July 11, 2023 • 52 mins
Robert and James sit down with Marianna Wright (director of the Butterfly Center) and Jenn Budd (a former Border Patrol officer) to talk about the newest anti-migrant fuckery at the U.S. / Mexico border.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to It could happen here. I'm
Robert Evans, and this is a podcast about things falling
apart and nowhere. I don't know showcases collapse quite as
well as the US Mexico border. And that's my little introduction.
Now I'm going to pivot over to James Stout. James,
what are we talking about today?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, today we are talking about the US Mexico border,
is specifically in the Great State of Texas, which people
might remember from its winter power grid failures. It's upcoming
summer power grid failures. And Greg Abbott's sort of hilarious
and also very cruel and terrible antics on the border.
And we're joined today by one guest. Who are two
(00:46):
guests we've had before to talk about the border on
the podcast. We've got Gen Budd, a former senior Border
Patrol agent, an author, and an activist. And Marianna Travina Wright,
who people remember as the Butterfly Lady, the previous owner
of an M four assault rifle, the lady who made
the cop walk off a butterfly sanctuary, once an hero
(01:08):
occasionally of Twitter dot com. How are you guys.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
We're good, We're good.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Good to see you guys.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It's nice to hear because we are this is normally
the time of year where Texas is rough climactically, in
this particular year, it's it's downright apocalyptic down there.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah, we just don't go outside. You're likely to vaporized spontaneously.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, it looks bad. Yeah. And so what I've gathered
us here today to discuss is the upcoming implementation of
a a floating border wall, a barrier which is going
to make children drown. I don't really know how to
(01:56):
describe it. Press one, if you could sort of describe
this proposed Greg Abbott's talking about it, but it's it's
clearly like a not just a state thing. So perhaps
we could start out by explaining exactly what he's been
talking about what this design looks like.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
So the floating border wall, I confess in the beginning
I was kind of like, I don't get it because
I'm thinking of a wall, you know, going extending upwards.
But essentially what it is are these giant booyes plastic
booies that are very tightly woven together so that you
can't go in between them. And then the booies also spin,
so if you grab onto them, you're going to just
(02:36):
spin down. And then underneath the booys is four feet
of netting, so if you try and swim underneath it,
you will be captured in the netting and then you
will likely drowned. It's originally I think the original design
for the makers was to prevent groups like Green Peace
(02:57):
and so forth from getting to oil what do you
call them, oil stands out in the middle of the
ocean and keep their boats from getting to them. So
now they're going to use them and string them because
the border technically most Americans, I don't think. No, there's
the border technically along a lot of parts of the
Rio Grande and Texas is in the middle of the river,
(03:18):
depending on where the river's flowing that year, and so
they will have to also be weighted down as well.
And the hope for the governor is that most of
the people will drown trying to get over to the
US side, which means their bodies will remain in Mexico
and then we won't have to deal with them easypasy.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, that is a particularly dark consideration. They haven't thought of.
Our border is already. If people aren't familiar with di
colonial atlets. They have some good visualizations, but you can
see where migrants die and they have one I think
it's called where Migrants Die, and there are various sort
of colors for different people dying from exposure, people dig, dehydration, drowning,
(04:03):
and overwhelmingly people don't die on the way here. They
die within a few miles of our southern border, normally
on the northern side.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Our border is.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Already and Jen has covered this extensively, how our border
is already killing people, But this is I think particularly cruel.
Is it something that like Abbott started talking about it
maybe a month or so ago, maybe two months ago. Now?
Is it something that he's doing sort of of his own,
(04:32):
like they Arizona sort of contain a wall, or is
it something that he's proposing as a sort of federal operation.
What's going on with I.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Think he originally probably got the idea because in the
Trump administration they had promoted this, and so I believe
that the former chief under Trump, Rodney Scott, was probably
they were probably researching him and CBP were researching how
to do this, because it would take a few at
least quite a few months, if not years to research
(05:03):
this and make something like this happen. But I think
that they abandoned that because they knew that that's just
not going to fly federally. But although why wouldn't it.
I mean, all deterrence policies are based on this kind
of cruelty, So I guess visually they thought it would
be too much. But since since Rodney Scott is no
(05:25):
longer the chief of the Border Patrol and he resigned,
he's been working with the State of Texas and specifically
with Governor Greg Abbot to develop new policies and so forth.
And he's been down there helping the union and helping
other ex Border Patrol agents come up with new policies
and new.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Cruelties for Greg Abbott to install.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
So I think originally the idea was a federal idea,
and now it's come down to the State of Texas.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Okay, So I guess what how far along is the
State of Texas in? Like I know, before Trump built
his border war, we had these little thirty foot prototypes
in San Diego. He gave a lot of contracts people
who'd given him a lot of money in his election campaign.
Uh was Wheatland Tube I think is a big one
and mixed deal. But how far is the State of
(06:18):
Texas along in its plan to create a floating murder barrier.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
The booy barrier border barrier is already created and it's
available in various links. And I should add in addition
to the booys in between the booys are spinning radial blades.
So you yeah, it just I mean, every aspect of
(06:47):
this I can I miss. That is a bloody nightmare.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
I went to the manufacturer site and it addresses this too,
So you can't even get to like the middle of
the buoy with uh you know something and cut the
string of booiz because they are these radial razor blades too.
(07:11):
So the state will be deploying it in thousand foot strips.
And Jin and I did a little podcast on this,
I don't know a couple of months ago when we
first saw these signs appearing on the river and they
(07:33):
were super strange. It was Memorial Day weekend, I believe,
and they were numbered and they said like RGV for
Rio Grand Valley RGV one ninety one, one ninety three.
We thought, are these mile markers like we have on
the freeway, But they weren't at any particular distance, and
(07:53):
they were put at various spots that appeared as though
they could be areas where migrants crossed. They can also
be the paths where the cows and the horses come
down to drink. Jen's been on the river with us.
She's observed that at various platforms on the river where
(08:15):
water pump stations are for farmers and irrigation districts and such.
So we saw these signs. The RGV one ninety one
is facing the river facing Mexico. The backside of it
is a caution danger risk of drowning sign in English
(08:38):
and in Spanish, but it is facing the United States,
on the bank of the Rio Grande River in the
United States, so it's in no way a caution to
anyone who might be approaching the river. And we thought,
why are they suddenly putting up these signs, because you know,
forever people have been crossing the river, and Border patrol
(09:03):
is on the boats there, Texas DPS, the Coast Guard,
the US Coast Guard now Game Wardens now Florida Highway
Patrol and Florida Fishing Game and all these. I mean,
it is everybody's floating the river now, not for recreation,
but hunting migrants, and so then we thought, well, maybe
(09:27):
these are so that when these out of state interlopers
and at times even the militia who show up to
help them, could easily communicate with the authorities, say I'm
at marker number one ninety one or whatever. Then it
(09:48):
was just a few days after that that the announcement
of this floating border buoy barrier came up. And my
guess is the markers will be used to determine where
those are deployed, where they get moved, and that sort
of thing, so that then they can be accounted for.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Right, So are they proposing the entirety of the river
be covered by the single They're going to move segments
of it to areas where they think it's a high
traffic area.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
They're going to begin an Eagle Pass where four people
drown just this weekend. But then, according to Steve McGraw,
who's head of Texas DPS, it sounds like they will
be putting them all along the river in areas they
believe are high traffic.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Right, yeah, yeah, and Jesus Christ, it is the dock
se and yeah, Eagle Pass is where all those people
died in the in the annac conditioned trailer like I
think two years ago, right was that Eagle Pass.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Those kind of trailer horror have happened near US and
fel furious in San Antonio. Unfortunately, they happen throughout the
border region. And there are so many ports of entry
land ports of entry along the Texas Mexico border because
Texas is I mean, Mexico is our number one trading
(11:19):
partner with the US, and we have NAFTA, which established
the North American Free Trade Zone. So if you have
a television or a refrigerator, or you drive a car
in the United States today, chances are those pieces and
parts are manufactured in Mexico in the Free trade Zone
(11:40):
and then they get brought over by Trump. Same thing
with so much of our produce. So the amount of
that trailer traffic is enormous, and those trailers are used
for human smuggling at much higher numbers, we should note
than the river area. Same as for narcotics trafficking. Those
(12:01):
things are coming across by the truck load and in
shipping vessels, not in small bundles across the Rio Grand River.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Right, Yeah, I think most I think most narcotics center
the country through ports of entry red than between ports
of entry against nodings.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, oh absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
Yeah, absolutely, especially the narcotics that are very expensive. Even
when I was an agent in the mid nineties, I
used to say, why do we only get marijuana and
and the agents would say, well, because cocaine's too expensive
to put on somebody's back and hike it through the mountains, Yeah,
across the river or in the desert. So it's just
easier to buy off a CBP agent or a Border
(12:46):
patrol agent and just get waved on through.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, they're not like dumb otherwise, Like these these are
huge money businesses. You're not throwing a half a million
dollars of cocaine on some guy's back, yeah, right.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
And risking it floating away.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, this valuable merchandise. Like there are no like, no
more cavalier with it than like target is you know, like.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah, the obviously this is part of a sort of
larger I don't know. Abbott does a lot of posturing
on the border, right, and that posture has real consequences
(13:31):
for migrants, and it has real consequences for people living
on both sides of the border as well, right, especially
I think people our previous coverage that will be very
well aware of that. Perhaps we could sort of characterize
this within the context of Operation Loan Star, within the
other Like you've said, right, the other deployments. It's not
(13:51):
just even Texas National Guard who are now deployed to
the border. So could you give us like an overview
of all the ridiculous lapping that's been done.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Well, there are twelve or thirteen states to date that
have sent prison guards, their national Guard, fishing game or
wildlife officers, and state police to the border. And this
is related to two different campaigns basically by the Border
(14:33):
Patrol Union. One is Biden Border Crisis with that hashtag,
which they launched in March of twenty twenty one, and
the other is every state is a Border State, which
was a battle cry for MAGA politicians during the midterms.
