Ep. 3: The Devil Within: How the Cartels are Operating in the United States

The Mexican drug cartels have amassed enough money and power to overwhelm the Mexican government and present a serious security threat to the United States. These sophisticated organizations have a simple goal: to keep the drugs and people flowing north while money and weapons continue to flow south. But now the cartels are so brazen that they illegally grow marijuana right here in the U.S. by stealing land and water and exploiting labor from people in the country illegally. The cartels are using our open border and their intricate networks inside our country to smuggle people and poison to every community - including yours. Interviewing key sources on both sides of the border, investigative reporter Sara Carter (Fox News Contributor, The Sara Carter Show) examines how such a simple strategy can be so hard to stop and the painful consequences that follow.

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Rape, the women being raped,the little girls being raped. Of these
ladies will die in a very violentway. Murder. Fifteen year old Olivia
agree. It's about Austin Babcock.It's about all of these beautiful young people
who should be here. Human anddrug trafficking. The first time she used

(00:31):
heroin, she smoked it, shesaid it was like seeing the face of
God. She just passed out withthe needle right there, just open air,
right in her neck. The cartelsare bringing these horrible tragedies to us
every day. More than one hundredthousand Americans died in fiscal year twenty twenty

(00:52):
one from overdoses and drug poisonings.The drugs kill more people between the ages
of eighteen and four than anything else. This includes suicides and traffic accidents,
and fentanyl is the deadliest poison involvedin those murders. The cartels are responsible
for mixing, packaging, then deliveringfentanyl and other deadly drugs straight to the

(01:19):
American people. We are living ina world of disinformation, one where major

(01:41):
news stories are suppressed and the narrativesurrounding mainstream media outlets are curated by big
government, big media, and bigtech. Welcome to Dark Wars the Border.
I'm Sarah Carter. I've spent themajority of my career covering immigration and
border issues from news, papers,television, and radio. I've met with

(02:02):
and know a lot of the peoplethese issues impact the most. In this
episode, we will talk about howthe Mexican cartels are producing drugs, setting
up distribution centers, and encouraging theflow of migrants in states far from the
border. Kimball rockydices to fully comprehendtoday's problems that are coming from the border,

(02:35):
you first need to understand the landitself and the history of the area.
Before it was the US Mexico border, the region was the true Wild
West, a real no man's land, with Native American tribes like the Comanche,
Apache, and Tonkins, the Mexicans, Texans, the Spaniards, and

(03:00):
eventually Americans all waging war over thearea. People who got caught in the
wrong place at the wrong time wereoften tortured and brutalized. Women were raped,
men, women and children were murdered. So they pulled the body out.
Yet he's communicating with them, Butit's on the island. But on

(03:21):
this site, they're going to goand get it. This land is filled
with blood. Oh my gosh.Parties are there to dance, to retreat.
They haven't love to get again.It was like all these groups,
we're trying to one up each otheron how brutal they could be to their

(03:45):
enemies in order to terrorize them intosubmission. I was wondering because it was
like there were so many vehicles.He's got a friend over there, he's
communicate The landscape, the wildlife areboth brutal and beautiful. Sitting on the
banks of the Rio Grande, theriver looks peaceful and almost still. They

(04:09):
want us to take it. Youguys are just under that surface. There's
a massive undercurrent. You can getsucked under. It can disorient you.
Many don't make it out of lies. Halfway between making to say is they're

(04:35):
still debating. Well with the waythe winds blowing is numblow right this way,
right here. This summer, theUnited Nations designated the Southwest border as
the most dangerous land crossing in theworld. Twelve hundred people died on their
way to the US in twenty twentyone. Seven hundred twenty eight of those

(04:59):
deaths occurred at the US Mexico crossing. Fifty one were children, and it's
easy to get it across the border. A retired d EA agent who wishes
to remain anonymous because of his continuingwork in the region, is going by
the name of Ralph. He saysthat cartels are running an increasingly sophisticated human

