Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - A Journey Beyond Borders - with Vincent Vargas

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

In this episode, we're joined by Vincent Vargas, a man whose life reads like an action-packed novel. Vincent takes us on a journey through his extraordinary experiences, starting with his time as an Army Ranger deployed in the Global War on Terror, a period that tested his mettle and shaped his worldview. Vincent discusses his new book "Borderline," a gripping account of his life and experiences as a member of the elite Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue (BORSTAR) team. Vincent then takes us on his incredible journey from the frontlines of law enforcement to the bright lights of Hollywood. Discover how this former border patrol agent turned his life around to become a celebrated actor, bringing a unique authenticity to his roles drawn from real-life experiences. This episode is a blend of action-packed stories, heartfelt reflections, and inspiring insights into a life lived without limits. Buy Vincent's new book here: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Borderline-Defending-Front-Vincent-Vargas-ebook/dp/B0BQGJ1TX9⁠ Explore and sign up for Starlink Service here: ⁠https://www.starlink.com/residential?referral=RC-14303-34690-52&utm_source=Starlink2MoAndy⁠ **The 2-month free offer will only show in your account after you fully complete your account and activate the service** This offer expires on 12/1/23. Offer available for the United States and Canada only The Speed of War Comic Series: ⁠https://www.thespeedofwar.com/⁠ Sign up for the new G14 newsletter here: ⁠https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/exclusive⁠ Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: ⁠https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/⁠

What's going on, everybody? Welcome back. Before we get into today's episode, let's talk about the sponsor that makes all of this possible. Let's dive right in together. Let's go to their website, black rifle coffee.com. Veterans Day is just around the corner. This episode actually will come out two days after Veterans Day. That doesn't mean you still cannot support the causes that Black Rifle Coffee is getting behind.

In the rotating banner up top, you're going to see Veterans Day serving those who serve. Click on that, and you can find out about that particular campaign. Next is going to be joining the fight against cancer. By the time this comes out, the sponsorship should have been announced, but Black Rifle Coffee and the UFC are starting a partnership together. And then, of course, what just rotated naturally, the pumpkin spice, there's the RTD, there are the K-cups, there is the horseman's roast, probably a grind. And I don't think there's ever a bad time for that. I've covered this banner here before where you can drag it to the left and to the right and look at all their different roasts. Let's go into, since the holidays are right around the corner, let's just click on apparel.

Let's see what we get when we do that. Yes, all the newest stuff. I actually ordered this orange shirt right here. This thing's awesome. Put it into the laundry and I can't find it. So that's a journey for later today. You can rotate through all of this and there are so many different things that you can look at. The gear section, the coffee bundles, which is when I highly recommend, bundles or samples I recommend for the holiday season.

It's tough to shop people. especially as you get older. People just have everything that they need, but coffee fans and aficionados can always appreciate a nice selection in bundle. And then at the bottom, they have their bestsellers. So whether you're looking to fulfill your coffee desire or get behind a good cause, black rifle coffee.com.

You won't regret it. And that's it on the business side of the house today. My guest today is Vincent Vargas. If you listen to Change Agents, he was in season one. And we were discussing his time in the Border Patrol and what he saw directly on the border. He has a new book that has just come out, and it is right here. Borderline, Defending the Home Front by Vincent Vargas. It looks like it was pressed or produced by, what is this, Joko, Jocco, Jocco.

Oh, got it, Jocco Press. I wonder who that guy is. He's probably not very successful. But I digress. You may have heard of Vincent from the television show Mayans, which I'm here to tell you is not about an extinct civilization, which, of course, who would think anything like that when they first heard of it? I would.

That's who. It's actually a motorcycle game. Before getting into Hollywood, though, and becoming a thespian of sorts, he worked for the Border Patrol. Heavy emphasis on Borr Star Time, and he'll explain how those two organizations interface himself. And then before that, he was in the military. Specifically, he was an Army Ranger.

If you want to dig in a little bit and hear about what's actually going on at the border and hear about the relationship between what the Border Patrol's role is and what they can and can't do, the policy of what they are required to do, what happens when ice interfaces in the whole nine yards when it comes to our border, whether it's open or close, I highly recommend you check it out. And I'm going to shut up. Episode 311 with Vincent Vargas. Enjoy. Okay, got the red smoke. Okay, Kathy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now.

Dude, why don't you still have that mustache? That's varsity-level mustache. You should have that at all times. It was during November is when I started growing this out. And actually, it's unauthorized for Department of Homeland Security. haircut stares. Because it goes a little bit below the lower lip? Right, just like kind of military. But I was kind of

in my forward deployed, I was activated to go down to the McAllen area, which means there is no, you know, no supervisor really paying attention. The Wild West. Right. So I grew my fucking shit how I wanted to. I can support that completely. You know how it goes. I used to cut my hair and shave when I

would get the word that the higher-ups or the shinier collar devices were coming out to our outstation. Like, okay. Just give me 12 hours of heads up. Maybe two at a minimum so I can get shit unfucked and we'll be good to go. Yeah, and no one really said anything. So I was like, I don't keep it for a while. But when I got back to Sector, I had to fix it.

Yeah, yeah, I get that. So we first linked up, you were a guest on change agents. Yesterday, I was recording a podcast with a guy, I'm going to mess his name up. Yohan Griot. He's a British journalist who lives in Mexico City. Oh, nice. And he specializes in cartels. and I've actually talked with a few

Monday's episode that just came out with a guy named Jason Jones and he was talking about... I know Jason Jones, yeah. Well, I know who he is. I've seen everything he does. Trafficking. It's like...

And I was just sitting there listening to him talk and he had videos... He had video of a cartel essentially military operation that happened north of the border. In the United States, on this fucking island, which I'm not even going to attempt to describe because I would absolutely mess it up.

So I'm talking to all these people. It's the same conversation that you and I had. And I asked you on yesterday, why can't anybody tell the truth about the border? You know, in the world we live in, you have, and I don't give a shit about people's politics. It's so wild to me that people define themselves by

a binary left or right. Are we this dumb? It's the weirdest thing. But one side says, border's good. The other side says, oh, fuck, no, it's not good. Yeah. Why can't we get anybody to tell the truth. I mean, you have lived and worked down there. Bring us up to speed. Yeah. I'll say, yeah, it's good. You know, the difference between me and them is that I am an expert in the Border Patrol career field in the operations of what we do. And so I'll be coming at it from that kind of perspective and that experience. Those two are journalists, man, and they look for all the fucking dramatics and they tell those stories. And I'm not well versed in the deep, deep, deep rooted stuff with cartel. I understand it. in an operational standpoint

in what we have to combat on our side of things as a board patrol agent. But I know enough, but I just don't, it's not a place I consider an expertise. But the weird thing

about the border stuff is that it is like a weird divisive conversation because people, I think, are more ignorant to the truth of it. And so they're just emotionally invested into their ideology of it.

Open the border, let them all come in. They're all seeking asylum. Bullshit, they are. But okay. And then the other side is like, well, close the border and fucking shoot everybody

who comes across. Well, that's not right either. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so this discussion is weird, but, you know, the truth of it, the answer is actually right in the middle of both of those arguments, right, is that us as America, we want to uphold kind of the dignity of being America and allowing immigration, but legal immigration, right? Because in that process, now we have the scope of how many come across.

I think last year was 1.5 million, right? That legally came in that we allowed into our country, right, for whatever reason. And then the other side of it is like we can't just open the border because then we have no country, right? That whole argument was like, yeah, so why do we have somebody coming over illegally? Well, it's kind of fucked up. We have incentivized accidentally or not accidentally, but, but just by the fact of we're so overwhelmed that they implemented the process of just giving them NTAs, right? What is an NTA? Notice to appear. So current process, here's what happens.

Which has no teeth if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Yeah, nothing. No, there's none. So just so anyone listening doesn't understand what happens or what kind of like thinks they know. Here's what happens. As they come across illegally and the Border Patrol apprehends them, which is not usually an aggressive attack. It's usually just like, hey, stop. You're here illegally. Let me arrest you. Or sometimes they called give-ups. They just walk right up to you and be like, hey, sir, I'm here, you know. And so the Border Patrol agents, they apprehend them. They take them in to the processing center. Currently right now, you know, there's massive processing centers because of the massive influx. And it takes about three days to get them fully processed and handed off to ice.

And when you fully processed, meaning you show up illegally, you're going to tell me what your case is. I don't know. I can't determine that. It's not what a border trade agent does. My determination is, are you here illegally or legally? Illegally? Cool. You broke the law.

Right? And that law is Title VIII, 13, 25, entering illegally outside of a port of entry. Boom. Right. And so we process them determining what their case is by what they tell me. And what I do is I roll their fingerprints and identify if they have any criminal history that we can identify. If they do, they're getting removed. Immediately.

Like, nope, we don't want that shit in this country. If they don't, and they're saying they're seeking asylum, which is kind of the trick that they all know, then it's not for me to determine that. It's for me to do the paperwork and hand it off to ICE for them to house them or determine what they do with them until they can see an immigration judge. That immigration judge makes a determination on their case. Since there's such a massive influx happening, and for some reason, we don't hire more immigration judges, something I don't know enough about to even explain.

But they're so backed up that they're giving NTAs up to five to ten. 10 years. Right. Yeah. And so what's happening is once they, they, ICE receives these individuals, it could be 1,500 at a time. They're trying to make a determination. Okay, we're going to give them NTAs.

Here's all the NTAs to everybody. It doesn't matter who you are. You can be Chinese. You could be African. You could be Mexican. It doesn't matter. If you're seeking asylum, the immigration judge will determine that. And so here's your NTA.

They give them an address that they are supposed to go to a sponsor family. It's usually someone in their, in the past who's done the same process. process and has that address, and then they give them their papers. Some non-government organizations are believing the humanitarian mission of it and are giving them money a plane ticket and a cell phone so they can kind of, you know, I guess start getting comfortable in America. And so these people are going wherever they need to go in America. If you go to an airport in San Diego, you guys know who they are. They have a bag in their hand usually or a manila folder. It's in every kind of border town or big city outside of it. You'll see.

this. They're busts there, they're dropped off, or however they get there, and they're taking a flight to wherever they go. So both sides of this argument, right? The open the border and the close the border side of the argument, and we're like, well, where are they going? I don't know. Tactically, I'm nervous, right? I would be nervous because it sounds really weird to just let people into America and have no real way of communicating or seeing what they do. The other side of it is The humanitarian side of it is they believe it's a, it's a, you know, there's seeking asylum. And so they have to go through the process. And our process right now is completely overwhelmed.

And so this is what we have currently at the moment. Do you have any data on the, or stats on the number of NTAs that are actually adhered to? Adhered to, no, who've actually returned to their immigration. No, I don't. And it's, it's not. We're in Vegas, hypothetically now. and you had to put some money on above 50% or below 50%. I think maybe 80% don't ever come back.

I was going to guess higher. It probably is. I'm being generous. Well, if it doesn't have teeth, what's the incentive? Well, that's the problem. And so when you have a legal process of entering in this country and then you have an illegal process and then you look at them both. So say if I'm an illegal immigrant, I just want to come to this country, for whatever reason,

to do bad or too do good, it doesn't matter. if I try to do it legally you can take a long process it can cost me a lot of money if I do it illegally you're telling me in three days I'm into the country and I'm gone

with a cell phone yeah with a cell phone potentially $1,500 bucks and a plane ticket I'm out so like I said inadvertently we might have just incentivized

illegal immigration whether we like it or not or maybe they did it in purpose I don't know I'm not here to speculate on that I'm saying that's the problem is when you've given

the incentive to come over illegally and made it very easily well then they go and send that message to everyone else down south and remember in our

our first meeting, I said dissemination of information is fucking insane. Well, yeah, they tell them all like, hey, come to this border currently, this is what's happening. Boom, the next two weeks, three weeks, months, you have 10,000 of people coming across. So a combination with talking with Jason and Yohan, the more I talk about people with cartels, you know, you hear often, hey, we need to designate them as a terrorist organization because that would flip some levers as to how we could respond to them. But you talk to people who've been reporting on them for decades. And it's not that they advocate against that, but they describe cartels like a massive business. Yeah. His estimate was that, one, there's a variety of cartels all over Mexico.

There is, absolutely. And they don't all do kind of the same thing. As you get closer to the border, they get a little bit more heavy-handed, if you will. They're in a little bit more control. The police and government stay away a little. You know, like they can kind of cruise through the town and they'll disappear for a second and come back. but people associate drugs, you know, fentanyl,

but they're doing everything from literally plugging into oil pipelines to steal oil. He was describing the system where they have two hoses. One goes in so it maintains the pressure. Yeah. The other one's literally taking fucking oil out. I don't think they're putting it into a bucket, but in my fucked up imagination, that's what I like to think.

They're like walking off. I don't know how you'd sell oil in a bucket, but whatever. Legitimate businesses in the areas that they control, they're taking money from that. They might put people in power in political positions or chiefs of police, and they're drawing from that. So they're more like a tick. They're biting into a lot of different things and drawing a little bit. Yeah, absolutely.

They're taxing the local businesses of that. But the human trafficking. Jason was talking about they're starting to see people coming across the border with color-coated armbands. Yeah. So, I mean, like, this is a fully structured, monetized approach on the other side of the border. Yeah. I mean, I think what you're saying is absolutely correct. That dissemination of information, hey, these are the guys you need to talk to.

And he just had fistfuls of these wristbands. Like, what the actual fuck is going on here? It's a legitimate business, right? They have an MBA in trafficking, whether it be drugs or humans. You know what I mean? And they know exactly how to manage it. They know how to leverage it. It's not fly-by-wire operation.

No, no, no. It's extremely intelligent. Yeah, high-level business. Yeah. And it's extremely weaved into our own. world. And so I'm not dumb. I'm and I tread lightly on talking about this

conversation, personally, it's not my expertise, so like I don't want to speak out of line. I think Jason is way more versed in this subject, but corruption is deep everywhere. I personally had relationships with some of the Mexican side of police who work with Border Patrol.

And every time you change, like leadership, it's not uncommon for them to get killed, right? And you're like, oh my God. You know, Because new leadership goes, you know, I'm going to fix things. I'm going to really put my foot down. And they show up and they start putting their foot down. And then it's like, well, now they're gone.

Because it doesn't matter if you have good intentions. The cartels do manage those border towns. And if you start causing a rift in their system, well, then fucking get the fuck out. We'll put someone else in. And someone who will actually take the money, right? You know, the plato or promul, right, the silver lead. You get to take the money or you get the lead, right? And so that is a very common thing that happens across the borders.

In law enforcement, in government officials, it doesn't matter. so much money and so much power involved in this in this trafficking and that's both trafficking human and drug trafficking and so how do you fix that that's a tough one i mean there's a lot of there's a lot of answers but it's just a tough one and and um this will continue to be a thing these this massive influx of individuals coming across even if it is to try and seek a better opportunity uh it's still funneled through the cartel yeah well especially if they go the illegal option which You know, I guess I'd never really thought about it. If you want to spend, who knows how much it would cost somebody to try to do it the legal route.

I'd say an average from 5,000 to 10,000, depending how long that takes in their background. So it just fluctuates. So not a small sum of money taking a long period of time. Or you could go and find, what sounds to be very well-known points of contact south of the border, pay a fraction of that. I mean, what you're not going to get from that is it sounds like really any help. They'll drop you off and be like, hey, head north. Worth, sucker. You're on your own. So you'll pay some around $1,500 to $2,000 initially. They could also later on tax you for more if they wanted to, right? So there's not unheard of for them to. Like you pay that money. They get you across them. I'm like, okay, if you want me to really take you across, I need another $2,000. Oh, call your people who you're going to, they'll pay it. Right? So ransom kind of thing. But you could pay less. You get across the border. Potentially. Potentially. But let's, so let's say you're successful. Let's say we have an A-B choice. And the A route is to do it legally and the cost and the time associated with that or the B-choice. is cost seems to be a quicker time.

The word is made it back. You might end up with an airplane ticket and a manila envelope and a cell phone. Yeah. What do you want to risk? I mean, look, if it's me, I'm going the easy route. And I think for most people, especially if they are in a tighter circumstance, they're going to go the easy route as well. I'm not going to blame somebody for making decisions off the, their station in life and the choices that they have in front of them. Yeah.

It's this thing where we can sit here and judge it and you know money money quarterback it all day long from a seat of You know of of of shit we're in America We're Americans like we don't know like we really don't know what hard struggle is unless you're really poor like my mom's era where they lives in a Adobe house or something like that You don't know what real struggle is so I can't sit here and judge them if they're coming across and they're willing they know the risk right Everyone knows the risk already and they're saying fuck it I'm gonna try Fuck they're in a position where they really want this. And so that's why they do it.

And it's fucked up. It's a fucked up thing because who's manipulating that or who's taking advantage of that is what's wrong. But we have no control over that, us in America. As a Border Trade agent, I have no control over why they came. All I know is my job is to, you know, a big part of our career field is the humanitarian side of it is hopefully to safeguard life. You know what I mean? If you're coming across or attempting to come across and you fall in that river and you're drowning, we're going to get to. you. Our boat crew is going to try and rescue you. There's tons of stories of agents doing CPR and

illegal immigrants right on the boat trying to save their life after they fall into the river. It's nonstop. That happens all day long. Like the Bore Star Mission, we go out there and search for people who have been stranded in the heat, you know. And so like all we can do is on our side is trying to safeguard life as much as possible. What do you would think, how would you, again, this goes back to the left or right narrative. It's, and I hate binary choices, you know, story A and story C, almost every time of my life, B has been the closer answer or version of the two. How would you describe the border accurately to somebody who's actually interested in what's going on down there?