(14:54):
And so what we see now are these red states
with you know, governors who want to capitalize on looking
tough on immigration sending reinforcements to the border. DeSantis obviously
was the first to do that because he's been very
(15:15):
vocal about envyat Abbot and how Abbot had kind of
a leg up on him in any campaign because.
Speaker 6 (15:23):
Abbot got the border and Abbot got to, as you said,
posture there and be you know, the new sheriff in
town and you know, stepping in where.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Sleepy Joe is, you know, not performing. But what we
see in reality is Brandon Judd, who's the president of
the National Border Patrol Council, was stuck to Trump. You know,
they were best buddies and and you know, basically campaigning together.
(15:59):
And then Brandon jen kind of fell away from Trump
when he lost reelection and has become Greg Abbott's best
buddy and press junket sidekick and helped stage the launch
of Operation Lone Star, which you know, was like a
(16:20):
Fourth of July type parade with the tanks and the
helicopters and the planes and the boats and the you know,
the ATV agents and the horses, the whole nine yards.
And people think, I think most people in the United
States believe that Abbot is this renegade doing this all
(16:42):
on his own. And what we see is the reality
is it is a joint operation between the state government
and the federal government, but the Feds won't admit to
it because of the optics. It's bad enough that Biden
(17:03):
continued border wall construction, which most of his supporters opposed.
Now he is working hand in glove with Abbott. And
when I say our experience, what we see daily and
what I have documented is US Border Patrol working with
(17:27):
Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and Operation Loan Star
Texas National guardsmen literally riding in the same vehicles together,
responding to scenes, patrolling together. And at the Butterfly Center,
we had National Guard Texas National Guard parked on the
(17:50):
levee at our property, blocking our access back and forth.
And I went and said, hey, guys, you know this
is our property and we have to have access to
it during regular business hours for you know, my staff
who are working here and our members and visitors who
(18:12):
come to explore and enjoy. So I need you all
to move. I need you to move your humbyes so
we can get back and forth. And I recorded this
interaction as I do all and they said, ma'am, we
don't take our orders from you. We take our orders
from Border Patrol. And that was a revelation to me
when this happened a couple of years ago. So I
(18:34):
actually got on the phone with the patrol agent in charge,
the highest ranking Border Patrol agent at the McCallen station,
and I said, his name is Tony Crane. I said, Tony,
you need to come out here and tell these guys
to move. They're saying they'll only do it for you,
and they only take orders from you. And Tony drove
out there to the Butterfly Center, to the levee and
(18:58):
instructed the National Guard to move their vehicle and they did.
And this is something we've seen over and over. And
I now have in email commander or Regional director rather
of Texas DPS, Victor Escalon, who the rest of the
nation may know from the Uvaldi tragedy. I have email
(19:22):
from him where he is invoking the federal statute that
DPS claims gives them the authority to ignore our Fourth
Amendment rights and enter private property without warrant as long
as they're working with Warner Patrol, and they are claiming
(19:42):
that they are doing so at the request of the
United States Attorney General according to the federal.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Statute am importantly the federal government in any of its
aspects in saying no, this isn't true, or like they're
working get like you say, hand in hand with these
and like it's not even just a joint federal and
state operation. Like I know, I think it was South
Dakota's deployment. Was it that was funded by a wealthy individual?
(20:13):
Like the state didn't pay for it. I can't remember
which Dakota it was, but yeah, it was funded by
a wealthy donor who paid for it.
Speaker 5 (20:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
So whichever state CHRISTI Noem is in charge of, Yes,
and I believe that also happened in Kentucky or Tennessee.
Same thing. It was a wealthy donor who funded their
state National Guard deployment.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah. And then perhaps Jen, you could explain to people
why it is so different if they believe they have
these within one hundred miles the border, and then again
within twenty five miles of the border, so many of
your fundamental rights don't apply. Could you explain how that works?
And then how then if the National Guard see themselves
(20:58):
is also having the ability to sort of wave the
with amendment, what that would mean for the privacy of
people living along the border.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
In the United States Border Patrol Academy, So I went
through the academy I started in June of nineteen ninety five,
so I can at least testify to that. They basically,
you know, I had a four year in law, so
I knew a little basics about it, and then going
to the academy, it was really kind of sad because
(21:26):
they don't really teach you much of anything. They're just like,
you know, your their rights are limited. We're allowed within
twenty five miles of the border by the law to
go on anybody's private property and even search their buildings,
as long as it's not a domicile, and that can
sometimes be in question whether it's being used as a
(21:47):
domicile or we consider it as a domicile, And then
within one hundred miles of any land or sea border,
which encompasses two thirds of the United States population, we
can basically stop you and ask you to prove that
you're a United States citizen. And so then they increase
(22:09):
that with checkpoints that are a little ways away from
the border, where they under the guise of asking for
your citizenship. They then get to police American citizens or
legal residents. And as the years have progressed, Border patrol
(22:30):
keeps trying to push those authorities.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
In the beginning, you know.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
We weren't allowed to work with local PD, the local sheriffs.
There was a very clear separation, a very clear line
between Border Patrol and local cops, or at least legally
on written paper, there were supposed to be. And after
nine to eleven, what we end up seeing is the
Border Patrol decides to get very heavily invested into surveillance.
(22:56):
And it's not a coincidence. Former Chief Rodney Scott was
in charge of that during that time, and his basic
statement was, you know, if a car is bombed in Iraq,
the Border Patrol needs to know about it. So they
considered anything in the world to be important to the
Border Patrol, and they wanted the Border Patrol to be
the go to agency and as far as surveillance. So
(23:18):
that's why you see them being used in Black Lives
Matter protests and things like this, and we saw them
a lot in the Trump administration where they were supposedly
guarding federal buildings and then went and attacked them. So
what you see is the Border Patrol trying to quietly
eke into what is typically considered peace officer authority. So
(23:41):
they're trying to get peace officer authority in Texas through
the state legislature, and they just keep trying to expand
their authority more and more. What I see in Texas specifically,
is when you look at the history of immigration when
the United States, when we first you know, when Texas
first came a state, and all this other stuff. Originally
(24:02):
the states did their own immigration patrolling, and so if
you went and you just decided you're going to somehow
you landed on the coast in Georgia, then you would
have to go to a Georgian official and pay whatever
it is that they required of you and stuff. And
so what I see more and more is like Texas
(24:22):
is taken back that authority and saying we're the ones
that are going to say this, and so then they
can make money off of the deterrence policies and all
of this other stuff. So it's just a constant expansion
of the rights of the cops, while at the same
time constantly reducing the rights to the people who live
(24:45):
here and even the people that cross here. A lot
of people think, they'll say, you know that migrants don't
have any constitutional rights.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Well that's not true.
Speaker 5 (24:52):
They have constitutional rights because it says people in the
US Constitution.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
It doesn't say citizens.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
So in certain areas it will say citizens, and then
that is exclusive to United States citizens, but they're you know,
the basic rights are afforded to even migrants. But because
the migrants don't have much of a voice, the border
patrol gets away with with everything. Secret teams, cover up teams,
(25:21):
and all this other stuff. Border patrol agents will just
flat out tell you constitution doesn't exist down here, and
they never get in trouble for it.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
So yeah, one of one of the things Jen just
touched on is Texas DPS getting in on this immigration business.
