Julian Dorey Podcast - #243 - Border Patrol Special Operator Exposes Government-Sponsored Takeover | Vincent "Rocco" Vargas

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

SPONSOR - ACORNS: https://www.acorns.com/podcasts/?s2=julian&s4=julian_podcast (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Vincent "Rocco" Vargas is an American entertainer, producer and writer, known for Range 15, Mayans M.C., the MBest11x YouTube channel and the Vinny Roc podcast. He is also a Special Operations Border Agent. EPISODE LINKS - PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey - MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/ - AMAZON STORE: https://amzn.to/3RPu952 GUEST LINKS - BUY HIS BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Borderline-Defending-Front-Vincent-Vargas-ebook/dp/B0BQGJ1TX9 - ROCCO'S PODCAST: https://www.youtube.com/@thisisironclad/videos- ED CALDERON EPISODE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76cITRqC-UE FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/ INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey LISTEN to Julian Dorey Podcast Spotify ▶ https://open.spotify.com/show/5skaSpDzq94Kh16so3c0uz Apple ▶ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trendifier-with-julian-dorey/id1531416289 JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP OTHER JDP EPISODES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: - Episode 148 - Shawn Ryan: https://youtu.be/ib4atmvMqlk?si=iw3Rc5MUkBhiUpoe - Episode 188 - Dale Comstock: https://youtu.be/3turgHTOS-I?si=7TEfGEtUe_8tPwFU - Episode 189 - Dale Comstock: https://youtu.be/7rerXhVYqNA?si=SSErCojtCIrmbiqO - Episode 238 - Taylor Cavanaugh: https://youtu.be/6zsj2CHonQk - Episode 214 - Nick Shirley: https://youtu.be/DyZeoFWz-UA?si=hUIEYcTZPf-VPEbc - Episode 229 - Jorge Ventura: https://youtu.be/Lut9cR18FAc ****TIMESTAMPS**** 00:00 - Growing up in California, Border Patrol Agent & Topic Became Politicized 12:14 - Border Patrol Agents Angy & How it Works (09-15) 21:18 - Who’s Crossing & ID Process, Obama vs Trump’s Immigration Policy 33:34 - Story of Rocco’s Gma Coming to America, Watching Migrants Drown Story 40:00 - Humanitarian Crisis (Dead Bodies) of Migrant Crisis, Addressing Controversial Border Patrol Agents 49:29 - Tactics Used by Border Patrol, Building a Wall, Local Sheriff’s Involved on Immigration Issue (Sheriff Lamb) 01:00:52 - Political Posturing & Why the Border is Everyone’s Issue, History of Border Patrol (Post 9/11) 01:13:33 - Times of Most Action at Border, Story of Suspicious Illegal Immigrant, Amount of Kids Left Behind 01:22:07 - BORSTAR (Pararescue), Lack of Military on Border Patrol, Questioning God & Faith Journey 01:27:07 - College Baseball to Joining Military, Tour in Afghanistan & Iraq, Capture & Kill Attack 01:39:07 - Hunting Al Zawariri & Hitting Evil Terrorist, Coming Back & Doing Ranger School, Losing Friends 01:51:47 - Border Patrol Special Operations 01:57:56 - Heavy Cartel Work, Most Value Product & Cartel’s #1 Product 02:10:25 - Exotic Bodies & Chinese Directions for Illegals, Chinese Bought Farmlands 02:19:07 - Corrupt NGOs, Rocco’s Slow Dismantling of America Theory 02:25:22 - The Mayan TV Show Disrespect, Assimilation into American Culture 02:34:28 - Rocco Meeting Illegal Immigrant Conversations, Deported Veterans 02:44:20 - Story of Undocumented Immigrant, Ed Calderon Intel on Cartel Situation 02:56:22 - Leaving Border Patrol in 2015, Famous Border Tracking Mission 03:04:44 - Border Under Obama Administration, Future of Border Security CREDITS: - Host, Producer, and Editor: Julian Dorey - In-Studio Producer: Alessi Allaman - https://www.instagram.com/allaman.docyou/ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 243 - Vincent "Rocco" Vargas Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming across the border and I saw your ass running at me, I'd be really pissed off about America. You're like, this is not what I signed up for. I pulled over a dude one time. It turned out to be a pretty big case. It was a black dude on the border and going the wrong direction. In all of my investigative questions, I knew he was there smuggling. Going back to the other side? Going towards the border. I just saw him pulled over and looking at his tires. I'm like, this doesn't look right. Let me see me see if he needs help but also it's an area that usually

put picks up dope so like he's already in the wrong place and i'm like let me go check this dude in that area that i was at there's not a lot of blackheads so let me go another suspicion like wow weird going the wrong direction this is strange man like why is this dude here this location that always people okay so hey man what's up man um you need help he goes oh no man it was just uh my tire i was like well, which one is it? And so as I'm doing all that, I'm like, hey, what are you doing here, dude? He's like, I was just, and he's not answering.

I'm like, I'm gonna ask you one more time, big guy. I was like, are your spills pickup dope? Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please take a second to hit that button and leave a five-star review. It is a huge, huge help to the show. And you can also follow me on Instagram and on X by using the links in my description. Thank you. Rocco, thank you so much for being here, man. You are one of the most requested guests we've ever had. I hope I don't disappoint. I think you're going to live up, man. You have had a hell of a career doing a lot of different

things. We were just talking about the fact that you have had a hell of a career doing a lot of different things we're just talking about the fact that you have eight kids along the way that's also impressive given everything you've done but you know the probably the topic of the hour is what you've been doing your borderlands podcast and book from 2023 on which is the u.s border which you were in the border patrol for i guess like six years and you still maintain ties with what's going on there and everything. But before we get into it, I just want to say your book gives the best view into the border patrol and what it's actually all about that I've ever seen. Because, I mean, you know how it is in society. We all just have this idea

of someone standing there with a gun on the border waiting for someone to cross. But it's actually like you got special forces on the border. You got all kinds of ranges of skills that are difficult to train to the point that even a guy who was an Army Ranger like you came into the Border Patrol and it was difficult to get in there and do your thing. But what got you interested in doing that job in the first place, man? Yeah.

