60 Minutes - 10/27/2024: Deportation, Sanctions, Surfmen

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Correspondent Cecilia Vega examines former President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation in American history. She goes out with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Maryland as they arrest undocumented immigrants with criminal records, and she talks with one of the people Mr. Trump is likely to ask to oversee the mass deportations if he’s elected: Tom Homan, who led ICE when the Trump administration separated about 5,000 migrant children from their parents at the southern border. More than two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, the fighting continues, and despite thousands of economic sanctions, Russia's wartime economy is expected to grow. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi sits down with Daleep Singh, the architect behind the U.S. sanction strategy, to discuss his past predictions and uncover new details about what's fueling Russia's economy. Her investigation leads to the waters off the coast of Greece, where she tracks Russian oil tankers evading sanctions and raises questions about how Russia is making its money. Correspondent Bill Whitaker ventures out to one of the most dangerous inlets in America, nicknamed the Graveyard of the Pacific, at the mouth of the Columbia River. The mission? Document the training of elite members of the U.S. Coast Guard determined to graduate from the National Motor Lifeboat School and earn the coveted title of certified Surfmen. Whitaker speaks with some of the best water rescue professionals in the country as they push their limits, tackling the roughest waters and toughest test, to hear firsthand what it takes to operate in huge breaking surf in order to save lives. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. We will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country because we have no choice. How realistic is Donald Trump's campaign promise? We asked someone who would know. Is there a written plan on this? Not that I know of. If there's no memo, if there's no plan, is this fully baked? We've done it before.

We have seen one estimate that says it would cost $88 billion to deport a million people a year. I don't know if that's accurate or not. Is that what American taxpayers should expect? What price do you put on national security? Is that worth it? 60 Minutes has been reporting on the sanctions imposed on Russia since they invaded Ukraine.

Tonight, we track Russian oil tankers flouting those sanctions off the coast of Greece and hear how the Russian economy has actually grown since the start of the war. So let's be honest, this is not the nosedive that I predicted two years ago. On the bow. Here comes the big one. Watch your head. Coming to skybridge. Being a surfman is sometimes compared to being a Navy SEAL or in the Army Special Forces. But in truth, this is a more exclusive club, isn't it?

Is that the reach? Reaching! Nice reach, Josh! Get him on board! It is. There's a small number of us. For training for the opportunity to save human life, it's all the motivation you need. I'm Leslie Stahl.

I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Scott Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes.

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Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. With nine days until Election Day, former President Trump has stepped up his attacks on the Biden-Harris administration's record on illegal immigration and pledged that if elected, he'll conduct the largest deportation in American history. There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, about 3% of the population. Nearly 80% of them have lived in the country for a decade or more. How realistic is this mass deportation campaign promise? What would be the human and financial cost?

We took these questions to one of the people Donald Trump has said would join him if he wins a second term, Tom Homan, who led immigration enforcement during the first Trump administration when thousands of migrant children were separated from their parents at the border. I hear a lot of people say, you know, the talk of a mass deportation is racist, it's threatening to the immigrant community. It's not threatening to the immigrant community. It should be threatening to the illegal immigrant community. But on the heels of historic illegal immigration crisis, that has to be done. How you doing? At the Republican National Convention this summer, Tom Homan was the proud pitchman of mass deportation.

I got a message to the millions of illegal immigrants that Joe Biden's releasing in our country. You better start packing now. Over three decades, he worked his way up from border patrolman to acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency known as ICE, during the first year and a half of the Trump administration. This election cycle, former President Trump has mentioned mass deportation at nearly every rally. We will begin the largest deportation operation in the history

of our country because we have no choice. What would the largest deportation in American history look like to you? Well, let me tell you what's not going to be first. It's not going to be a mass sweep of neighborhoods. It's not going to be building concentration camps. I've read it all. It's ridiculous. But if mass deportation is not going to be, as you said, massive sweeps and concentration camps, what is it? They'll be targeted arrest. We'll know who we're going to arrest, where we're most likely to find them, based on numerous investigative processes.

Former President Trump's running mate J.D. Vance said it would be reasonable to deport a million people a year. Trump's top immigration advisor, Stephen Miller, told a conservative audience that deportees would be removed from the country in a massive military air operation. So you grab illegal immigrants and then you move them to the staging grounds and that's what the planes are waiting for federal law enforcement to then move those illegals home. You deputize the National Guard to carry out immigration enforcement. Stephen Miller said that this will involve large-scale raids.

