From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Rachel At The Border: Are Venezuelan Prisoners Being Sent to America?
Episode Date: March 1, 2024In September of 2022, it was widely reported that the Venezuelan regime was releasing violent prisoners and encouraging them to join caravans headed to America. This led to Border Patrol receiving ins...tructions to be on the lookout for these violent criminals -- but is this a concern we should still be having in 2024? Live from the Arizona border, Rachel joins for a conversation with Texas Congressman Troy Nehls, one of the lead figures raising the alarm about this national security threat. They discuss the intel he's received regarding the validity of these claims, why it remains an issue, and his new book, 'Borderless By Design,' which examines the origins of America's current border crisis. Follow Sean & Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Welcome to From the Kitchen Table.
Today we have with us Congressman Troy Nels from the great state of Texas.
And I was really interested in speaking to the congressman because of the influx of Venezuelans coming over the border.
And it turns out that Congressman Nels has been talking about his concern about Venezuelans being released from prisons long before I heard about that.
So I wanted to talk to him. Congressman, welcome to the kitchen table. Thank you for joining us.
Rachel, thank you for having me.
So let me get this straight. You became aware, and we can talk about how you became aware,
but you became aware of the possibility that Venezuela was releasing prisoners and
violent prisoners that they didn't want to hold on to, didn't want to pay
for in their prisons, releasing them into the public and actually encouraging them to join
caravans into the United States. And you had heard what from our government about that?
Well, the Border Patrol put out notification that said, hey, listen, we need to look out for some of these Venezuelans, people coming in from Venezuela, because the reporting was that Maduro was releasing individuals from their prisons, and they embedded them into these caravans,
and they headed north, and now they're in our country.
And it is quite clear with what we saw the other day
with that poor young lady, Lakin Riley,
being brutally murdered by this Jose Ibarra,
obviously from Venezuela.
So we sent the letter.
We did send a letter in September of 2022 expressing our concerns.
But of course, Mayorkas, nobody ever responded to it.
They never, they don't care, Rachel.
They just truly don't care.
You know, so as I was doing my research for this, I saw that PolitiFact was trying to
push back on what you had said on this letter.
I think 15 other congressmen had gotten together to sign this letter,
sent it to Mallorca saying, what is the intel?
Send us your intel report.
I know you wrote the Border Patrol and told them to look out for violent criminals from Venezuela.
We, members of Congress, want to see that report too.
You never heard anything from DHS on that.
And then Politico looked into it after you put
something on social media about this. And I read that they actually went to, as part of their
research, into whether you were lying or not. They went to the minister, the foreign minister
of Venezuela, and they didn't, I guess they said no.
We asked in the letter in September of 2022, oh, by the way, this bad hombre that killed this poor young lady came across into the United States on September 8th in 2022. So the timing of this,
but we asked 10 questions. I think the American people have a right to know,
Congress has a right to know about Venezuela and who's coming through and what kind of
individuals are entering.
But the administration wouldn't really truly be able to, I guess, answer those questions
without making them look really bad.
Listen, when you have a half a million of them, there's been over a half a million now.
The last year under Donald Trump, there were 4,500 that came up through the southern border, Venezuelans. Last year, 2023,
FY 2023, 334,000. So there's been over half a million individuals coming to this country.
And the American people got to understand, there is no repatriation. I mean, you're not
repatriating any of these. Maduro does not want these individuals back.
We can't send them back.
We can't send them back.
So I want to give our listeners, our viewers, a little bit of context around Venezuelan prisons.
So just to give you an idea of how powerful these criminal gangs are inside of the prison,
Venezuelan prisons, I guess a year or two ago, Venezuela tried to take control of these prisons, which were just out of control and being run by the criminal gangs themselves.
The criminal gangs were so powerful, they built swimming pools inside of their prisons for themselves.
They had restaurants.
They had weapons. So Venezuela, again, kind of around the same time that you're talking about this letter going out and trying to get the intel,
Venezuela breaks up these prisons and all of a sudden you start hearing about Venezuelan violent criminals and ex-prisoners coming through the United States.
I mean, if something like this is happening, we have a CIA, we know there must be intel reports on this.
We know that those prisons were run in that fashion and broken up by the Venezuelan government.
Well, if you just look at Mr. Ibarra, I mean, what do you think he was doing?
He comes over here September 8th of 2022.
We arrest him for entering. And then what do we do?
We parole them, no big deal. Parole them, send them
into the interior of the country. The following year, 2023, he's arrested up in New York for doing
some type of a crime against someone under the age 17. I don't know what that really, I don't know
the full details of that, but I would like to get the answer. And they never put a detainer on this
knucklehead. And so then what happens here a couple of weeks back, he takes the life of a young, wonderful dean's list student, a nursing student from the University of Georgia.