(05:19):
and drug smuggling operations. These guysare so well organized, working from the
DeConcini port of entry by the Noblesall the way to Red Mountain, by
the whole old reservation. That arearight there is controlled by the Sinaloa cartel,
I'll say, by the DeConcini airport. They would start by the port

(05:41):
of entry on the Mexican side andup to the main highway. They had
lookouts, they call it in Spanish, they called him Alcornez. And these
guys are there twenty four seven andreport everything everything that they see. Tragedy
is borderless. Much of the borderregion is a fight for life. Mexican

(06:02):
cartels were forged here and have beenable to survive and thrive in it for
decades. Chris Olivarus of the TexasDepartment of Public Safety has seen some of
the tragedy firsthand. These are violentindividuals. They have no regard for human
life. And we're talking about whenthey are publicizing their their acts of violence

(06:25):
by beheading people, dismembering people,setting people on fire, firing against you
know, military and law enforcement onthe Mexican side. These are these are
violent criminals. These are violent individuals. So just to put that in perspective,
think about the people that are comingacross into Mexico that have to deal
with these individuals, who are goingto allow them if they if they will

(06:47):
allow them to cross into the US. Because they got to pay to get
across. It's not for free.They're going to expect their profiting off this
situation right now, And that's anotherthat's another issue right there is in itself
that you know, we're allowing thisto take place, so we are enriching
these cartels even more. To fullyunderstand today's cartels, we need to take

(07:08):
a look at the history of howthey started. The US is at least
partially to blame, as prohibition inthe nineteen twenties led to the rise of
wild bands of Mexican gangs transporting liquorover the border. Small organizations grew when
bootlegging ended. Those gangs were lookingfor new and better things to sell.

(07:30):
In the nineteen fifties, American organizedcrime started working with the Mexican gangs to
import marijuana. This set this stagefor the rise of the narco traffickers from
South America to Mexico, one ofthe most infamous being Pablo Escobar, and
the rise of the Medine cartel.As new and more complex organizations grew,

(07:55):
the American government started to take notice. America's public enemy Number one in the
United States is drug abuse. PresidentRichard Nixon issued the first call for the
War on Drugs. In order tofight and defeat this enemy, it is
necessary to wage a new, allout offensive. I have asked the Congress

(08:16):
to provide the legislative authority and thefunds to fuel as kind of an offensive.
At the same time, US agentswere taking down the old crime organizations
like the Italian Mafia. The riseof newer and more vicious organizations started in
Mexico and Central America. Some ofthese organizations are now huge, multinational,

(08:39):
and harder for any one country topin down. In fact, the cartel
lifestyle is celebrated in music. Itpromises a better life and glamorized death.

(09:00):
It lies to young men and womenwho are desperate and alone and who want
an easy way out of poverty.But don't let the catchy music with false
promises fool you. Today's cartels aremore vicious than ever. Ralph are retired

(09:24):
the EA agent. The cartels aremore violent. They're basically, you know,
killing politicians, they're killing military Personnelitykill cops, they kill journalists,
they killed anybody in Mexico today.There's areas today that are unsafe as before
I could travel, Like, forinstance, when I went to Vera Cruz

(09:46):
with another agent by ourselves, wewere down there by ourselves. Would I
do that today? No? Heckno, you know, not to not
to go work with with the becausethese these these cartels have gotten more sophisticated
and more violent, and they reallydon't care about the consequences. We're not
talking about the old cartels. Theyget romanticized in TV shows like Narcos and

(10:11):
movies like Scarface. They're so powerfulthat in twenty twenty, when El Chapel's
son ovid O Ghosman was detained inMexico, President Obrador was forced to personally
order his release because the cartels wereoverrunning the Mexican military that area became a
war zone between the cartel cartel underthe Chapitos, where these guys started shooting

(10:37):
up everything, bringing out, bringingout the artillery, you know, fifty
caliber machine guns, and they startedthreatening that they were going to start going
after the military's family and killing them. They killed a couple of military personnel
and what happened basically released them,give them back to the cartels. So

(11:00):
you can tell how powerful, Imean, how powerful cartel is. This
new generation of cartels is taking onour government and taking over weaker nations in
Mexico's western provinces. The cartels ownthe streets. Mexican law enforcement doesn't even
try to control those areas anymore.This is a shadow government controlled by the