I don't use the term raids, but you're probably talking about worksite enforcement operations, which this administration pretty much stopped. Workplace enforcement, that's a roundup. And that's going to be necessary. Worksite enforcement operation is just not about people who are working illegally in the country and companies that hire them that's going to undercut their competition that has U.S. citizen employees. That's where we find a lot of trafficking cases, women and children who are forced into

forced labor to pay off their smuggling fees. A study by the American Immigration Council found that mass deportation could result in the removal of millions of construction, hospitality, and agriculture workers, reducing the GDP by $1.7 trillion. Can you just limit it to criminals and national security threat, though? If I'm in charge of this, my priorities are public safety threats and national security threats first. First implies others follow, though, right?

Absolutely. So game that out for me. What's the scenario? It's not okay to enter a country illegally, which is a crime. That's what drives illegal immigration. When there's no consequences, the Biden-Harris administration has proven this. You can get to the border, turn yourselves in, get released within 24 hours. So you are carrying out a targeted enforcement operation. Grandma's in the house. She's undocumented.

She get arrested too? It depends. Which? Let the judge decide. We're going to remove people that a judge has already deported. Homan's suggestion that Grandma might face arrest would mark a major shift in policy. Under President Biden, ICE is mostly targeting those deemed national security or public safety threats and people who just crossed the border illegally. The majority of the four million deportations carried out by the Biden administration have occurred at the southern border,

where an unprecedented influx of migrants created scenes of chaos, a humanitarian crisis, and one of Vice President Harris's biggest political vulnerabilities. Homan says mass deportation is the solution. How many people would be deported? You can't answer that question. Why not? How many officers do I have? Is there a written plan on this?

Not that I know of. If there's no memo, if there's no plan, is this fully baked? We've done it before. But not a deportation of this scale. ICE is very good at these operations. This is what they do. To see what they do, we went to Silver Spring, Maryland,

a suburb of Washington, D.C., where earlier this month, ICE agents gathered in a parking lot before dawn. It's what ICE does every day and has been doing for many years. All right, good morning, everyone. Their task this morning, locate and arrest undocumented immigrants with criminal histories, including assault, robbery, drug and gun convictions. This morning, our target is going to be... Identified by ICE as a threat to public safety. Hey, let's roll.

Matt Elliston, director of ICE's Baltimore field office, told us the goal was to catch the first target by surprise. You've been watching him. Yeah. You know his routine. Yeah, we know his routine. We've been watching him for a couple days. Wait till he gets about in front of my vehicle.

Sure enough, a white van soon appeared to pick him up, but they didn't get very far. Hey, how you doing? What you got in your hand? What did you put down? The man they arrested was a 24-year-old Guatemalan with an assault conviction who had been ordered deported by a judge five years ago. The ICE agents discovered that the driver of the van

was also in the country illegally. They told us he'd been deported once before. He has no criminal record. He was picking up his employees to go to work. It doesn't make sense to waste a detention bed on someone like that when we have other felons to go out and get today. A lot of folks might hear you and say, like, hold on, you've got an undocumented immigrant who comes face-to-face with ICE,

who's responsible for deporting folks from this country, and you let him go. We utilize immigration law to enhance public safety. It's not to just aimlessly arrest anyone we come across, right? We do targeted enforcement in ICE. It took a team of more than a dozen officers seven hours to arrest six people, and that doesn't include the many hours spent searching for them. So how would it even be possible then for ICE to arrest a million people in this country if that mass deportation plan were to take effect?

I could say here in Maryland we would never be able to resource or find that amount of detention, which would be our biggest challenge, right? And just the amount of money that that would cost in order to detain everybody, you know, it would be, you know, at the Department of Defense level of financing. It's insane to think about it at this sort of scale. Jason Hauser, ICE chief of staff during the first two years of the Biden administration, says it costs $150 a night to detain people like those we saw arrested. The average stay as they await deportation is 46 days. One deportation flight can cost a quarter of a million dollars, and that assumes the home country will accept them. Many, like Cuba and Venezuela, rarely do. ICE currently has some 6,000 law enforcement agents. How much manpower would it take to arrest and deport a million people?