Is when Governor Abbott declared that Operation Loan Star would
be targeting Hispanic males and in some places they talk
(25:53):
about of fighting age. So they're already depicting all of
these individuals as like olders in some invasion in a
gang war, and you know that they're again hostile combatants
to the United States. But they were going to charge
them all with criminal trespass. So we hear a lot
(26:17):
about how awful the cartel is and how much money
they take from migrants and then hold them for ransom,
and how expensive it is to get across. Well, once
they get across the state of Texas becomes the cartel.
They arrest them, charge them with criminal trespass, put them
(26:37):
in the county jail. It's a five thousand dollars fine.
Then when they're released from state custody, they're immediately handed
over to federal detention, and that is generally the for
profit GEO group or cor civic. And there my understanding
(26:58):
is fines for attention can be ten thousand to twelve
thousand dollars for your federal detention. And so here we
have it used to be just the for a profit
federal detention facilities cashing in on our criminal immigration policies,
(27:25):
and Governor Rabbit's like, hey, why aren't we getting a
piece of the pie? So that is what Operation Loan
Star is really about. It's not about public safety. It's
not that all this fentanyl is coming across the Rio
Grande River being smuggled by migrants. It's about chi ching
(27:46):
chi ching, Chi ching chi ching, putting all of them
in to the county jail at five thousand dollars ahead.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah, yeah, and it's all the while, right, like he's that,
I know. So the Texas National Guard people aren't getting
the benefits they would normally get if they'd been mobilized
or deployed because it's a state deployment, not a federal deployment.
And like as much as Abbott and DeSantis try and paint,
(28:14):
the border is a dangerous place full of like I know,
like drug warlords and cartel violence. And overwhelmingly the people
in that in Lone Star who have died have died
because they got drunk and drove because they had an
accident with a personally owned firearm. Because Texas law doesn't
allow them to stop the National Guard bringing their own weapons.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
They're they're not getting into gunfights with zacarios, right, Like,
it's not it's not any any anything like that. It's
the standard problem of taking a bunch of men away
from the place they normally live and making them do
mine numbing duty.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Yeah, yeah, they're they're doing mine numbing duty in you know,
exasperating heat. It's boring as hell. We see them asleep
in vehicles, watching Netflix, doing other things. When National Guard
totaled their Enterprise rental truck on the gate at the
(29:15):
National Butterfly Center, what we found were bud light cans
on the ground, which we can only assume bounced out
of the truck bed when that truck made impact. And
was destroyed. The local police will not release any public
(29:37):
information related to calls and reports that they have to
take of drunken disorderly conduct, noise complaints, property damage, sexual assault,
all of these things happening at the hotels where National
Guard is staying. But we know from visitors and from
(30:03):
property managers and others that this is happening regularly because yeah,
they don't so good leadership and it's it's frankly, it's
like really young kids that are down there.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
And the other thing.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
That we need to say too is that the National
Guard that's being posted there, the young National Guard kids
are seeing increase rates of suicide. And that's that's something
that's particular to Border Patrol agents because when you're an
oppressor and you do that cut of work, then you're
going to end up your The suicide rates go through
(30:38):
the roofs as they are with the Border Patrol, and
now you're seeing that with the National Guard. But Marianna's right,
there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff that they're
suppressing about what these National Guard kids are getting into
because they're bored down there. So they're sitting down there
in Texas drinking and opening it up and getting in trouble.
But it's all kind of hush hush quiet about that.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
Yeah, not only are they bored, but these are, like
you said, eighteen nineteen, twenty twenty one year olds getting
paid six thousand dollars a month, like they have never
had this kind of cash before, and what are they
going to do with it? They're going to go buy
guns at our local pawn shop.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
They pay the National Guard that will, that's.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
What they're being paid. And initially their taxes were not
being withheld or anything. So employment, yeah, that was a
whole nother issue. And then for a while they were
trying to unionize because they were not getting the benefits
of a regular deployment. And the ones who were working
(31:45):
in law enforcement already as police officers, firefighters, paramedics and such,
they also, while they're on deployment, do not accrue their
hours toward their pensions. They're taking another hit for that.
And so these were all things that I guess the
(32:05):
state didn't really think through when they called all these
people up and forced them to come sit on the
border and do mind numbing work.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
For the most part, No, it's just a it's a
terrible idea like comprehensive. It's one of those things if
you if you spent any time studying the surge in
Iraq and kind of the later part of the Bush
Ears and some of the shit that happened when they
just grabbed a bunch of National Guard guys and through
the like, it's a lot of the same shit. It's
people who were like finding ways to get alcohol and drugs,
(32:37):
who were crashing cars, who were because like, yeah, you were.
It's just this is this is an inevitable consequence, which
is why you shouldn't do something like this unless there's
like a dire reason to need to bring the National
Guard into a situation like a natural disaster.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
I would I would say that they all need house mothers.
I mean, like fraternities have and stuff, because every time
I run into one of these young men and they
start to like look at me or open their mouth
a certain way, I just want to grab them by
the ear and be like, oh, you know, junior, I'm
(33:17):
gonna spank you.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
You know.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
My first snapper.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah you are nineteen. You should not be in this
position right now.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, get out of here.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
Yeah, go ahead, We'll take your gun. From you too.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, but we spoke to a few of them at
a grub At and I when we were down there,
and one of them was just saying he's trying to
get some money for college, and yeah, I don't think
they're recring those benefits because if they're under state order
to say it, they didn't get it. So Greg Abbat's
kind of screwing everyone apart from himself and his little friends.
I guess maybe to finish up, I know that one.
(34:11):
I think the only case like I can come across
of this happening of someone dying or trying to rescue
migrants was a National Guard soldier who tried to rescue
some people from the river and drowned from what I understand,
and like, obviously this drowning barrier is going to if
(34:31):
Border patroller even invested in investing in getting people from
the river, which they might not be if they're from
the from the Mexican side, if they're still on the
Mexican side of the border, right in theory, would put
those people in those like National Guard and Border patrol
agents in danger to So what have Border Patrol to
say about the floating barrier so far?
Speaker 5 (34:54):
They haven't said anything about it so far, and there
have been a few Border Patrol agents who've lost their
lives jumping into the room as well. There have been
other migrants who have lost their lives trying to save
their children and so forth. Migrants die every day in
that river, and the Border Patrol is just going to
stay quiet about it because they like it's it's their management.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
He's going along with it.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
And if they didn't like and if the bid administration
didn't like it, then they would come out and say so,
or they would come out and have Chief Gloria Chabez
come out and say no, we're not going to have this.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
This is going to kill people.
Speaker 5 (35:28):
This is not right, you know on our first blah
blah blah, which we all know it's bullshit.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
But the truth is is they really don't care. They
just don't care.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
And as they say in the Border Patrol, and we
learn and you all learned. I knew it, but you
all learn from the ten to fifteen group on Facebook
they call them floaters and take pictures of them and
make fun of it. So the Border Patrol could care less.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
It's just one less migrant. They got a process.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Well, and you know, as Jim said, if US Border
Patrol was opposed to this new border barrier, they would
say something, well, I think it's even worse than that.
In twenty eighteen, Trump got border wall funding, and as
you mentioned, he had his you know, Commando Climb, all
(36:14):
these border wall prototypes in the desert and all of that.
In twenty nineteen he got his second trunch of border
wall funding, but twenty twenty and twenty twenty one were
continuing resolutions, so he was getting border wall funding after that,
but it was always for existing approved designs, and those
(36:40):
are the concrete with the steel ballards. So for even
though Trump floated the idea of this Wui border barrier,
this floating border wall, to get congressional approval or US
Army Corps of Engineer approval for such a thing would
(37:00):
have been an issue. Also there's the issue of the
International Boundary and Water Commission Treaty, which is a bi
national treaty with Mexico that governs the Rio Grande River,
the water that flows in it, the boundaries, who gets
to take how much water from it, things that are
built and might affect the flow of the river. As
(37:24):
Jen mentioned, the International Boundary is the middle of the river,
no matter where the river is flowing now, because over
millions of years it has shifted. The channel has shifted many,
many times and greatly. So we know the FEDS probably
border patrol with the Trump administration. So DHS wanted this
(37:48):
floating border wall. The easiest way for them to get
it is to have Governor Abbott do it. In two
thousand and five, the Real Id Act, in that act
of legislation, Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the
(38:09):
authority to waive every law, local, state, federal for border barrier.
So it doesn't say border wall, it's as border barrier.
So presumably this buoy border barrier would also be covered,
so the FEDS don't have to worry about something like
the National Environmental Policy Act or the Endangered Species Act
(38:33):
or the Rivers and Harbors Act in deploying this. But
they do not have authority to waive treaties or the Constitution.