You know, it's funny. I grew up in L.A. driving to Mexico and with my family doing the whole – we go to this 50-mile bike ride from Rose Rio to Ensenada. And I'd see these Border Patrol agents in there. At the time, it was like a mint green truck. I had no idea who the hell they were. And so I asked questions about it before, saw a movie called, I think it's called,

it was called Born in East LA. And it was a Cheech Marin film and it talked about him crossing the border. He was trying to cross the border to get to some event, but it had a lot of like talk about illegal immigration in the film, but it was used in a comedic about illegal immigration in the film but it was used in a comedic tone so i had no idea it was anything serious until the military i was during

during one of my deployments one of my squad leaders uh sarja barraza was kind of asking us all like what do we want to do after you know everyone has this thoughts you know you're overseas at the time we were in afghanistan and we're cleaning our weapons uh and everyone says you know cop firefighter this or that me too the you know, cop, firefighter, this or that. Me too, the same. My father was a firefighter, so I was like, oh, probably a firefighter, maybe even a smokejumper now that I'm an airborne ranger. I can just do both, you know.

And he said, border patrol. And I was like, this aren't your Mexican, bro. Like, I don't know if you know this, but you're Mexican. Why would you want to be a border patrol agent, you know? I had no idea what I was even talking about, but he mentioned how they have a really good budget for the special operations side of things, and his dream was to become a BORTAC member, which is Border Patrol Tactical Team. And so when he kind of put me onto that, I started looking into it more, and it actually

seemed pretty interesting. And at the time when you Google it, there was BORTAC, and then there was this group called SOG, which Special Operations Group was the top of the line. These were the kind of – they can get response anywhere around the world for any kind of crisis. And so I had my eyes on that for a second. I was like, that sounds interesting, but we'll see. But that was the first time I ever kind of thought like maybe I can transition from what i'm doing as an army ranger overseas and when you're overseas you you realize that we we actually are kind of helping defeat some of the potential future attacks on america when you start collecting the information the intel on these guys

that were apprehending overseas or you know these these killer capture missions we're doing you start to see their ties to America and their plans of kind of hurting Americans. And so then you really are like, man, how can I do this in my own country? Well, Border Patrol was the answer for that for me. Well, I think something that really lays out well in your book that's such a breath of fresh air for this conversation is the fact that you try to get down to the nuts and bolts of it. The politics and this stuff obviously gets crazy.

I understand that. People are going to fight over something like the security of our border. But to your point, it's like it's not just this whole US is bordered with Mexico or US is bordered with Canada on the north side, it's like the threat that that can be for bad actors to come across who aren't from those places even. To say nothing of some of the bad actors who may exist in those places as well. It's like you hear people say if you don't have a border, you do. Like what's a country? And I kind of get that. Yeah, that's exactly like – in the book, I was trying to explain that this conversation, which became political during the Trump era.

Yes. It wasn't political before then for some reason as much as you would think. It wasn't. It wasn't like this big conversation because of the way – I believe the way it was handled by the Obama administration was – it was almost a pass over. People were just like, oh, yeah, he's dealing with it, whatever. But the Trump administration – and I wouldn't say them per se. I would say maybe more the media turned it into a political argument. And when it got pulled into political argument, people felt they needed to choose sides.

Well, the only two sides you can choose in this conversation is border security or immigration policy. Those are the two sides that people picked. So to make it even easier was build the wall or open the border, right? That was the conversation, and that's all the conversation ended up being and it continues to be that for those who really don't understand the topic they just say well let's just jump on one of these sides and that's going to say build the wall fuck everybody you know and the other side goes like let them all in and that's where this conversation became like man man, you guys really don't get it. It's so, so complex and there's so much more to this conversation. And the answer is actually more in the middle of that.

It's kind of like both of those combined. And I can't believe it. Yeah. It's it's it's it's become this emotional conversation. And when people get their emotions involved, they stop really wanting to educate themselves on the subject more. And because they would they would find that they're probably wrong. You know what I mean? It's not the extreme versions of those is what we want to say.

It bothered me because here's my biggest gripe. Why I wrote the book. Let me say this. I'm sitting in Hollywood doing Mayans MC and it's a very privileged fucking life to live like that okay okay like at one point during my the best contract I ever had uh I received my check and I was emotional because I felt really shitty that I made this much money in two weeks you know what I mean I'm like well they're that matched my border patrol paycheck you know what I mean that kind of feeling and then watching the scrutiny that the that the media was giving them right the media was telling saying oh they're they're just like the nazis the

way they're treating these kids in cages and things like that like all that conversation when it gets to hollywood it's just multiplied 10 times because then the hollywood people some of these some of these individuals who jump on these conversations because they want to back them. But the lack of information on that, right? And so they jump on them like, hey, man, fuck these border traitors. Dude, you see what they're doing? And I'm sitting there like, motherfucker. I am them.

I was them. I know what they're doing. And so I got pretty frustrated and decided I was going to write a book. The Border Patrol at the time took a position like, well, let's just not counter any of these arguments because it's just like out of sight, out of mind. Forget it. But it didn't do – that didn't benefit the agent administration, as much as it was good for Border Patrol based on the policies that were implemented by that administration, the public eye towards the Border Patrol was negative. The media's interpretation of the Border Patrol's job was negative. And so as the border patrol is doing good by doing whatever policy was put into place, meaning most likely it's going to be any kind of illegal immigration that comes across

that the upper hand, they're just going to end up expedited removal, right? Just deporting them. As much as that felt good and it's doing the job exactly that what you signed up for and you feel like you're doing your job, well, the public persona of the border patrol was negative yes they saw the man's these these guys who were being abusive they thought they were racist they all the conversation of from man from the whole thing with the kids in cages which was completely taken out of context

yeah i want to come back to that yeah Yeah, we will. Go ahead. But like multiple different things, just the fact that Trump, you know, that they said Trump said this or Trump said that, I'm not going to put any weight behind any of it, but it pulled the idea that the Border Patrol was a conservative-leaning organization. And that's unfair because the organization alone has no political bias. It can't. It's a fucking government organization. It's a law for it.

And so the average person sitting on the back end believed it. And then you started hearing some truth like, yeah, but they're like 60%, 70% Hispanic. They're like, what? Why would they do that? What do you mean why would they do that? It's a great job. It's a good career, right? So this thing was like – so those four years the public was shitting

all over the the agency and that's not easy as an agent you know they they were dealing with their own family members saying how can you treat kids like that how can you treat people like that and which is false it's an it's an exaggerated narrative there is some truth to these kids in cages but like i said we'll circle back on what that looks like so when you're going around your own city and people talking shit right and when you're going around your own city and people talking shit, right, and when you're going around your social media and people talking shit, and when you're going around your family even doesn't understand it because they believe everything the media says, it doesn't feel good inside of that. Border Patrol having one of the highest suicide rates out of any law enforcement agency at the time. And then you get these next four years, the Biden administration. Now the policies that are put in place are not the most beneficial for the Border Patrol feeling as if they are doing their job that they originally signed up for. How so? Because now instead of deporting anyone who comes over illegally, the policies that are put in place are allowing them to seek asylum and get an NTA, a notice to appear.