Yeah, I'd say the border itself or what do we see currently on TV? Like, what do you... The actual reality. Because, again, what you see on TV depends on the channel you switch to. They'll take the same topic on a different network. Yeah, you have one border trade agent cutting the bar, one guy saying, oh, it's such a good thing he's doing in the other side goes like, can you believe they're helping? Border is totally locked down. No, border is totally wide open. Same topic, completely different

lens. I think everyone can agree that the border is not locked down. That's the truth. We get all, there's the truth is there will always be holes in the system. At one point, San Diego was considered the best, um, the best running border patrol sector, but they also have the highest amount of tunnels, you know what I mean? And who knows how much comes through those time? All the time. All the time. All the time. Right. So the point is like when you sit there and say like they're the best ran sector at one point. And then you're like, wait a minute, but are we accounting the tunnels? Right.

So when you say the border is secure, when people say that, like, okay, you can say that as well. And in the same conversation, say, no, it's not. So what is your definition of secure is really what it comes down to. Yours and mine might be different. Yeah. There will always be holes in our system. There will always be someone coming across. They're going to either climb it, go under it, go over it some way they're going to get here.

So no, the border will never be fully secured if your definition means nobody. coming across. That'll never happen. That's unrealistic. Too much of a vast space, too much, too many opportunities of like I said, overthrew it under it. It doesn't matter. So if your definition of secured no one coming across, that'll never be a thing, right? Because what happens in this argument is everyone has their idea of what a secure border looks like. Everyone has their idea of what humanitarian mission looks like. But the reality is we have to come to terms like, what is that definition? And once we identify that definition, like, then we can tell you, like, are we there, if we're not. The border's not secure. People are coming across. Even at a time when

the most strict policies are in place from Obama era to even Trump era, people still come across. You know what I mean? It's like you're not going to stop that from happening. And the cartel is always going to find a hole in our system so they can continue to make money off it. So there will never be a time where we're 100% secure unless we create this crazy system that is now North Korea. Right? Like it's not going to happen. We don't want that too as America, right?

So it comes down to what is their definition of secure and do we really want it to be that? Do I want it to be North Korea? Do I want it to be completely open borders? None of those. I want it somewhere in the middle. Yeah, again, the AC answer is not what anybody's looking for. Michael, I just thought of the best metaphor ever or visual description of the secureness of the southern border.

Go to Google image and see if you can find a picture of the fence, an imperial beach. Okay. That goes out into the water for at least 50 yards. Yeah. This is, I mean, I used to live right by the O Thai. reservoir and I'd go skydiving there all the time. I got rides back to the DZ from Border Patrol guys many times because I don't always land where I'm supposed to. And they'd crew, I'm like, hey, what's up, dude? And the fence goes, you know, the flight path goes out to the west towards the water.

And yep, there it is. You can see that as you're flying up. This is the southern border of the United States. This is an impenetrable barrier that nobody could ever go around, even though I'm sure there's sensors or cameras there or something. But that's literally, it extends into the Pacific Ocean by it's tough to say at the picture i'll call that 100 yards yeah that fence contiguously goes out towards the east and at the o-tie mountains it just stops yeah it's the same as el central sector i've actually gone there's a youtube clip of me going to to all central sector and right where the fence stops and then it goes an opening of about 20 20 yards maybe and then it starts going uphill and i'm like huh and you see you go go down you see foot traffic you see foot traffic

just like oh they just walked around but shocker yeah exactly but you know the cool thing about that is like, well, then that makes it really easy to identify those funnel points where we can manage. Yeah. And that's kind of what it's about, right? Like, so the argument with the, like, oh, build the wall is like, yeah, but the wall is not the only thing we have. It's part of caveat to the multi- echelons of system, sensors, cameras, so on and so forth, right? But when you bring it all together, that is the compound of trying to secure our borders, is multiple levels of defense, multiple levels of technology, of personnel, of tools, the wall. And that helps us funnel traffic in a way so it's more manageable. Overhead.

There you go. Yeah, I call it 100 yards. A good swimming motherfucker can really fool someone, dude. Imagine you swim under, hold your breath for about five seconds, come up and just act like you're fucking surfing. I know it happens all the time. You come up with a surfboard, they're like, oh, he's just a surfer. Why is he over there? And then you sit and just pay attention, like, I should watch him for a little bit. Yeah. What side of the fence that he starts surfing on? Nobody knows. I worked in Eagle Pass, Texas, and actually on the border, no shit is a golf course. And it wasn't uncommon for a dude to pull out of the fucking river, rolling

fucking rolling some clubs and acting like he's swinging and you're like, hold the fuck up, dude. Is this dude real or not? And so everyone's going to try. They're going to go over it under or through it. I don't even know if you'd have to swim on that one because it's vertical fencing.

I bet you could just like hold on to it and go around. Yeah, if that'd be obvious. But again, I mean, how many of the people coming across the Rio Grande can't swim? I mean, imagine the motivation behind that, right? We've talked about it. What is behind you that makes the risk, you know you can't swim, you know you have to cross the water, you probably have your family with you. What is it that's burning that fire behind you that would allow you to take that risk?

Because that's, I mean, it's life or death. Yeah, and Life Fest are probably an extra $1,000 if you want to buy it in water. You know what I mean? So it's another tack on for your safety. Oh, you want to buy a Life Fest? We have those too. Oh, you don't have the money? Well, then go.

We're going to go in the morning, whether you like it or not, we got to go. And then you're like, well, is it deep? Because I can't swim. Deep-ish. Yeah. Some parts. Figured the fuck out. Go.

Man. It is fucking insane. So Del Rio sector last year, I believe the number. And I could be off by a few. But in one year, they lost 257 personnel. Sorry, immigrants, migrants coming across are attempting to come across. Not half of those, but a good majority of those are drownings. And the other half of those are from the heat.

Exposure. Exposure. And so it's like, you're telling me, in one sector alone, you've lost 257. That's fucking. up. That's a hard number to hear. And imagine what other people don't think about is the border agents who come up on those bodies. You don't want to come up on that many dead bodies in your career, but in one year, how many did the Del Rio Sector see? And now imagine 20 years of this as an agent, you have to see these dead bodies, these mothers, these kids, these fathers.

And people always want to blame the borderline. Well, the borderline didn't do that. Right? Like, I didn't push anyone in the water. I actually was trying to save them. I didn't tell them to go walk and get lost, they ran because they were scared because what other things they're told about us is that we shoot them all. You have many times that I've posted things about the border patrol and people are like, well, why are the border patrol so quick to pull their gun? Are you fucking kidding me? The statistics of a border patrol agent actually having a lethal engagement is fucking the lowest of almost any law enforcement out there. It's actually a higher percentage of us getting assaulted by rock throwing, by whatever kind of assault. You can think of stabbing everything

you can think of. And so it's this really crazy thing. People believe that agents are out there pulling the gun out and saying, hey, fucking don't run. Boom, boom, boom. Like, it doesn't happen. It's, it's actually the, it's the opposite of that. But how do you, how do you get immigrants to be afraid of us? It demonize us. The South, you know, the cartels are demonizing us.

People, the, the coyotes are demonizing. They're going to beat you. They're going to rape you. Like, really? Dude, they think of us as the bad guy. And you start to see when they're like, really in trouble to call 911, who shows up, it's us. Yeah. And we're like, do you need water?

Yeah. Do you want my lunch? Go ahead. Eat by lunch. I don't give a shit. Because we know what our job is. It's a passive version of law enforcement. We wear the hat of the, you know, the Border Patrol.

We wear the hat of the humanitarian. We wear the hat of the crisis intervention guy because they just lost their wife, their kid, their husband. We wear the hat of the medical technician. We wear a hat for every situation, whatever it dictates. And so that's the hardest part of being in this law enforcement field is that there's so many different faces. you need to see and you don't know which one you're going to present you know it's like oh it's just a kid well then i got to be your dad almost for a moment you know what i mean i got to be human i got to make

sure they're comfortable with me and we've got to get them into the station check on them medically it's like the most complex like job career field that that you can think of and you're still considered a law enforcement officer but it's it's more of a humanitarian mission at the same time right we're trying to safeguard lives we're trying to we're trying to apprehend people coming across illegally and we also have to think about the the security of our country not let bad fuckers in you know so it's a fucking crazy like there's no one that has to deal with this shit dude like no one yeah it's the craziest career field that got demonized and then now that like we're at the book and people reading like well fuck i had no idea it's like yeah man because you listen to the

fucking news you listen to the news and they told you whatever they wanted to tell you because they used them as a scapegoat well a few years ago and i don't remember god maybe it was tied to the presidential election i remember this narrative coming out of children being put into cages and being separated from their family. Can you unpack that and where that even came from? No, so there's a truth to it. But when you say that, there's a truth to separating the kids from the adults because part of our job, when kids come across,

you have to identify who their parents are. And you don't do it in front of them. Whenever you apprehended any kind of, or apprehended, you kill or capture some kind of terrorist organization, right? Some terrorist overseas. You grab them and you separate all of them, and then you ask the questions for when you start doing interrogations. It's the same thing.

interrogating a group of individuals you separate everyone and you do one-on-one. The father who gets separated from the child to identify if it's actually their father, right? And when you can't identify it, well then you can't bring them back together because now you might have a trafficking case. And so that was a big part of what was happening. And there was a lot of undocumented unaccompanied minors coming across. Just solo. Just coming across. When I went there just the other day, there was like 120 of them in holding.

They just come across. They're below 18. They're, some of them were fucking babies with their brother or sister coming across. unaccompanied minors it's the weirdest fucking thing so then what do you do well they're putting them in different holding facilities the problem is that a border patrol station is not built to hold more than a hundred people and that's that's probably fucking more than than ever we started getting people the thousands the 2000s the 2000s the 3,000 and so they started creating these spaces like these these makeshift housing facilities yet they didn't have a plan for this and so when they

didn't have a plan they did a makeshift and then boom someone used it to fucking to shit all over them. I don't know much about the second part of that when I say all these missing kids. That's not the Border Patrol's job anyway. So it wasn't even us to be blamed for. If you wanted to put blame, which I don't want to put blame on anyone, I would say once the Border Patrol does the processing, they hand them to ICE. And ICE makes a determination where they're housed. So I don't know what ICE was housing them, but I know they didn't have any facilities to house them. So it was going to be in these, they're calling kids in cages. It's going to be a holding facility, the best that we possibly could for a makeshift moment

where you have an influx that we were never capable of. So that's what happened. And they definitely used it kind of like to sway votes and to make a president look bad. But the truth matter, it was a fucked up situation. Absolutely, dude. Like nobody wants to see people held like that. But what do you do?

They are here illegally. They broke the law. So at first, you have to determine that. Yes, they broke the law. Then, well, what do we do with them? I don't know. What do you do with fucking 2,000 people that just come across? Well, now you've got to find a way

provide them medical because that's what we do. You got to make sure you get them fed. You got to get them reasonable clothes because half of them were probably wet so they had to change clothes. You had to get feminine products for the women. You have to protect the kids from the adults who don't know them. And so there's this massive thing that has to happen. And it's not pretty when it happens and you're not prepared for it.

We have nothing in our system that is prepared for that kind of influx. And that's what happened. I can't even imagine trying to do that at scale. Do you know, so if they were able to positive, positively identify that they were family members, would they put them back together? Yeah, they always put them back together. And it's called a family unit. That's actually part of the processing. So once you identify who the family unit is, they usually keep family units. Well, they will keep family units together, whether they decide to deport them or keep them in our country because they're seeking asylum, it's, it determined is what they say. You know, if you're from Mexico, you can't seek asylum. Mexico is not a state that has considered that, right? Mexico is not a country that can consider seeking asylum because I didn't. know that yeah no it's not yeah the problem is they have a cartel problem yeah but that's not that's not going to be deemed to us and to the way I don't know who determines that but

currently it's not determined a place where they can seek asylum so if you're a mexican and you're a family unit most of the time all we're going to do is put the family unit together and ship right back to Mexico now if you're a family unit from el salvador I don't know if now it still is but at one point it was when I was working well now we can bring them on and seek an asylum and then let them see the immigration judge to make a determination on their case but Once you identify that it's a family, yeah, they keep the family together. Absolutely. It's so wild how that portion of keeping the family together and treating them as a family unit is not told.

Right. And I wasn't, and I'm to be honest, I wasn't like keeping a pulse on that narrative of kids being put into cages. But the way it was portrayed, or at least it seemed to me as if that was the end state, stripped away from the adults. And they're like never reconnected. Yeah, it's hard, man. I've made a career on messaging. I've made a career on like strategic communications, right? And it's kind of what I do on the side of things.

And it's crazy to see how easily our communities are manipulated just by, you know, a news clipping. It says kids are in cages, the Border Patrol. And then it's a guy in a blue uniform, which is customs or ice. You know what I'm saying? It's like it doesn't matter about what the faxes. It's just how they spend their messaging to manipulate people to believe the harshest, worst thing. It's super emotional too. That image.

It's all emotional. I mean, don't get me wrong. That image is a powerful one. I don't want to fucking see kids like that either. I don't either. Yeah. You know, but at the same time, like, well, what's the system we have in place? I don't know if the government doesn't like that.

We'll fucking build something that's better. Create something because we know the influx is going to happen. So what do you do? That's the hardest thing is like, well, what do you do? Who's going to fund that? We are. Okay, so what do we build? Do you build housing or do you build, is it a prison?

Did they break the law? Yes. So then how do you manage that? So it's a really interesting conversation of what do you do at that point. But it's not a Border Patrol conversation. So I really don't know the truth. You know, I'm just saying, speculating as someone who sees it doesn't like it either. We have to do something about that.

But it's not a Border Patrol argument that people were giving it to Border Patrol. They were using Border Patrol as a scapegoat, and that's unfair. We process, we hand off to ICE. Ice makes a determination. That's it. And then they wait for the immigration judge. It's wild how fast. That type of messaging can get out of control.

Another example I can think of directly to the Border Patrol was a guy riding the horse. Yeah, the whipping, the so-called whipping. And I don't ride horses for clarity. I've been around people. My ex-wife used to ride horses. And I've been there when they try to steer a horse and the things that they do to steer a horse. And I looked at that picture and as somebody who is an absolute rank amateur when it comes to understanding what's going on with horses, that person's not trying to whip. the human being.

Right. They're riding their fucking horse. Yeah. It was, and that was another one that was like a red star cluster that went out of control. That was probably the moment I knew I was going to write this book. Really? That moment.

Yeah. I was like, what the fuck is going on? Like, no one gets it. Like, they don't get it. And they're being manipulated and swayed to believe left to right.

I don't give a fuck what it is. You find that image, Michael? And it's wild. Again, another powerful image. But if you actually take a look at what's going on, you can instantly realize that. that the person is just trying to handle the

multi-hundred-pound, if not thousand-pound beast that they're right at. Absolutely. In the context of it, it was in the Del Rio sector, and you had a massive influx of Haitians coming across. It was just, it happens like that, these waves of different countries, right? We just had Venezuela, like just massive amounts. Well, at that time, it was the Haitians. And I think it was like 1,500 to fucking something,

but maybe 4,000 were right there at the border. There's images that are fucking incredible. The images, if you... I don't actually think that's it. It was near... Yeah, yeah, it's right there into the left. Bottom left, yeah. Bottom left.

That's the one where, that's the one where you have the clear image of him holding him. There's another image where you don't see the grasp, but he is grabbing him and you see the... What he's not doing is whipping him. Right, he's not whipping him. Exactly. But it was crazy. So the context of it was like, look, these border chains were standing there waiting for them to make a move. How the fuck is like 20, 30, 40, 50, I don't give a fuck 100, 200 are going to stop 4,000 Haitians, even just the 1,000, they're not.

They're not. And so they kind of created a position of... a posturing is what we do. We'll put our trucks there, we'll put our lights on, and we have guys like this who are mobile, and when these guys attempted to come across, they were going to apprehend him. A guy and a horse, can't jump off his fucking horse and do his job.

He stayed on his horse, he grabbed the individuals just so we can hold him while another agent could probably come and arrest him. And so, in the moments of him doing that, there's another shot where the horse covers the grasp of him grabbing the shirt, and it just sees the reins up in the air, which looks like maybe a whip, I guess.

Except it's not being held by the border patrol agent, he's not like coming down in a whipping motion. No way, shape, or form was it? There was actually a video, and I got to talk to the lady who was filming there at the time and caught the whole angle of it,

and there was at no point, undeniable, nothing of a whip. But no one ran with those images. No one ran with that image, right? That image that was actually used was the one that looked like a whip or could be perceived as it. And so that caught all the way up to the president,

and the president made a comment about it, which is like, hold up, man. Like, look, I don't want to shit on anyone, like, politically because I don't want to take that position. I don't want people to turn this off and say, oh, he's your left or right. No, no. I want to say, that is a hard position to take to just assume that's what it was and say something publicly about it. And it's like, you just shit on the Department of Homeland Security Border Patrol who is doing their best to uphold the policies that are put in by you guys. What the fuck?

And that was fucking hard for the morale of the Border Patrol to be like, man, who has our back? Who has our fucking back? Because right now nobody at the highest level was supporting and saying, hey, this is a tough job, a very complex job, and they did their best at that time. Here's the truth. 1,500 to 4,000 Haitians were coming across, and they did the best to apprehend those individuals. At no time was anyone using use of force that was undeniable or use of force that was not supposed to be used. And so there it is. So he's controlling his horse.

Yep, he's whipping around the reins in a way to let the horse no turn, right? And here's another thing I'll add to this too. Because people were going to say that we're viewing this from a one-sided perspective. If there was video and image of a Border Patrol agent whipping people, I'd crucify that motherfucker. Absolutely. You know what I mean? He should be fucking fired.