(11:26):
cartel and a war zone on ourborder that we largely ignore. And now
it's even worse because the cartels haveshifted. Victor Avola, a former ICE
special agent who survived an assassination attemptby the cartels, says they are calling
the shots in Mexico in the lastten years, have taken over. I
always say they are running the palelgovernment in Mexico. That's how much the

(11:50):
control of the cartels have come inin Mexico, which affects us tremendously because
they're involved in not just the forgetthe drug trade and the human smogan and
trafficking they want to talk about,but the politics, the media, the
avocado trade, the gas and oil, the line trade. They're involved in
a lot of hands and especially thepolitical world, where now the cartel gets

(12:15):
to call the shots rather than thepolitician. Not only are they having their
way with Mexico, the cartels areinfiltrating governments, law enforcement, emergency response
services, even hospitals from Colombia tothe United States. Think of the cartels
as Amazon. When you think ofAmazon, what do you think you think
of a large corporation, billion dollarcorporation, organization distribution. They're everywhere that

(12:39):
and organized. That's the cartels.They're highly sophisticated, well organized. They
are everywhere in our country, notjust in Mexico. And yes, they
are producing the drugs with the helpof China. The method fenomine and fedal
is with the precursors and chemicals thatChina provides, the cartels now have enough

(13:05):
money and firepower to not only getaway with what they want in Mexico,
but they're not content staying on ourdoorstep or hanging out near the border.
Like any sophisticated international business, theywant to expand. And when you've amassed
the amount of money and power theyhave, they go wherever they wherever they

(13:28):
wan want marijuana. It's legal innineteen states, including California, but the
cartels continue to grow marijuana illicitly herein the United States, undercutting the legal

(13:56):
grows. The Antelope Valley is abouta ninety minute draw northeast from Los Angeles.
It's an area that's known for beautifulwild flowers, canyons, and rolling
hills, and it's where cartels Armenian, Chinese, Russian, as well as
Mexican have set up hundreds of illegalmarijuana growing operations. The cartels are stealing

(14:22):
people's land and diverting their precious waterresources, probably over a thousand square miles
of Bianlo Valley and the surrounding areas. They are actually being victimized right now

(14:45):
with these oltle grows. I spentseveral days with Congressman Mike Garcia in his
district. We flew over these illegalgrows in a helicopter. The size of
them are almost impossible to describe.We also met with his constituents on their
land who are terrified by what's happeningin their own backyard. Recent law enforcement

(15:05):
crackdowns in the area are barely makinga dent in this problem. Heartbreaking to
see our beautiful Bucolic suburb of northernLa County just being pillaged the way it
is with these illegal marijuana grows.You know, this is a state where
growing marijuana is legal under the rightregulations, and these are massive transcontinental criminal

(15:33):
organizations that are that are not onlypaying it, but also subsidizing with illegal
immigrants an indentured servant the operations ofthese grows as well. How can the
cartels get away with this in aplace where recreational pot is legal. Garcia
says illegal grow operators are able toundercut legal business owners and turn an enormous

(15:56):
profit by skipping out on date andlocal licenses, not paying taxes or worrying
about labor costs. We've also found, you know, ten dead bodies of
these illegal immigrants who are indentured servantsworking there right. They have no one
to report to, They have noone to you know, express grievances to,
They have no top coverage and it'sa humanitarian crisis not only in the

(16:18):
southern border, but also two hundredmiles inland, and we're seeing that much
further north than where we are aswell. So this isn't just a border
issue anymore. This is affecting theentire country. This cash the growths that
we saw. I think we didthe math, and it's going to be
about ten to fifteen billion dollars ofrevenue being harvested out of our ground for

(16:41):
nothing, for no cost at all, basically, And it's not staying here
in the United States. It's goingoverseas, it's funding foreign operations, and
it's it's actually self perpetuating the illegalimmigration problem that we're seeing in many ways,
the bodies are piling up on topof that. Think about some of
the problems tend to fifteen billion dollarscould solve by securing our border, funding