So since at least two thousand and five, the federal
government has been trying to devise ways to effectively waive
(38:57):
the IBWC Treaty. One of the ways in which they
have done that is with the we build the wall
campaign which built you know, they built border barrier on
the international boundary line in Sunland Park, New Mexico, and
in Mission, Texas, and the US government settled with them,
(39:20):
allowing this illegal structure to stand in violation of the
treaty in spite of Mexico's objections, thereby setting a legal precedent,
effectively waiving the treaty. But now Abbott can do this,
and who's going to sue him? The IBWC isn't going
(39:45):
to do a damn thing because they have no authority
to sue on their own. They have to go to
the federal government and ask the Department of Justice to
sue on their behalf. And it's the Department of Justice
that has already settled with Fisher Industries for the we
(40:06):
build the wall fraud fence in violation of the treaty.
The other issue is Texas doesn't have to abide by
NEPA or any equivalent law. And we know that the
FEDS have in the past devised really nasty reach arounds
for the law where if they get busted doing something
(40:29):
illegal like having Customs and Border Protection spray, imas appear
a broad spectrum herbicide that is a known carcinogen all
over people, animals, and plants on the border, they get
sued and made to stop that, they'll simply pass the
money through to the state of Texas and ask them
(40:50):
to continue it. And I think this floating buoy border
barrier is exactly that kind of thing. The Biden administration
can say, we're not doing it, and they don't have
to get approval for this design, and they'll just find
a way to either pass the money through to Texas
(41:12):
or allow Texas to continue to basically fundraise for it
by prosecuting immigrants for criminal trespass and finding them to
get out of county jail.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, well, that is doc.
Speaker 5 (41:29):
I think it's interesting to point out though that when
Governor do See of Arizona put up his train car thing, yeah, Biden,
the Biden administration did get involved with that.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
They and they were upset about that.
Speaker 5 (41:42):
So far, we haven't seen anything about this, and so
we'll see if they deploy it and the Biden administration
stays quiet about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
I mean, we're closing in on like November twenty twenty four,
and I think Biden really is very sensitive about being
seen as quote unquote weak on the border, and like
given the absolute disaster it was the end of Title
forty two and the way they handled that, and yeah,
(42:11):
they didn't really say anything when border patrol with clearly
holding people in conditions that are in violation of their
own detention standards. Like I don't have high hopes for
the Biden administration.
Speaker 5 (42:23):
It's yeah, it's interesting because you would think, like the
whole thing from the Union and everybody that is pro
border patrol an anti immigrant was like, if you in
Title forty two, then then it's just going to overwhelm
the border patrol and more people will come. And we
kept saying for a year like no, that's not going
to happen. It's going to be drastically cut. And so
it's drastically cut. And you would think the Bide administration would.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Be like look what I did. Yeah, yeah, but they're not.
Speaker 5 (42:50):
I mean like like they have no clue how to
talk about the border and what to do on the border.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
It's sad.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
Well, it's this double edged sword of get in line,
do it the legal way. So the people who say
we're not anti immigrant, we just want them to do
it the legal way and get in line. So title
forty two ends we've got the CBP one app which
gives them an appointment so they can stand in line
to cross at a legal point of port of entry
(43:18):
and do it legally. And now they've got to find
a way to thwart that and to mess it up.
And Biden, as you said, is not saying, look at
what we did. We've got everybody standing in line doing
it the legal way.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah. I think they don't want to look at CBP
one too, given what a disaster it's been and how
biased it's been and how bad it continues to be.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
For sure, they've failed to offer any other options. And yeah,
I don't really have any hope that things will not
just get worse. There seems to be a bipods and
consensus that it's okay to kill lots of people trying
to come to our country for help, because it's bad
if folks need mean to you.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Jen has been very vocal and produced lots and lots
of research and documentation on how our deterrence policies are
designed to kill and they're not a whole lot of
people using the G word. But Jen has been courageous
enough to do it. I was recently told by my
(44:26):
employer that I could not use it, and I think
it's a horror but Jen can speak to it.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
We have to do a whole other episode.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, I think we should be. We're definitely going to
keep covering this because it's one of the things that
just disappears from a lot of national media in between
election cycles or in between.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Well and unfortunately it's one of the things where kind
of the numbers are heading in the wrong direction nationwide
because like the border, Like the right is winning on
border stuff right now, the right is winning on immigration. Like,
there's some pretty dark polling likes as much as you know,
some of the last couple of elections have been positive
(45:15):
in terms of the pitiful performance of like kind of
maga Republicans. Like if you if you look at kind
of how Americans are polling on border issues and immigration issues,
it's it's pretty bleak at the moment. And I don't really,
I don't think anyone has a great clear clue as
to like how to reverse that at the moment, which
isn't to say that it can't be reversed, it's just, uh,
(45:37):
it's it's it's difficult.
Speaker 5 (45:40):
Well, it's difficult, especially when the Democrats are always ceding
the argument to the Republicans like they're afraid to make
the argument that a robust, in humane asylum system that
can inspect the people requesting asylum is a national security
issue and you need one. You can't just not have
a NASH. You can't have an asylum not have an
(46:00):
asylum system. You have to have It's an essential part
to the national security infrastructure. So people that argue that
we shouldn't have an asylum system because it's a threat
to national security are completely ignorant about what they're talking about,
and so they have to start framing it as as
a national security issue, you know, one where we can
(46:21):
have people come and be inspected and so forth, and
then the people who are the nefarious people, Yeah, they're
going to go in between the ports of entry. Fine,
arrest those people, but let's have a humane system otherwise.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
It's also fundamental to the success of our economy, and
with you know, the US birth rate is declining and
without a robust, safe, timely immigration system, ideally one that
allows people to go back and forth. Because what I
(46:55):
hear from people here is I miss my country. I
want to return to my I want to come here
to see my family, to work for a season or
for a spell, to send money home, but then I
want to be able to return, and our current system
it's too deadly to allow them to make it through
(47:17):
and then go back and attempt to do that a
second time. Another issue related to the narrative and read
winning on immigration is we found at the Butterfly Center
that when Biden continued building border wall, and we said,
(47:40):
oh my gosh, you know this is what's happening, and
we posted photos and video and everything of it, people
who had supported US, Democrats, liberals with a capital L,
who had supported US said, you're lying, or that's just
they're continuing trumps they had to. And then when we
(48:06):
contradicted every one of those arguments with facts, then they said, oh, well,
if Biden's doing it, then there must be a good reason.
And you know, the US can't accept everybody. And you know,
you get this walking back of all of the the
(48:29):
things that they were saying when Trump was president, about
being humane, about needing an effective system, about creative solutions
and all of this, and now it's suddenly, well, you know,
we can't let everybody in and and so I have
(48:51):
honestly found and I'm going to take a lot of
hit flat for this, but there's basically no difference between
a moderate Republican and a liberal capital l.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Yeah, it cly seems that way. Certainly, Uh, Trump had
months of tible forty two, Biden had years of it.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Like it's yeah, certainly, I mean it's it's I think
pretty much impossible to argue with that, at least on
the on a broad scale, like if you're just kind
of like looking at at national trends. Uh, there's there's
ample support for that argument.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yeah, Biden, I mean Obama deported more people than anyone absolutely, Yeah,
massive number.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Yeah, well cool, yeah yeah.
Speaker 6 (49:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Where can people find out more terrible stuff about the border?
Is there in podcast they can listen to.
Speaker 5 (49:44):
We do have a podcast, Border Patrol Watch. Marianna and
I have kind of started it just to talk about
a lot of these issues that we feel are being
left out. And it's on YouTube. We also have a
TikTok account in Twitter for the moment.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
We'll see how that goes.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
And Facebook and Instagram, and there is Border patrol watch
dot com. Yeah, and that list there's a page on
there for all the agents arrested for rape and pedophilia.
There's a corruption page. There's a page on how they
try and indoctrinate the youth down here on the borderlands
and so forth. So yeah, I'm all about that jazz.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Yeah, that's hashtag on a first And so where could
people it's all borderpar watch. How about you two? Do
you guys have individual accounts? Where can they find you?
Speaker 4 (50:38):
Jen is doing most of this, and I believe it's
under the Border Patrol Watch banner. Yeah, because you know,
both of us found ourselves targeted or throttled or being
you know, really suppressed by Twitter and Facebook.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
And lost my forty thousand followers. Yeah, oh wow.
Speaker 5 (51:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
But bottom chart, which is great. You had a great
thread on agents who have facing charges for sexual assault,
and that's a very small minority of agents who have
done sexual assaults certainly, but yeah, there's some really good
information for people on there.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Yeah, those are just the ones who are being prosecuted
or have been convicted. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, most of them sadly have not, and even the
ones who have, it took too long and it was
far too convoluted. We can yeah, we can talk again
on that happy topic another day, But thank you so
much for giving us some of your afternoon guys. We
really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (51:39):
Thank thank you guys for all you do and forgetting
the word out. It could Happen here as a production
of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 5 (51:49):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen Here did
in monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
Thanks for listening.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to It could happen here. I'm
Robert Evans, and this is a podcast about things falling
apart and nowhere. I don't know showcases collapse quite as
well as the US Mexico border. And that's my little introduction.