He should be held accountable. That's what I'm saying. Any law enforcement officer that steps outside of what he's supposed to be doing, fuck that guy. Sorry to say, that's how it should be. We should be held accountable for our actions. If you're holding in a position of authority and you fucking do something wrong, be held accountable for that motherfucker.

And that's, I would be the same. There's border things who've done dumb shit. man there's border trades who've been caught smuggling dope yeah there's board trains who've been doing uh the list goes on anything you think of that's fucking and they get fucking fired or they get prosecuted good they should be yeah and there's

a lot of motherfuckers who are out there trying to do the right thing and then you got the world shitting on them and it's fucking frustrating that's exactly why I decided to write the book I said no I'm going to write this book I'm going to tell the story humanize these motherfucking brothers and sisters who out there fucking serving an impossible mission

an impossible mission and uh They're getting no support in the sense. And so, you know, I felt like my duty was to do that now. Sounds like you grew up knowing you wanted to be a Border Patrol agent. Absolutely not. I'm joking. Absolutely not. I used to go to Mexico all the time.

And, you know, we used to go hang out in Rosarydo and Encinanoa as a family. And I didn't really, I never even, I'm Mexican. I'm half Mexican, half Puerto Rican. I never put into the context of it because I am privileged, man. You know what I mean? I lived in L.A. my parents, you know, a Mexican, Puerto Rican, but everyone in my area was Mexican or Hispanic of some sort. And so I didn't really put two and two together about, where did my family come from?

You know what I mean? Until I got older and I asked my mom about it. You know, I talk about it in the book about it. This whole thing is, it's very interesting to choose that career field was one inspired by a late Ranger buddy of mine who was killed in combat. And he, before he died years prior, we talked about the border shows because that's what you wanted to do. And I was like, oh, fuck, that's interesting. You're Mexican. Why would you do that?

That sounds weird. And he enlightened me on it, right? And explained it to me. And I said, you know what? That actually sounds like a fucking dope job. Got out of the military and applied, you know. And I found myself trying to get into the special operations teams because I wanted to continue to do special operations type work.

And, you know, I was very honored to be there. And I was blessed. And it was just like such a culture shock of learning and understanding. And through that, I learned more about why it's an important job. I learned why there's so many Hispanics that are agents. You know what I mean? It's like 70% in agents. Quite frankly, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And I asked, I even asked one of my good buddies. He's one of the FSOs or SOSs, which is one of the supervisors over in El Central. No, Yuma. And I said, you know, he was the first generation. I said, how do you feel about the question people ask me, like, how could you do this to your, you know, how can you do that to your people and turn back? He goes, it's a hard question to answer. Like, everyone's going to have a different answer for it.

But the fact is like, we're Americans and I want to protect America. And I want to, you know, the argument of like, I want to make sure America stays America, like this foundational, I guess, I guess country's kind of culture, right, of the home of opportunity. And if you don't, if you don't invest into that idea, well, then you lose what it is and what his family came here to do. His dad, who is Mexican, who came across legally, did it the right way, right? He said, son, do the job. Just do it right. You know what I mean?

Do it right. Do the job right. because there's a right way and a wrong way to do this job as well. You know, do it with dignity. I mean, this country, you know, everything that is supposed to stand for and fuck, that can be an argument in and of itself these days. Immigration is a part of that. Regardless of what side you land and what you think the country should stand for, we're a country of immigrants. Absolutely.

It's built into our fabric. But I just don't see how the country survives for a long period of time if the faucet is completely on without any metrics or controls. Yeah. You know, you have to have immigration, but you can't just say, hey, open door policy, do your best. Yeah, you have to have immigration, but you also have to have assimilation. They also have to assimilate to the countries. Like I said, it's hard to say the culture because we all have our culture. You have yours.

I have mine. But they have to understand what the foundational beliefs of what this country stands for, or almost what the American flag stands for, like, the land of free, the land of free speech, the land of opportunity. And a lot of immigrants actually believe in that. A lot of immigrants are more so, you know, the ones that say, man, this country has given me everything. Because they come from nothing and they get here and like, fuck, there's a lot of opportunity here. And they raise their kids to believe in that. Some of the most patriotic people I've ever met are first generation immigrants.

Absolutely. Who went through the appropriate channels. They probably know more about this country than people born and raised here multiple generations in. Absolutely. They had to study to take the test. they go, the day that they get their citizenship is like a defining chapter in their life.

Yes. And then you got other motherfuckers born in Beverly Hills punching people in the face because they're wearing an American flag headband. Which I don't know if that's ever happened and I don't know why that's what came to mind but that's what I went where.

I'm sure it's happened. I'm sure. Yeah, they demonize America from like this position. It's a very weird position of like you know America has been bad like the context man. Yeah, all countries go through shit, man.

you know what I mean? But talk to the first generation migrant who's developed a business here, who got his education here, whose family's thriving. They're always going to be like, man, America gave me good things. Talk to some of the interpreters that we worked with overseas that came to this country and were able to bring their families. They will knock a motherfucker down who's talking shit about the U.S. Yeah. It's a fascinating thing that we're in a time like that. And I guess that's what I was saying is that we have to be careful of just turning on that faucets so much so that it dilutes, you know, the foundation and ideologies of America and what, you know, these first, these first generation immigrants came here for. Opportunity. The assimilation piece is a tough conversation to have.

People get really edgy about that. They do. I mean, I've gotten shit on my whole life about this, dude. I agree with you. It's, I mean, if you want to come to this country, uh, Let's use Europe as an example. Yeah. Because there's been some really violent shit that has happened in sections of specifically England, where there are, and I say this with no level of judgment, it just is what it is.

There are very large sections of that city that have people who have immigrated and have made no attempt to assimilate into the culture. So it's almost a country inside of a country. And some of the violence and terrorist attacks and the planning that has happened in those areas, is, let alone the assimilation piece, but what has been allowed to, I guess from the terrorist planning perspective, I will use the term fester. I don't know if any of that would have been possible if assimilation would have been promoted more or valued more. Because I don't think that the United States will survive if it just becomes pockets of other countries that, you know, I completely, you and I both, you know, it's interesting.

Veterans Day is just around the corner. Actually, one of the things that I hate that I hear people, I signed a check for an unknown value up to it, including my life. It's like, hey, would you consider shutting the fuck up? That's funny. However, you and I did both, when I signed, first I don't even think it was a dotted line. I think it was an actual contiguous line that I signed my name on. You know what I mean?

I wanted to do that, and I didn't realize at the age of 17 and 18, I wouldn't have been able to describe the deeper thoughts and the reasons why, But I did want to fight for what I believed in and what I value. And I don't know the values of this country, although I'll be the first to admit our country is not perfect. We've had some stumbles along the way. And I think the best way to continue to evolve is one, don't talk up. I mean, people want to avoid talking about the missteps. Like, no, no, no, let's talk about that shit a lot.

So we can learn from it and move on. But those values of what this country stands for, if we can't rally people around that, And then we have a policy of people can come from wherever and they start creating these really large pockets that are existing inside of that and have no desire to assimilate in any way. I don't know where that leaves us in the long run. Right. That means it's like it's like diluting the water essentially that we lose exactly the foundation of who we are. It gets scary. It gets scary.

My family assimilated, right? So a part of this is what people used to call me like coconut, right? And so in some groups of friends, like I said before, yeah, I'm browned on the outside, but white on the inside because I don't speak Spanish fluently. I am glad you use that term. I am not going to use that term. Michael don't use that term. Yeah, it's something that someone like me who's Mexican and Puerto Rican, right, but in L.A. I was considered more, I'm just Mexican because there's not a lot of Puerto Ricans at the time. And when you're around your Mexican friends and you don't speak Spanish, you're a coconut to them, right?

You're like, oh, you're a white boy. Dude, you're just brown skin. And you're like, what the fuck? Like dog, my parents both speak Spanish to themselves in our household. They just didn't teach us Spanish because my brother had trouble learning both. And he started speaking in a later age and like, you know what? Fuck that. We're going to teach me English first and you can learn Spanish down the way.

We never did. Life got busy. Both parents worked. You know what I mean? We just did our thing. And so I grew up not knowing Spanish very well compared to my friends. And so in my Hispanic friends, I'm the white guy. I'm a white wash, right?

But to my white friends, I'm the beaner. And so you're like, motherfucker, where the fuck do I fit in, dog? because I'm just to me, I don't think like that. I grew up in LA. There's every fucking race, color, everything you can think of. So it wasn't a thing for me until people made it a thing.

And then I was like, no, I'm an athlete. That's what I think I am. You know, I just play sports and I fucking, and I have a good time of my life. So to have to try and identify with something was tough as a kid because I'm like, well, fuck all this. Fuck all.

Like, that conversation is weird to me. I don't even give a fuck about it. I just want to play sports and just be a good person. And that continued to follow me throughout my life. When you get into the military, everything's a race in the military. because that's a joke. But it doesn't matter really, right?

When you go to combat, like, all those jokes are just how we communicate in his brotherhood. And then we go to war and no one gives a fuck. And so it was like, okay, cool. I fit in a lot better in the military because no one really gave a fuck about that. Then I get into the Border Patrol. And they go, hey, Vargas, give us all. Like, why don't you speak Spanish? And I'm like, I don't know, man.

I don't fucking speak Spanish. I don't know, dude. You know what I mean? Like, I don't fucking know. And I'm trying here, bro. I'm trying. You know, I can order a good fucking meal in Spanish. Dondea is a bibliotechre.

There you go. So, like, it's a really weird thing is, yeah, my parents decided to assimilate, right? And they wanted us to be as American, you know what I mean? And they were proud of that. My Puerto Rican father doesn't know anything better besides being American, right? Because he's Puerto Rican. He doesn't have the same, he didn't have the same issues as someone who was Mexican, like my mother, second generation Mexican, trying to figure that out, you know, what her mother came across for.

So they didn't really have the same idea of that, but my father was just American patriot. my mother she never really talked about patriotism she just talked about like just just do good be a good person you know what I mean and so like I grew up and like I had the patriotism of a father who was a Marine

he was always like America you know I'm like all right cool man and Marine I'm like oh God stop that shit you know Marines and then as I got older and I became like fuck what I'm gonna do myself and I joined the military that's when I started like 9-11 I think all of us were like

oh fuck this made me more patriotic to see like fuck that dude that's fucked up something to come to our country and do that to us. And so I was ready to serve as soon as I could. You know, I did some military. I did some baseball for a while and then I joined the military. But as soon as I signed that dotted line, you know what I mean? I was like, fuck yeah, this country's great.

And the more I served, the more I started to really believe in like, man, we do have something really special because you go overseas. You go to Afghanistan. You're like, fuck, we're very lucky to be here. You know, very lucky to be an American. And then how can I do the same thing I did overseas, but not do that in my country? and do that in our country. How can I protect our country but on our own soil where I don't have to be gone from my kids

where I could actually try and do good on our soil but be home? The Border Patrol. It was the next best step. Besides FBI, I didn't have a fucking, you know, I didn't have any of those three-letter agents that was pretty dope. I didn't have a segue into those.

So for me it was Border Patrol. It was the best place I can still do what I did in the military on our own soil and protect from terrorist potential threats. And so that's why I kind of was more inspired to do that. It's one of the toughest things for me to, I guess, rationalize would be the word. We're living in a time right now where the term patriotism or people overtly expressing being proud of being from this country

in many circles, I'm not going to say all, but in many circles there's a negative connotation associated with that. Oh, I'm scared to mention it too much in my world, right? Because Hollywood... The Hollywood world? Yeah, the Hollywood space, man. I have to tread very lightly because, look, if I don't care if you're extremely liberal, we can have a cool conversation no matter what.

Like, I can get along with everybody. But if me saying, like, I'm an American veteran and I love my flag, offends you, like, I don't know how else to say that that's going to be a softer blow. You know what I mean? Because it's just so true to me. Yeah. To my reality, it's like, I love our flag. I love what it stands for.

I love our national anthem. Actually, I'm at a weird age now when I hear the national anthem. I get a little emotional because I think I put everything into perspective. damn you know what I mean and so I have to fight back tears when I hear it yeah it dude it's it's just started happening to me more recently and I'm sitting there just like wow this is a very special thing to me maybe because it's under attack right I even more so I'm very passionate about it but if I said that too much of my social media I definitely lose some of my friends not lose but they'd probably like I don't want to see that so much and they'd probably unfollow

there might be a potential uh job opportunity lost because I'm I'm I'm just a page Patriot, in a sense, and that word might scare people. And I have to try that. Well, it's been hijacked. Yeah. No, absolutely. That's what it is. I mean, if you look at what happened in January 6th.

Yeah. That was all, well, I don't want to use that word. It's a little bit too broad. For most of the people there, and I'm basing this off just what I've seen, and I listen to people when they talk. Yeah. They wanted to be there because they considered themselves to be a patriot. Right.

And this is where words start getting really. Yeah. It becomes, you start paint with a broom. So if people see that and that, well, if that's what a patriot is and you say, I'm patriotic because I love my flag, I'm like, oh, fuck, you're one of them. And they're thinking that you were, you know, jamming up your mags and getting your ballistic helmet that you were wearing fucking backwards, storming the Capitol. Yeah. You know. It's really tough.

It's really tough to, like, society is strange right now. Like, I don't want to be like, I'm not the guy as like, I'm unapologetically American or something like that. I don't present like that. You know what I mean? I raise my household the way I do because of the things that I've experienced. And I'm even more proud of this country because of those things I experienced. And so I feel maybe that gives me a little bit of, I guess, a past to be able to be so expressive about it. But genuinely writing this book, I was like, okay, I might be writing my ticket in Hollywood being done for now.

You know, I might have to find a new career. And if so, okay. I'm okay with it but I hate the fact that I had to feel that way it's fucking weird you know what I mean it is weird yeah you are you're willingly governing yourself

yeah yeah and it's odd because you're doing that because you recognize the potential consequences of what other people may think of you yeah and it's an inability to express yourself in the way that you truly should be able to which would honor

the freedoms of this country that you have to be cautious because some of those freedoms are far less free than people think in the modern era. Yeah. And some of our friends, and I'm not specifically identifying anyone, but I'm saying some of our friends would look at me and think that that's a weak choice, you know, and I have to also face that. Yeah, but you have to make the choices for you and your life. Right. You know what I mean? Right.

But it's funny to me that people would say that's weak, and I would say, I know what I'm doing. Yeah. You know? And the reasons I feel like there has to be someone. willing to have the dialogue in the center and being able to have educational dialogue that creates discussion because that's valuable and not come at it from an emotional, angry standpoint and saying, well, fuck you, here's my stance. Yeah.

It's more from the sense, like, well, here's my truth and here's the education behind that truth. What's your side of the discussion? And let's keep talking. That's the position I'm taken. That's what I've chose to. Even anyone in Hollywood, it probably says, like, man, I think, well, cool, let's have a discussion on.

Let's talk. I've sat there in a group of friends and people who don't believe in everything I've done. and we talk about it. And I can do that. I've taken that position. And in that position, I can't come off as this like, well, fuck your ideas, here's mine,

because it shuts off all fucking necessary dialogue. I have to come out of a position and be like, cool, I hear you. And here's my side of it. And that, to me, is what's the most valuable position to take if we really want to see some kind of change. If we really want to affect

any kind of ripple effect of something, it has to be a part of a discussion that's open. Because outside of that, then it's just an argument. And fucking no one's, listening. I mean, my personal opinion is that you can be violently patriotic, but you don't have to be a billboard. Yeah. I'll give you two examples of vehicles that I have seen here in Calispell. Michael, you've probably seen these two. A truck that is lifted to a degree that I don't know how

they get into it or what it's lifted for, and I'd be fascinated to see the gas mileage. On the back of this truck is generally two massive Trump flags. Yeah. And I'm sure I'm not looking forward to 2024. Let me just tell you. I know, dude. It just, I was hoping we'd get like a two-year reprieve from the political cycle. I think we got about seven days before the, you know, the 2020 election and we're rolling into 2024. One of the flags near the 2020 election was Trump shirtless. It was basically Rambo with the M60 ammo. Oh, yeah, I've seen it. Yes. And the other one was a huge American flag. And the entire back window is covered in of menagerie of

don't tread on me come take it from my cold dead hands punish your skull and Trump stuff have you seen this vehicle Michael or versions of it I've seen version he's like yeah I parked it in the back I mean I'm at the gas station

a week ago and I'm filling up my gas tank and there is a man who I can only describe as look like 30 pounds of shit in a five pound bag just blasting out fucking everywhere. Like first of,

why are you wearing clothes so much smaller than your obvious body style? Yeah. You're shaped like a fucking pear. Go get some pear-shaped clothes. So he's, he's, he's pumping his gas.

And I haven't, this ties in, I guess, a little bit. But he's pumping his gas and just moving his arm to do so, his entire back fucking 40 acres is exposed. And I see his belt. And he's wearing a leather belt that just says Trump in old English riding that goes all the way around the belt. And that's kind of what I imagine is the dude.

I've never seen the guy driving that big truck. But I'll just say he's probably a dude with a red hat that says something ridiculous on it. And he's got the Trump belt and probably crocs on. So the other side of that is, Michael, let me know if you've seen this one. There's a Prius that rolls around up here. And let's just say the coexist sticker is all over that motherfucker. Yes. And versions of that.

And what does it? Make love, not war. And it doesn't, it's actually much more aggressive. So it's like the left wing version of the Trump Mobile. Yeah. And I imagine them both for whatever reason, you know, they obviously violently believe what they believe. And they want to be a poster child and a megaphone. But like you're saying, to actually have a conversation.

with somebody, you have to be able to listen. You have to be able to be nuanced and objectively talk through things. This is one I saw. God damn you, Michael. Forgiven by the blood of Jesus. I mean, that's, you know, believe what you believe. But then he's got. Yep.