We'll dig into that later more what that looks like. And so for the agency, now not speaking as the organization, everything is just my own opinion and watch what I've observed in my experience. Got it. Just look. CYA there. Covering my ass right there. We've opinion and watch what I've observed in my experience. Got it? Just look. CYA, they're covering my ass right there. We've had to do that a few times in the studio. Put a little writing on the wall here. Like, all my opinion.

Either way. The agents feel as if they're handcuffed and not able to do their job because of the policies that are put into place. Are they doing the job? They're doing exactly job they're doing exactly what they're fucking supposed to do the the these migrants are coming across and they're still apprehending them they're still stopping they're still getting all the biographical information right about like all the data right and there's and then they're still processing an a-file right just giving them a documentation but after that the process has changed where now there is no facility or location or anything put into place where we can house this many illegal immigrants.

It doesn't exist. Yeah, because the flow has turned up like crazy. Like crazy. It slowed down recently, but sometimes there's a political kind of slowdown or whatever the case may be. You don't say. Yeah, it's weird how it works. Yeah. But the fact is that we don't have anything put in place where we can house this many individuals as we wait, while we wait for their determination of their case, right?

And the immigration judge determines, okay, you say you're seeking asylum. Let's look into it. They determine yes or no, right? So we don't have a system put in place to house them. What's one money lesson you wish you had learned earlier? For me, it's easy. Discover the exciting action of BetMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer

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whether someone they know or the cartel has given them an address that just used this one right and whatever yeah we'll talk a lot about the cartels. Right. And so then they get let into the country for a notice to appear, a later date in which they can come back and the immigration judge can make a determination of their case. So that doesn't feel good for the agents to know like, man, it's almost like a catch and release. And the problem of that is now the media, instead of now calling them bad names, they're saying they're not even doing their job. The media is using the spin. You can't win.

Right. So for the past eight fucking years, there's a scapegoat for whatever conversation the media wants to use them for. That's fucking unfair. Yeah. And you know what? You made the point in there five minutes ago about how like 60, i believe you said of the border patrol is often like his black hispanic and when when i'm just sitting at home in my armchair here thinking about the stereotype that is pictured yeah it's a white dude in a cowboy hat spitting out some

chew like get on the other side of the border there and that's not it's not what it is and now these guys are there it's like they're doing their job but they're not being helped on the back end so they're taking all the blame for it like you said it's like burning on both ends of the can yeah it's tough because the border patrol is doing exactly the job that is put in place for them currently right now they're following the policies and procedures that are put into place so they're doing their job but mainstream public eye it looks as if they're assisting aiding and abetting. And it's false. That's a false narrative. That's just what the media uses to make them look bad. That's what

the media uses to kind of pull people in different directions for voting. That's what it is. Okay. And so remember, this isn't a left and right conversation, but it's been used that way. And the border patrols has been the fucking butt of that joke for way too goddamn long. And I'm frustrated. And that's why I wrote the book. And that's why i continue to do what i do with borderland is let's give people the information they deserve so hopefully they can make a better determination of what's really happening on our borders absolutely i think something that would help out there just for for all the people listening who are casual viewers of what happens on the border man they're not experts on it but it's something i hear about in the news a lot. Maybe they've seen it in the political conversations, which

isn't exactly helping. But like when you talk about border patrol versus ICE and the process that's supposed to happen, maybe not what's happening right now, maybe even different than the Trump years or whatever. But before that, like perfectly like border into ICE, what where does the line get drawn where one goes to the other and what are the roles and how is it done when someone goes to come across the border? Yeah, and if anyone watching this podcast wants to really dig into the nitty-gritty of it, the book really explains this. And this is why we had to write a book like that because too many people will blame all of it on the Border Patrol when there's so many layers. So let's talk about the first three, the only ones you really need to identify when you're talking borders. You got CBP, right? CBP, those are CBP customs is who works the ports of entry. They usually,

they're wearing blue. That's their color is a blue. They sit there in their chair, they're standing and they evaluate if you're an American citizen when you're coming back across, or they look at your documents. Okay. They work at ports of entry. Now, when you're entering into this country, the only way you're allowed to enter this country legally is through a port of entry. Anywhere outside of that port of entry is illegal. So they work all ports of entry. So if you've ever gone down to Tijuana, you're going to see them.

They're the ones right there at the checkpoints, all the other border, all the way across the nation. That's Customs and Border Protection. That's Customs, so remember that. Border Patrol is the green uniforms. Predominantly Predominantly green. Now, if you're dealing with special operations, they're usually probably going to wear a different, it could be a multi-cam, it could be a, I think right now they're all running multi-cams, but when I was in, it was multi-cam and then a green kind of subdued uniform. But the Border Patrol themselves work

everywhere outside of the port of entry, so they guard the nation across the borders outside of the port of entry. So anywhere that someone would enter outside of there trying to evade, abscond, that detection is where the Border Patrol covers. Where there's a hole in the wall. Yes, where there's holes in the wall potentially. After detection, after the Border Patrol themselves has apprehended these individuals and they've done their a files on them and they've determined like okay we're going to send them off to wherever for the immigration judge or deportation they can hand it off to ice ice at that time ero right they're the ones who now will set up deportation

okay now there's a change here sometimes that happens because the deportation is them and the housing is them, is ICE, but currently because of the massive influx, sometimes it doesn't even get to them because they can't house them, and so they just hand off the portal, like, you guys go ahead and release them

because we don't have anyone. So they give them their notice to appear and release them. As per policy, not just like fucking. Yeah, I understand. And so that's the layers you have to think about. ICE also will be in major cities, and they work off of if someone gets arrested and they find out that it's a DUI and it's kind of a manslaughter case, whatever, and they're an illegal immigrant, well, boom,

they'll go to a deportation hearing as well, things like that. So if you get arrested for whatever reasons, boom, now ICE can identify they're illegal. Boom, now they get set up for deportation. And they also have the difficulty that the legal system is so far behind with this. Not for one of those examples, but even for like a standard, all right, someone just came here, regular person, not criminal, just crossed the border illegally. Sometimes their court date can be like five years from now yeah so back when i was you know when i was in there was these policies that were put in place like i said this is obama era obama era was like he deported everybody that's it that dude deported and it wasn't a bad thing like he never got the scrutiny that trump

did because maybe his political presence and how he talked about the conversation what you know what i mean yeah he didn't come out and say they're rapists and some i assume are good people that's that has proven now to be a problem yes right like as as a commander-in-chief we have to have a little bit more tact in that yes we do and so when he when obama was doing this it wasn't public issue, it wasn't a public issue, right? It wasn't – they didn't put scrutiny on the Border Patrol for deporting as many as we did. And the way it worked was if they come across, it was an expedited removal. Like, hey, sorry, you're in here illegally. Can you claim asylum?