You're talking 100,000 official officers, police officers, detention officers, support staff, management staff. Trump advisor Stephen Miller has said staff could come from other government agencies like the DEA. The idea that you're going to take the FBI or the Marshal Service or the Bureau of Prisons or the Secret Service or FEMA off of their mission sets that protect and protect our communities will not make us safer. Immigration enforcement requires specialized training and language skills that most military and law enforcement officers don't have.

There's this discussion out there that makes it sound like it's just an easy swap. It is not an easy swap. So what I can tell you from the Immigration and Nationality Act, immigration law is second to the U.S. tax code in complexity. We have seen one estimate that says it would cost $88 billion to deport a million people a year. I don't know if that's accurate or not. Is that what American taxpayers should expect?

What price do you put on national security? Is that worth it? Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families? Of course there is. Families can be deported together. Monica Camacho-Perez and her family worry about that. They have lived and worked in the country since coming illegally from Mexico more than 20 years ago. What scares you the most? I think of my nieces and my nephews, that they're going to get separated from their parents. They made a life in Baltimore, where Monica, who's 30, teaches English as a second language. We are a normal family like anybody else. We go to church. We work every day. We pay taxes.

She's among the more than 500,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children who are protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA. I'm the only one right now that's like protected while my parents are not, my brothers are not. My brothers have children that are born here so if they were to get deported, what would happen to their kids? Although I have my life here, I think that I would take the decision to go back with my parents, to take care of them.

You would? Yes. You own a home here. This is the city you grew up in. But they're also part of my American dream. And I can't imagine living here without them. Like Monica's nieces and nephews, more than four million U.S.-born children live with an undocumented parent. Why should a child who is an American citizen have to pack up and move to a country that they don't know?

Because their parent absolutely entered the country illegally, had a child knowing he was in the country illegally, so he created that crisis. While Homan ran ICE, in what became one of the most controversial policies of the Trump administration, at least 5,000 migrant children were forcibly separated from their parents who were prosecuted for crossing the border illegally. You've been called the father of Trump's family separation policy. How does that sit with you?

It's not true. I didn't write the memorandum to separate families. I signed the memo. Why did I sign the memo? I was hoping to save lives. While you and I are talking right now, a child's going to die on the border. So we thought maybe if we prosecute people, they'll stop coming.

And if Trump wins a second term? I don't know of any form of policy, but they're talking about family separation. Should it be on the table? It needs to be considered, absolutely. Do you think a mass deportation plan would deter other people from coming to this country illegally? No, I don't think so.

Regardless, people are still going to try to come for a better life. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the

Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it sparked international outrage. It also triggered a wave of international sanctions designed to cripple Russia's economy so badly it couldn't fight the war. And yet, two and a half years later, the fighting continues, and the International Monetary Fund predicts this year Russia's economy will grow over 3 percent, more than the U.S. and Europe. The architect behind the United States' sanctioned strategy

is Dilip Singh, the Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics at the White House. We first interviewed him in the weeks after the 2022 invasion, when he told us he expected a barrage of sanctions to bring Russia's economy to its knees. Earlier this month, we went to Washington to ask Dilip Singh about those early predictions of a nosedive, and he told us something we don't hear very often on 60 Minutes. So let's be honest. This is not the nosedive that I predicted two years ago. But I don't think anybody should mistake Russia's rebound with resilience. On the surface, Russia's economy may appear to be a fortress, but underneath, the foundations are fragile. Hours after the invasion, the U.S. began striking that foundation.

At the White House, Dilip Singh announced the administration's strategy. Today we impose an unprecedented package of financial sanctions and export restrictions. Within 72 hours, the U.S. and its allies blocked Russia's central bank from accessing $300 billion it stashed around the world. Then froze the foreign bank accounts of dozens of Russian billionaires, later seizing their trophies for good measure. Since then, 45 countries have directed over 5,000 sanctions at Russian targets, everything from diamonds and semiconductors to Vladimir Putin himself. And yet… The war is still raging. The Russian economy is growing.

It looks like sanctions have been a failure. No, not at all. So he's turbocharged government spending to fuel the war machine. He's frozen infrastructure and education spending. And yes, that's lifted GDP growth, but there's a cost. Sky-high inflation, almost 9 percent. Nosebleed interest rates, almost 19 percent. Both are choking off growth.