So I am telling you, there is blood on Mayorkas' hands and Joe Biden's hands.
Because the thing is, is that when you bring when these individuals are entering our country, obviously we don, our relationships are strained with Venezuela.
Not like we can say, hey, Venezuela, Billy Bob's coming over.
I'd like to run a criminal history, see what type of guy he is.
We can't do it.
We have no information on these individuals whatsoever.
And they're releasing them into the interior.
And it puts America last.
It's very dangerous.
Explain to me the relationship between members of Congress and
say Alejandro Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security. I mean, I would imagine, I mean, you
have oversight over that agency. How is it that they can hold on? Did they say, no, that didn't
happen? There is no prisoners released? Or did they just say nothing? They didn't send anything?
Because I would imagine that you can demand that you can
subpoena records like that. Well, obviously, I was I mean, I wanted to impeach him because I think
Mayorkas has put America last. He's been a disaster. He's been horrible, if not the worst
DHS secretary we have to date. I mean, he's just been horrible. And he looks at the American people
and says, we have operational control of our southern border.
You know, Mr. Mayorkas, we don't have operational control.
People are coming through by the tens of thousands, now up into the millions.
So when we've had opportunity to have him in front of judiciary and our committees, he really doesn't ever answer, truly ever answer any questions.
So he's just playing this game.
He's working for Joe Biden. It's all
by design. Now, I understand this is all by design. But what took place in Georgia, the American
people are paying attention to. They really are. We've been busing them from Texas and other border
states up to New York and others. So America is finally paying attention to our southern border.
Texas has been dealing with it for decades,
but up in New York, not so much.
Out of sight, out of mind.
I applaud the governors for sending them to these cities.
Yeah, you know, I was one of those people that,
you know, every now and then,
a congressman, I have to eat my words and say I was wrong.
And when Governor Abbott started sending
illegals out of Texas, I kept saying, just send them back home.
Why are you sending them to New York?
This is such a stunt.
And I do think it has been effective since you actually legally, because of federal law, can't send them back, which is insanity in and of itself.
I have to say this idea of busting them out has been effective.
this idea of busting them out has been effective. Again, can I ask you one more time, how can Secretary Mayorkas sit on intel that they have, that Venezuela has emptied prisons of violent
criminals and encouraged them to cross the border? How can he sit on intel like that?
Well, because number one, he is a DHS secretary. He's got the corrupt DOJ behind him with Garland and others. So, I mean, how do we get the information? We can do everything we can to subpoena information. They will do everything they can to block it. Whether it's the issues at the southern border or it's Hunter Biden, they do everything they can to obstruct.
they can to obstruct. But the 10 questions that I asked about how many Venezuelans have you encountered and how do we know who these people are? They didn't respond at all. Because quite
honestly, if they would respond and be truthful with us, they're probably a red flag is going to
go up and they're going to say, oh, my gosh, we better reverse course. But they're not going to
reverse course, Rachel. This is all by design. The only
way you can protect the interior of this country is the MPP, the Remain in Mexico protocol,
migrant protection protocols like Donald Trump had. And if you're going to come up here and
claim some type of asylum, you remain in Mexico. That's not what this administration wants. They
don't want to secure the southern border. They're not serious about securing the southern border. And they want
to blame the Republican Party for all that this country's skills. Yeah, no answer on that letter
is basically the answer. You know, I want to let our listeners and our viewers know a little bit
about your background, because I think that you're uniquely positioned to understand what's happening
at the border, not just because you're from Texas and representing constituents in Texas,
but because you were sheriff and you also wrote a book. Not many members of Congress have actually
written a book on the border. So what's your message in your book? What's your message given,
again, what's happened in Georgia? What's happening now. Tell me what, let's start
with the book. Sure, the book, it's borderless by design. It's, the American people have to understand
this isn't by accident. The Bidens are actually controlling this, what's taking place at our
southern border. They could stop it tomorrow, but they choose not to. It's all by design.
And the book starts out with my experience as a sheriff in Fort Bend County in a very large county. I got about 900,000 people in this county.
And I had individuals in my county, residents in my county that were killed by illegals, killed by illegals.
And then once we arrest them and we find out that they've been, some of them deported six previous times,
how do you get deported more than one time? These individuals will come back and they just come
back, they come back and they keep coming back. And finally, they're taking lives, whether it's
Miss Riley or it's some of my residents in Fort Bend County, Texas. So the border issue is what
caused me to run for sheriff. And I talked about some of my experiences with gangs, Latin American gangs, whether it's Colombia or anywhere else, Mexico, Venezuela. And so that's why I ran for Congress. And the book talks about this is by design because it's bringing people into this country like they did under Boss Tweed in New York in the 1800s.
in the 1800s. Naturalization mills, right? Get them in here, eventually give them naturalization,
amnesty, all this stuff, make them citizens. And then it's about one party rule forever.
