bunch of people there that they're apprehending, and there's some pretty rough look at characters coming out of the stash house, including one guy I remember who

was big. He was probably two sixty two eighty pounds, was wearing sort of a raggedy undershirt covered with tats, I mean tats everywhere, and the agents kept saying Senator, senator, Hey, come over here, senator, come look at the Senator. I'll be back here. Thanks now. And I'm like, xnay on the editors stay, just just call me Bob. Guys like that is, you know, I think that's probably typical. Though.

We're dealing with, to use the President's term, tough embres down here, and I don't know, to hear the rhetoric coming from the left right now, it's as though these are the most wonderful people in the world and the villains are the law enforcement officers who are trying to arrest. It's it's disgraceful. Really. Again, we have. DHS is the largest law enforcement agency in the country. We have over one hundred thousand law enforcement officers in the department doing

their job every day on the border. Every day they're building that wall, they're stopping individuals from crossing into the country illegally, and I would say, in a pandemic environment, stopping individuals crossing into the country illegally takes on a more important mission, of course, not just stopping immigration by a laters. We're stopping individuals that perhaps could have COVID nineteen,

could be coming into the US and infecting Americans. We're told that we're not allowed to leave our homes in many cases, but it's perfectly fine to have foreign nationals who obviously are not being tested across that border illegally. But actually, Center, you raised this question for me because your job is to make the laws there are. Your job is to enforce the laws, and there are regulations that you all and my job is entirely to make

fun of the list. But it occurs to me if we're now four years into an administration, we were told, big beautiful wall. We know that people want to build the wall, and yet I think a lot of people listening will say, only two hundred or two hundred and fifty miles of wall, what's the hold up in It strikes me there are other people who make the laws as well, outside of our perhaps constitutional system. Yeah, so

we are not only stymied by congressional inaction. You know, the President has been very clear about a border wall system. We've had to find that funding internally to the administration over the last several years is Congress. Certain members of Congress, I would say, are not supportive of that. But we also have courts and we have lawsuits that we have to deal with. But again, as far as building the border wall system, we're going to reach three hundred miles

by the end of August. We'll be We're here in early August. They built two hundred miles of wall. We've got another hundred miles coming into August month or so, right, and I think is the goal by the end of the year, four hundred and fifty fifty to five hundred right, right. And that's a new wall, this is or replacing previous So it's a great you know, this is what the other side, you know, our opponents usually say, is you're

not actually building any new wall. So in many cases we are tearing down a five to six foot fence and putting up a thirty foot wall, and in any case that is a new wall. It's very much like if you were to tell you another story of this, just on on the five to six foot fence. Back in twenty sixteen presidential race. We're down in Arizona on the border and and you know, I've got a whole bevy of reporters following me, and we're doing we're doing

something right on the border wall. And it's got this this little sort of vehicle barrier, the Normandy barriers, the Normandy bearrier. Yeah, that's exactly. It looks like the sort of criss cross yes, metal planks. Yeah. Um. And and the reporters are there, and we've got a bunch of sheriffs and folks who are down there with us, and a bunch of the reporters. They want to get a better camera shot, so they climb over the barrier to shoot north. And I'm like, okay, so you just crossed

in the Mexico illegally. Uh. And that's how much little of the barrier is. Did you just hop over the damn thing? Okay? I got a better shot here. Maybe we need something more substantial, given that you're, like I think, currently an illegal immigrant in the country of Mexico. They unwittingly. I think of your point on the border, and it's the point we're all making. And yet you're being stymied left and right on building that wall. But again, we

have found ways to do that. We have enough funding, We're in a good place, We're in a good glide pass. So again, as the senator mentioned, about four and fifty to five hundred miles by the end of this calendar year. And that's what the operators want. They want that effective border wall system. It's not everywhere on the border. We can't put it everywhere, but we can put it in the places that need it most so that control, so officers can control other hard hit areas well, even even

be on the operators. I think it's what the American people wanted. A made that point time and again. Let me make a point also, that's that's interesting and would surprise you. The guys working for Chad, the CBP guys on the border, they need a lot more technology. Yes, so so I've been I've been out with them on their boats on the river. I've been up in their helicopters,

which are old. Some of the helicopters are old Hughey's like like you know, out of out of like watching you know, mash growing up, which by the way, they keep the doors open on the side, and you know, they strap you in, And I think the helicopter pilots enjoy doing turns where you're going forward and you're looking at this one little round disk that that is holding your body and if it comes loose, you're following two hundred feet down into the ground. And you're trying to like, yeah,

this doesn't bother me at all. I am urinating my pants right now, but no, I'm not not. Yeah, they do enjoy. I would say they do that with the acting secretary as well. I have no doubt. But what's interesting, So Texas DPS Department of Public Safety, I've been up Texas has, for example, it's an eight million dollar plane.