But the sanctions have not been able to curb the flow of cash from the Kremlin's most valuable asset, oil. Russia is the third largest producer in the world, and this year its oil and gas revenues are expected to increase 2.6 percent to nearly $240 billion. We wondered how, despite all those sanctions, the Kremlin is still making so much money from its oil. We found the answer in an unexpected place. 20 miles off the coast of Greece, we went there with Samir Madani. Madani runs a company from Stockholm that tracks oil tankers for dozens of international clients,

such as insurance companies or shippers, who want to know exactly where oil is moving in case of a spill or accident. But he took us to see this oil tanker, called the Sprite. It's part of Russia's Dark Fleet, one of an estimated 200 ships that move a million barrels of Russian oil around Western sanctions every day. It's quite rare to see this vessel actually presenting its name and IMO number and everything. Madani and his team monitor satellite images, signals from ships, and photographs from the ground to track tankers. He told us one day in January 2023,

he noticed something suspicious on his dashboard. A tanker sending signals from a port in Japan, a country that doesn't export crude oil. That didn't make sense. So I was able to review that with satellite imagery and saw that there was no vessel at the port. Instead, it was a spoof. In fact, we saw the vessel in Kosmino in Russia. Instead, it was a spoof, where in fact,

we saw the vessel in Kozmino in Russia. So they're able to lie about their location? Yes, in real time. And so that allows them to move wherever they want to move undetected. And that happened how quickly after the sanctions took place? Immediately, immediately.

When you're sitting at your dashboard and you're watching all of this, what makes you know that's part of the Dark Fleet? Yeah, the ownership will change. The vessel age is beyond 15 years. That's a red flag. And so these vessels were supposed to be scrapped. And then somebody makes a bid in the last minute with a million dollars and gets to extend the life of this tanker.

The Sprite is one of those tankers. 21 years old, it was last purchased in February and is registered to a shell company in the Caribbean. So what was it doing floating off the coast of Greece? Sprite here is acting as a drop box for Russian oil. If you can see on her starboard side, on the right side there, you have the four buoys. And that means they place those there for contact with other vessels. Other Dark Fleet vessels that will transfer oil onto or off of the Sprite. Madani spotted one of them, the Zambra, a mile away. These are images Madani's team provided of Zambra moving oil from Russian ports on the Black Sea,

through the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey, and then transferring it onto the sprite just off the coast of Greece. We were there with you. We're watching, you know, transfer, transfer, transfer. What's going on there? The transfers are an additional layer of obfuscation when it comes to transferring oil. So when you have a floating drop box act like that, you know, where it's able to take in any kind of oil and then output any other kind of oil, it confuses things.

The point of this tanker shell game is to get around Western sanctions, specifically a price cap that was supposed to limit Moscow's oil profits. In 2022, the G7, which includes the U.S., Canada, Japan, and four European countries, banned the import of Russian oil. But they didn't want to risk a global price spike, so they allowed Russian oil to continue to flow internationally, but imposed a $60 a barrel price cap on the purchase of Russian crude oil. Russia's workarounds are paying off. Almost all of its crude oil is selling above the price cap. In the last two years, Russia's dark fleet has moved an estimated $45 billion worth of crude oil. And where is all that oil going? Yeah,

most of the oil that departs Russia by sea nowadays is going to China and India. 60 Minutes analyzed four years of data from India's Ministry of Commerce. We found the value of India's imports of Russian crude oil increased by more than 2,000 percent since the invasion of Ukraine. Much of that crude goes to an Indian port called Sika, where it's refined into other oil products such as gasoline. But those products don't necessarily stay in India. Samadani helped us track a tanker of refined products from India's port around the tip of Africa, across the Atlantic Ocean, and ultimately here, to New York. We saw the ship coming from India into the New York harbor. How often is that happening? It happens around twice a month,

and they bring in around half a million barrels of refined product, fuel. So is the Russian crude oil untraceable? After it becomes refined, it's untraceable, yeah. The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned 38 Russian Dark Fleet tankers, but Sam Adani says he's identified 170 others that are still active moving Russian oil. They're not doing it in the middle of the night. They're doing it in broad daylight. How do you stop that?