This is not by accident. It's by design. Yeah, you know, I was about to ask you,
what's the design? And so that's definitely there's an electoral component to this. We'll be back with much more after this.
component to this. We'll be back with much more after this. I interviewed a gentleman who is an expert in security in Latin America.
And that episode is actually, if you're listening, that episode I pre-recorded.
It's going to come on after in a week subsequent to this one. So if you're listening and you want to get hold of that podcast, stay tuned. It'll drop in about a week after this one. But when I spoke to that gentleman,
Congressman, he said that in addition to sort of the domestic policy incentives for the Biden administration,
that China and Venezuela and also Iran were the ones truly who were facilitating the international,
the non-Latin American infiltration of our country to the southern border,
that they both wanted to overwhelm our system, but also bring in their own
assets who could hide among those who are escaping for economic reasons, hide among them. So we've
seen this 800 percent increase in Chinese. We've seen people from the Middle East. We've seen
people from Iran and that he believes that those assets are coming through. Many of them already
positioned inside of the gates, if you will, and they're ready to do whatever they need to do when given the sign.
fashion, although that is true, but also that they are able to, they're trained to do color revolution type things as we do in other countries as well. What do you make of that?
You're scaring me, Rachel, is what you're doing.
Scared the hell out of me, I'll tell you.
And people, it wouldn't surprise me, Rachel, you know, it wouldn't surprise me that if we
continue to have this poor southern border individuals coming to us, whether they're the individuals on the terrorist watch list or people from Hamas, you could see carbon going off in our country in the next 20 years in some of our large cities.
Don't think it can't happen.
There's no accountability.
We don't know who these individuals are, especially coming from Venezuela and Cuba.
So why would this administration allow these individuals to come in?
And there's over half a million of them.
Donald Trump did it right.
We had the most secure border in 40 years.
Donald Trump did it right.
He said, hey, listen, if you're going to come here and claim amnesty, right, you need some asylum.
You're going to remain in Mexico while we do it.
This administration flipped it on its head right on January 20th.
He reversed all these policies.
Joe Biden reversed them all.
And now we have millions and millions of people in our country sprinkled throughout the entire country.
And there's no accountability.
We can't account for over 60,000 children.
This administration cannot account for over 60,000 children.
That's why legislation next week I'm going to file in honor of Ms. Riley. It's going to deal with if you come into our southern border,
we're going to have a GPS monitoring device on you. We're going to know where you are every
single place. We're going to know where you are. And if you don't agree to have GPS tracking on you,
then you're not coming in. You're not coming in. We need to know where these individuals are. We
need to protect their homeland. And that's the only way you can do it. And quite honestly, if you're coming up here for
honest reasons and you want to be a contributing member to our society, you won't have a problem
with being monitored. Why would you? The FBI and everybody else, social media companies are
monitoring us on our cell phones. Rachel, they're monitoring our every move. Yeah. You know, so even
if you had tracked that guy, probably still would have killed that poor young woman.
But I'm concerned about a couple of things.
I think, why don't we have DNA tests?
The children that come up are not attached.
You know, they're saying that this is my child or the child who comes unaccompanied has a name and an address.
And they just call the person and say, hey, are you this person's aunt or uncle or parent?
And they say, yeah, but there's no DNA test to really prove that.
I understand from my husband, he said that the Democrats fought to not have the DNA test,
that there were at one point DNA tests or Republicans were introducing that and Democrats killed that.
Is that correct?
Yeah, the UACs, you're talking about unaccompanied alien children that are entering in our country.
There are a lot, there's many, many of them. You can't hold them for very long, right?
And I don't believe that whether it's an NGO or DHS, they're doing much vetting on these
individuals saying we're releasing them to the neighbor's cousin, aunt's brother who lives up in New York or some other place.
Vetting is a problem. And it is such a problem that we can't even account for, I believe, over 6,000 of them.
Now, where are these children? Are they being sold into the sex slave industry or labor. I mean, it's just absolutely horrible. And I don't know how Joe
Biden or anybody in that administration can put their head on their pillow at night and sleep
safe and sound without having this like, what have we done to our country? It's shameful. It's
criminal. Quite honestly, Rachel, what they've done, they're aiding and abetting in the trafficking
of human humans. They're aiding and abetting and the trafficking of humans. It's got to stop. It has to stop. And the only one that's going to stop it,
it's going to be Donald J. Trump in 2024. That will secure the border once and for all.