Now I'm going to pivot over to James Stout. James,
what are we talking about today?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, today we are talking about the US Mexico border,
is specifically in the Great State of Texas, which people
might remember from its winter power grid failures. It's upcoming
summer power grid failures. And Greg Abbott's sort of hilarious
and also very cruel and terrible antics on the border.
And we're joined today by one guest. Who are two
(00:46):
guests we've had before to talk about the border on
the podcast. We've got Gen Budd, a former senior Border
Patrol agent, an author, and an activist. And Marianna Travina Wright,
who people remember as the Butterfly Lady, the previous owner
of an M four assault rifle, the lady who made
the cop walk off a butterfly sanctuary, once an hero
(01:08):
occasionally of Twitter dot com. How are you guys.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
We're good, We're good.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Good to see you guys.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It's nice to hear because we are this is normally
the time of year where Texas is rough climactically, in
this particular year, it's it's downright apocalyptic down there.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Yeah, we just don't go outside. You're likely to vaporized spontaneously.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, it looks bad. Yeah. And so what I've gathered
us here today to discuss is the upcoming implementation of
a a floating border wall, a barrier which is going
to make children drown. I don't really know how to
(01:56):
describe it. Press one, if you could sort of describe
this proposed Greg Abbott's talking about it, but it's it's
clearly like a not just a state thing. So perhaps
we could start out by explaining exactly what he's been
talking about what this design looks like.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
So the floating border wall, I confess in the beginning
I was kind of like, I don't get it because
I'm thinking of a wall, you know, going extending upwards.
But essentially what it is are these giant booyes plastic
booies that are very tightly woven together so that you
can't go in between them. And then the booies also spin,
so if you grab onto them, you're going to just
(02:36):
spin down. And then underneath the booys is four feet
of netting, so if you try and swim underneath it,
you will be captured in the netting and then you
will likely drowned. It's originally I think the original design
for the makers was to prevent groups like Green Peace
(02:57):
and so forth from getting to oil what do you
call them, oil stands out in the middle of the
ocean and keep their boats from getting to them. So
now they're going to use them and string them because
the border technically most Americans, I don't think. No, there's
the border technically along a lot of parts of the
Rio Grande and Texas is in the middle of the river,
(03:18):
depending on where the river's flowing that year, and so
they will have to also be weighted down as well.
And the hope for the governor is that most of
the people will drown trying to get over to the
US side, which means their bodies will remain in Mexico
and then we won't have to deal with them easypasy.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, that is a particularly dark consideration. They haven't thought of.
Our border is already. If people aren't familiar with di
colonial atlets. They have some good visualizations, but you can
see where migrants die and they have one I think
it's called where Migrants Die, and there are various sort
of colors for different people dying from exposure, people dig, dehydration, drowning,
(04:03):
and overwhelmingly people don't die on the way here. They
die within a few miles of our southern border, normally
on the northern side.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Our border is.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Already and Jen has covered this extensively, how our border
is already killing people, But this is I think particularly cruel.
Is it something that like Abbott started talking about it
maybe a month or so ago, maybe two months ago. Now?
Is it something that he's doing sort of of his own,
(04:32):
like they Arizona sort of contain a wall, or is
it something that he's proposing as a sort of federal operation.
What's going on with I.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Think he originally probably got the idea because in the
Trump administration they had promoted this, and so I believe
that the former chief under Trump, Rodney Scott, was probably
they were probably researching him and CBP were researching how
to do this, because it would take a few at
least quite a few months, if not years to research
(05:03):
this and make something like this happen. But I think
that they abandoned that because they knew that that's just
not going to fly federally. But although why wouldn't it.
I mean, all deterrence policies are based on this kind
of cruelty, So I guess visually they thought it would
be too much. But since since Rodney Scott is no
(05:25):
longer the chief of the Border Patrol and he resigned,
he's been working with the State of Texas and specifically
with Governor Greg Abbot to develop new policies and so forth.
And he's been down there helping the union and helping
other ex Border Patrol agents come up with new policies
and new.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Cruelties for Greg Abbott to install.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
So I think originally the idea was a federal idea,
and now it's come down to the State of Texas.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Okay, So I guess what how far along is the
State of Texas in? Like I know, before Trump built
his border war, we had these little thirty foot prototypes
in San Diego. He gave a lot of contracts people
who'd given him a lot of money in his election campaign.
Uh was Wheatland Tube I think is a big one
and mixed deal. But how far is the State of
(06:18):
Texas along in its plan to create a floating murder barrier.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
The booy barrier border barrier is already created and it's
available in various links. And I should add in addition
to the booys in between the booys are spinning radial blades.
So you yeah, it just I mean, every aspect of
(06:47):
this I can I miss. That is a bloody nightmare.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
I went to the manufacturer site and it addresses this too,
So you can't even get to like the middle of
the buoy with uh you know something and cut the
string of booiz because they are these radial razor blades too.
(07:11):
So the state will be deploying it in thousand foot strips.
And Jin and I did a little podcast on this,
I don't know a couple of months ago when we
first saw these signs appearing on the river and they
(07:33):
were super strange. It was Memorial Day weekend, I believe,
and they were numbered and they said like RGV for
Rio Grand Valley RGV one ninety one, one ninety three.
We thought, are these mile markers like we have on
the freeway, But they weren't at any particular distance, and
(07:53):
they were put at various spots that appeared as though
they could be areas where migrants crossed. They can also
be the paths where the cows and the horses come
down to drink. Jen's been on the river with us.
She's observed that at various platforms on the river where
(08:15):
water pump stations are for farmers and irrigation districts and such.
So we saw these signs. The RGV one ninety one
is facing the river facing Mexico. The backside of it
is a caution danger risk of drowning sign in English
(08:38):
and in Spanish, but it is facing the United States,
on the bank of the Rio Grande River in the
United States, so it's in no way a caution to
anyone who might be approaching the river. And we thought,
why are they suddenly putting up these signs, because you know,
forever people have been crossing the river, and Border patrol
(09:03):
is on the boats there, Texas DPS, the Coast Guard,
the US Coast Guard now Game Wardens now Florida Highway
Patrol and Florida Fishing Game and all these. I mean,
it is everybody's floating the river now, not for recreation,
but hunting migrants, and so then we thought, well, maybe
(09:27):
these are so that when these out of state interlopers
and at times even the militia who show up to
help them, could easily communicate with the authorities, say I'm
at marker number one ninety one or whatever. Then it
(09:48):
was just a few days after that that the announcement
of this floating border buoy barrier came up. And my
guess is the markers will be used to determine where
those are deployed, where they get moved, and that sort
of thing, so that then they can be accounted for.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Right, So are they proposing the entirety of the river
be covered by the single They're going to move segments
of it to areas where they think it's a high
traffic area.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
They're going to begin an Eagle Pass where four people
drown just this weekend. But then, according to Steve McGraw,
who's head of Texas DPS, it sounds like they will
be putting them all along the river in areas they
believe are high traffic.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Right, yeah, yeah, and Jesus Christ, it is the dock
se and yeah, Eagle Pass is where all those people
died in the in the annac conditioned trailer like I
think two years ago, right was that Eagle Pass.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Those kind of trailer horror have happened near US and
fel furious in San Antonio. Unfortunately, they happen throughout the
border region. And there are so many ports of entry
land ports of entry along the Texas Mexico border because
Texas is I mean, Mexico is our number one trading
(11:19):
partner with the US, and we have NAFTA, which established
the North American Free Trade Zone. So if you have
a television or a refrigerator, or you drive a car
in the United States today, chances are those pieces and
parts are manufactured in Mexico in the Free trade Zone
(11:40):
and then they get brought over by Trump. Same thing
with so much of our produce. So the amount of
that trailer traffic is enormous, and those trailers are used
for human smuggling at much higher numbers, we should note
than the river area. Same as for narcotics trafficking. Those
(12:01):
things are coming across by the truck load and in
shipping vessels, not in small bundles across the Rio Grand River.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Right, Yeah, I think most I think most narcotics center
the country through ports of entry red than between ports
of entry against nodings.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, oh absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
Yeah, absolutely, especially the narcotics that are very expensive. Even
when I was an agent in the mid nineties, I
used to say, why do we only get marijuana and
and the agents would say, well, because cocaine's too expensive
to put on somebody's back and hike it through the mountains, Yeah,
across the river or in the desert. So it's just
easier to buy off a CBP agent or a Border
(12:46):
patrol agent and just get waved on through.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, they're not like dumb otherwise, Like these these are
huge money businesses. You're not throwing a half a million
dollars of cocaine on some guy's back, yeah, right.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
And risking it floating away.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, this valuable merchandise. Like there are no like, no
more cavalier with it than like target is you know, like.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah, the obviously this is part of a sort of
larger I don't know. Abbott does a lot of posturing
on the border, right, and that posture has real consequences
(13:31):
for migrants, and it has real consequences for people living
on both sides of the border as well, right, especially
I think people our previous coverage that will be very
well aware of that. Perhaps we could sort of characterize
this within the context of Operation Loan Star, within the
other Like you've said, right, the other deployments. It's not
(13:51):
just even Texas National Guard who are now deployed to
the border. So could you give us like an overview
of all the ridiculous lapping that's been done.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Well, there are twelve or thirteen states to date that
have sent prison guards, their national Guard, fishing game or
wildlife officers, and state police to the border. And this
is related to two different campaigns basically by the Border
(14:33):
Patrol Union. One is Biden Border Crisis with that hashtag,
which they launched in March of twenty twenty one, and
the other is every state is a Border State, which
was a battle cry for MAGA politicians during the midterms.