Fuck Biden, straight, Christian, conservative. Howless may offend you today. We are the people. God. You know, we're going to start a political campaign that outlaws all bumper sickers. But let's say they both, they both pull up into a parking lot. what are the odds of them, or they were forced to sit down at a dinner table together.

I bet you they couldn't even make it out of their vehicles into the front door of an establishment to sit down and have a conversation because they would fucking start screaming at each other in the parking lot. And that gets us absolutely nowhere. To me, like, I am so incredibly thankful of the opportunities that this country provides

not at an equal level to everybody, and I understand that. And there are socioeconomic differences for sure. And all of that shit should be addressed. And we should do the best thing. I believe in equality of opportunity, not outcome. But we should do everything we can to provide equal opportunity for as many people as possible. I just feel like the best way to honor those freedoms and the privileges that we had the opportunity to pursue in the military or Border Patrol is to not scream at the top of your lungs to the point where you turn everybody.

off. It's the ability to take the tone of voice and sit down and have that conversation and listen and maybe find, here's a controversial fucking topic, some middle ground. Let's find areas where maybe we agree as opposed to sitting there yelling at just that vehicle analogy, one, they probably would fucking drive into each other because they would visually identify themselves as enemies. Yeah, they're at war with each other. Yeah. But even though they're both Americans and arguing over different sectors of the same political system, if they'd did park to each other. Definitely something's either getting ripped off a car or spit on or

you know, the fucking Trump pair might take a deuce on the guy's dashboard, whatever it may be. And then they wouldn't be able to have a conversation because they're so blinded by their patriotism. And again, live your life how you want, be how you want. But if we want to evolve as a society, it's in the middle ground between those two extremist vehicles, not riding in the back with their shirt off, screaming at people. It's a it's I find it very interesting how emotionally invested people are into topics that they have no control over, right? And they allow it to really control their emotions. And they're screaming at the top of the lungs with this expression, right? However they want to express it, they scream at the top of the lungs, but it makes no movement in the needle of change.

Zero. I would say, if anything, it moves it backwards. Yeah, I agree. And that's why it's like if you're in a position that has any kind of. social like influence like you have to watch yourself too like guys like you who have these massive podcasts guys like me who are in this position we have to be very cautious about how we use our messaging and is it an emotional rant that has no leverage that has no value that really moves no needle and exactly like what are you trying to get at are you trying to really help the situation

are you just trying to create more anger more frustration more emotions and i just refuse to do that like it's just to me makes no sense you know what i mean i want to if i really want to see a change for kids' sake for their kids, right, for my potential future grandkids down the road long time from now, you know what I mean? Well, then we have to really start addressing these things in a manageable way, right? In a mature way, in an educational way. And people aren't using their social media. People aren't using their forms of expression this way.

And it's fucking creating mass division. I heard it put it, I heard it put perfectly yesterday. There are so many people out there with a cauldron of opinions and a teaspoon of knowledge whereas you should be shooting for a cauldron of knowledge and a teaspoon of opinions. Yes. We would be so much better off. I stole that directly from guys talking to yesterday. Yeah, no, I love it.

And it's funny is we have to learn how to receive information. We're not good at it, right? There's too much information. There's so much. Well, the tools that people are being bombarded, why? I don't think the human brain is actually able to tolerate or compensate for the bombardment of information that we are on the receiving end. There's something interesting about guys like me and you who have been able to. Why is that?

I just turn it off. Right. Well, I emotionally am not connected to it. Right? Like emotionally, I am not connected to. I refuse to have an emotional response to what I see on a social media platform. But I have enough experience in my life to realize more often than not, the first thing being reported is the least accurate. People want to just, they want to jump from.

From zero knowledge to full conclusion. Right. And I mean, don't get me wrong. I've done that in my life. Yeah. And every fucking time it was, I was galactically wrong. Right. So to me, I'm a little bit more of, hey, let's do a little research.

Let's do this. Yeah. Well, that's take a breath. I think that we have this wealth of experience. You know what I mean? And we've probably fucked that up a few times. And now we're sitting here like, yeah, I don't want to look stupid anymore. I want to do it right.

I want to actually pay attention. And I want to not be emotionally invested to any of these topics. You know, my wife who, you know, very sheltered woman, you know what I mean? I love her to death. But she sees all the stuff going on. She goes, I'm scared.

I'm scared. I'm not scared. I'm just watching. I'm paying attention. I'm always prepared for the worst. But I'm just watching. I was doing a speech in New York not too long ago. And at the end of it, it was a fundraising speech. And it was a fundraising dinner.

I was the speaker at the end of the dinner. And the Q&A is my favorite portion I do it, any public speaking? I like that too. One, it's fascinating. And two, people's willingness to ask completely socially unacceptable questions fascinates me.

I'll be up there in front of a couple of people. Like, did you just fucking ask me that? Yeah. Okay, let's get into it. And I'll figure out a creative way to answer any question. But it was around, the question was around,

how do you manage all of this negative information that is constantly coming in? And it truly, and people don't have to take my word. for it, get a piece of paper out, draw a column, positive and negative, turn it to any media channel you want to, and just put a tick in each one of those when any on-air personality starts discussing a story or things that are presented to. What you're going to find is it's overwhelmingly negative. Yeah. And if you're not cautious with that, it can create a worldview or a view

of where you may live. You know, I have people reaching out to me, literally this is an email I got last week. And I'm pretty sure the person said it was in Arkansas. But If not Arkansas, it was another flyover state. And I don't mean that negatively. It's just I don't often stop in those states because I don't know what is a value in North Dakota. I'm being honest. I'm sure there's a lot of value. I've never spent a lot of time there.

And he's asking me, he's like, hey, man, I live in a really small town, but I'm worried about sleeper cells here in my small town. I'm like, okay. Initially, I'm sitting there. I'm starting to chuckle. I mean, there's the statistical likelihood that that's happening there. But I also can understand the leap and logic, which probably wasn't a galactic leap. It was this little bread come step of the information coming in is just being bombarded. And my answer to the person at the speech was, you have to remember that these tools that we are fortunate to have are voluntary.

And the input of information is going to inform the output. So what you take in is going to inform your behaviors and your thoughts and all these things associated. And I'm not saying check out so you don't know what's going on in the world. But I don't know if as a human species our brain is designed to receive. mostly negative information. I mean, how could that not frame your worldview of this guy is constantly falling? Because, you know, statistically, and I threw this into my answer with him as well, as a human species right now in the moment that you and I are sitting here, it's the safest time ever to be alive as a human being. And 30 years ago, if there was an earthquake in Indonesia that killed 5,000 people, that's horrendous.

And the loss of life is catastrophic. But you and I wouldn't know about it within 30 seconds. Yeah. And it's, I don't think, you know, from a violence perspective, statistically the safest time, longevity perspective, health perspective, all of these things are largely net improved. But I think people can easily feel like the world is crashing down around them. Yeah, it's, you know, there's phenomenon's like suicide contagion, right? There's phenomena. It's really, it's like, it's like negative psychology is never good for anybody.

And we're essentially just handing people negative psychology daily. If you download a news app, it's all negative. You could do the same drill. You could just fire it up and just negative, negative, negative, negative, negative. You know how many actors I've seen? People I don't even fucking know, but they say, actor from this show died. And it happens on my phone all day long. I'm sitting like, fuck, I'm going to die soon.

I'm an actor. Are we all just getting taken out by fucking something? What the fuck's going on? I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I might. No, but it's this really interesting thing that, I guess, it's kind of like a case study for me and my wife watching her how she handles everything is so.

like terrified. She said, don't be. If I'm nervous, then you should probably get nervous, but like, let's just keep going. And for some reason, I could read all the information. I could see it on. Just like, okay, I compartmentalized to the point of like, can I control it? No. What can I control myself? Let's continue. You know, and I kind of keep that, but she's not good at that. She didn't go through the selection processes that we did. No, no, no. Well, I look back at it. A lot of it is, it's, I look back at special operations. It's nonlinear problem solving. Yeah. Here's a really complex problem.

You're going to get halfway through it and we're going to change some variables and then you're going to have to solve for a different equation. Yeah. But nothing in that is actually positively impacted by your emotions. So I think back at a lot of the training, it's not trying to turn you into an autonomous robot. It's just trying to get you to a place where you realize that objectively thinking through things is much more valuable than becoming emotionally attached to them. Yeah. And I actually haven't really seen emotional attachment to outcome ever happen in a positive. manner.

Yeah. No, absolutely. But I've seen it swing the other direction where it just goes catastrophically wrong and it falls apart. It's, it, the ability to not become emotionally attached to some of these things, I think does go back to the training pipelines that we went through. Yeah. And that's, I think that's why guys like us can see this and be like, okay, I'm not fearmongering.

I'm not going to allow it to fearmonger myself, you know what I mean? Because that's what happens. And it's a crazy thing. And I think that's why when I wrote the book, people were reading it now, like, oh, I didn't think about all that. I'm like, yeah, I guess I see it from a different perspective because I'm not scared of it and I'm not uncomfortable with it. It's just the situation we have and how do we fix it? You know what I mean?

How do we problem solve that? Yeah. How did you find your way into the military? I was in Kentucky playing baseball for a college called Abrescia University. It was an NAA college. I had a full ride to. And I became academically ineligible. That's what I'm talking about.

You know. My strategy in high school, which, by the way, is the highest level of the education that I have, was one semester on academic probation and then one off and then just right back onto it. I feel like that's what my son's trying to do with me right now. I'm like, fuck, dude. Work hard enough to get off academic probation

and then let's coast a bit. So I did everything I could to take the easiest fucking class as possible just so I can have a 2.0 to play baseball. Like that's what I did my whole, like my two years of junior college was like just find a way to get through to get to baseball.

So that's why I did theater classes, right? It paid off eventually. But yeah, and so I lost my full ride. I didn't want to go home. to California, right, to L.A. And because I was just, like, kind of embarrassed of the whole thing. And I got a job at Texas Roadhouse. And, you know, when I was done with our shifts, we all walked over to the Buffalo

Wild Wings and had a beer. And one of these nights, I was kind of, it's coming like six months after, like, losing everything. And I'm just sitting in this, my little, I had an apartment that used to be a brothel in Kentucky, you know, and it's a little room that paid, I think 350 bucks a month. I paid for everything. And I had a bed and no shower curtain. Like, it was just like slum living it, you know?

And I'm sitting there like, fuck this. What am I doing? You know? Inflatable couch. Yeah, yeah. I made friends with a guy at a GNC who gave me the return protein, so that was part of my food. And I made friends with the Frida-Lay guy, so he gave me cheese and beef jerky. So, you know, I was living it up, you know.

I usually just waited to eat when I got to work at Tex Roadhouse, and I fucking, you know, scarf down whatever I could there. Returned protein. Yeah, yeah. So if you return your protein and say you didn't like it, they'd just discard it. So he'd save it for me, and I'd have, you know, milk, I made protein shakes all the time. Your comfort level with risk is obviously higher than my own because I would not. not eat that shit. I was a starving kid.

And so we went to the Buffalo Wild Wings one day after work. And I've told the story a few times and so the way it goes is that I was sitting there hanging out with a guy from the Navy who used to be in the Navy. He's a now a cook at Texas Roadhouse. There was Jim Daniels.

It was a fucking awesome dude. And we're talking about his little stories. I'm like, oh, he's got some cool fucking stories in the Navy, his time in the Navy. And we're watching the Marine putting the American flag over the statue of Saddam. Remember that image and they pulled the statue down? Well, at the time they were interviewing his family

and his family was all fucking proud of him, and they're like super happy. And at that point in my life, I was kind of like, man, too embarrassed to face my family because I just fucking lost everything and I'm trying to figure it out. I'm trying to figure it out, dude, I'm going to figure it out, you know? And I just kind of felt like, fuck.

I have a daughter who was just born and I don't have the money to go fly and see her. I'd have no money. I'm calling my mom like, can you bring her diapers? Can you bring her? You know what I mean? I lost the dream of being a baseball player, which I've done since I was.

four. I still to the day, you know, just absolutely love the sport. And it's just something that's just been ingrained in my soul. And I lost it because I'm a fucking moron, you know, and I don't feel like my family has ever been that proud of me when I saw that kid's family just super, like proud of him crying and stuff. And I was like, fuck, man, what can I do that can fix that? And it was just like, well, fuck it. Just join. Like, what are you doing? Just join. And you can fulfill all those with one fucking signature, right? I can now have money for my daughter. I could go to war and serve this country and make my family proud. And if I die and then, I think everyone's still proud and my daughter has money.

So let's fucking do it. You got some insurance to go with it? Yeah, yeah. So it just kind of fulfilled a lot of those questions and kind of the void that I had going on in my life. It was a hard transition to leave baseball. It was, you know, I got two credit cards out and maxed them out and just drank my fucking life away until it was time to go on to that fucking bus. You know what I mean? Because I was like, I'm probably going to die.

It's okay. You know what I was just, you know, I lost the one thing I really loved. So I didn't know what was next. And so joining the military was the next best thing. And then walk me through your career, the military career. Yeah, I went to, you know. Or experience. Yeah.

I was actively trying to change how I talk about time in the military from career to experience. My experience. I like that. Well, I think it, I have no idea, not a doctor or scientist for anybody out there. Even the way, the way that we talk to ourselves, I think is super important. And how many people do you know whose entire identity is hooked into what they used to do? Yeah. I think it will, for me at least, I think there's a very positive association with talking about my military experience as opposed to using the term military career. Yeah. Just in the way that I speak about it.

Yeah. And I love that. And I have a quote that I use that kind of keeps me grounded in that same ideology. But, you know, I joined with 11 Bravo infantry because I watched, you know, Black Hawk down and I really wanted to see if I had the balls to go through something like that. I kind of was like, man, that's a fucking, that's some tough shit. I want to see if I can do that. So I joined infantry immediately. Like, that's what I wanted. But I joined with the Ranger contract. So it's an option 40 with called 11X, right?

So they don't give you the identifier of Bravo yet. It's going to be X because it could be Charlie or Bravo, whatever. And so I go through the whole basic training. Not sure if I was going to be good at it or not. And it comes to weeks later, I start to realize like, okay, I kind of have a, I figured this out. I know how to be a good team leader. You know, they put me in a squad leader and shit like that. You know, and I kind of took to it.

You know, I've realized that I was more athletic than the average bear. You know, I started like physically was like, oh, this isn't as challenging as I thought. And it kind of continued. I went to airborne and got through that, which I fucking hated. I hated everything about airborne. I thought it was fucking annoying. As did I. Yeah.

And then I went to RIP. And RIP was kind of like the first time of like, well, let's see if you got it, dude. You know what I mean? Let's see if you can handle it. You know, went through the whole RIP's experience and learned a lot about myself. Got through that. Went to Ranger Battalion. And before you get to Ranger Battalion, you go to like, I don't know what it's called anymore,

but it's essentially it's like in processing of the base. and so it's like a week and a half in processing and you're getting all your stuff done and then you're also getting your uniforms and then you're going to get to your unit. During that time, they were dealing with the whole Tillman incident. Pat Tillman was killed. And so we had our DCUs

and we were getting ready to deploy within a week of getting to it, but they decided maybe it wasn't a good time let's just go ahead and keep you guys back. And so when we got to actual battalion, we were dealing with that whole ordeal and it was kind of an eye open and like, holy fuck man, Pat Tillman was fucking killed.

And then you find out while we're there is when it all got exposed, right? And we're like, oh shit, this is kind of crazy. And so I got to see all that. And it was in my company. I was in first and he was in second between when that happened. And so when the company came back, you know, redeployed from Afghanistan at the time, you know, we kind of dealt with all the aftermath of that. And within 35 days, 40 days after that, boom, I'm in Afghanistan.

And so it was kind of a whirlwind of like shit. You know, I wasn't with my baby's mom. And so I'm trying to fix that because I want to raise my daughter. But I'm getting ready to deploy. So I'm like, we'll just stay there. We'll figure it out after. and then I get deployed. And I get deployed as a Gustav ammo bearer.

You know, I'm a Gustav A.B. I'm on the weapons. At the time, it's called an AT team. And then eventually integrated with the weapons. And then eventually I got pulled into the line for the next deployment to Iraq. And so it was, we were in Bargroom and Salerno areas of Afghanistan. And then the next deployment, you know, six months after coming home, which I thought, like, man, special option is going to be good. I'm going to be home more for my kid.

I was like, what? Half the time I'm sitting there sleeping there at the battalion because we had training in the morning. You know what the fuck just happened here? So then we go to Mosul. My now wife is pregnant with our second kid. And, you know, at the time I'm kind of like trying to figure out myself of like what am I going to do with my career. I lost a friend to training. He was killed during a training exercise that just went horribly wrong.

And it kind of, it was like, oh shit, man. This is fucking kind of wild. You know, it was the first time I lost someone in the military. and wasn't sure I was going to feel about it, but it was someone who was real close to me, so it kind of really fucking, like, hit me in a way that I didn't expect. And then we go to Muzul.

We had a very good deployment, very active, you know, a lot of Purple Hearts were giving him out that deployment. We didn't lose anyone, but we had a very successful deployment. And from there, I was a sawgunner. That whole deployment was pretty fucking rad. And then from there, I went to Ranger School. When I went to Ranger School, I got hurt. I graduated.

I went straight through, graduated, got distinguished honor graduate award. And it's kind of funny because, like, I think it's just by chance, I didn't get in trouble as much as everyone else, even though I should have. It just kept missing me for some reason. You know what I mean?

And so... Sometimes that's the way it goes. It was a weird fucking thing. Yeah. And so I'm the only one there who had, like, fucking no-no-goes at the time. And I had a high peer review because I carried a lot of fucking weight for food.