Well, let's see. Like if someone from Mexico at the time tried to claim asylum, it was like, no, there's nothing that determines that you have any right to claim asylum. They say the cartel. Like that's not – at that time, it's not considered to be a valid excuse. Everyone could say that technically. Right, exactly. And so at the time, it was still El Salvador. They were struggling a lot.

They could claim asylum. And I think – I don't remember at the time if there was another one, but you didn't have a lot of people who could claim asylum. So everyone else was just getting deported. And that expedited removal could be within 72 hours after we've already handed them off to ICE. Did you see during your years, 09, 15, when you were active, did you see a lot of people coming from non-South American countries? Not a lot.

No, it was – we call them OTMs other than Mexicans. Okay. Everyone else south of the border who's not Mexican was considered – was labeled as an OTM as per paperwork. And so that's Guatemalans, El Salvadorans, Hondurans, freaking Chileans. Yes. The list goes on and on. All right. Let's come back to that.

Yeah. And it's funny. Coincidentally, when I worked in the prison system, part of the prison became a holding facility for illegal immigration. Where were you stationed? I was in CCA, which is a prison, a private prison owned right in Florence, Arizona. Okay. And so we were – You were on the private prison side.

No, they paid good. And they hired fast. Now that I know, now what I – you know what's funny? I got out of the military. I was like, $21 an hour? Yeah, I'm good. I'll do it. What that I know, now what I – you know what's funny? I got out of the military. I was like, $21 an hour? Yeah, I'm good. I'll do it. What do I do?

And like the academy for that was seriously PowerPoint. So I was like, we're fucked. I'm going to go work in a prison through a PowerPoint training? Like, god damn. And so I just told – There are a lot of future podcasts on other topics with you. I just want to point that out. Dude, the private prison, shit.

That's a whole different world homie but working there i'm like damn we got a lot of we got a lot of hispanics and you're like no they're called they call themselves bisos right that's kind of how they identify in prison biso is biso is if i'm correct it's like a mexican nationals but pretty much anyone who labeled is an illegal immigrant at the time and spoke Spanish, they fell into the gang, the prison culture of paisas. Got it. And so when you have in prison, you have sureños, you have some of the black gangs. At that time in Arizona, you have some of the Indian gangs, which would be – or the native gangs, which would be kind of like Warrior Nation. I believe it was a couple others.

They housed up with each other as paisas.'s how they label themselves so they're not really a gang right they're not at all but in the holding facilities they had to kind of buddy up to protect each other they're small but mighty you know i mean there's a lot of numbers you know and so yeah dude they'd pop off too dude if someone took their food they would they would fight too and they'd bring 10 of them with them. So it was interesting. And I started like, why do we have so many illegal immigrants here? What's up? It's like, oh, they're just waiting for ICE deportation. So they were fighting their case.

They were repealing their deportation. And if they lost, boom, they got deported either way. And that was the first time I ever heard of that in my life because, like I said, I was so far removed from the idea of where the border was, the whole border patrol, the whole concept. And then when I became an agent, was like oh shit the people from arizona who are who are grabbing these dudes isis putting them there to hold them because they have no other room for them and then they're waiting for their deport deportation hearing and once they get deported deported boom they they get on their flight all right so it's usually a flight when they do that yeah most of these people were flights if and so because a lot of us just

like picture a bus going right to the other side like get out arizona does that arizona does arizona does so that's true i'm in i'm in i'm in texas and from what i know is most of the time texas from the texas areas if they're getting deported back to me, then they'll just drive a bus and drop them off right at the border. Right on the border. Right. Right. But to someone. Like connecting with the, you know, the...

A cartel coyote? Probably. Now that I know more about it, right? But just hand them off. Looks like a real straight shooter. Right. That's the guy. He said he's wearing a blue tie.

I don't know. But, yeah, so they do drop off some of the border the Mexican ones But the funny thing is when you're interviewing them you're like it's what country from they're like Mexico and you're like It's good. Oh like Mexican at all So they're trying to hide the fact that they're from another country, right? Because the fact we're gonna deport them directly to the country and if the country is Chile then they're never fucking going way down south So point is a lot of them try and hide the fact they're not mexicans so they can get deported to mexico so they can make another attempt faster and you you can't share ways that you guys

detect that well yeah not necessarily but all dialect and language can help with that so um but there's other ways if they're good at that though right yeah there's some some of these countries share their you know their data their data, their criminal history. Some of them do and that helps. Sometimes they're carrying their own identification arms right away we know. And then sometimes like the way you say in Spanish, children is different. Yes. Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, they have different dialects, right?

And so some of us know that and so you could identify right away like, oh,'s from this guy's from honduras for sure yeah yeah so that's those are those ways like that but some of the this really good spanish-speaking guys are the ones who take over that and they try and break them they try and you know ask them enough questions to really identify it and eventually you get out of them so we we have been talking about this like kids in cages narrative and now that we at least understand the, I guess, like chain of custody there, then it goes on. What was that? Because apparently Obama had set up holding facilities during his presidency that I think even Bush may have been a predecessor for on some of it. And then when Trump got in, the narrative became, oh my God,

we're putting kids in cages and Donald Trump did it. What's really the truth there? So Obama actually closed down during his time, a lot of the holding facilities, because it was almost like no need for them at the time. It was like, why would we have these open? Let's just shut them down. The kids in cages was an interesting thing that the Trump administration tried to do to hopefully create deterrence. And it wasn't the kids in cages that was the deterrence. Someone's going to clip them and be like, I told you. They created a policy that was trying to identify first if these kids were connected to the people that were crossing them and so that takes a little bit longer to determine whether the dna was or not right the

other side of it is you have to anytime we brought someone in who had kids we had to determine if it was the father because of human trafficking issues oh yeah and so we separated them already just for questioning. It's no different than what we did overseas when I fucking went into a room in Iraq or something like that and we had a bunch of dudes. We separated them and started asking questions and started doing our version of questioning to try and identify who's the dude we're looking for.