First, identify them. Second, let them know that they are subject to our sanctions. And then three, deliver those sanctions. Any player in Russia's shadow fleet network would be subject to our sanctions, and then three, deliver those sanctions. Any player in Russia's shadow fleet network would be subject to our sanctions. Why not do it right now? What we're trying to balance right now is to continue to move the global oil market into balance,

to continue to have a downward movement in the level of inflation across the world world and to sustain unity. We can't sanction Russia's shadow fleet by ourselves. So there's a diplomatic component to this too. This is about stamina more so than it is about shock and awe. There's another market the U.S. is trying to keep in balance, American nuclear energy. The U.S. is still paying Russia $1 billion a year for enriched uranium to help fuel 94 nuclear reactors that provide about a fifth of America's energy needs. In May, Congress took notice and banned the import of Russian enriched uranium.

But the ban won't go into full effect for four years. Does the U.S. have the capacity right now that it needs for enriched uranium? No. So unfortunately, about 25 percent of it, to 30 percent, has been imported from Russia. We don't have it. Right. We are dependent. That's because the United States stopped making enriched uranium a decade ago. Amir Vexler runs Centris Energy. Last year, Centris began enriching uranium

inside this Piketon, Ohio facility, the only American company with that capability. Vexler showed us how it's done. Those 40-foot-tall centrifuges spin uranium gas until it's enriched and can be used as nuclear fuel. But these 16 centrifuges can only make a fraction of the enriched uranium the U.S. needs. See those squares on the ground? Those are placeholders for 11,000 more centrifuges Centris wants to build. And how long, in the best-case scenario, would it take to get those up and running? It will take about six to seven years to get to full capacity. And to not be reliant on Russia? That is correct. In Russia, businesses quickly pivoted. When Western companies left the country at the start of the war,

Russian versions replaced them. Starbucks with Starz coffee, Zara with Mog, Coca-Cola Dobrikola. Even authentic Western products, such as the latest iPhones, are still getting into the hands of Russians. When we first started hearing about sanctions against Russia, we anticipated seeing, you know, bread lines in Moscow. Has that happened? In a word, no. The most goods that Russians would have accessed before the war are available now. Richard Connolly is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and a specialist on the Russian economy.

Sanctions prohibit the sale of Western cars to Russia, Mercedes or Chrysler's. But a lot of them are still making their way to Russia via third parties, like Georgia in the South Caucasus or Kazakhstan or China. Now, of course, if you're going to have to send an American or a German car on this roundabout route to reach Russia, the price of that car when it's sold is much higher than it was before the war. But there's a lot of Russians with a lot of money in their pocket who are prepared to pay that higher price. There's an incentive for lots of Russian small businesses to acquire goods on foreign markets from sanctioning countries, bring them back to Russia, and sell them at a very healthy markup.

So evading sanctions has become good business in Russia? It's become a business sector of its own in Russia, yes. What kind of businesses are we talking about? Some people are selling goods that were previously sanctioned. They're producing them at home. The number of small and medium-sized businesses registered in Russia is at an all-time high. Before the war, Russia had a big problem.

It wasn't investing enough. But since the war began, the single biggest source of investment is in trade and logistics. It almost sounds like from an economic perspective that the war is the best thing that's happened to Russia. It's certainly changed the economic trajectory. This is the fastest it's grown for a consecutive period in over a decade and a half. Whether they can sustain that over time is, of course, the big question. It's possible that they may confound expectations in the future as well. The spot where the Columbia River spills into the Pacific Ocean at the border between Oregon

and Washington State is where Lewis and Clark ended their journey of discovery in 1805, with Clark writing in his journal, Ocean in View, O Joy! But it's not all joy. In fact, it's one of the most dangerous inlets in America. A high-pressure torrent of water pours out of the huge river's mouth and runs right into waves that have been moving across the Pacific for thousands of miles. It's precisely because of this powerful aquatic collision that elite members of the United States Coast Guard come to this place once each year, determined to

earn the coveted certification as surfmen. On the bow. Here comes the big one. Watch your head. On the starboard. On a wet February afternoon, we're on board a 47-foot U.S. Coast Guard motor lifeboat with Chief Eric Kelly at the helm, driving through breaking surf barely 100 yards off the beach. I have another small right up here.