You know what I mean? Like, I'll carry your shit, give me food dogs. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so a lot of people were happy with me. You know, And they always pick me to be a team leader, so I'm like, yeah, let's do it, dude.

And I fucking kick people's asses who fuck up because like when it's my time to get graded, motherfucker, take care of me, I'll take care of you. And so high peer review, boom, got a distinguished honor graduate. But I severed nerve my shoulder. And it was the brachial plexus nerve damage, essentially what they called it. I fell during mountains phase, late in the phase, and the rucksack strap, you know, kind of created an impingement in my shoulder and severed the nerve. And so it was dead.

And so when I graduated, that was like, I got to figure this out because I'm, I'm trying to get back on deployment with my guys who are overseas already. And the battalion PA didn't let me. I was packed up, ready to go. Everyone was going to redeploy or get the reachback burden, go back. And they denied me that day. And so I stayed back and I helped with Rear D commander. And we got the call.

We lost two dudes. And those two dudes were the biggest influences of my career. One being Sergeant Braza, who was the gentleman who told me about the Border Patrol in the first place. And so we had to manage that. that and that was probably the biggest blow of my career but of my life I think it's probably being the biggest impact it's kind of shifted a lot of things in me and what I wanted to kind of do in life and so I thought it was my time to get out and and go to the reserve side of things and just kind of take a break and I had one more deployment knocked that out and then

yeah man I walked away from active duty and decided to go into the reserves and you know I finished my career 18 years and got medical retired eventually but but I did drill sorn for a while. I got activated to push soldiers, which is fucking dope as fuck. And then I went into the psychological operation side of things, and that's kind of why the communications out of my world is kind of taken control of. And then I retired medically, Sorn First Class, at 18 years.

And then started working at the Border Patrol. Well, I started working with Border Patrol simultaneously. You only do the reserve thing. I jumped in. I still, to this day, I don't understand the reserves. Yeah, I'll explain to you. It's impossible to explain. That's what I've determined.

It's kind of weird. So once leaving active duty, I immediately went into the reserves. But I didn't show up for like six months because they gave you a little bit of a fucking break. During that time, I had a job at the prison system. I was a prison guard for two years at a private prison. It's actually the first time I seen illegal immigration, people being held for illegal immigration. And I was like, why do we have so many Hispanics here, dog? It was like, well, they're called Mexican nationals.

I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, why do we have so many Mexican nationals? Well, they call themselves Baisas. In the prison, they're considered Baisus. That's the gang. Okay. And so the Baisas were Mexican nationals, where they weren't all. They were just anyone who was apprehended for illegal immigration at the time. There was an executive order that they had to do prison time, right?

And so they're doing jail time six months a year, whatever it was, depending on their case. And so I'm working at a prison where half of it's a federal prison, so any kind of federal kind of contract. And so yeah, so half of the prison was these Mexican nationals, which actually were considered Baisas, which could be anything from South America and speak Spanish. And they were the biggest gang we had. And they're not a gang, but they had to be a gang if they needed to be a gang. You know what I mean? By the numbers, they would fuck you up. You know, and so that as a private prison prison guard, it's kind of a fucking weird world that it's a whole different conversation that I'm not completely like, I'm not proud of.

But I needed to make good money coming out of the military. And so that was the first job I had. And then after two years of applying for the Border Patrol and finally getting through it in 2009, I became a Border Patrol agent. So simultaneously, you're reservist. You show up one week in a month to make sure that you're proficient at your job. You have to get reclass. So I had to go to drill sergeant school at one point and get reclassed as a drill sergeant, double o golf. And then every month, at least one weekend, I'm continuing to do continued education with my platoon.

So I'm either doing PT test for new recruits or teaching the younger drill sergeant how to teach this and that and that. And then two weeks out of the year, you have to designate to go to an AT, which is essentially a two-week training to make sure that you're proficient at your skill set. And that's all it is. And so I did that for a long time. Never think I was going to activate it because that's why I chose drill sergeant. I'm like, I don't want to get activated. Yeah. in 2000,

I'm activated to fucking force still to push troops. And so interesting time. My time as a special, excuse me, as a psychological operation was interesting as well. Very cool career field.

Very, I had a really good time there, but I was forced promoted back into the drill sergeant world because of the needs of the army. So I just, I ended up retiring at 18 years. What trips me up

is the retirement calculator in the reserves. I don't even fucking know. I don't know if I'm ever going to get anything, to be honest. Yeah, it's like a point-based system. Yeah, it's a point-based system. They determine good years. Do you have good years and bad years? And every... God damn right, you do.

Yeah, I definitely had those. You know, I think my last two years were more bad years than good because I was on the show my ends and I couldn't shave and I didn't want to go to my NCO development. And so I wasn't the best soldier at that time because I was so focused on my career. Yeah. That's why I was like, well, go ahead and initiate the medical retirement. I got to go. But yeah, so I don't really know what I have in the sense. I know I have a retirement. I don't know if it's ever going to kick in. I don't know how good it's going to be.

It might be 20 bucks in a hot gatorage. Who knows? Let's see. As a reservist, I think it kicks in at a certain age. I think it's 65. I don't know if I'll make 65, to be honest. That's crazy. It's not likely.

Yeah, I don't think so. I tell my wife that she goes, what the fuck? I'm like, I'm just saying. I'm just saying. No, there's a lot of things that are fighting. You know, I do have my, you know, my disability stuff coming in and so I don't really care. I just, I have the medical for the family. Yeah.

And that to me is the most valuable thing I got out of it. I can't argue that. And a lot of people, you know, Trichcare has actually been very good to me and my family. I have never actually interfaced with the VA system outside of my, what do they call them? Your initial, it's not an interview, but were you, when I was, when my package was being submitted for a medical retirement, they can currently get you your VA. rating. So I went to all of the appointments, I guess they would be. Other than that, I've never actually sought care through the VA because I've never lived really near a VA facility, but I've gotten spectacular coverage from TRICARE everywhere that I've never had a problem using it.

Yeah, I don't really have a problem with it. You know, I think just moving states, I just have to change it. And that's only the biggest headache, but besides that, I don't have a problem with it. I've gone to VA's and I've had success a lot of the Salt Lake VA was really good to me. So I've never had a problem with them. El Paso was a little rough, but, you know, I don't sit here and motherfucker them at all. It's a mixed bag for sure. So how did your career progress inside a Border Patrol? Yeah, so when you get into the Border Patrol at the time, I know there's things have

changed, but the policy is you have to do your two years as an agent and you're going through your on-the-job training type stuff, right? And so your OJT and something else, really, that's two years of trying to make sure that you're suited to be considered permanent position in the federal side of things, right? And so you want to get to journeymen, and that's going to be the two years, and that's the approval of all the paperwork and making sure, like, yes, we want to approve him to be a journeyman. So in those two years, you do, you know, all these different little things, whether you're going with your field training officer or then you're going to be going with your journeyman, and he's going to drive you around, and they all make determination on how good you do. So in those first two years, I was down at Eagle Pass, and it was the Del Rio sector, but Eagle Pass station. And it was cool, man.

you learn, you know, how to track, right? It's really the big part of our job is identifying tracks on the ground, which we call sign, and understanding the job and how we work that sign. And so most of the time you have to learn your area. You have to understand the, I guess, the identifiable markers that we can use for the radio in the area. And then you also have to understand the bugs or the seismic meters and locations of those. And so throughout the night or the day, you're cutting signs, so you're looking for these tracks on these like identifiable paths.

and then you're also waiting to hear if there's any of these bugs have gone off so you can go check those half the time it's probably local traffic or maybe it's just you driving past it you know whatever it is you call it on the radio and you continue on with business and then one of those moments you walk up on like five footprints that obviously are fresh and they weren't there before you're like I got sign of good traffic got sign of five what do I got I got running w I got you know I got a Nike shock I got a work boot and you identify them through the radio and you have friends who will jump on that sign up ahead miles potentially and try and cut them off. And that's how we work.

You know, at the same time, that could be dope. It could be just bodies. And so you work it every day just like that. I did that for two years until I was eligible. Well, I did it for like a year and a half, got activated for the military. It came back. I was a journeyman just by the way the federal system goes. My time doesn't stop.

I had to pass a few tests to qualify that. And then I was able to, I was eligible to try out for any special operations team. At the time, it was either Bortak or BOR STAR. BORTAC is our tactical side, right, is kind of like our SWAT team of the border. And Boar Star is kind of like our pararescue jumpers of the border. And so we do search trauma and rescue. It was the first team I could try out for at the time, so I weren't straight for that. I passed that.

I passed that my first course. And by the time I got back to Del Rio Sector, I was part of the SOD, which is special operations detachment. Later, I was laterally transferred over to SOG, which is special operations group. and if you had to differentiate them, it would be almost like a tier one, tier two kind of thing. The Special Operations Group would be considered kind of the national team that can get response to anywhere in the nation at any time, which you've seen recently on the news from these escape convicts, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And so I was part of that team as a Boar Star agent. My first two years there was part of the, was cadre for the selection. I helped kind of revamp the selection program to be kind of more efficient, as well as since I was a drill sergeant. I've done this. It was kind of made sense for me to help make sure that this had safety mitigation involved and things like that. And I helped with the TAC med program being integrated into the

system because what we were missing was teaching medics the tactics behind tactical medicine. It was like, let me teach T-E triple C, but they never went through basic training so they don't know basic tactics. And so what I was trying to create was a world where the Bortac was more comfortable with us being embedded with them because at the time they weren't. You remember Brian Terry getting killed? You remember the story of the story. of a Bortak who were getting killed on a mission, part of the Fast and Furious operation? No.

We touched on it back in the day a little bit. So Brian Terry, former Marine, former Michigan cop as well, transitioning to the Border Patrol became a Bortak operator. It's in the book. There's a chapter that talks a lot of it, like in depth about this, but essentially at the time,

the standard operating procedures for Bortac wasn't to have a medic on objectives. It just wasn't common, right? Because at the time, there was still a big transition for BoreTar as well. originally BOR Star was brought into to help with agents and also illegal immigrants who were hurt in the field. And a lot of that was like the jokes were like, oh, you're just fixing their blisters on their feet. You know, but it was hydration.

It was dehydration issues and it was blisters definitely, but it was also snake bites and so on and so forth. But we're so far from definitive care. It made sense to incorporate a unit that was focused on medical. But the medical transitioning into tactical medicine was kind of very nuanced. It was new. It was a big thing. It was military thing. It wasn't a law enforcement thing.

And even law enforcement went through that transition as well, right? And so as Bortak was getting a more serious mission and getting deeper into this, like, trying to break up these rip crews and these cartel smugglers, they were doing these objectives to try and slow that down. In Arizona at the time, there was a big influx of rip crews. Essentially, it was like gang organizations who were jumping or taking the dope from smugglers so they can go use it in their own way, right? They can make their own money. And so those guys were coming very violent. They were known to have guns and they were known to be like altercations of like serious threats. And so Bortak had the information and had some intel and they were, they created an op to be able to kind of kind of have early detection of them and hopefully stop it.

And before it happens. And so as that mission was happening, it was kind of wearing them down. And so they were kind of like they were they were losing a little bit of the security because it was just kind of like, well, too many manpowerless, put them different. So it put them in a position that wasn't conducive for them. being successful with that. And so at the time, the SOP was to initiate contact with less than lethal rounds and escalate that if needed. But in that case, they initiated with less than lethal and in the volley of rounds. The return fire was lethal. Right. Return fire was lethal. And as they engaged with lethal as well, Brian Terry was already hit. And so when he was hit, he was hit. I can't remember

exactly if it was the pelvis or something, but whatever it was something that even if a was on hand, he wouldn't have survived. But the question for guys like me who were military, he's had a medic on hand who already was, I was an EMT and also had TechMedic training and felt very comfortable in that space. I was like, man, where was it fucking medic? Right? And so

not trying to be the guy that money wanted a quarterback is them, but at the same time, like, hey, it's kind of strange that they don't have the SOP to have a medic on the target, right, on the X. And so I started just kind of seeing that and that's what kind of inspired me more to be in the Borster side of things and hopefully be a good medic for the tactical team where they can trust.

because of my Ranger background. And I kind of was over being a door kicker. I was like, well, let me see what's next. Let me try to do the right by, I guess, my God in a sense. Personally, like my own chase, I was just trying to feel good about, like, saving lives instead of living a life trying to take them. That the medical thing was in my head.

And so when Brian Terry was killed, it was kind of like definitively like, no, fuck it, I'm going to be a Bore Star agent. And so when I went to the academy, I helped incorporate the tactics behind tactical medicine. And I was one of the initial, you know, medics who was integrated with Bortak and really made it a thing. It was a few of us. You know, there's the white rhino. I won't say his full name, but he knows who he is.

White rhino. As my man. Then there's my boy Smilow, who is another big, big dude in the, in the, in the organization who made it very comfortable to have a medic on target that the Bortar, but the Bortac agents can trust. Like they'll put us in the stack with us, or they'll put us in the stack with them. They'll use us like one of them, but they know our initial, our main job is always going to be medical, but we also taught our Bortakers the basics of blood stops, right? Like, stopped bleeding and everything else, just like you win in the military. For some reason, that side of the conversation was left out when they created their teams,

and it wasn't of the most importance. They had, you know, teacher will see training, but no one really cared about the medical side, like a medic would. And so their SOPs have completely changed since. And, you know, medics like me who want to be TAC medics attached to Bortac has made their mission, I think even that much more better, made their... them like a really, I think a well-rounded team who's capable of doing fucking anything. I think they're, I think Bortak is one of the fucking dopest fucking groups out there.

Um, but once once I got into the SOG world and became a medic for the tactical team, for the Bortac team, you know, that was really the beginning of the end of my career because on the personal side of things, you know, I was losing my family. You know what I was going through my second divorce. You know, my kids still didn't know who the fuck dad was because I'm operational, you know, and I went through this phase of like really trying to figure out. what I want, how do I, how can I be a better father? And I started some businesses on the side that ended up starting to pay out pretty decent. And that was kind of like, all right, it's time to

kind of transition my life away from being a door kicking kind of special operations guy, trying to be better at home. And so that kind of, which inspired me to kind of resign and try something new. Is the Bortak involvement, I think the last time I actually read about this, they were looking for that dude, it was on the East Coast. God, he was fucking about for like two weeks. Yeah. Is it because of their tracking ability? Yeah, I mean, that's what I would say.

Because that dude was playing a pretty high level. Well, he was better at hide and seek than most people looking for him. Yeah, they're the ones who caught. They're the ones who did in support of other agencies, but the ones who caught the guy who, the prison guy who got away. Yeah. And they were also, they were activated to go chase that other dude down the active shooter recently who killed himself.

In Maine. Right. And so they were activated to go get him too. I was part of the mission that one got the two matting sweats. I just left the day before for my daughter's birthday, but they engaged on that. So I was part of that whole world of it. And I believe it is.

I believe there's no other agency that daily has to track people. That's what we do. And now you're talking about a team who's daily tracking people who are extremely proficient at tracking on top of just as good as shooting as any other agency. I'm talking to FBI. I'm talking to ATEF. Anyone you can think of, it doesn't matter, just as proficient as shooting,

just proficient at breaching, just a proficient with dog handlers, with bite dogs, with search dogs, with sniff dogs. I mean, they are really like the total package of anything you need. They have the expertise of it, so why not activate them as soon as possible? And we've become that. We've proven that. And it's becoming a thing where everyone's starting to really like, call them, call them. And it's really cool to watch, like, from my position.

Rob Elementary, Bortec. And who was a medic's? Borsetar. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so, like, this is going to continue to be a thing because they've proven themselves time and time again. They have the resources to train. They train daily, and they're actively always working on their skill.

If we were to turn this into a TV show. Oh, you and I, we get a two-hour head start. How far can we get away from these fuckers? How long would we last? Bro, I already have the location. I've called and said, I'm going to do this. Okay, I'm going to give you an example. How long do you think we would last?

Two-hour head start. Two-hour head start. I think within four hours, we're done. Because they're rookie numbers. Yeah. No. Imagine the vast space that we have. It's an interesting thing.

They can catch us how as fast they want, but I'm saying within four hours, guaranteed. We're fucking done. And I'm talking... What if we can hijack people's cars? That's a whole different world. And I'm talking, if we have seven hours of potential walking, 10 hours of potential walking.

Yeah, they're going to catch us. If you tell me, like... Well, if we have to walk, they're going to catch us almost instant. with electronics and sensors. Right, exactly. It's an interesting thing. We can do it. Honestly, I can set this up

because I've talked about a couple guys and they're willing to do this. They're willing to show the skill set. But it has to be in a place where it's not like 20 seconds. I'm right at the street and getting picked up by a vehicle because that's hard to work, right? Those are very hard to manage.

But if they had time to just cut sign, like the tracking side of us and they're just going to track us, we're fucked. And I'm going to tell you, there's a story about this. The Bore Star got called by special forces. The special forces,

they wanted to kind of see the tracking. It was kind of a whole tracking course. And then we say, how good are these dogs? How good are these tracking dogs? Right. Borzzar has some of the best fucking scent dogs you could ever fucking imagine. It's super dope. Because we do it all the time.

And so these special forces dudes are trying to hide from these fucking guys. And they have a certain grit squad that are a lot of work in his fucking miles around. You're not going to hide from a dog. Right. Well, this is a funny thing. These fucking special forces dudes take off their fucking socks. Bury them. Thinking like, oh, it's going to throw off the dog scent.

Yeah, because it's the sock. Yeah. The dog goes and smells the sock and keeps going. Like, now I know exactly what you smell like. Thank you for. Yeah. It's like these dogs are fucking money, dude. And the agents who run them are money.