It's no different there. You separate them. You put the kids over here, even with the mothers if you needed to. Sometimes you separate even from the mothers, but we have someone caring. You try not to separate if the mother is identified. But right away it's like let's see if this is the father. If this isn't the father, let's do DNA testing right away. The problem with this was we don't have – the boardroom facilities are not built to house more than like 35, 40 people at a time.

That's it? Well, because it's a quick return it's you come in we don't get this massive influx we just recently started getting this shit so we're like damn what do you do with this shit it's gonna say there's 35 40 just walked across all you said that's the problem is like the the stations are not built to house that many people at once and it and it started to become a problem so they started creating like what do you do now it's becoming unsafe conditions the only thing they do is make these make shift um kind of these pop-up housings and all it was was what you saw it not cages it was essentially just chain link fencing yeah that's what it was but you know you use the term cage well now you're fucking i'm fucking with emotions now you're fucking with the hearts and minds.

That's right. And so that's what they did. It was the most – the fastest way they can actually create something so they can go through the process of determining where these kids are from, if these are the actual parents, and then how they're going to – what are they going to do with them. Usually if it's coming as a family unit, then you keep the family unit together and you deport them. Now the process that Trump was trying to do, which is more what's like trump the administration came down to like hey let's create deterrence let's separate them from the families and put the families in jail yeah and that became an issue and i i yeah i that's a fucking issue for me too because then what do you do with the kids well then we're supposed then we have to house them well do you get

reconnected i don't fucking know i don't know that far into it but that's where it came it was a chance of let's create deterrence but optics wise it looked fucking terrible yes it's fucking terrible and like and as a human being sitting at home like i consider myself a winner of a lottery the fact that i was born here? Like it's such a great place to be. We have our problems like anywhere else, but like America is like this beacon of freedom in the world. I love that. So I respect the fact to say nothing in the fact that I don't even have any relatives that were here before like 1900. Right. So, and there's a lot of us that could say that, but I respect the fact that people want to come here. I also respect the fact that, frankly, people get the vast majority of people coming across the border are exactly that.

They're looking for a new hope, new life, a job, whatever. Within that though, when you have such an influx, you are getting some very bad people who are coming across too. It's not just cartels. It's people from other countries it's people who who are leaders of gangs that are going to start that here and the minute those people come into this country and then i don't know do some gang shit or something and kill someone what do you think's going to happen of course it's going to get politicized and i i hate how that happens to like such an extent sometimes but i get it yeah yeah

yeah it's crazy because like right now the trend yeah trend right ben as well they're getting a lot of a lot of negative press and as they should right but it's it's used politically you know i mean like yeah it sucks to see these illegal immigrants come across right and they're called non-citizens and it's the term that people are using now to be less offensive whatever the case but non-citizens illegal immigrants however you want to use that is yeah they're coming in here illegally then they're given their notice to appear so now they're here and then from that point whatever they do with that time while they're waiting is up to them you know it's also proven that only 2%, 3% come back to the NTA to come back to evaluate their case, just statistically.

Wait, what? Yeah, only 2%, 3% even come back to allow the immigration judge to determine their case. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah, that's crazy. So that alone is like, that statistic isn't good. We got to figure that one out but you know the hard thing for me is being in a position like the journalistic side of it like trying to be fair on all sides of this is as much as these non-citizens illegal immigrants

are committing crime and rape so is american citizens and we're using yeah but they shouldn't be here i get it i get it but like we have an issue across the board too you know it's so multiple but that one stings more it definitely stings more because you're like wait but this is when we could have stopped internally we have our issues right internally we have our issues but this one should have been stopped this one should have been that's the problem it should have never happened and that's the fucking problem you know what i mean like we have but this one should have been stopped this one should have been that's the problem it should have never happened and that's the problem you know what i mean like we have to make sure that we're all also saying like yeah but we still have a problem guys there's still people you know americans raping americans right still americans murdering

americans like let's be honest with ourselves here but this one definitely is one that we could have stopped especially because we had them in custody we We had them processed. We have all their information. And so that's where it gets like, this is a fucking slippery slope. Yeah. And you're partially Mexican. Yeah, I'm half Mexican, half Puerto Rican. Okay. I believe it was your grandma.

Yep. She came over illegally by stealing her sister's identity. Can you tell this story, please? Yeah. So I asked my mom about this the other day. My mom was scared to tell the truth. I'm like, my grandma's passed. Don't worry. Don't worry. They're not going to send her back. They're not sending me back anymore either. We're good. borders just right there, right? It's not a big deal. And so back when she was younger, it wasn't uncommon to just come across, you know, do your shopping, hang out. Your family was there too. So there was family that divided by the river, right? The Rio Grande River. And so it wasn't

uncommon just to come across, spend the day and go home. At that time, they were still trying to figure out where they're living. My grandmother, my great grandmother had one of her daughters in America. So that's considered American citizen. My grandmother was born in Mexico. So she's a Mexican citizen. My, you know, my great grandma, I guess my, my grandma's sister died at a very young age who was American citizen. And they thought it would be best for the future of my grandmother to take her identity. So she took the identity of her sister and you know, there you have it boom we're in america so you but point being like this is like a full circle kind of thing with you because then obviously that was a long time ago it was a different type of situation but now you find yourself on the other

end of that where some other people who you know maybe in some cases could be like your grandma are trying to come across and it's your job to stop that. Yeah. That's not lost on me. Right. You know what I mean? It wasn't lost on me as an agent either. You know, there's times where you, you know, you apprehend the, this mother and her kids and just them. And you're like, damn, you know, this is one of those moments that you wish you didn't catch. But you know, the other side of it is like, you got to do your job. Right. Yeah. It's just, it's just the convicted in me to do my job. I'm going to do my job. But it's one of those ones you're like, ah, dude, this one I could have missed, guy.

What's wrong with you? Like, fuck. I could have won and got some tacos at that time, and then you just missed them. But I didn't. And when you work on a board, there's a lot of tacos, bro. But yeah, dude, so it's tough. It wasn't easy for me. My favorite part of the Border Patrol was going to a special operations unit because the mission was more focused on disrupting and dismantling the cartel, right? Yes.