And another one right behind there. Exactly. At the time, Kelly was chief instructor at the Coast Guard's National Motor Lifeboat School. This was the first day of class, and the three students on his boat were studying his every turn of the wheel and calling out approaching swells. Got a saddle, a starboard bow. Tenants, cut your head. That's not loud! Six more trainees were on two other boats with other instructors. Kelly says everyone is here because this place, at the mouth of the Columbia River,

consistently has some of the worst weather and highest seas in America. We exposed them to a tremendous amount of surf conditions over four weeks, more so than they'd get over years at their own unit. Morning, shipmates. How are we? Good, sir. First thing that morning, Tim Crochet, commanding officer of the lifeboat school, had welcomed this year's class of nine students. And I promise you the instructors behind me are gonna give you world-class instruction

and they're gonna help you become a better motor lifeboat operator. We're gonna get you closer and closer to certifying as a surfman. Certifying as surfman, that's the goal of each of these students and the dream of thousands of other members of the Coast Guard.

Being a surfman is sometimes compared to being a Navy SEAL or in the Army Special Forces. But in truth, this is a more exclusive club, isn't it? Currently, we have about 130 active-duty surfmen right now. Out of how many members of the Coast Guard? I think the Coast Guard's right around 40,000 people. 40,000 people and 100 surfmen. So that is a pretty exclusive club. It is. There's a small number of us.

Certifying as a surfman means the Coast Guard trusts you to drive a lifeboat on the most challenging rescue missions. In 20-foot breaking waves and 50-knot winds, at the entrance to the school is a display of every surfman medallion called a check ever earned. So how far back does this go? It goes back to 1872. That's when the U.S. Life Saving Service began saving mariners in distress. It became the Coast Guard in 1915 and now operates 20 surf stations where rescues may have to be made in breaking waves.

On average, the Coast Guard makes more than 5,000 rescues may have to be made in breaking waves. On average, the Coast Guard makes more than 5,000 rescues a year. Where is yours? Mine is right back here. It's check number 407. Chief instructor Eric Kelly, whose boat we were on, wears his surfman number. I understand you have a tattoo. I do, I do. I have my surfing number. I'm surfing 545. It's something that is very, very important to me. At the opening session of the Motor Lifeboat School, Chief Kelly read the Coast Guard's Surfman's Creed aloud. I will never unnecessarily jeopardize myself, my boat, or my crew, but will do so freely to rescue those in peril. And he told the students they'd each need to have the creed memorized

before the four-week course was over. It takes a lot to get there. It takes a person, a special type person, willing to put themselves into those situations where you're looking up at a 20-foot breaking sea and you're like, I want to do this. I want to keep training in this. This year's class was all male, but there are nearly a dozen female surfmen. Most candidates come here first for a basic course, then heavy weather, and finally this surf class.

Derek Samuelson, Trenton Campbell, and Joshua Slaughter are the three trainees on Eric Kelly's boat. Most of us are going to be pushing pretty close to four years when we get certified. and Joshua Slaughter are the three trainees on Eric Kelly's boat. Most of us are going to be pushing pretty close to four years when we get certified. That's almost a college degree worth of training in driving these boats. It's something not a lot of people get to do. It's not that they get to do it, but that they achieve it.

That they achieve it, yes. When we come here, our only job is to learn and drive and surf, so it's a great opportunity. This is a representation of the mouth of the Columbia. Jeff Smith is the curator of the Columbia River Maritime Museum, which has a giant map illustrating how the mouth of the Columbia River has earned the title Graveyard of the Pacific. All these little boats that you see are representative of the shipwrecks that have occurred. All of these?

Yeah. We have 50 of them numbered, but there's many, many more. Thousands more over several centuries, with at least 700 lives lost, the skeletons of wrecked ships still litter some area beaches. So despite how treacherous this waterway is, it's a vital economic waterway as well. It certainly is. Of all the grain exported from the United States, just over 40% goes out the Columbia River. Every commercial ship coming into the river must have a local pilot come on board to guide it. This video shows how perilous it can be just to get that pilot onto one of those ships. Imagine the dangers faced by Coast Guardsmen trying to rescue a ship or sailboat or fishing boat that's in trouble.

I'm always a little bit, I don't know if starstruck is the word or awestruck, when I'm in the presence of the men and women of our Coast Guard. Because the job they do is just amazing. It's incredible. It's an incredible group of people. It's such a cool mission that we get to do. We get to go drive these awesome boats out and have the opportunity to save people in their darkest day. As he drove into ever stormier seas on that first day of school,

it was clear Eric Kelly would rather be at the helm of his lifeboat than just about anywhere else. So you love this, huh? I absolutely love this. But Kelly was also deadly serious about teaching his students how to read every swell. Watch that. Run from that. Run and run and run in the center of that helm. I'm going. You got that beat. You got window right here. Nice little near side shoulder. Easing off. Watch that coming to me. I'm going to get right on the back. Full. Follow that peak point. This is going to get super dynamic down here. These are shooting in every direction.