They know how to manage me. They know how to make sure that their temperatures are right and their noses are on point. All right. So we need anti-dog. I'm going to research this to make my odds better. Here's my initial plan. I'm going to find a mule deer somewhere and kill it with my bare hands. Oh, cut off all four of its hooves, tie or somehow attach them to my rear shoes and my hands.

And I'll run on all four. So I'm going to look like a mule deer. I'm never going to get caught. We see it all. We see it all. We see guys who walk across backwards. We see guys who wear carpet. We see guys who wear these new...

Very Viet Cong. Yeah, there's new shoes that actually have like a print of a dog, so it looks like someone's walking a dog. I mean, the list goes on on. They try and we figure it out. And then they get away with it sometimes. Absolutely. But if we wanted to play this game,

we'd find a place where we'd have like at least 10 hours of walking of some sort. I think we could even get four hours at Head Start, and they'll find us. I'm saying we do a simulated prison break. It's you and me. How long? How long until they catch us? We can, if we want to,

deviate and violate from any laws that we want. We're responsible for what happens. It comes down to, you know, what helps a lot with these escape convicts is like how the news and people start like to give Intel. Like it's Intel driven. That and ring cameras are fucking these dudes up. Dude, it's crazy. Yeah.

Intel is driven. You know what I mean? When we were doing the Matt and Sweats when we were up in New York and we did seven days of like any intel we can get, you know, we hit the mission. We did an objective where we went to this like a cabin in an island. So there's a boat op, which is pretty fucking rad. And I was like, don't drown, motherfucker, please. You know what I mean?

And so we did the boat up, when we found, like, old shit that they already ate and they were gone from. So they had been there. Yeah, they had been there. Then the next until they're out of school, boom, we, we, we, we, air assault to the school. We get there. We're scary kind of going into a school knowing these two dudes are there. And then we're like, man, this is a, very open terrain space. Like, if they want to snipers, we're done, right?

We go into it, and just half the school is kind of condemned, so it's, like, half broken. And I can't even tell if they were ever there or not. We never really could find any kind of sign of that. But, like, then that was another mission. And then we're doing a bunch of a just cut and sign and saying people calling. And like, so there was thousands of people calling for like this and that and happened. Seven days of this shit. Nothing.

And then all of a sudden, boom, one. Like, hey, someone broke into my, someone broke into my thing. And they're like, okay. That's what they found them. So it's this really crazy thing how it all works. I mean. Is the MO usually they cover some distance and then hole up, covers some distance and hold up? Yeah.

They're, they themselves are trying to make a determination. So those guys, at one point they thought they would go down to Mexico. and then the next thought was like, okay, maybe they changed plans and they went up to Canada. And then what happened is they ended up separating because they got into like an argument of like what they should do next. You know what I mean? But like, dude, you're running from you're running from these fucking, you know, they're thinking FBI. They don't know it's probably us coming.

They're running from some high level people and they're thinking like, well, fuck, what are you going to do? I don't know. What do you want to do? We can't find food. I'm getting fucking hungry. I got a place to sleep. All those things are happening at the same time they know they're being chased. So at one point they just decided to split ways.

And when they did that, that's what fucking got them. It's not what's going to happen to us. No, we are not splitting ways. So I'll get the mule to your hooves. I've added another layer to our plan just in hearing your story. You can ride on my back. I'll be like a reindeer. So that's how we'll get to a location that's yet to be determined,

because I don't know we're going to start. But we're going to find some 55-gallon drums and handmake a submarine. In really limited time. Yep. I don't know what the propulsion's going to be, but we're going to have a periscope. It's going to be dope. Maybe two of them together so we can stretch out a little bit. and we're going to get in a river, and that's how we're going to get away.

That's like Florida ops. All the submarines are finding. There's a lot of details I have to fill in here, but at a wavetop level, there's no way we're getting caught. It'd be fun. It'd be fun to try. I have full faith in all the stuff they have to be able to find. But do you think we'd be better off with our baseline understanding of their TTPs, or are we just fucked either way? No, I think the fact that I know the TTPs of it, I can try and.

I think you'd have to get out in front of it farther. You'd have to have speed, I think, would be the number one thing. Yeah, if it's just a walk, we're going to be fucked. Like, we're going to be fucked because I know how they do it. Well, let's not set it up so it's all in their favor. Yeah, so if it's a drive, we could find a way to beat it. I'm sure. I'm sure.

Yeah. All right. I need you to get to your contacts. We're going to break out of an actual prison. Probably get shot because they're going to think it's real. Yeah. Yeah, we can do a private prison. I got my contacts.

I got my contacts. Oh, man. And then so how did you start working in Hollywood? I was doing YouTube with some friends. You already know some of the friends. Yep. Matt and J.T. We were doing YouTube.

And we decided to produce a movie. It was just like, we're doing all this YouTube videos. They're doing really well. We're getting millions of views, having fun with it. And kind of like me and JT, you know, Matt was forward deployed during contracting at the time. And me and J.T. were kind of sitting there drinking and thinking, like, what's next? Like, we would love to do a movie.

And so we got a hold of a screenwriter. Actually, the screenwriter DM me at one point said, hey, man, if you guys ever want to write a movie, I do screenwriter. His name is Billy Jay. Fucking awesome. We're actually working on a new project here soon. And I said, yeah, dude, let's fly you in and let's get the script done. So we drank all night and thought of this crazy zombie film, and he wrote it. And that was like the first step of like, okay, now what do we do?

Well, then we brought in a real screenwriter that actually produced stuff already and said, dude, dude, this script is like a fucking $50 million dollar script. Like, it's too expensive. We're like, oh, fuck, now what? Because, I mean, we were using helicopters and fucking. Of course. Of course. And so then we had that guy rewrite it to something that we could actually probably afford.

And so then once we did that, we said, okay, what are we going to do? I called Nick Palmashano from Ranger Up at the time and said, hey, would you want to partner with us and try and blow this up and maybe produce a movie? He said, yes. Tim Kennedy got on board as well, right? The whole whole, oh, Timothy. Yeah, all Tim. And so then we did a crowd fund. And we were the fourth highest crowd fund in Indigogogo history at the time.

they kind of called us and who the fuck are you guys and how the fuck did you do that right well Matt Bess had a massive following at the time we had a huge following of everybody waiting to see what our next move was going to be and so we were able to raise a lot of money and the community came together and they wanted to see us produce this and so we produced that movie and we did it in like

I don't know 15, 18 days but really yeah yeah yeah and the whole budget we're talking about range 15 right yeah yeah yeah and it was only like 18 days you had to every day is like fucking 60K that's true you know what I mean so we did it fast as shit But it was the first day on set I looked at Nick and I said Yeah, this is what I'm gonna try and do for the rest of my life

Like I fucking love this It was really cool. It's really cool to be able to use a form of expression And use the arts I did some in college already so I had a grounding of it And you know I kind of was like well how do I fucking keep doing this? You know and so when we were done with that movie You know everyone kind of went separate ways They went and blew up black ruffel coffee

You know I went and tried to do this I produced another short film it did well I was in the film festival kind of kind of circuit I met another veteran actor His name is Jamie Keller And he invited me to LA to do some improv comedy I did that called Dads and Parks It's a silly like improv

Dads on a bench in a park And while I was in L.A. During the second round of that Minds was still auditioning And I just found out through like social media And I text a buddy of mine Steve Howie Who's on Shameless is a fucking brilliant dude Really cool cat

And I said look I've never done the official acting But I have a headshot I have my acting reel have my bio ready. And I always knew that's what you need. It's kind of like, it's kind of your fucking resume is all those. And I said, I have all that.

How do I get to the casting? And he goes, you don't have an agent. I was like, no, I don't, no one was it. In the weird world of acting, you can't get an agent unless you show them work. And you can't get work unless you show, fucking get an agent. It's this really fucking flawless.

Yeah, it's fucking insane. So luckily, you know, he knew the casting director and say, hey, I got a guy. He looks good. He looks like he would be a Mayan. Would you want to check him out? She goes, yeah.

We're talking a Mayan motorcycle gang. Yeah, Ryan's MC, yeah. And so my first real Hollywood audition was Mayans' MC, and I got it. And how long have you been working on that? I was on it for, it was a total of six years, five seasons, but six years. So we did, we filmed the pilot within weeks after landing the role. Boom, we filmed the pilot. We got that done within like, I think the pilot took us like 10 days.

I flew back home. I was already, I had another show for the History Channel, called brothers in arms. And that happened just fucking, I don't know, how. They contacted me and say, we want to do a show. Let's film a sizzle reel. I'm like, yeah, cool. We did it.

And it got picked up. And so I thought that was going to be like, oh, game on, life is over. We made it, you know? And then the Mines thing happened. And so Mines didn't get back to me for about another six months. And then I got a call. And they're like, hey, man, you know, you did a really good job. But we're going to be going different ways with it.

We have to reshoot the, and I said, hey, dude, it's all good. Dude, I had a great time. He was, no, no, no, I'm not done. We rewrote your character. Now you have a bigger role on the show. And we're going to start filming in a couple months. I was like, oh, fuck. I'm still in?

Fuck, yeah. So, boom, I went back and we started filming, and then the rest is history. I just filmed all five seasons. We wrapped up the show about six months ago. The show was done now. We're now, it's like on to what's next. But in the meantime, I produced another film,

and I had another role in another movie. And there's a film. you guys go check it out it's called lucy shimmers in the prince of peace it is a lucy shimmers in the prince of peace you want to can you bring that up oh he'll bring it um it is a could they have could they have possibly created a less understandable title dude i remember the kind of fucking focus group came up with that this is an independent film this is a completely independent film that uh me and the filmmaker you know we we became buddies and he wanted to put me in a film and i said look if you put me in anything it's not going to be a bad guy it has to be someone with a heart please

So you sent me the script and I read it and I was like yeah I'm in But they couldn't afford my day rate right like my day rate is like I get paid pretty decently as an actor So he's like well how do you want to work on this? I was like well I want to be an owner like give me give me points on the back end You know what I mean and so are you gonna play it? No, this is just a trailer Yeah, it's a trailer I love how they sub-titled coughing Is this a fucking homework movie? It pretty much is but it is Yeah, yeah it's a faith-based film and

honestly when we filmed it was right when COVID blew up it was like February 5th my son was born yeah we started filming this like February 15th and we got it done in like 10 days and everything shut down in Utah after that so we got it done and I had no idea what it was but I was like hey

an extra you know a couple thousand bucks I'll take it and it's another chance to to portray a character and work on my craft as an actor and as we're filming I kept telling my wife like it's actually really fucking good I feel like it's done well you know Where can people watch it? Amazon. Okay.

But it's absolutely viral on fucking TikTok. Like people cut it up into like these really emotional, you know, reels. And it's like, I think on, I think TikTok it has something like a something billion views on it already. Really? It's fucking insane. Yeah. Every Christmas, the thing blows up. It's like a, it's one of those things that if you have kids, if you're looking for something like the family to sit down during the, during the holidays of Christmas, this is a cool film to watch.

It's fun. It's faith-based. But as well as like, it's going to make a grown man of motherfucking cry. I promise. It's fucking cool. But it's part of like the career that I never expected I would get into and it's going well. And yeah, that's a film that I never thought it would get as much attention it has. But TikTok has blown that one up like ridiculously. Do you enjoy acting?

I do. I love it. I have, I did a little technical advising work a couple years ago. On what? The show six for the history channel. Yeah. Yeah. And I think maybe people think acting would be easy. They all do.

It takes a special person for sure. It's a weird environment. And for one, I don't think people realize, like those shows were 60 minutes, which was what, about 44 after ad breaks. Yeah, so it probably took about 10 to 12 days of film, one episode. For sure. And, you know, you'll watch a seven-minute segment in between an ad break. But that's like two or three days of five to 10-second shots, flip the world, do it again. I didn't understand all the coverage and holy.

I try to explain this one the other day. It's so complicated. And I, like for me, it would never be a good fit. I watched the actors go from, you know, fucking about behind the camera to like getting their shit together, whether they needed to be angry or frustrated. I'm like, holy cow, man. Like you are. It's no different than being on a team, bro.

It's no, you remember, I know you've done this. I never was wearing makeup. on a team, you know what I'm saying? That's different. That's different. Pretending to do shit. It's different. But the same idea of, do you know when you're heading towards the mission in the vehicle and you're saying these snarky little fucking jokes or

bullshitting or listening to music and then all of a sudden it's game on? Yeah. Same thing. Yeah, but game on and I just had to tactically perform. Yeah. These guys are tapping into... We had emotionally performed. Well, they're again, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like they're tapping into this really creative, emotional, complex

space that, I mean, you point a camera at most people and they fucking nerd out, which I get, because it's this dead fish eye lens. You're like, what do I do with my hands? How do I act? It immediately makes people act weird. Whereas there's a small subsection of people, I'm assuming it's reps, so they kind of get used to that. But God damn, man, the creative ability of some of those people. Yeah, it's tough. It's really cool. It really, it become like almost a therapeutic process for me. So, like, as an actor, if you have a character,

you have to understand who that character is. So you have to develop a process of getting into character. Right. And so getting into character means you know the ins and outs of how this person reacts

to any situation, essentially. And so how do you do that? Well, you have to create that. You guys have to spend the time to fucking say, all right, here who this, here's what they give me in the script.

What don't they give me, I'm going to fucking make up. Until they give me a direction of like, that's not what I want, I have to fucking create that. I have to create this whole world of who the person is and how they experience life and how they see life

and how they react to different things. So that in itself is fucking work. Most people don't even want to create a process. Most people say, hey dude, I know I can act, well, I'm really, I think I'm a natural. Like, yeah, motherfucker. Do you even have a process? Because every actor has a different way

of doing that process too. Right, there's actions that are like, don't talk to me. I'm focusing in there's actually like, don't give a fuck they're ready as soon as you say action. Right, you've seen that. Right?

There's guys that are just like, boom, on. And there's guys that are like, hey, it's an emotional scene. And like, just don't talk to me. And like, okay, cool. And so, like, everyone has their system of it. And it's really fucking cool to watch, right?

It's really cool to see people be one thing and then you say action and go. Like, on my show, you're going to know who this guy is. We have a guy named Michael Irby. My favorite fucking dude to watch. Michael Irby played Betty Blue on the unit. Okay. So you know who he is.

So this year, he was on Mines MC as the fucking president of our, or non-president. It's kind of whatever season you're watching. and then he's also on a show called Barry and he's this Bolivian he's a gay Bolivian man and he's like a killer he's fucking like a cartel leader

but he's a very very flamboyant personality you can watch him on the same night and watch like what the fuck it's the same guy it's the absolute same guy and it's two complete different fucking worlds and none of them really him if you know the guy so it's like how the fuck did he do that it's fucking brilliant he created a process for this character

and he created a process for this character and he's filming him simultaneously in the same year within the same fucking month. That's wild. It ain't fucking easy. Yeah. And so like guys at that I respect and it's the craft that people don't respect.

It gets frustrating. It gets frustrating people like, hey man, I want to be an actor. I'm like, cool. That's a fucking loaded question. Like, what do you want me to do? Like, you have to go out there and get work. I have an acting coach.

We've developed the process. I learned what works for me. I fucking, this is my profession. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't just say, hey, I want to be an actor and show it up. Like, I fucking studied this shit. I did it in college.

I'm doing it now. I still am working on my craft. Like, it's hard because, like, I want to guide people to this, but I don't think they're ready for all the work that it takes. And as well, like you said, in this movie, I had to cry, right? Some people use fucking mint or whatever the peppermint on their eye to get the motion. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, no.

A say action. They're flowing. But you have to fucking sit there and cry in front of 30 people who are in the room holding a fucking. holding the boom mic holding the camera one dude's in the corner snacking yeah exactly i had three students who were watching me and i'm sitting there thinking like do they really have to fucking be in here right now well i'm trying to fucking you know i'm trying to do my thing but like it's part of the process of really being good at it is shutting off the world around you being really in that moment engaging with the person you're talking to and fucking and and dude like living in that moment

it's fucking dope it to me it gives me this very similar feeling of accomplishing a mission overseas Very similar fulfilling of like, fuck, that was exciting. It's exhilarating and scary at the same time. Kind of like kicking in the door and fucking accomplishing a mission. Very, very similar feeling. But now, instead of being the brute in my world, I've always been like the big guy, the strong guy, the, you know, now I'm actually using the emotional side of my world, which has been therapeutic, like I said, because now I have to have the roller decks of emotions ready. I have to be able to use and access all those or else I'm not a well-rounded actor and I can only play one fucking character. And I don't want that.

I like to challenge myself to be the best fucking actor I could possibly be and hopefully fucking put myself in a position to prove that. Would you prefer acting or producing? I would say there's a position in film where you'll know called the showrunner. I would rather be a showrunner than anything. Really? Yes. Interesting.

The showrunner is the, I don't know, platoon sergeant of the fucking show. He's actually probably the fucking first sergeant. It's the guy who runs the whole motherfucker. He makes sure it all works. Everybody cohesively is making it happen, accomplishing a mission. And a showrunner usually is the guy who created the show. I want to create shows and manage them. I want to make sure they tell the story that I want to tell.

I want to be able to work with actors and help them get into their position and make sure that they're mentally ready for the scene while the directors are doing their thing. I really want to be the guy facilitating the whole show. But I don't ever want to take my name out of the house. for acting. I will always want to do something in this sense of like push me as an actor. Let me see where I can go for my own self of just like the challenge of it because I love it. Yeah. I'm dabbling in the writing. Actually, I wrote season eight. I was one of the writers on the show for season eight. And I have a lot of other projects coming down the road in the writing

sense. But the goal is I'm just doing the writing to get to a position of creating a show and being a showrunner so I can write and create the show and run it. Yeah. Kind of stacking up all those pieces that need the line. How do you think So we were talking about this on the walkover. So there was a director's strike, a writer's strike, and an actor's strike. The directors are good. Yeah, I don't think the directors actually officially ever won on strike. They were talking about it.