It's an amazing plane that I've been up in, and it flies along the border and it has heat imagery where they can look like a mile or two away on the other side of the border and you'll see and we'd look at the screen and be like they'd be like, all right, there's the coyote there. You can see him hiding in the brush and you can see four or five people that he's getting ready to send across. And what Texas SPS will do is call CBP and say,

all right, there are five guys right here. They're preparing to cross, and you can see the CBP vans like pulling up on the other side, waiting to apprehend them when they come. The amazing thing, though, is the state has better technology than the FETSI, which is messed up. Y'all should have adequate technology, and it's not your fault, it's Congress's fault. We haven't given it, but it's kind of startling. You don't expect the state equipment to be

better than the federal equipment. Well, some of our best partners are obviously Texas DPS as well as in Arizona in other places, so we rely on our partners to do our job. But as you indicated, we do not have an unlimited budget, so there are certain we have a number of air assets as well that we send up along that border to patrol that but we can always use new and better equipment. Mister Secretory we want

to be respectful of your time. But before we go, I think a lot of Americans looking around don't feel great about how things are going. You know, they see holdings on fire, they see this unrest, especially in Portland, they see problems at the border. What's the outlook? Give it to us straight, you know, we don't want false hope. But but how are things looking as we now move

toward the end of the year. Well, I would say what we've seen over the past month, and we've talked a bit a little bit about here when we talk about defund the police or you start attacking law enforcement, I think what we are seeing around the country is the result of that. What you have are criminals at their very heart. They are violent opportunists, and they see an opportunity to exploit their street, their corner of the world because they know the police are under a microscope.

And so I think that's very dangerous. What the President, what the administration has been very upfront about is we're not going to let this continue. So whether it's through Operation Legend, which is surging federal resources in to deal with some of this violent crime, We're going to continue to searge federal resources in We're going to continue to protect federal property. We see it almost you know, we get threat and intelligence every weekend. Certain federal properties around

the country are being targeted by these groups. We searge resources into those communities to make sure that those properties are protected tybally. When we talk about a courthouse, a seat of justice in a city has to be protected. That's what those country is about. And DHS is going to be on the front lines protecting those all Right. A totally different question to wrap up, how do you

get to be Secretary of Homeland Security? Like you're a cabinet member, You're one of the top cops in the country. Like what you know when you were when you were a kid, is this what you dreamed of doing? How how did you get here? Yeah, it's a little different. Actually dreamed of joining the military, and for whatever reason, it didn't happen. To grow up in Texas, went to school in Dallas, had the opportunity to come to DC

and and shortly after nine to eleven joined DHS. Nine to eleven for me, I was on Capitol Hill, rushed out of the buildings. It was a significant factor in my life. Basically right when DHS was four. Yeah, this is back in two thousand and one, two thousand and two. So it was a formidable event in my life and really changed my outlook. So I jumped in, started serving at DAHS, took a break during the Obama administration, and then came back in and held a variety of different

positions here in the department. I think the thing that you know, a lot of us here in the part we believe in this mission. We believe in what the department does and how it was created after nine to eleven. It's counter terrorism mission, but it has a number of other missions, some of which we talked about that I think the vast majority of Americans just don't know about Federal Protective Service, a lot of our immigration enforcement, and a lot of other things that we are doing here.

So it's a big department, one hundred two hundred forty thousand folks, twenty two different agencies that came in. So what do you do for fun? Like when when I work, but you know, when I can, I try to run a little bit and bike a little bit. Well those hobbies notwithstanding, I think you're probably working a lot more of these days. Well, and I do need to clarify it and just say, Chad, thank you for being here. So as we are here, yeah, your base basement is flooding.

It is so there's a tropical storm. It's raining like crazy. You're in DC, You're base. Smith's flooding and your wife is calledge. You're saying, Hey, our basement's flooding, and you said I gotta do a podcast right now. I'm just gonna say I'm sorry. I know you're sleeping on the couch tonight. It's my fault, blame it on me. But but you're a great American and please get home quickly and help your wife or or it won't be the couch, it'll be the doghouse. We need to get you back

to the basement and more importantly, to the mission. Mister Secretary, thank you so much for being here. Senator, I'll see you next time. This is Verdict with Ted Cruize. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across

the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation. Chef