Can he deport all these people that have come in?
Well, I like the idea. If you have a tracking on him, you have GPS on him. At least we know where
they are. I mean, but let's get the bank out first and let's address the other millions that have been here for four years.
Yeah, let's address it. I have one last question for you this week.
I was in Arizona and I was able to go inside a secret hotel where the signage was taken off.
signage was taken off. I had a suspicion that this was Casa Alitas, an NGO that was affiliated or subcontracted in some way through Catholic Relief Services, who gets their money from the
U.S. government. They're a non-government organization. So they seem like a charity,
but as you said, they're part of this pipeline that's facilitating so much evil, including,
you know, not just the trafficking
of humans, but the trafficking and sex trafficking of children. I went in. They panicked. They tried
to kick us out. We went the next day because we thought there might be a drop-off, Congressman.
Our cameraman was accosted. Rocks were thrown at my car. Rocks were thrown at Congressman Biggs' car,
who happened to also be with us, although he did not go into the facility as we did.
Members of Congress can't go into some facility, even though you have oversight. They treat these
hotels like they're some sort of CIA black site. I've been inside of prisons, Congressman, to do reporting,
and I had more access inside of a U.S. prison.
So there's all this secrecy around it.
To me, it seems like this would all end if they didn't have the funding.
They're clearly addicted to this government funding.
The funding comes from Congress.
They're raiding FEMA pots of money.
They're raiding refugee settlement money. They're raiding FEMA pots of money. They're raiding, you know, refugee settlement money. They're raiding veterans money. They're raiding HHS money. So why is it that Congress just can't cut off the money? I'm kind of confused because I feel like this is something that at least all the Republicans could agree on.
the Republicans could agree on. Yeah, you would think we should cut their funding. I am sure,
like whether it's Catholic charities or others, I'm sure there are others out there that are probably doing good things to try to help some of these migrants that have entered our southern
border. But many of them are working in a strong working relationship with this administration
to help process them into the United States, whether
it's providing them food, clothing, shelter, cell phones, information on how to take advantage
of the different programs that will be available to them, whether it's health insurance or
schools or whatever the case may be.
So some of these charities are working in concert with this administration to get these individuals, enter them into the United States, sprinkle them throughout our entire country.
And then eventually the long term game, the long game for the Democrats is these individuals will remember the party that brought them here.
And we're going to find a way to give them naturalization, give them citizenship.
It's one party rule forever. And honestly, it would be over for the Republican Party.
Final question. I want to get back to the Venezuelan prisoners.
Now that this has happened so tragically to this young nursing student in Georgia and, you know, we've had just over the last month,
And, you know, we've had just over the last month multiple high profile cases of violent Venezuelan criminals. We know our criminals, Venezuelans specifically.
Do you think that there will be a revisiting from you, from others in Congress to get that intel report so we can know for sure whether, you know,
report so we can know for sure whether, you know, we can get confirmation about the emptying of Venezuelan prisoners and also find out if they did know this before and didn't share
this with Congress.
We can go out there and we can demand it.
I don't know what they're going to give us.
I don't have the answer.
We can demand it and say, hey, listen, we want to know whether it is subpoena and bringing
Mayorkas again or bringing somebody else up there from the administration to talk to us about
what's happening with this, with these Venezuelans entering our country. And we don't even know where
they are. I mean, there's 500, over 500,000 in the last three years. We don't know where they are.
But when we do find out when an individual has been paroled, when they take the life of one of our American students.
And that's shameful. But I tell you, Rachel, the American people are paying attention.
Joe Biden's approval ratings in the toilet. The southern border is the number one issue for America.
I'm at a polling location right now in Texas, and the border is the number one issue for people voting today in Texas.
The economy is number two. They're done with it. They can't wait for Donald Trump to come back. I wear Trump socks. They love it. They're giving me hugs
saying thank you. Donald Trump is going to save this country. And so the American people are
feeling the pain. I hate to see these individuals, these bad hombres in the lives of Americans. But
I just it's all on Joe Biden's hands and he should fix it and he could stop it today,
but he chooses not to do so.
Well, we're really glad to know that there are good guys like you in Congress with such firsthand knowledge of what is happening at the border and how this whole system works.
I want to promote your book one more time. I think people would benefit from it.
Borderless by demand, by design. It's by Congressman Troy Nels.
And I really appreciate
you joining us today. Please stay on the prison situation. It's so troubling. And boy, if Donald
Trump can get in to office, he's got a lot to clean up. Congressman, thanks for joining us.
Thank you.
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