Fuckers, that's right. The writers definitely did. Riders went on strike. That resolved itself, right? Yes, it did. So now the last straw to break the camel's back is going to be the actors. Right. How do you think that plays itself up?

I think while we're here, I haven't checked my phone. They might have come to an agreement already today. Were they close? Yeah, it's within, yesterday there was messages within the day we're going to have an answer. I don't know if they have already today. They're with the acting side, SAG posted saying that as much as it's the final and last offer is what they were given. And then they said even that, there were still things they weren't happy with, so they're still going to try and fight for what they want. And so I haven't heard anything since.

Hopefully today or tomorrow it's done. Hopefully in the week. The problem is that we're so late in the year. Hollywood shuts down somewhere around December 15th, 17th time frame, and it goes into Christmas and the New Year's and it won't open again, usually until like January 15th or so. So even if it does open up in the next week, you're probably not going to have any real actors acting until the new year. You'll probably just have people starting to build the sets, like all the other jobs getting

to work to kind of build, and then writers will be getting to work just to start like shaping out the season. Well, you can't even talk to or approach the actors from even a consultation or contractor perspective anyway. No, absolutely. So as an actor, like I had a couple projects on the fence, whether we're going to see what was going to happen, but I haven't been able to have any kind of discussion with that. I don't even know if it still exists anymore, if the budget's going to be there. Wow. If the network decided that we're just going to scrap that project because it doesn't financially make sense right now. I don't know yet. I'm waiting to hear. And as the writer,

I know that I'm currently in the process of pitching different shows and trying to get something picked up and trying to get a green light. So the writing side of me is actively moving. we're trying to make some stuff happen. But the acting side, I'm waiting to hear if I still have this job that was supposed to be a pretty massive job for me. And I don't know if it still exists anymore. I've even talked to the guy like, hey, dude, he's like, hey, dude, we can't. He's like, hey, dude, we can't say shit. No, we can't.

And so, out of the respect of our craft and our union, you know, we're just, we're following the rules and just waiting. How far in advance does Hollywood work? Meaning, so a show comes out, a new show launches in 2024. When did they probably film that? So I only know from the experience of Mayans. We started filming sometime around November, December, January, February, March, and the show came out in April. Okay. So the filming in November for the season, like for episode one or two, was getting edited and ready.

By the time we were filming, I think, so it minds. The show started. You guys got to watch episode one in April while we were wrapping up episode 10. Okay. So like we... That's quicker than I thought. actually. Yeah.

And I don't know if that's normal for everyone across the board. I really don't. I know that that was very consistent every season. I just feel, and the reason I ask is I feel like, how long has the strike been ongoing now between those organisms? Close to seven months. So I feel like there's this massive gap in products, for lack of a better term. Yeah, it's probably six months. But yeah, I think so too.

I think you're, I'm fortunate enough to like, I found a new show recently and I'm binging through that one. But like, man, I'm smoking everything. There's nothing really. I haven't seen that this time. You know what I mean? I mean, there's not a lot of good, you know, I love the Apple TV and you go down to the trailers. Yeah. Man, there's not a lot of new movies and none of these are that good.

It's really, you know what I think is happening? And this is just as a fan of watching shit, I feel like the movie era is dying and the TV shows are picking up. I think because of the, and I'll say from the perspective of me is there's longevity in TV. And there's also, you know, I think the pay is significantly different. But I think knowing that you have a job. that's going to pay for potentially five seasons is a good feeling for us actors. Hell yeah. Yeah, exactly.

And then on the movie side of things, I don't know if after COVID, if they've ever really, you know, been successful in movie theaters as much as they used to be. And I think everyone's getting really comfortable of doing everything from home. So now you're streaming from the house, which means I buy a $20 movie in my family of, you know, currently in my household seven, just sit and watch it. And so they've lost definitely. Cheap as they're going to the theater. Yeah, so they've lost easily $200 out of fucking candy and the rest of the tickets I would normally buy.

And so I don't know if there's a coming back from that in the way it used to be. Now there's these anomalies, things like Avatar, always fun to go watch in a movie theater. Don't forget, Maverick. Maverick was fun. Yeah, so there's these anomalies like that. But I think you're going to start seeing a lot more production

meant just to go straight to streaming. And that means their budget was not as what it probably would have been because they're going to try and make that work. You're going to have the massive films that will still always be successful. I think Marvels will always be successful. Like the major Marvel films, because you've seen, there's some that are going directly to,

to Disney. Well, they probably should because they're dog shit. They're steaming piles of dog shit. Me and my kids love them, man. It's something that we enjoy it. I watched the Spiderverse, the recent one. I can't do it, dude. I get so lost in the fucking multiverse.

I love them. I think they're fucking fun. But it's, you know what it is? Part of it is my kids enjoy it. So it's what I do with them. But yeah, I think forever there's going to be a shift in that. You're not going to have as many people going to movie theaters. I was in movie theater almost twice a month, family.

And we've probably gone once in that. the last six months because it's just hard to do. It's way more convenient to watch it from your home. Right. We get the popcorn in our house. Yeah, totally. We do all the thing. We just sit there and do it.

It's kind of, it's kind of better for the family of the cohesion of us is to sit there with us and have a movie night. And so, COVID created that, you know, and I don't know. Well, Michael's the youngest up and coming generation. Do you go to the movie theater? No, rarely. Yeah. Would you rather just stream it from your house?

Yeah. Dude, there you, I mean, there's the writing on the wall right there for the future. Yeah. And you know, the streaming side of things did, like, for, for TV shows. At first, remember, they used to, the show is out. And you could watch every fucking episode. So you'd binge it in one weekend, be like, all right, that's done. One weekend. Well, they don't do that. One day. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, they don't do that anymore, right? So now they've like, hey, the episode's out this week. And then you have to wait the next week.

No, you have to have discipline and wait until the entire thing is released. Yeah. Ignoring any social media. You know why, though. Spoiler alerts. And then you watch that mother fucker in one day. And that's because the ads. That's because who pays it is, is the marketing is all the, you know, your, you're, um, investors in, like Toyota or whoever is doing the ads in between these things, they're paying for it. And they want longevity of that. They want the six months of it. You know what I mean? And so does the network. They want to be able to afford paying these actors and everything. And so it's a very interesting market. And, and I'm, the way I'm trying to control my career is being in a position where I could either direct,

act, produce, or show run. So do all of that on our prison break show. On what? Our Prison Break Show? Yes. That'd be fun. Where Boratac chases us. I can do it. I thought you scared me because, you know, they just released the, there's going to be a new prison break show. Is there? Yeah. It's not going to be as good as ours. The creator of Mayans, Elgin James, is the one who's leading that. I think I'm going to have to activate my SAG card.

I get it, dude. I have it. I'm sure you do. Well, actually, I never got it. They keep sent, I get a letter from SAG like once every quarter. Yeah. And I don't open it. I don't know what's in there. but I'm eligible I think because Have you been paid by them ever? Yes There might be checks

If you haven't said it's not going to be big Yeah if you haven't said I'm not even going to say where I got it from But yeah If you have instead of your direct deposit I'm in the industry I can figure this out Oh man

Yeah I'm not Yeah It is what it is I'm eligible for one But you'll never see me fucking acting Unless we do Well since prison break's already coming out Ours will be maximum security prison break

There you go. It'll be better. Now I'm tempted to put you in... Now I'm tempted and put you in something. No, absolutely not. No, I will be an absolute nightmare on set. I'm not going to do anything that you say, and I'm going to make shit up.

Yeah, fuck. Well, maybe we can just kill you right when you get there. I mean, that's what Jack Carr did. He doesn't even die good. Like, you fucking, your acting is terrible. That was funny. Acting's tough, dude. I wonder how...

Did he tell you if it was tough to him or not? Well, he didn't do a good job, so it couldn't have been that hard. I mean... I audition for that fucking show so many times. For terminal list? Yeah, and then I was on it. Because it's like, they're looking for veterans, right? And so like, okay, I'm on the list.

And it just, I never got it, which obviously, I also know I don't look like the typical veteran with all the hand tattoos and neck tattoos. So I just knew it probably was going to be a tough sell. Yeah. But then I did his pocket. He goes, fuck, we got to get you in the next one. I'm like, yeah, motherfucker, you think, let's do it. But it's a better talk to his boy, Pratt, because I think he's making the decisions. Oh, I know.

It's a, you know, there's a lot of guys who want to try and make it, and there is no rhyme or reason to it. It's a really interesting career field where I don't care how good you are at it. It still comes down to like who's going to give you the opportunity. I mean, honestly, to use Pratt as an example again, he was working in Lahaina at a Bubba Gump shrimp factory. Yeah. And I only know that because he was recently talking about that based off the fires that had occurred there. Somebody came in and he, I don't want to say aggressively, but he was very, upfront about he recognized them asked him what they were doing there and was like I want a shot and I guess they gave him an auditioning shot the next day and he got it and one beget the other and yeah and what happens it builds from there is the people you've worked with on set the people that you you you've act with and and so on and so forth

they continue their career as well and some pivot and go into producing some pivot and go into writing some pivot and keep doing acting and eventually you get to a point where like someone's like man that dude's really fucking good let's bring it back in and that's kind of how this world works. You can be an expert. You can be the best of this, and it doesn't matter. It really comes down to, like, are you a good person to have around on set?

Are you good at your crafting you're a professional with it? And then are you fucking something special? You know what I mean? Genuinely, do you look like the person we want for that character? And that's a hard thing for a guy like me who's massive compared to most actors. So it's like, I'm always going to find my way to be a certain character. And I'm okay. They are tiny.

They're tiny. They're tiny. The average, like, lead actor is from a 5-7 to 5-10 and like 135 to 45 pounds, maybe. Why do you think that is? You can fit more of them on camera. You know what I mean? I know the argument for me has always been like, God damn, bro, can you just like,

we're going to have to put you somewhere so you're not taking the screen. You know, whether it's my back, whether it's my... Use a wider lens. I'm also not a director of photography for clarity. Back up this camera, God damn it. No, I don't know. I think there's a certain aesthetics to Hollywood.

There's a certain aesthetics to film that, you know, that you want to... It looks, you know, the looks is very big in our career. Whether you want it to be or not, it just is. I mean, Tom Cruise could be hiding under the... this table while standing up right now he's fucking tiny he's a midget yeah there's a lot of them that are small yeah it's an interesting it's an interesting there are some giants though uh Vince Vaughan's fucking massive dude Joe Mangonella massive dude he was on he was originally

the what would he be who's the fuck is he he was on uh he was married to Sophia Vargaro I met him on the first season of six he medically had to back out of it and was replaced with Walt Goggins how did he fuck that up his marriage I don't know. She's so cool. I met her one time. She seemed to be very nice. It was, he had some very serious medical issues that he was dealing with.

So that's why they ended up at the last minute switching him out with Walt Goggins. So they had to reshoot a bunch of stuff. It was interesting to see how that happened too, just bringing somebody in because they had done a variety of training evolutions with everybody. And then all of a sudden this new actor rolls in. and I heard they did that on saving Private Ryan, but they left Matt Damon out of it intentionally to try to create the, like an off-screen antagonistic relationship that showed up on screen.

So they put all these guys through the ringer. Yeah. And they're like, fuck you, Matt Damon, you don't get to come. And he shows up, he's like, but everybody's friends now. They're like, yeah, this is what we want to come through. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, it happens a lot. It happened actually for the same guy, Michael Urbia. I had him on my podcast, and he was talking about, like, dude, he got to call at like 12 o'clock at night and had to work the next day. because some backed out. And he had to just show up and like, all right, let's go. How could you possibly be prepared for that? He had to learn four pages of dialogue too, dude.

That's fucking professional, dog. Is that a lot? That's a fucking ton. Okay. To memorize? Yeah, because you don't have to learn them. I've heard guys yell out line. You will, and no one will forget it.

I'll tell you that. For future jobs, no one will forget it. And what I'm talking about for people listening is they'll be literally, what's also cool, though, too, is the other actors. because you're human, right? And to watch that where you can see the guy like, oh, fuck, he forgot his line, but everybody else stays in character

and they kind of just restart at a beautiful thing. Yeah, you take a beat. Yeah, you take a beat. They restart and everybody is kind of supportive, but yeah, you hear people like, lied. Yeah, it happens.

And it doesn't happen often on a very professional set. You try not to let that happen because it looks like you have no professionalism. Yeah. But there's times when you're just flustered and you're just like, fuck. It's an emotional scene and you're like getting into it

and you can space. And then you get to this mental side where like, oh shit, it's gone, gone. You know what? So you need that? Yeah. But it doesn't happen too often.

And when it does happen, if you're a guy that is doing that often, it's remembered. Really? Yeah, and it's considered to be unprofessional. And it really fucks with us actors on the other side of that. Because this is a dance, man,

and you want to have a good partner. And having a good partner really helps you get into your space. And being a giver, like when the camera's on you, I better be giving you good energy because when the camera's me, I'm hoping you give me back energy, but

there's times with guys who are like, can someone just stand in? I don't need to be here. And they'd leave and you're like, you motherfucker, you know what I'm? Or the best is like the behind the scenes of stepbrothers? Who's the other actor with Will Ferrell now? Oh, I don't know his name, but he's fucking brilliant. Well, you look at the behind the scenes, they're fucking with each other when it's not their coverage. Yes, that sounds so awesome.

That sounds awesome. Yeah, dude, so it's a really interesting thing that everybody has to come ready. And yeah, and four pages of doll, it's fucking stupid. Yeah. That is a lot. So the book, all right, you're limited on time. I got to get it back to the airport here sooner rather than later. You got about 45 minutes.

Yeah. How long did the idea chip away at you before you actually started writing it? I thought about, I thought a book about the Border Patrol was needed when I was in. You know, I always thought like, man, there's not a lot of information out there about this. I wrote a blog that at the time there was a website called, what was it? tap rack bang or something like that it was just like kind of like a military kind of law enforcement kind of thing and I wrote a blog about it so you want to be a border patrol agent and it and it did really well and I was surprised by it I was like man what the fuck there's not a lot of

information and I still get people to say hey man I googled borr star and your name pops up and so because there's not a lot out there and so I always thought like it'd be cool to write that book life is busy and I didn't want to make the time for it didn't need to make the time for it and so when I started seeing the shit with the media that's when I was like all right fuck it sit down and do this and it came at really good timing when I actually decided to because the immigration topic became even more heated as it progresses. And now we're coming into an election year. It's only going to get, it's just like logs, going to get thrown on the fire.

It's crazy. So it's good timing for the book. I don't know if it's going to make any ripple effects on that high level, but I think it's going to be a really good boost of morale for the Border Patrol to know that they have a voice. What was your overall goal in writing it, to give people a more accurate inside look of what it actually, the occupation actually requires? Yeah. man, there's a lot of things I was trying to do with this book and I didn't know how to.

And so first was, how do you explain the career field of this and make it somewhat interesting? And I thought, you know what I had a pretty fun career. So let me just talk about my career. So what I did was I wrote in chronological order of me getting the job and through my progression of my career. And in that I sprinkled in different stories of exciting shit that might have happened. but throughout that as well, I give an explanation of the educational side of it.

So this book, for anyone to read it, I think they'll kind of take from it what they are looking for. The Border Patrol agents are going to be proud to see their stories being told. The special operation

is going to be even more proud because of the fact that we've never really been talked about publicly the way this book tells it. I think in the recruiting side of the Border Patrol, people are going to be like, man, I don't know nothing about the Border Patrol.

This is the book they can read and be like, oh, fuck yeah, this is a cool career field. The people who are questioning and trying to understand the career of the Border Patrol in the sense of like, why do they do what they do? They'll have that answer as well. I do everything I can to educate people on what it is and what immigration is and what the job of the Border Patrol is in that system of the immigration system. So if you're

having questions about the immigration policies and how it all works, well, at least I'm going to give you that answer of what the Border Patrol's position is in that whole question. And that's what I want to do. So there's even a chapter in the end of it written in Spanish of about immigration for my goal is if someone gets their hands on it who is a Spanish speaker and wants to just learn anything about immigration while at least there's one chapter that's going to be full informative of how the immigration process work and becoming a citizen in America it was just like my goal of like wherever this fucking book goes it's going to hold value it's going to hold value for the agents themselves for the people who who are curious about it

for veterans who are looking for a job outside of the military and for for immigrants themselves who like want to read and like what is that career filled and then the end of it says oh this is how you become a citizen this is not a a lot out there that really kind of writes it in a digestible manner for just the average reader and so that's what I kind of did it for did it for. Did you enjoy the process of, I mean, because this is

the first book you've written. This is the first like real book. Yeah, I've written like a self-help book called Light the Feuds on Amazon. It's just like self-published and I wrote a couple kids books because just I wanted my kids to read something. It's just like personal growth type shit. But no, this is the real fucking challenging book that I've ever read and yeah, the process was scary.

The process was scary. When you go to Jocko and say, hey, I got a book idea and here's a couple of chapters. and he goes, fuck yeah, man. And they go, all right, cool, we need 80,000 words. I'm like, I'm sorry, what? Was that their requirement? Was it 80,000? That's where our goal was to hit somewhere around 80,000.

And that's going to be a good size book. So do you have enough information? I'm like, yeah, I do. How'd you tackle it? What was the approach that you used as a writer? And so I first identified, like, how I was going to write it. And so, like I said, I decided chronologically from how I got that, like, what inspired me to be in Border Patrol, the process of getting hired, and then, boom, the rest of my career.