When he couldn't outrun a wave, Kelly executed what may be the most important maneuver a lifeboat driver must master. Nowhere to go. Squaring up. Squaring up is pointing the bow of the boat directly into and through a breaking wave, sometimes a really big breaking wave. We hit a couple of those yesterday where we got the spray and you went up and the bow was up and you saw a blue sky and then all of a sudden you're down in a hole.

What's the worst thing you could do in a situation like that? The worst thing you could do is not be square to that breaking wave. You could have a knockdown, which is when the boat goes underneath water but rewrites in the same direction, or even worse, a 360 degree rollover.

Have you ever experienced that yourself? I haven't experienced a full 360 degree rollover. I you ever experienced that yourself? I haven't experienced a full 360-degree rollover. I have experienced a knockdown or two, and that's what they designed this boat for. That design is seen in this demonstration video, but out in the surf, Eric Kelly was showing his students how to avoid ever having to test it on a real mission. How long before you let the students take control of the boat?

So starting tomorrow, we'll do another demonstration of wherever we're going to train, and then students are on it for the remainder of the course. Hold on. Whoa! Every day for the next four weeks, the students took the helm, with Eric Kelly signaling approval when they did something right Kelly signaling approval when they did something right and correcting them when they didn't. We probably should have squared up to that one but on the bow guys.

Students drove in every kind of condition and ran simulated missions like pulling someone, in this case a dummy, out of the water. Nice reach, Josh. Get him on board. Don't play it off. All right, stand by to clear the recess. Sometimes a real rescue mission can supplant the simulations, as when the boats were making one last training run on graduation day 2023. Sure enough, we heard a mayday for distress go out over channel 16, the radio frequency. By the time the three training boats spotted a white boat called the Sandpiper with one man on board. Conditions had gone from mild to mad.

At this point, we're facing 25, 30 foot, 35 foot breaking seas, 50 knots of winds. It's raining, hailing, and very, very dynamic. Far too dynamic to have any chance of towing the vessel to safety. It was also graduation day for the Coast Guard's Advanced Rescue Helicopter School, and they dropped a rescue swimmer named John Walton into the water. You can see him paddling furiously. It was his first rescue, and they deployed him, and he was able to retrieve that individual off the sandpiper right as that 30-plus foot break rolled that boat multiple times.

It's hard to imagine how either the rescued or the rescuer survived that, but they both did. But really seeing how the Coast Guard worked together and have one of the coolest rescues I've had my entire career. On graduation day. On graduation day for these future surfmen. Graduation day for this year's class was far more placid. All nine students completed the course, and all nine had memorized the surfman's creed. I will, to the best of my ability, pursue each mission with the commitment, compassion,

and courage inherent in the title surfman. They didn't all certify as surfmen that day. Most had to wait to return to their home units for their commanding officers to give them the nod. But two of the nine got a surprise. BM-2 Casey, BM-2 Campbell, front and center, please. Dorian Casey and Trenton Campbell had their commanding officers in attendance, ready to bestow the honor then and there. It seemed every certified surfman on the West Coast had come,

and they handed the coveted medallions, those checks, to one another. Surfer 494, say it's a cool year, Ir Surfer 494, station Quilly River. 485, station Morro Bay. 484, station Humboldt Bay. 450, station Quilly River. 407, station Chetco River. And then to the two newest surfmen. Trenton Campbell accepted hugs from his trainers and fellow classmates and then headed

back to his base, Station Quileute River on the coast of Washington, ready to do what he joined the Coast Guard to do. The reason why we all want to be here is that dream to save a life. I think there's no better feeling than that. We're training for the opportunity to save a human life. It's all the motivation you need. In our last minute tonight, a look ahead to our pre-election day broadcast. Scott Pelley shows us the place with arguably the most complex and reliable elections in the world, the United States. Why should Americans have confidence? Republican Brad Raffensperger runs elections

in Georgia. Everything we've been working on for the last four years is to build trust. Trust is the gold standard in a democratic society. On day one, Georgia voters smashed the record for early voting. Sunday, we look at why America can believe in the ballot. I'm Cecilia Vega. We'll be back then with another edition of 60 Minutes.