Or drug-smuggling organizations. So I was happier to be in that side of it, but it doesn't mean – it doesn't take away the value of what that job is in knowing it's an important job no matter what. I personally – it wasn't easy. I'm someone who's very empathetic you know if you read the book i i jumped in to save someone's life the water that no one was like you shouldn't do that and i was like yeah i'd rather story can you tell that one please yeah um i was 30 days into the border patrol in the border academy they they put you through this kind of basic uh life-saving uh water techniques for your uniform we watched a video of two migrants uh you know attempting to cross losing their footing and then drowning and what happened was one lost his footing and started drowning the other one went in to try

and save him and then the other one drowned the other one trying to save his own life and like just the unfortunate thing about people panicking in water they tend to drown each other accidentally. And I knew that, you know, my, my years of military, we'd learned some of the water survival stuff already. So I kind of was very familiar with it. I grew up swimming since I was little beach, you know, boogie boarding. I understand the water very well, very confident in it. And so 30 days into the job, um, I hear a commotion across the river. Families are screaming. One of the guys who was attempting to cross lost his footing. He started drowning himself. And I thought it's probably, you know, 45, 50 meters away. I don't know what it is, but he was probably 75% on the other side

still. And I knew I can get to the distance. It didn't scare me. I knew the water was going to be cold. And so I told my supervisor at times, Hey, do you mind if I go? He goes, no, dude, I don't recommend it. I said, bro, I don't think I can sit here and watch this any longer. I got to go. He said, okay. So I handed him my gun. I took off my pants, took off my shoes.

I took off my top, but the fucking top got stuck on the wrist because I was so trying to rush. I just ripped it off. So it's me in a shirt, my boxers, my socks and a cuff still on. And I started swimming out that way. The current was pretty strong.

It was pushing us kind of to the left. And as I got to him within this distance, me to you, we both kind of got washed up on a low spot. And we just looked at each other. And I was like, he was like, gracias. And I was like, yeah. And he turned around, and i just swam back like what that was fucking weird right he go back and he went back yeah he went back to the

other side he just he found a path to walk and um the agents were like you know it was kind of half and half you know half of them were like what the fuck were you thinking and the other half was like uh bro that was dope to watch thanks for for trying, right? Because it's a conflicted position to be in. You know what I mean? I can't watch another human drown, whether American or not. It's just not in my character. And I know how to swim really well. So I was like, I'll fucking try.

And I was going to fucking – I was going to fuck the dude up so he didn't drown me, right? Like I knew what I was going to do if he tried to drown me. I was going to fucking give him something, turn him around and fucking rescue the bitch, right? I know what I'm doing. You know what I mean? I wasn't just going to be like, I was going to fucking give him some and turn him around and fucking rescue the bitch, right? I know what I'm doing. You know what I mean? I wasn't just going to be like, I hope he drowns me too. I was going to give him the fucking business just to make sure I can rescue his ass. But the other half just was like, dude, that's not smart to risk your life for one of them.

Because there's so many. Yeah, and I didn't understand that. Personally, I still don't understand that. It's why I went war star because I don't give a fuck who it is. I'm going to do my best to rescue whoever I can because that's just where my heart's at. Yeah, I want to break down Boar Star versus Boar Attack and then eventually go into the Special Forces or the SOG group with The thing that's really come across to me in learning a lot more about this issue over the past couple years and then having guys like Jorge Ventura securing your country and shit like that but the people who are caught in the middle of this whether it be because they're with abusive cartel coyotes who are killing some of them when they don't pay them enough or you know the fact that they're coming into wild areas sometimes with no resources and

you know they're left to fend for themselves in the fucking Rio Grande and – or just the human trafficking end of it, which is such a sad thing. But obviously we'll get to that with the cartels. year 2024 in the confines of our country basically because we're talking about on our border we have people who are encountering deaths that are similar to like shit you would see in the show 1883 yeah like i i can't wrap and you had to see that up close for so long yeah do you ever get to wrap your head around that or is it just like you get to synthesize to it yeah i think uh it took it took a long time to understand that's not normal you know i was at war right we did see dead bodies there you know so it wasn't the most uncommon thing i think i kind of disassociated at the time just kind of did my job but it is you start to like damn that's crazy you know i think it was del rio last year lost 166 people uh there's 166

migrants who attempted to cross illegally died whether it was by drowning or dehydration that's one sector dude so imagine these border patrol agents who do 25 30 years of this career field see you know several dead bodies a year that's not normal no that's a that's a very different and not like it's ugly to watch someone drown like to see them struggling and try and try and go save them and then they disappear and then you don't see them for three more days and it's just floating body guys if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button please take two seconds and go hit it right now thank you yeah like that's up but then to walk up on a body that died of dehydration in my book i talk about she right with sticks help and half naked because

they just got overheated they you know kind of lose their mind a little bit and it's that's crazy and then especially as a as a as these agents who get the calls of like someone's lost and they try and go out and find them you know it's like that's a hard thing to deal with and so these agents deal with it all the time and it's fucking crazy there's so much there's so much death at our borders and that's part of like this humanitarian mission is like 99 of our job is humanitarian mission these agents are giving the the these these non-citizens their their food, they're carrying the kids. I'm trying to say anything that's going to get me in trouble.

But they're always constantly making sure that these noncitizens, these illegal immigrants are coming over and still healthy and safe. Yes. We have EMTs across the nation. The EMT of the Border Patrol, to me, it matches with the medical level of what the military has done. They actually had the medical, the medical director was someone who was connected to the military. So it's very similar. But the EMT program for the border patrol, bar none, is fucking highly successful what they do. And that's not just for agents. That's for anyone in the border that needs medical attention.

The EMTs are there doing their job. So it's like the humanitarian mission happens daily is insane and it's just swept under the rug because of the political politicization of what's going on right just the controversy what they're trying to create from the border they forget that these guys are saving lives every day yeah let me explain something too that that that i don't get enough chance to you've seen recently in these videos in the news where the migrants are coming across and the agents are kind of helping them out of the barbed wire. Yes. Very controversial when you see it.

But when you understand it, that barbed wire is already on American territory, and that barbed wire is about 50 to 100 meters from where the actual entry of the border. So those individuals have already crossed into America. They're here. There's no way, shape, or form is a border trade agent going to grab a shield and shove them back in the water. But that's what people think. Like, hey, why don't you just stand there and hold off? Well, like, hold up. It's not our position to do that. My job is to, if you enter this country illegally, I apprehend you and put you through the process of what we have in our immigration system. Not to be shield-bearing freaking riot control shoving them back into the water. Because if they drown, that's another liability.