(17:03):
substance abuse programs, law enforcement resources, funding schools, healthcare for veterans,
or keeping our current military members safeabroad. Instead, most of it is
leaving the American economy and flowing straightout of the country into the hands of
people who are trying to harm America. When you look at the grand scheme

(17:26):
of things, that's about two percentof our own nation's DOOD budget on an
annual based two percent coming out ofjust marijuana boroughs in one valley in one
state of the nation. So thatmagnitude of money leaving our shores, it's
not just that we're missing out onthe tax revenue, is that these funds

(17:47):
are going to bad places with badintentions. And tracking this stream of cash,
who it is going to, andhow it is being used once it
leaves the United States is not easy. According to Simone Ladin, a former
Assistant Secretary of Defense and expert ontracking illicit money, when you're talking about
huge sums of money that are beingtransferred into the Chinese banking system in you

(18:15):
on or in other foreign currency thatthe US government tracks US dollars, But
if it's you know, you're talkingabout other currencies that we don't have good
visibility on, it just kind ofdisappears into the Chinese banking system. We
don't know what happens to it fromthere. It's very difficult to track.

(18:37):
Powerful drug cartels like the Sinaloa carteland the Jalisco New Generation Cartel are expanding
their influence in Mexico and even divvyingup the United States for the sale and
distribution of drugs and trafficking people.The da IS explicit that these narco trafficking
organizations are becoming increasingly complex, engagingin business alliances with transnational gangs, US

(19:04):
based street gangs, prison gangs,and Asian money laundering organizations. They also
blend into our communities by laundering moneythrough seemingly legitimate businesses. Tennessee Senator Marsha
Blackburne says, Mexican cartels are evensetting up networks to make it even easier

(19:25):
to get their poisons into your neighborhood. So they are now setting up distribution
centers in the US, and Ihave launchmen officers that say, we can
tell you where the hub is.We can tell you what city it is
in, because we know that thatis where some of these drugs are coming

(19:47):
from. These distribution centers operate incities closed too and far away from the
southern border. They're all over theUnited States, in places like Denver,
Oklahoma City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and New York City.
The cartels diversify their business by deliveringwholesale quantities of fetnol, heroin, methamphetamine,

(20:12):
cocaine, and marijuana to these hubswhere they maintain drug distribution cells that
either report directly to cartel leaders orreport indirectly through intermediaries. This way,
if federal law enforcement in the UnitedStates decides to crack down on any one
drug, they can flood the streetswith other narcotics. Former Special Agent in

(20:37):
Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration DerekMaltz. If you look at some of
the sieges that have been made aroundAmerica, like for example, in January,
Dallas had like two thousand pounds ofrecord Breaker, they had three thousand
in La two thousand or three thousandin San Diego, two thousand pounds of
meth seas in Atlanta. So it'sfun to see, like these amazing men

(21:00):
massive sieges. That's because the cartelshave their commanding control leadership position in all
the hub cities around America, andthey have no problem getting to work.
Is coming in and so the Southwestborder is the start of this madness.
But it's the cartels and they haveto be dealt with. Retired d e
Age and Ralph, who is stillworking in Central America and spoke on condition

(21:23):
of anonymity agrees. He says thecartels are becoming so seamless with their drug
distribution operations that they control prices andparts of the US where they are fully
established, and sometimes start price warsin areas where turf overlaps. Here in
Colorado, avent appeal of its goingbetween a dollar dollar fifty. Arizona is

(21:48):
going for eighty cents. So Ithought that was cheap. But he told
me a city in the Midwest rightnow, it's going for fifty cents.
So I said, how is that? He said, because the amount of
fentanyl they have in them cities inthe Midwest right now, there's so much.
Price is cheap. So it justyou know, that's how much fentanyl

(22:14):
is right now. Now. Whathe did good news about it is that
he did tell me that the purityof fentanyl has dropped some. But that's
good. But what happens is someof these people might need two or three
or four pills of fentanyl. That'swhere the old comes in because they need
more because if the purity drops,they need more pills to kick their habit.