And so as I knew that, then I kind of made an out. outline of each chapter would be that. And so the chapter goes like, you know, the introduction chapter and then it goes into becoming a border page and so on and so forth. And so when I created those chapters, then I just sat down and created a time early in the morning and late at night when my kids are asleep both ways. I can knock it out. And so I would sit there and write the first chapter and flesh that out as much I can.

All the information could about from my origin story to everything I felt pertinent to getting into the job, like applying for the job. And I filled it up as much I can. to the side and knock out every chapter like that. So, again, essentially it's like a draft of each chapter. Once I've written all that, then there was like, well, I'm going to have to answer this question. So let me put that in there too.

And so I kind of kept filling it out. And then I started thinking, like, what else would be valuable in this book? And so I contacted another Border Patrol who wrote, who wrote these little books about the history of the Border Patrol. And I asked like, dude, can I put you a piece into her book about the history of the Border Patrol? I said, yeah, so I took some of his pages and I told him was like, hey, I'm going to credit your book and put it in there as well. And so I kept hitting these little spaces and then eventually I started finding kind of like what the, I guess, what the flow of the book is going to look like.

And so eventually we have what we have today. And in there, like I said, it talks about how immigration works. You know, it talks about being Hispanic and a border trade. And it talks about the career field and my first apprehension of illegal immigrants, my first apprehension of dope. And then the transition into the selection of the Border Patrol, the special operations and how that was and so on and so forth. And so I really just kind of, it's like, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? I'd really do that each chapter at a time. And then I flesh those out and then I read them.

I did kind of a rough edit of them, did it again, send it to the publisher. They edit, boom, boom, boom, and kept going. How long did it take you to write it? I am a writer, so probably a little faster than the average. But I think six months is where I finished the book and then probably another two months of, like, editing and stuff like that. I'm fascinated about the creative process when it comes to books and how people said it. up. Would you set for yourself time to write, or would you set for yourself a word goal that you had to achieve for the day? No, yeah. There wasn't a goal of words. I know that's what,

you know, I've researched a lot about writing books because it's something I want to do a thousand words a day and just stack them on top. Yeah, that's what Stephen King does that. He says he gives himself a word count and he has to hit it every day. No, I just wrote for a time. You know, I just wrote as much as I could. And when I kind of got into a groove, you know, I can knock out a bunch of fucking pages and I'd be like really proud of that and then there's days where I just kind of kind of struggled and so I'd be like you know put this aside and get through something I'm excited about and so it took time but like I said I've created a system of writing for myself already and for journaling I do and then I you know scripts and it's part of it's kind of part of what you do yeah it's exactly

just I mean books are I mean it's a structured process you're looking at a structured product a little bit less creativity than on a I should say bouncing it off of other people in real time for your other Hollywood job. Yeah. You think you'll write another one? Oh, absolutely. I'm already kind of working out. Because of all these interviews I'm going through and people asking questions,

there's a lot of questions that I didn't get a chance to answer in this book because it wasn't the, I wasn't trying to answer those questions. And now I'm like, maybe it's important to answer these questions. And so I have a buddy of mine who is just a brilliant, he was a board of tradition as well. And now he's in another organization. And we talk a lot about these things. I always hear him like, bro, I'm going to be getting these crazy questions. Like, what are your thoughts?

And so he helps me kind of a think tank. And I said, you know what? Why don't we work together and write this next book? And so we're going to work on a book right now that hopefully has a lot of answers on the immigration process and things we could probably fix and kind of just kind of the bird's-off view of what it is. Something is probably going to be a little bit more hard to read

for the average reader. It's really going to be, you know, policies and potentially, like I think the political side of things should read it is what we're going to try and get to the point of like if you're educated on this and you're probably in a position that might be able to change policy, like this is probably something you should read. That's what we're going to try and get to.

You would hope so, right? You would hope so. You would hope so. You would hope so. People that throw the switches and levers have a very deep level of knowledge and understanding of what it is that they're voting on or the policies that are trying to put in a place. I think this book is going to be using colleges. I think it's written enough information that I think a college student would be

fascinated by reading it if you're in the immigration space. If you're an immigration lawyer, if you're a Homeland Security personnel, like a degree of that, I think it'd be an important book to read. But I think the next one is going to be. something that is going to be even more important to read just as much. And so I'm working on that. I have a couple of concepts. I'm writing my book about Mayans.

I'm just for my own sake, but I think it's kind of cool for the fans. They'll really enjoy my perspective of being a very new actor. Oh, you're writing your book about your experience as an actor on the show. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, it's just like the path of like the new actor coming on set and learning. And eventually I was there for the first scene and I was there for the last. And so kind of a cool, cool book that I'm putting together.

I'm writing that all my free time. And then I want to get into the fiction side of things. I really enjoy creating stories like I would in film. But now I'm like, well, let me try my hand in writing a book version of that. It's very Jack Car, view. Yeah, but he's good. Is he, though? He's good.

I'm always impressed on how much he fucking writes. I'm like, God damn it, that motherfucker. He's a full-time writer. What that is he supposed to do? It gets me mad, though, because I see these guys, I'm like, fucking so good. I don't know if I could ever get that good. You know, I think we went through buds together. Yeah.

He wasn't physically or mentally strong enough to graduate with our class, but we started together and then it weeded him out to the class behind us. I'm just stating verifiable facts. I mean, I could show you the graduation list of people for class 212. His name's not on it. I mean, I don't know what happened. It's on 2.13, though. Weird.

He, for knowing him as long as I have, he's one of those guys that was tooled for creativity. like that. Yeah. And he'll, he's talked about it many, many times. He wanted to be a team guy

and an author. Yeah. He has had his eye on the prize for a long time. And he puts the fucking work in, man. You have to. You don't get to those levels

without putting the work in. My wife reads, an author who name is like Colleen Hoover and like, I think a lot of women read her right now. She's brilliant in the fact that like she just sells a ton of books

to that same demographic. But I'm always telling my wife, like tell me about it. Tell me about it. Like, why is it so good? Because I can tell you right now, it's a vampire who's got a dick that's so hard he could smash in railroad spikes with it. And he has just plowed his way through history and housewives are reading the shit while their husbands are asleep and Ben and I just like, oh my God, Garsohn, I love you so much.

It's all like mystery murder type like romance novel. Yeah, with vampire dicks. Probably, probably. I got to start reading these motherfuckers, damn it. It's softcore porn, dude. They hide it. There's like some shirtless dude on the cover with fucking Fabio hair, which. Nobody beyond our age is going to

Michael who's Fabio God damn it Oh wow you really don't No I don't he turned 24 Two days ago Oh shit he's never been out of the country He's only left Montana one time Is dude do you know what a pay phone is dude

Do you know what a pay phone is? Okay good Geez not that bad God but yeah so I asked You didn't even get the reference Fucking Fabio Yeah Bobby is the gravest I can't believe it's not butter Which he I guarantee you doesn't get that reference either

God You get that one That sounds familiar I'm getting there That's like a bullshit non-answer answer answer Well it sounds familiar I've been researching as much as I could about fiction novels And how to make a payoff like work and reading books

I just gave you the template I got you I'm gonna create one with a big vampire dick That's hard as rock That genre These women's novels And let me just be very clear I'm already over the front of my skis Basically talking out of my ass at this point

But what I suspect it is is softcore porn hidden through like different versions if it's all getting into that. I don't know. I don't know. I can't say. I've never read one of those books. So, but either way.

I haven't either. And I'm speaking about it like I'm a goddamn expert. She's an incredible writer, it seems like. But yeah, so I get a little jealous that my wife is so into someone else's writing. It's almost like, you're making me jealous and I got to figure it out. So I'm going to try and make something

that my wife's excited about. And it's not going to be a vampire dick. I hope to God not. I mean, I think it would be a cool, it would be a cool occupation to be bounderied only by your creativity that's kind of like I guess that's the

that's what's so attractive to me is that oh you're telling me I could sit in my own house wake up and have coffee with my wife drop my kids off at school work on my book for the next four hours or so have lunch with my wife

go pick up my kids take them to practice and do that again tomorrow yes that's attractive as fuck dude you know what I mean like that for me sounds really cool and like to be able to create that as my life would be, what a blessing it would be. But I know I'm not built to be just a writer.

I want to make films. And so I want to keep it as my hobby and hopefully the hobby pays. Yeah. Do you think that like the major film industry, I know a lot of people associate it with Hollywood, but they probably don't realize how many films are shot in Canada or they're shot in Atlanta.

And a lot of it is like Yellowstone. It's a good example. The first few seasons were shot in Salt Lake City. Yeah. That was for tax reasons, which I totally get. The ranch is actually in Montana, and I believe they moved a lot of the production up there. But, you know, just because they say it's Montana, it doesn't mean it actually is. Right.

I just, I wonder with the, one, creativity, the tools that people have, the connectivity that people have, the connectivity that we have. Technology also, there was, I don't know much about this other than what I've seen, but there was just a major, Hollywood movie shot on a like a Sony Handy cam. It's reducing the barriers is what I'm saying. I wonder if they'll ever lose the ironclad grip that they seem to have on the industry. Yeah, it's interesting. I think

there's some independent filmmakers who are making really good films for really cheap, you know? And I think time and time again it's starting to prove itself and eventually, you know, it's what's going to win, right? I think... I mean, obviously, the Hollywood industry

a monolith of infrastructure, whether it's the lots. I mean, I've never really spent time on them, but I've driven by them in L.A. Actually, I've spent a little bit of time on them. They're fucking huge. The infrastructure is unbelievable, but that also comes with a cost that they have to pay. They're not going to want to willingly hand over that power.

There's also a lot of people who make money off this, and not in the wrong way. I'm saying in the right way, as in like everyone who built the sets, everyone who you know the medics on it everyone can capitalize on it so the unions make it make it kind of hard to not stay in that world and for rightfully so like we're protected by those unions and it's interesting because like once you become a union you really can't work on independent films so then you know the independent market they won't pay a lot but it don't it doesn't cost a lot to make some of

those films so it's like you have to choose i guess you choose which battle you want to fight um that's going to continue to be a thing And I think slowly the industry is going to have to kind of, I guess, thin out the cost of things because it's getting harder to find a way to make money off these shows. Well, especially with the rise of the streaming services. Like you said, $20 for a movie versus $200 into that ecosystem. Yeah. So they're going to start. You're going to have to cut somewhere.

And I think it's going to have to be on how you film. I think these, look at our iPhones are just as good as some of these other 4K cameras that are out there, which is kind of crazy. And so as things change, as technology changes, I think. budget's going to change and I think it's always going to be ever-evolving kind of system and what works because yeah a lot of films are not in LA anymore a lot of them are Atlanta a lot of them are in New Orleans you know what I mean in New Mexico and I think I think Austin is going to start opening some serious oh no shit yes I believe they're building some serious studios there as well so it's going to continue to transition and change are you

on an iPhone you are right yeah our tax bubbles are blue do you have one of the new ones the 15s no I'm going to get one soon. So I went for, I actually had the bigger one, the Pro Max, whatever it was for the 14. Yeah. And I downsized because it's like carrying around a fucking encyclopedia in your pocket. And I was just messing around with the video settings. And I'm not an expert in this by any stretch, but I do like messing around. I mean, we do editing stuff in Final Cut Pro for the podcast. You can shoot in 4K, 60 frames per second in pro res. And people listening to that, it just, it's when you're looking at it, it's a much more neutral color. But It allows you to add color to it in post. As long as you plug in an extra, it's just a USB hard drive. Yeah.

It'll fucking record in damn near cinematic quality on an iPhone. Yeah. Like, that's insane. Yeah. And at the cost of, what, if you're buying it, it costs like $1,500 maybe? Yeah, something like that, right? Well, yeah, plus, I mean, I bought a 4-terabyte scan disk with just a small little USB and a double-sided Velcro. And you're like, you've got to be shitting me.

It's a very, very different world with that. And, you know, there is almost no excuse. Like all the guys who want to be making films, I'm saying, go make them. Use your fucking iPhone and film something. Well, that's what I was asking. I mean, like the major players in this have all of that infrastructure, the cameras and all this. But, dude, if you go to an Apple store and you know what you're looking for? Yeah.

I mean, obviously, it's limited. It is a fucking iPhone. But it's also got some capacity. Yeah, it's starting to happen. You're starting to see people create films or just iPhones and stuff like that. It's starting to happen. There's a transition that's going to happen. It has to.

It all comes down to business, and business is about making money. And right now, I think just because the world the way it is, things are changing, man, with the AI stuff. Like I said, the iPhone, it's changing. And you don't necessarily need, you know, look at TikTokers are making tons of money just on being a character. So what they're doing is they're bringing on TikTokers because they're using their, they already have a fucking following. And so you're really going to have the 5 million viewers because they're following. And so you don't even need to bring in these massive actors anymore just to make money. in film. You're just bringing people that have huge social media followers and they

generate the fucking sales on its own. It's a weird fucking thing. It's a thing that we never expected was going to happen and that you don't need to make a film with fucking, you know, Brad Pitt anymore to make money. You just make a smart budget and bring it on the right people who have a lot of eyes on and they'll get people to buy the, by the product. I would make a film with Brad Pitt though. I wouldn't love to make a film with Brad Pitt. I mean, how handsome is he on a scale of one to ten? I say 13. I've never seen him personally, but like the fight club, Brad Pitt with like abs. Dope, dude.

Dope. What's that movie? Michael, you would fuck. I don't know why I ask you anything. 24 years old. What? Inglorious bastards? No, that's also a good one too.

The one he just did with DeCaprio. It was a Tarantino movie. Was it Live and Die in LA? The Hollywood one? Yeah. Yeah. Didn't see it. It's good.

Longer hair. A couple of top buttons of the shirt unbuttoned a little bit. Oh, yeah. I mean, I get it. I mean, I get it. heterosexual man, but I would consider it if Brad Pitt propositioned me. I'm not afraid of saying someone is good-looking. He's good-looking.

I agree. What do you want to leave people with, man? I've got to get you to the airport so you get your flight home. Buy the book. Check it out. Well, what's the best mechanism for people to do so? You could buy it on Amazon. You could buy it on Barnes & Noble. It doesn't matter.

Audio book, I did it. So a lot of you guys who don't have the time to actually pick up a book, go snag the audiobook. How long did that take you? Five days and stressful as fuck. and then I did a one retake day. That was the fucking worst thing because I don't read really well, right?

I read good but not well. And then when you have people like counting on you to read a certain speed, I'm like, god damn, you're fucking stressing me out. They probably want inflection at certain points. That's not bad because I'm an actor, but like you're telling me to read it and then give you, it was hard.

They had to tell me like, hey, on this one, let's do it this way. I'm like, okay, cool. And it's just you in a booth, right? Me and a booth. Bro, I came home the first night and I told my wife, like, I got PTSD. I said,

I don't know if I want to do this again. And she's like, what's wrong? I was like, it was fucking hard. And the guy at the end goes, you know, we really didn't read as fast as I thought we were going to. So I'm just a little, he goes, we're a little behind time. I'm like, motherfucker, you're stressing me out even more now, dog. It was, it was tough. I mean, I think people will like it because it's my voice, but it stressed me the fuck out.

Yeah. Yeah, I didn't like it. I've actually, I ask every author that comes on in A, whether or not they chose to read it. Because a lot of them outsource it. Yeah. Like, Jack, not reading his own books. I don't think he should. He shouldn't either. He's got a radio voice that deaf people appreciate it. I mean, I don't think he should because it's a character-driven kind of thing. Let someone do it. Oh, I want to hear him try to create different character voices. It's, but I ask all the authors and the ones who say that they did the audio version, they all say the same thing. They're like, oh my God, it was so bad. Yeah, dude, it was bad. And I've read the motherfucker million times. It wrote the motherfucker. It's still stressful as fuck.

So there's no difference in benefit for you, whether it's Amazon or Barnes & Noble or any of the other websites? No, I just want to try it. My goal is honestly, you know, New York Times best-selling author is my goal, man, because that gives you opportunity to write more for sure and get opportunities to keep doing it. You know, and I think it's something, it's a book that every household should understand since the conversation is in everyone's household, like let's understand at least the Border Patrol side of it and then that argument. I think every veteran out there is going to appreciate reading this book because we've, there's a ton of military books out there. of cool stories out there, but like you've never seen a book about the Border Patrol like this. And so it's just a cool book, man. I'm really proud of it. And yeah, I don't care where you buy it.

It doesn't matter. I just want, I really am not in the side of trying to sell them more books. I'm just thinking if you're going to buy it, you can do it however you want, Amazon, marginal or audiobook and just receive the message of it. Where else can people find you? Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn. I'm on all of them, Vince, Rago Vargas. Just get off TikTok.

Oh, dude. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. So fun. No, the funny thing about it is like... I think you said gay, right? Yeah, yeah. It's another platform, man, to get the message out that seems to just do well, so I just... I'm on it.

God, damn you. I've done one dance. I've only done one dance, bro. I'm going to research this, and I'm going to find more than one dance. I don't know if I have done a dance. Do you have TikTok, Michael? No, I don't like to do. Good answer.

We have a child in the room who's being more professional than you. It's Chinese spyware. Exactly. They already have, but they'd... looking forward, dude. I don't care. That's true. They're totally, yeah. If you think TikTok is gonna be flip you up. Yeah, if that's the segue, I just, I just fucking sent money to a guy in Africa accidentally. Was he a prince? Yeah. I cut you off a bit when you're saying your, uh, your username. Oh, it doesn't matter. It's Vincent Rocco Vargas everywhere you find it. Perfect. That's too

easy. What do you want to close it out with, man? Thank you for having me. Of course. Let's get you the airport.