(14:54):
And so what we see now are these red states
with you know, governors who want to capitalize on looking
tough on immigration sending reinforcements to the border. DeSantis obviously
was the first to do that because he's been very
(15:15):
vocal about envyat Abbot and how Abbot had kind of
a leg up on him in any campaign because.
Speaker 6 (15:23):
Abbot got the border and Abbot got to, as you said,
posture there and be you know, the new sheriff in
town and you know, stepping in where.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Sleepy Joe is, you know, not performing. But what we
see in reality is Brandon Judd, who's the president of
the National Border Patrol Council, was stuck to Trump. You know,
they were best buddies and and you know, basically campaigning together.
(15:59):
And then Brandon jen kind of fell away from Trump
when he lost reelection and has become Greg Abbott's best
buddy and press junket sidekick and helped stage the launch
of Operation Lone Star, which you know, was like a
(16:20):
Fourth of July type parade with the tanks and the
helicopters and the planes and the boats and the you know,
the ATV agents and the horses, the whole nine yards.
And people think, I think most people in the United
States believe that Abbot is this renegade doing this all
(16:42):
on his own. And what we see is the reality
is it is a joint operation between the state government
and the federal government, but the Feds won't admit to
it because of the optics. It's bad enough that Biden
(17:03):
continued border wall construction, which most of his supporters opposed.
Now he is working hand in glove with Abbott. And
when I say our experience, what we see daily and
what I have documented is US Border Patrol working with
(17:27):
Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and Operation Loan Star
Texas National guardsmen literally riding in the same vehicles together,
responding to scenes, patrolling together. And at the Butterfly Center,
we had National Guard Texas National Guard parked on the
(17:50):
levee at our property, blocking our access back and forth.
And I went and said, hey, guys, you know this
is our property and we have to have access to
it during regular business hours for you know, my staff
who are working here and our members and visitors who
(18:12):
come to explore and enjoy. So I need you all
to move. I need you to move your humbyes so
we can get back and forth. And I recorded this
interaction as I do all and they said, ma'am, we
don't take our orders from you. We take our orders
from Border Patrol. And that was a revelation to me
when this happened a couple of years ago. So I
(18:34):
actually got on the phone with the patrol agent in charge,
the highest ranking Border Patrol agent at the McCallen station,
and I said, his name is Tony Crane. I said, Tony,
you need to come out here and tell these guys
to move. They're saying they'll only do it for you,
and they only take orders from you. And Tony drove
out there to the Butterfly Center, to the levee and
(18:58):
instructed the National Guard to move their vehicle and they did.
And this is something we've seen over and over. And
I now have in email commander or Regional director rather
of Texas DPS, Victor Escalon, who the rest of the
nation may know from the Uvaldi tragedy. I have email
(19:22):
from him where he is invoking the federal statute that
DPS claims gives them the authority to ignore our Fourth
Amendment rights and enter private property without warrant as long
as they're working with Warner Patrol, and they are claiming
(19:42):
that they are doing so at the request of the
United States Attorney General according to the federal.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Statute am importantly the federal government in any of its
aspects in saying no, this isn't true, or like they're
working get like you say, hand in hand with these
and like it's not even just a joint federal and
state operation. Like I know, I think it was South
Dakota's deployment. Was it that was funded by a wealthy individual?
(20:13):
Like the state didn't pay for it. I can't remember
which Dakota it was, but yeah, it was funded by
a wealthy donor who paid for it.
Speaker 5 (20:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
So whichever state CHRISTI Noem is in charge of, Yes,
and I believe that also happened in Kentucky or Tennessee.
Same thing. It was a wealthy donor who funded their
state National Guard deployment.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah. And then perhaps Jen, you could explain to people
why it is so different if they believe they have
these within one hundred miles the border, and then again
within twenty five miles of the border, so many of
your fundamental rights don't apply. Could you explain how that works?
And then how then if the National Guard see themselves
(20:58):
is also having the ability to sort of wave the
with amendment, what that would mean for the privacy of
people living along the border.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
In the United States Border Patrol Academy, So I went
through the academy I started in June of nineteen ninety five,
so I can at least testify to that. They basically,
you know, I had a four year in law, so
I knew a little basics about it, and then going
to the academy, it was really kind of sad because
(21:26):
they don't really teach you much of anything. They're just like,
you know, your their rights are limited. We're allowed within
twenty five miles of the border by the law to
go on anybody's private property and even search their buildings,
as long as it's not a domicile, and that can
sometimes be in question whether it's being used as a
(21:47):
domicile or we consider it as a domicile, And then
within one hundred miles of any land or sea border,
which encompasses two thirds of the United States population, we
can basically stop you and ask you to prove that
you're a United States citizen. And so then they increase
(22:09):
that with checkpoints that are a little ways away from
the border, where they under the guise of asking for
your citizenship. They then get to police American citizens or
legal residents. And as the years have progressed, Border patrol
(22:30):
keeps trying to push those authorities.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
In the beginning, you know.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
We weren't allowed to work with local PD, the local sheriffs.
There was a very clear separation, a very clear line
between Border Patrol and local cops, or at least legally
on written paper, there were supposed to be. And after
nine to eleven, what we end up seeing is the
Border Patrol decides to get very heavily invested into surveillance.
(22:56):
And it's not a coincidence. Former Chief Rodney Scott was
in charge of that during that time, and his basic
statement was, you know, if a car is bombed in Iraq,
the Border Patrol needs to know about it. So they
considered anything in the world to be important to the
Border Patrol, and they wanted the Border Patrol to be
the go to agency and as far as surveillance. So
(23:18):
that's why you see them being used in Black Lives
Matter protests and things like this, and we saw them
a lot in the Trump administration where they were supposedly
guarding federal buildings and then went and attacked them. So
what you see is the Border Patrol trying to quietly
eke into what is typically considered peace officer authority. So
(23:41):
they're trying to get peace officer authority in Texas through
the state legislature, and they just keep trying to expand
their authority more and more. What I see in Texas specifically,
is when you look at the history of immigration when
the United States, when we first you know, when Texas
first came a state, and all this other stuff. Originally
(24:02):
the states did their own immigration patrolling, and so if
you went and you just decided you're going to somehow
you landed on the coast in Georgia, then you would
have to go to a Georgian official and pay whatever
it is that they required of you and stuff. And
so what I see more and more is like Texas
(24:22):
is taken back that authority and saying we're the ones
that are going to say this, and so then they
can make money off of the deterrence policies and all
of this other stuff. So it's just a constant expansion
of the rights of the cops, while at the same
time constantly reducing the rights to the people who live
(24:45):
here and even the people that cross here. A lot
of people think, they'll say, you know that migrants don't
have any constitutional rights.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Well that's not true.
Speaker 5 (24:52):
They have constitutional rights because it says people in the
US Constitution.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
It doesn't say citizens.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
So in certain areas it will say citizens, and then
that is exclusive to United States citizens, but they're you know,
the basic rights are afforded to even migrants. But because
the migrants don't have much of a voice, the border
patrol gets away with with everything. Secret teams, cover up teams,
(25:21):
and all this other stuff. Border patrol agents will just
flat out tell you constitution doesn't exist down here, and
they never get in trouble for it.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
So yeah, one of one of the things Jen just
touched on is Texas DPS getting in on this immigration business.
Is when Governor Abbott declared that Operation Loan Star would
be targeting Hispanic males and in some places they talk
(25:53):
about of fighting age. So they're already depicting all of
these individuals as like olders in some invasion in a
gang war, and you know that they're again hostile combatants
to the United States. But they were going to charge
them all with criminal trespass. So we hear a lot
(26:17):
about how awful the cartel is and how much money
they take from migrants and then hold them for ransom,
and how expensive it is to get across. Well, once
they get across the state of Texas becomes the cartel.