(22:40):
Congressman darryl Issa tells us that tounderstand the vastness of America's drug epidemic
and the extent that our enemies usein our cootics against us as a tool
of war. All you need todo is visit a government drug warehouse.
Probably the best way to look atit is to go to our fentanyl and

(23:00):
meth holding facility. In that facility, we have pretty much one year of
confiscation. For each time they confiscate, they either take all of it or
up to two kilos, and theyput it in a container and they stick
it on a shelf, and thewarehouse looks a little bit like Raiders of
Lost Art, where it just goesback forever and ever. It's one hundred

(23:23):
and forty seven thousand pounds of meth, methphetams, and fetenol, and then
on the fentanyl is doubling about everysix months. There's no such thing as
a routine border inspection anymore. Customsand Border Protection as well as other law

(23:51):
enforcement officers, are constantly aware thattraffickers, some as young as teenagers,
are moving the deadly fetenol into thecountry. And even a small amount exposed
to your skin is enough to killyou. So why isn't our government doing

(24:19):
more to stop it? At onepoint during his presidency, President Trump even
considered labeling some of the Mexican cartelsas terrorist organizations. That distinction would give
prosecutors stronger weapons to go after theMexican cartels and their associates and allow the

(24:40):
government to freeze assets in force sanctionsand travel bands. So why didn't this
happen? It starts with a disagreementwith our most essential ally in this fight,
Mexico President Andres Obrador. We arevery grateful to President Trump to any

(25:07):
foreign government which wants to help,but in these cases we have to act
independently and according to our constitution andin line with our tradition of independence and
sovereignty. If President Obrador was reallyworried about Mexican sovereignty, he would actually

(25:32):
do something to end the cartel's bloodyinternational reign of terror. People are dying
on both sides of the border.Cartel murders are on the rise again in
his own country, places like Caliscoand Warez. But the United States is
not taking this crisis as seriously asit should either. Like I mentioned before,

(25:57):
more than a one hundred thousand Americansdied from overdoses and drug poisonings in
fiscal year twenty twenty one. Theneed to do something is urgent. Virginia
Krieger's daughter Tiffany, is one ofthose victims. When you say overdose,

(26:17):
what you're telling me as a motheris that my daughter went out fentinl got
fentinyl in act daily, took toomuch, and that is now what happened
to her. She was poisoned.And the majority of these victims, whether
they have substance use disorder or not, are not aware that fentinel isn't what
they are about to consume. Andthey're all being poisoned and deceived. And
we need to change the national discussion. Something must be done about this.

(26:44):
But what is the solution? Drugsand the uncontrolled flow of humanity coming through
the border and lack of leadership fromthe federal government are frustrating Governors like Greg
Abbott of Texas and Rawn de Santisa floor into taking action. Not a
sanctuary state, and it's better tobe able to go to a sanctuary jurisdiction.

(27:06):
And yes, we will help facilitatethat transport for you to be able
to go to greener pasture. Somesay the solutions to the challenges will be
found when the impacts are felt everywhere. Biden would fly people in the middle
of the night, dump them allacross this country. There was no warning
on any of this, And allthose people in DC and New York were
beating their chess when Trump was president, saying they were so proud to be

(27:30):
sanctuary jurisdiction. DeSantis is forcing thesanctuary cities to live up to their word.
Isn't even a small fraction of whatthose border towns deal with every day
is brought to their front door,they all of a sudden go preserve.
You know, their virtue signaling isa fraud. His statement becomes all the

(27:51):
more real when government officials like WhiteHouse Press Secretary Original Pierre blatantly lie to
us about the seriousness of the issue. We see record seizures fentanyl at the
border, so we're actually catching fentanylbefore it enters the country. So that's
how we see that. Look asfar as the border, we're taking unprecedented

(28:17):
action. We had to fix somethingthat was broken, especially by the last
administration. We've secured record levels.This is what we have been able to
do. A funding for the Departmentof Homeland Security. Remember, many Republicans
voted against that, many of themwho would like to invite me to the
border. The difference is stark.President Trump did everything he could to stop