Now it's your fault. So my job is never to push anyone back. I think the misconception of the American people is that, that we're supposed to stand there with shields and keep them back. That's never been the job of the Border Patrol. No, it feels to me, and I think this is actually something that reflects pretty good, in my opinion, on the Border Patrol. It seems to me that it's less being a police and more being – let me explain this because I don't want to get these terms fucked up. But more being like the escort to the system in the sense that it's like, okay, a lot. Again, most of the people crossing, they're tired.

They've maybe had to travel with a coyote for thousands of miles or whatever. And like they're poor. They got nothing. They're not necessarily coming there with an Uzi trying to blow your head off. Right. So rather than like, get on the floor, get on the fucking ground. It's not like that. It's like, okay, come over here over here relax let's do our job now and it seems like again i only see limited video but there seems to be usually like a very good rapport like people comply and they

talk with you and so you guys are not upper escalating the situation exactly so for the most part currently during my time was a little different but currently they're walking up to us and saying i give up essentially right they're like hey i'm seeking asylum and so we're okay because the processing that you know because what is told to the agency now is like they're allowed to claim asylum and all we can do is process them for that for the higher echelon of the immigration system to make a determination not us so the misconceptions people like man he's just letting him in it's like no no he's actually protecting them because they're already on american soil they've already entered illegally there's no there's no going back

from that and now he's just making sure that they don't further harm themselves because this the the bar that's put into place would by the National Guard was a conflict of interest of – it was two agencies kind of going head-to-head and kind of a posturing. Yes. And so the agency is like, I'm still going to allow them to come across. They're already here. Let me just help them not get further hurt or else we're going to still have to put them into our hospitals and help them anyways. So there wasn't anything wrong with that. The one thing that was wrong was the knuckles

there was an agent who knuckled and i'm like bro you're still professional so just like let's be careful i understand though the position he took is like the knuckles it was like just a lapse of judgment but it was like also like it looks bad on a poster but in reality it's a quick one it's one of those like ah you shouldn't have done that because now the world's like oh look at him buddy buddy right it's like you ever seen the players sometimes they walk off and they fist bump the ref and the ref like fist bumps back he's like oh shit i shouldn't have done exactly it's same with my kids my kids are like hey dad and i'm like don't knuckles me bro give me a hug you know what i mean but like it's just a thing so yeah one of his 20 kids right what's your name again? Yeah.

So it's just – it's a tough one that puts the border patrol in the American eye that doesn't understand it. They're like, man, why aren't they stopping them? Like it's not our job. A law enforcement officer pulls someone over, and if they pull someone over for a high threat potential, right, some kind of speeding, whatever, sometimes they're getting their hand on their gun and they're walking up in a posture like, here we go. This guy fucking elevated his situation, made me fear that he's probably going to run. And if it gets escalated, boom, punch out. There is almost no time in the Border Patrol apprehending illegal immigrants, right?

These non-documented, crossed illegally, are we ever going to walk in a posture like that? Ever. Ever. It has to genuinely shift. I have to see something really happen. I'm like, oh crap, I got to pull my gun out. It almost never happens because when it's just an illegal immigrant, even if they're running from me, I'm not pulling out my gun for someone running.

I got to catch the motherfucker. You know what I'm saying? And then I'm gonna take them down. And at that point, if they don't fucking digress, well, then I have a bunch of tools here that I can use before I even get to that point. So an agent ever pulling out his gun for an illegal immigration situation is very, very, very rare. They'd have to be in a fight. If the dude reaches for my gun, boom, game on. Here we go. Right. Breaches for anything on my belt.

Game on. Here we go. But that's almost never the case. During my time, almost, you know, I'd say 50 percent ran. And it was OK. It wasn't like it wasn't like, again, it was like, go, go, go, go, boom, boom, boom, tackle, slow them down or get to them and they slow down, whatever it is. But it's never even, it's not even aggressive at that point. It's like, got them.

And then you just, then you do your interview. You're in this country legally. They say, yes, cool. Now you're under arrest for being in this country legally. Boom, put them in the thing. Put them in the truck and take them. Like, it's not a stressful event. What was stressful was drugs. Then you're you're like okay this is a different this is that's a

different this is a different beast and that is so the average american doesn't know how to dissect that as well because they don't understand the career field and they view it all as one thing and it's wrong i said in the, we wear many different hats. And when someone understands the job, they'll be like, man, what a complex job. It absolutely is complex because it's more humanitarian than anything, but then it could be a lot of other things as well. Yeah. Well, let's talk about when you came in and start at the beginning with that, because I think this will help define the different levels of it that we've been hinting at today. So you come in to join Border Patrol in 2009. And I might mix up the acronyms now, but I think when you come in, you start,

is it BORTEC? And then you ended up BORSTAR? No, I was BORSTAR the whole time. I was attached to BORTEC. And so in 2009, I got into the Border Patrol. After two years, I was allowed to try out for a special operations team. During those two years, I was allowed to try out for a special operations team. During those two years, I just learned how to be a good Border Patrol agent. I learned how to cut sign, which is tracking. I learned how to pull the drag, identify footprints, all the basics of what an agent does in almost every sector. Very similar questions with that? Yeah.

Can we dig into that a little bit? What are some tactics you do? A regular agent is really good at identifying disturbances in the soil. There's areas across the nation that are called drag roads. It's very obvious, and it's not a secret. This is not something that I'm telling any kind of information that's secret or anything. But these drag roads are just roads where we connect these tires or these drags to the back of our trucks and we drag real slowly and clean the soil we do it for about an hour two hours whatever it is then we turn around and look look at it slowly and see if there's new footprints if there's new

footprints on it game on here we go people crossed got one there you go yeah now if i just started my shift and i go and cut the drag, which we call it cut the drag, I go stick my head out my window and go really slowly with a flashlight at a good angle, and you can see the disturbances. Hey, I got a sign here. You call it in. Like, hey, I got a sign here. Like, yeah, that was last shift.

Okay, cool. Then it's old work, right? Potentially, because you know the areas everyone has. It's like in a stadium. You're like, hey, I'm sitting at 102. Same in our, we can say, hey, I'm over here, and everyone identifies us. Say, hey, I just got signed here with a 5. One of them is wearing – running Ws.