They arrest them, charge them with criminal trespass, put them
(26:37):
in the county jail. It's a five thousand dollars fine.
Then when they're released from state custody, they're immediately handed
over to federal detention, and that is generally the for
profit GEO group or cor civic. And there my understanding
(26:58):
is fines for attention can be ten thousand to twelve
thousand dollars for your federal detention. And so here we
have it used to be just the for a profit
federal detention facilities cashing in on our criminal immigration policies,
(27:25):
and Governor Rabbit's like, hey, why aren't we getting a
piece of the pie? So that is what Operation Loan
Star is really about. It's not about public safety. It's
not that all this fentanyl is coming across the Rio
Grande River being smuggled by migrants. It's about chi ching
(27:46):
chi ching, Chi ching chi ching, putting all of them
in to the county jail at five thousand dollars ahead.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah, yeah, and it's all the while, right, like he's that,
I know. So the Texas National Guard people aren't getting
the benefits they would normally get if they'd been mobilized
or deployed because it's a state deployment, not a federal deployment.
And like as much as Abbott and DeSantis try and paint,
(28:14):
the border is a dangerous place full of like I know,
like drug warlords and cartel violence. And overwhelmingly the people
in that in Lone Star who have died have died
because they got drunk and drove because they had an
accident with a personally owned firearm. Because Texas law doesn't
allow them to stop the National Guard bringing their own weapons.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
They're they're not getting into gunfights with zacarios, right, Like,
it's not it's not any any anything like that. It's
the standard problem of taking a bunch of men away
from the place they normally live and making them do
mine numbing duty.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Yeah, yeah, they're they're doing mine numbing duty in you know,
exasperating heat. It's boring as hell. We see them asleep
in vehicles, watching Netflix, doing other things. When National Guard
totaled their Enterprise rental truck on the gate at the
(29:15):
National Butterfly Center, what we found were bud light cans
on the ground, which we can only assume bounced out
of the truck bed when that truck made impact. And
was destroyed. The local police will not release any public
(29:37):
information related to calls and reports that they have to
take of drunken disorderly conduct, noise complaints, property damage, sexual assault,
all of these things happening at the hotels where National
Guard is staying. But we know from visitors and from
(30:03):
property managers and others that this is happening regularly because yeah,
they don't so good leadership and it's it's frankly, it's
like really young kids that are down there.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
And the other thing.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
That we need to say too is that the National
Guard that's being posted there, the young National Guard kids
are seeing increase rates of suicide. And that's that's something
that's particular to Border Patrol agents because when you're an
oppressor and you do that cut of work, then you're
going to end up your The suicide rates go through
(30:38):
the roofs as they are with the Border Patrol, and
now you're seeing that with the National Guard. But Marianna's right,
there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff that they're
suppressing about what these National Guard kids are getting into
because they're bored down there. So they're sitting down there
in Texas drinking and opening it up and getting in trouble.
But it's all kind of hush hush quiet about that.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
Yeah, not only are they bored, but these are, like
you said, eighteen nineteen, twenty twenty one year olds getting
paid six thousand dollars a month, like they have never
had this kind of cash before, and what are they
going to do with it? They're going to go buy
guns at our local pawn shop.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
They pay the National Guard that will, that's.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
What they're being paid. And initially their taxes were not
being withheld or anything. So employment, yeah, that was a
whole nother issue. And then for a while they were
trying to unionize because they were not getting the benefits
of a regular deployment. And the ones who were working
(31:45):
in law enforcement already as police officers, firefighters, paramedics and such,
they also, while they're on deployment, do not accrue their
hours toward their pensions. They're taking another hit for that.
And so these were all things that I guess the
(32:05):
state didn't really think through when they called all these
people up and forced them to come sit on the
border and do mind numbing work.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
For the most part, No, it's just a it's a
terrible idea like comprehensive. It's one of those things if
you if you spent any time studying the surge in
Iraq and kind of the later part of the Bush
Ears and some of the shit that happened when they
just grabbed a bunch of National Guard guys and through
the like, it's a lot of the same shit. It's
people who were like finding ways to get alcohol and drugs,
(32:37):
who were crashing cars, who were because like, yeah, you were.
It's just this is this is an inevitable consequence, which
is why you shouldn't do something like this unless there's
like a dire reason to need to bring the National
Guard into a situation like a natural disaster.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
I would I would say that they all need house mothers.
I mean, like fraternities have and stuff, because every time
I run into one of these young men and they
start to like look at me or open their mouth
a certain way, I just want to grab them by
the ear and be like, oh, you know, junior, I'm
(33:17):
gonna spank you.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
You know.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
My first snapper.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah you are nineteen. You should not be in this
position right now.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, get out of here.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
Yeah, go ahead, We'll take your gun. From you too.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, but we spoke to a few of them at
a grub At and I when we were down there,
and one of them was just saying he's trying to
get some money for college, and yeah, I don't think
they're recring those benefits because if they're under state order
to say it, they didn't get it. So Greg Abbat's
kind of screwing everyone apart from himself and his little friends.
I guess maybe to finish up, I know that one.
(34:11):
I think the only case like I can come across
of this happening of someone dying or trying to rescue
migrants was a National Guard soldier who tried to rescue
some people from the river and drowned from what I understand,
and like, obviously this drowning barrier is going to if
(34:31):
Border patroller even invested in investing in getting people from
the river, which they might not be if they're from
the from the Mexican side, if they're still on the
Mexican side of the border, right in theory, would put
those people in those like National Guard and Border patrol
agents in danger to So what have Border Patrol to
say about the floating barrier so far?
Speaker 5 (34:54):
They haven't said anything about it so far, and there
have been a few Border Patrol agents who've lost their
lives jumping into the room as well. There have been
other migrants who have lost their lives trying to save
their children and so forth. Migrants die every day in
that river, and the Border Patrol is just going to
stay quiet about it because they like it's it's their management.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
He's going along with it.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
And if they didn't like and if the bid administration
didn't like it, then they would come out and say so,
or they would come out and have Chief Gloria Chabez
come out and say no, we're not going to have this.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
This is going to kill people.
Speaker 5 (35:28):
This is not right, you know on our first blah
blah blah, which we all know it's bullshit.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
But the truth is is they really don't care. They
just don't care.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
And as they say in the Border Patrol, and we
learn and you all learned. I knew it, but you
all learn from the ten to fifteen group on Facebook
they call them floaters and take pictures of them and
make fun of it. So the Border Patrol could care less.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
It's just one less migrant. They got a process.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Well, and you know, as Jim said, if US Border
Patrol was opposed to this new border barrier, they would
say something, well, I think it's even worse than that.
In twenty eighteen, Trump got border wall funding, and as
you mentioned, he had his you know, Commando Climb, all
(36:14):
these border wall prototypes in the desert and all of that.
In twenty nineteen he got his second trunch of border
wall funding, but twenty twenty and twenty twenty one were
continuing resolutions, so he was getting border wall funding after that,
but it was always for existing approved designs, and those
(36:40):
are the concrete with the steel ballards. So for even
though Trump floated the idea of this Wui border barrier,
this floating border wall, to get congressional approval or US
Army Corps of Engineer approval for such a thing would
(37:00):
have been an issue. Also there's the issue of the
International Boundary and Water Commission Treaty, which is a bi
national treaty with Mexico that governs the Rio Grande River,
the water that flows in it, the boundaries, who gets
to take how much water from it, things that are
built and might affect the flow of the river. As
(37:24):
Jen mentioned, the International Boundary is the middle of the river,
no matter where the river is flowing now, because over
millions of years it has shifted. The channel has shifted many,
many times and greatly. So we know the FEDS probably
border patrol with the Trump administration. So DHS wanted this
(37:48):
floating border wall. The easiest way for them to get
it is to have Governor Abbott do it. In two
thousand and five, the Real Id Act, in that act
of legislation, Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the
(38:09):
authority to waive every law, local, state, federal for border barrier.
So it doesn't say border wall, it's as border barrier.
So presumably this buoy border barrier would also be covered,
so the FEDS don't have to worry about something like
the National Environmental Policy Act or the Endangered Species Act
(38:33):
or the Rivers and Harbors Act in deploying this. But
they do not have authority to waive treaties or the Constitution.