(28:41):
the flow of illegal migration into theUnited States, and all they had to
do was leave it alone. Andit was fixing itself. It was getting
better. It was tough to getin. Human traffickers couldn't get in,
and drugs were having a hard timegetting in. Sarah, we had the
best numbers on drugs in years,decades, and then these guys come in
and they say, let's open itup. Now, drugs are ten times

(29:02):
greater than they were two years ago. Think of it and the people coming
through. I believe it's fifteen millionpeople in one year. I believe it's
fifty it's not three or four.I believe it's fifteen million people. That's
the size of New York State.Meanwhile, President Biden is undoing his predecessor's
policies with both his actions and words, and those words are powerful. First

(29:25):
thing I'm going to do, andI've already written, sent to the United
States Congress, a Path to CitizenJIP for eleven million undocumented folks. There
will not be another foot of wallconstructed on my administration. We're going to
stop detaining people and definitely invest insteadon case managing programs to help ensure migrants

(29:47):
get to support they need while they'renavigating the asylum process. Those reversals of
Trump's policies have created chaos at thenearly two thousand miles southwest border. According
to our Department of Homeland Security,the cartel's human trafficking profits have skyrocketed from
five hundred million in twenty eighteen tomore than thirteen billion this year. Arizona

(30:15):
Attorney General Mark Bernovich says since PresidentBiden took office, drug overdose deaths in
his state and across the United Statesare climbing beyond comprehension. The number of
people crossing the border is staggering,and Bernovich believes that the Biden administration is

(30:36):
putting political priorities over the lives ofthe Americans he is sworn to protect.
The Biden administration is encouraging all thesepeople to a legally anti country, and
now they want to give DHS insteadof a federal immigration judge, they want
to give DHS the authority to unilaterallygrant asylum. And so this, I
think is not only going to encouragemore legal immigration, but it's essentially going

(30:57):
to grant amnesty for people that arebreaking law in that adventure the country legally.
And there's also a turf war withinour government agencies that leaves us all
compromised. Former Special Agent in Chargeof the Drug Enforcement Administration Derrick Maltz.
Their leadership is gone. They haveno old leaders at the top. It's

(31:19):
something we've never seen, Sarah thisfit. There's duplication of everage, there's
redundancies of capabilities, just wasted money. There's so much we could talk about
in this alone. There's a federallaw enforcement exodus. It's not just state
locals. All my friends, they'releaving left right because they can't take it
anymore. While the US government remainsin disarray in its response to tackling our

(31:47):
border issues. The cartels are extremelyorganized, and how they infiltrate our country
and spread their poison to every everycommune community. How highway system is amazing

(32:10):
for moving goods, services, andpeople from one part of the country to
the other one. US highways connectmajor cities on both coasts and through the
interior of America. I ninety five, for example, according to the Corridor
Coalition, is the longest north southinterstate. It passes through fifteen states and

(32:30):
serves one hundred and ten million people. That represents forty percent of the country's
gross domestic product. But because thesehighways make it so easy for us to
get around and move our products fromplace to place, access to them has
become extremely valuable to the cartels.In fact, they fight wars over them,

(32:52):
both in the United States and onthe Southwest border. Increasingly it is
more dangerous in our city as wellas for Americans looking to travel over the
border. Americans in Mexico are beingwarned to stay off the streets tonight following
a week long wave of violence fueledby warring drug cartels. Thousands of Mexican

(33:13):
troops are now patrolling very popular destinationslike Tijuana and Ensnata. Since two thousand
and six, more than three hundredand forty thousand cartel related murders have been
recorded in Mexico twenty eight thousand justlast year. James Carafano, who was
the leading national security and foreign policyexpert with the Heritage Foundation, says human

(33:37):
trafficking over our southern border is asbad as it's ever been because the United
States really isn't controlling our side ofthe border. Cartels are running a human
trafficking network on the other side ofthe border, and our open bordering policies
are literally advertising for them. It'sthe hey, this is your guarantee again
in America. You bring you payyour money, you know, we give