So since at least two thousand and five, the federal
government has been trying to devise ways to effectively waive
(38:57):
the IBWC Treaty. One of the ways in which they
have done that is with the we build the wall
campaign which built you know, they built border barrier on
the international boundary line in Sunland Park, New Mexico, and
in Mission, Texas, and the US government settled with them,
(39:20):
allowing this illegal structure to stand in violation of the
treaty in spite of Mexico's objections, thereby setting a legal precedent,
effectively waiving the treaty. But now Abbott can do this,
and who's going to sue him? The IBWC isn't going
(39:45):
to do a damn thing because they have no authority
to sue on their own. They have to go to
the federal government and ask the Department of Justice to
sue on their behalf. And it's the Department of Justice
that has already settled with Fisher Industries for the we
(40:06):
build the wall fraud fence in violation of the treaty.
The other issue is Texas doesn't have to abide by
NEPA or any equivalent law. And we know that the
FEDS have in the past devised really nasty reach arounds
for the law where if they get busted doing something
(40:29):
illegal like having Customs and Border Protection spray, imas appear
a broad spectrum herbicide that is a known carcinogen all
over people, animals, and plants on the border, they get
sued and made to stop that, they'll simply pass the
money through to the state of Texas and ask them
(40:50):
to continue it. And I think this floating buoy border
barrier is exactly that kind of thing. The Biden administration
can say, we're not doing it, and they don't have
to get approval for this design, and they'll just find
a way to either pass the money through to Texas
(41:12):
or allow Texas to continue to basically fundraise for it
by prosecuting immigrants for criminal trespass and finding them to
get out of county jail.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, well, that is doc.
Speaker 5 (41:29):
I think it's interesting to point out though that when
Governor do See of Arizona put up his train car thing, yeah, Biden,
the Biden administration did get involved with that.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
They and they were upset about that.
Speaker 5 (41:42):
So far, we haven't seen anything about this, and so
we'll see if they deploy it and the Biden administration
stays quiet about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
I mean, we're closing in on like November twenty twenty four,
and I think Biden really is very sensitive about being
seen as quote unquote weak on the border, and like
given the absolute disaster it was the end of Title
forty two and the way they handled that, and yeah,
(42:11):
they didn't really say anything when border patrol with clearly
holding people in conditions that are in violation of their
own detention standards. Like I don't have high hopes for
the Biden administration.
Speaker 5 (42:23):
It's yeah, it's interesting because you would think, like the
whole thing from the Union and everybody that is pro
border patrol an anti immigrant was like, if you in
Title forty two, then then it's just going to overwhelm
the border patrol and more people will come. And we
kept saying for a year like no, that's not going
to happen. It's going to be drastically cut. And so
it's drastically cut. And you would think the Bide administration would.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Be like look what I did. Yeah, yeah, but they're not.
Speaker 5 (42:50):
I mean like like they have no clue how to
talk about the border and what to do on the border.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
It's sad.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
Well, it's this double edged sword of get in line,
do it the legal way. So the people who say
we're not anti immigrant, we just want them to do
it the legal way and get in line. So title
forty two ends we've got the CBP one app which
gives them an appointment so they can stand in line
to cross at a legal point of port of entry
(43:18):
and do it legally. And now they've got to find
a way to thwart that and to mess it up.
And Biden, as you said, is not saying, look at
what we did. We've got everybody standing in line doing
it the legal way.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah. I think they don't want to look at CBP
one too, given what a disaster it's been and how
biased it's been and how bad it continues to be.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
For sure, they've failed to offer any other options. And yeah,
I don't really have any hope that things will not
just get worse. There seems to be a bipods and
consensus that it's okay to kill lots of people trying
to come to our country for help, because it's bad
if folks need mean to you.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Jen has been very vocal and produced lots and lots
of research and documentation on how our deterrence policies are
designed to kill and they're not a whole lot of
people using the G word. But Jen has been courageous
enough to do it. I was recently told by my
(44:26):
employer that I could not use it, and I think
it's a horror but Jen can speak to it.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
We have to do a whole other episode.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, I think we should be. We're definitely going to
keep covering this because it's one of the things that
just disappears from a lot of national media in between
election cycles or in between.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Well and unfortunately it's one of the things where kind
of the numbers are heading in the wrong direction nationwide
because like the border, Like the right is winning on
border stuff right now, the right is winning on immigration. Like,
there's some pretty dark polling likes as much as you know,
some of the last couple of elections have been positive
(45:15):
in terms of the pitiful performance of like kind of
maga Republicans. Like if you if you look at kind
of how Americans are polling on border issues and immigration issues,
it's it's pretty bleak at the moment. And I don't really,
I don't think anyone has a great clear clue as
to like how to reverse that at the moment, which
isn't to say that it can't be reversed, it's just, uh,
(45:37):
it's it's it's difficult.
Speaker 5 (45:40):
Well, it's difficult, especially when the Democrats are always ceding
the argument to the Republicans like they're afraid to make
the argument that a robust, in humane asylum system that
can inspect the people requesting asylum is a national security
issue and you need one. You can't just not have
a NASH. You can't have an asylum not have an
(46:00):
asylum system. You have to have It's an essential part
to the national security infrastructure. So people that argue that
we shouldn't have an asylum system because it's a threat
to national security are completely ignorant about what they're talking about,
and so they have to start framing it as as
a national security issue, you know, one where we can
(46:21):
have people come and be inspected and so forth, and
then the people who are the nefarious people, Yeah, they're
going to go in between the ports of entry. Fine,
arrest those people, but let's have a humane system otherwise.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
It's also fundamental to the success of our economy, and
with you know, the US birth rate is declining and
without a robust, safe, timely immigration system, ideally one that
allows people to go back and forth. Because what I
(46:55):
hear from people here is I miss my country. I
want to return to my I want to come here
to see my family, to work for a season or
for a spell, to send money home, but then I
want to be able to return, and our current system
it's too deadly to allow them to make it through
(47:17):
and then go back and attempt to do that a
second time. Another issue related to the narrative and read
winning on immigration is we found at the Butterfly Center
that when Biden continued building border wall, and we said,
(47:40):
oh my gosh, you know this is what's happening, and
we posted photos and video and everything of it, people
who had supported US, Democrats, liberals with a capital L,
who had supported US said, you're lying, or that's just
they're continuing trumps they had to. And then when we
(48:06):
contradicted every one of those arguments with facts, then they said, oh, well,
if Biden's doing it, then there must be a good reason.
And you know, the US can't accept everybody. And you know,
you get this walking back of all of the the
(48:29):
things that they were saying when Trump was president, about
being humane, about needing an effective system, about creative solutions
and all of this, and now it's suddenly, well, you know,
we can't let everybody in and and so I have
(48:51):
honestly found and I'm going to take a lot of
hit flat for this, but there's basically no difference between
a moderate Republican and a liberal capital l.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Yeah, it cly seems that way. Certainly, Uh, Trump had
months of tible forty two, Biden had years of it.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Like it's yeah, certainly, I mean it's it's I think
pretty much impossible to argue with that, at least on
the on a broad scale, like if you're just kind
of like looking at at national trends. Uh, there's there's
ample support for that argument.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yeah, Biden, I mean Obama deported more people than anyone absolutely, Yeah,
massive number.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Yeah, well cool, yeah yeah.
Speaker 6 (49:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Where can people find out more terrible stuff about the border?
Is there in podcast they can listen to.
Speaker 5 (49:44):
We do have a podcast, Border Patrol Watch. Marianna and
I have kind of started it just to talk about
a lot of these issues that we feel are being
left out. And it's on YouTube. We also have a
TikTok account in Twitter for the moment.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
We'll see how that goes.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
And Facebook and Instagram, and there is Border patrol watch
dot com. Yeah, and that list there's a page on
there for all the agents arrested for rape and pedophilia.
There's a corruption page. There's a page on how they
try and indoctrinate the youth down here on the borderlands
and so forth. So yeah, I'm all about that jazz.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Yeah, that's hashtag on a first And so where could
people it's all borderpar watch. How about you two? Do
you guys have individual accounts? Where can they find you?
Speaker 4 (50:38):
Jen is doing most of this, and I believe it's
under the Border Patrol Watch banner. Yeah, because you know,
both of us found ourselves targeted or throttled or being
you know, really suppressed by Twitter and Facebook.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
And lost my forty thousand followers. Yeah, oh wow.
Speaker 5 (51:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
But bottom chart, which is great. You had a great
thread on agents who have facing charges for sexual assault,
and that's a very small minority of agents who have
done sexual assaults certainly, but yeah, there's some really good
information for people on there.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Yeah, those are just the ones who are being prosecuted
or have been convicted. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, most of them sadly have not, and even the
ones who have, it took too long and it was
far too convoluted. We can yeah, we can talk again
on that happy topic another day, But thank you so
much for giving us some of your afternoon guys. We
really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (51:39):
Thank thank you guys for all you do and forgetting
the word out. It could Happen here as a production
of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 5 (51:49):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen Here did
in monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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