(33:59):
you a spam. We let youwalk across or drive you across or whatever,
and you have the golden ticket.And before where they have to say,
well, you give us, youknow, ten thousand dollars and we'll
try to get you across and ifthey throw you back, we'll try it
again. But now it's like thisis money in the bank, and so
that's I don't think there's a reallygood estimate of the amount of money that

(34:19):
the cartels are making for the humantrafficking. It's ends tens of billions of
dollars. Once this human product reachesour border, it moves throughout the highway
system, like blood through our veins. It is the same system used by
the narco traffickers to move their contrabandour highway system that is necessary for us
to move workers, supplies, andservices to the places where they are needed

(34:44):
is being hijacked. But what happenswhen this poison reaches our communities. Virginia
Krieger of Ohio lust her daughter Tiffanyat just twenty six years old. She
says that fentanyl poisoning in the formof counterfeit pills is killing more young people
now than ever before. It's notjust about tip. It's about you know,

(35:07):
fifteen year old Olivia Greens. It'sabout you know, you know,
Austin Babcock. It's about all ofthese beautiful young people who should be here.
They should be here. Isaiah Gonzalez. He was a football player,
he was just starting, he wasonly sixteen years old. He should be

(35:27):
here. And to address the problem, we also need to end the stigma.
You know a lot of people tryto say, well, they shouldn't
have done drugs that, you know, let's be realistic. We live in
a society today where drug use amongour young people it's almost as much a
right of passage as having a drinkevery now and then, because that's what
they do. We're not here topass judgment. We're here to keep them

(35:50):
alive. And today any drug useexperimental first time or whether they have the
worst case of substance use disorder amaginethey all have the same odds of death.
The only difference is how often theyplay the game. And it is
Russian roulette. You just don't know. Meanwhile, in communities on the border,

(36:13):
like the one I recently visited EaglePass, Texas, local law enforcement
like Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber,report that the record number of people trying
to cross illegally are zapping resources andcrushing an already overstressed system. But we're
looking at we're looking at body here. We're looking at people crossing, a

(36:34):
whole bunch of people crossing, Peoplewalk in the streek, people getting the
buzzes of being tacking up north.Since January twenty twenty two, one hundred
and thirty one bodies have been discoveredin Maverick County alone. Those that can't
be identified are buried in graves dugtowards the back end of the local cemetery.
It's a scene that at first leftme shocked and then angry for so

(37:02):
many of the migrants who are borderpatrol agents for our law enforcement officers.
There's nothing that truly brings home thetragedy of the border like being here in
this cemetery, standing among fifty maybefifty plus unmarked graves for the most part,
and right in front of me isa baby that a baby, a

(37:31):
little baby boy that no one,no one has claimed, who lost his
life somewhere on the river. Maybehis parents are among those dead here,
but nobody would know. I can'ttell you how many times I've been to
Eagles Past, where the bodies haveliterally floated down the river, but to

(37:55):
see the overwhelming death that has happenedhere on our border is actually speechless.
We will never know their names.Some are children. The only reminders that
these people ever existed are makeshift headstonesmade out of PVC pipe at the far

(38:19):
end of a graveyard in a smallAmerican border town, thousands of miles from
their families. Many of those whodied sacrificed everything to get to America and
believed the message that our border isopen, that they wouldn't be sent home,
and that they could start a newlife. It is an implied policy

(38:39):
being delivered by the White House.We're going to restore our moral standing in
the world and our historic role asa safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers
and those fleeing violence. And pressureand persecution. Our electeds need to start

(39:00):
being honest about what's happening at theborder, and as voters, we need
to hold them accountable for their actions. The issues impact all of us,
from the people who are raped,assaulted, and end up dead along the
dangerous journey, to the overdose anddrug poisoning victims and their families throughout our

(39:22):
country, and from law enforcement grapplingwith increased crime in our streets, to
overwhelmed social services which are desperately tryingto keep up with the throngs of people
entering the nation illegally. We needto start thinking about the Southwest border differently,

(39:42):
because what happens there is already impactingyour neighborhood and your family. I'm
Sarah Carter. I hope you'll joinme next time. Hold