One of them is wearing this. And they go, yeah, yeah, that was last shift. Okay, cool. So you brush it out. It's done. How big an area was – you were at Eagle Pass at the beginning? I was Eagle Pass at the beginning. Okay.

So how many miles are you guys responsible for? Man, that's maybe 60 miles. Maybe 60 miles. All right. That's a lot. It's not a lot of some others, but's maybe 60 miles. Maybe 60 miles. All right. That's a lot. It's not a lot of some others, but I think 60 miles. Yeah. But to the average person like me, that's a lot of space.

Yeah, pretty good. And there's different terrain, right? There's some that's like houses, like really close to the housing. Sometimes it's more of the river. Sometimes it's ranch. And so it just depends. So you have, yeah, you have different terrains to deal with. So there's challenges there.

One agent maybe covers 10 miles, maybe. That's what I was going to ask. So you have one agent per 10 miles? It could be, yeah. It just depends. All the terrain is different. Dude, there's times we're in an area called Quemado. Bro, that's like the scariest one for me.

I was like, damn, this feels like hippy jibbies every time I work here at night. You know what I mean? Because you never – it's a really weird terrain. It has cane. It has these really weird terrain has cane has these really weird um offshoots of the river that kind of trickle in there so the river is really good for them to kind of bring boats across low dope and that area was really good for dope like really good for dope so working there at night was a little bit sketch for me alone sometimes sometimes

yeah but you have another agent at you know los motoros i think it's called and then another like fucking 20 miles away? No, probably like 15 minutes. Yeah, yeah. That helps. 15-minute drive, yeah. But this thing— Yeah, 15 minutes.

Hold that bullet for 15. My guy is going to be here. Gracias. The work is weird, man. The work is— So if I had a sensor go off, just to give you kind of— If I had a sensor go off in a Kamado, and it's area where I know like, hey, this number is a good number. So it's like this.

The sensors go off and if they say, hey, it's a one hit, that don't sound good. And they go, hey, it's 35 hits. You're like, damn, that sounds serious, right? That's how we kind of identify like what it looks like. Either way, you're going to go confirm what it is. But when you hear it, you're like, hey, that sounds good. Then you call your boy like, hey, bro, get over here. I got a sensor went off at 45 or something. He goes, yeah, yeah, I'm on my way. Boom. So whether you're eating lunch, it don't matter. Boom, they're like, hey, that sounds good. Then you call your boy, like, hey, bro, get over here. I got a sensor that went off at 45 or something.

He goes, yeah, yeah, I'm on my way. Boom. So whether you're eating lunch, it don't matter. Boom, they're on their way, right? And that's when you start to work. Like, hey, I'm going to go down to the center. I'll let you know what's up. Or, hey, let's go in together if it's a really sketchy spot.

And that's how you work. And that's the only way you know how to work. Sometimes you have two of you in certain areas, and sometimes only one. And so that's how the Border Patrol kind of does it. That's why it's not easy. It's not an easy job. And's also why the the the wall was important and still is because there's areas where i thought you guys were building it you weren't out there with the bricks and all that shit no well it's funny thing is like the wall was already built before trump

he was just fortifying other positions that still needed it. Right. And so it was weird. It was a weird conversation. He wanted to gold plate the wall. Yeah, I don't know. We needed the wall in certain areas that helped us slow down the traffic. How realistic is it across, forget the Canadian border for a second, across the Mexican border, where you have all these different terrains? It could be at one point, it's a river. At another point, it's a mountain. At another point, it it's a tree how realistic is it to actually even build a quote-unquote comprehensive wall you kind of can't right there's going to be places where there's natural terrain that serves as the wall no right exactly exactly that's exactly it the wall that he was talking about

was areas that needed to help in slowing down the traffic and also helping detect the track there's areas that are just like no wall and in the middle of nowhere like bro we'll never get there and so adding the wall to that actually helped the border trade and do their job the wall wasn't a single answer to all illegal immigration it was part of a robust system that helped the wall plus plus sensors, plus cameras, plus agents in strategic locations. All that is what helps the Border Patrol do their job, not just the fucking wall.

It's just one part of that robust system. And so most people didn't understand that. Like, we already have the wall and half the places that we need. We still need more because it slowed down the traffic. Does it stop it? Absolutely not.

They'll still go over it. They'll still go under it. They'll still go through it, but it slows it down. And that's what we needed that's what that's what the wall was about people still don't understand that and and that's where the wall is a figure in their head as like racism like yeah no that's not what it was it really the well it's because of the guy who said it right that's all it's like whatever he says opposite right and it's like that's where they's like whatever he says opposite right and it's like

that's where they have like that trump derangement syndrome thing and i mean obviously the guy's incendiary you don't gotta like him yeah doesn't mean every single idea is rooted in racism or whatever well dude the crazy part was obama built the wall right there in eagle pass and obama built the eagle pass wall a lot of it the wall was up during obama's time the wall was going up the wall was going up during obama's time like i don't know like that i don't know why that's confusing for people it was up they were building it bro they push people out of their fucking houses that have been there for generations just to fucking put the wall up wait they used eminent domain to build the wall fucking you're right they did dude right i'll

show you the house i can go to the house and show you the house the family was pissed because they built a wall right through their area oh my god an eagle passed during his time and so it's funny that it became a political thing because it did but this thing was it has been happening man and it was unnecessary it was necessary we needed it do you guys back at the Border Patrol? Because again, I know you talk with a lot of your guys over the years since you actually have not been there as an agency in 2015. What's the political talk like? Do you try to ignore it?

I'll say this. to ignore it or is it just like during you know during the debate and remember like biden said that the border patrol backs him and then trump said no they back me and then the border patrol union said we've never vouched for for biden that was crazy to me to see that the union who is not the agency the union the union make that public. And I believe the union has been very public about what position they feel is best for them. And the union does represent a lot of the boots on the ground agents. And so I would lean more with they have a good grasp on the pulse of the agency boots on ground workers. The union does. Got it.

And I would just say, that's what I would say, because the agents want to pay their bills. They want to go home to their families and they, they're the most patriotic people in the fricking nation because they genuinely believe in the mission of protecting this great nation. They genuinely do. And so they want to do

the job where they feel they're doing it. And with just certain policies, it doesn't feel that way. It's a little harder to see what's happening, but they're still doing exactly the job that's tasked to them. It doesn't feel great because they see the backlash of that through the media through the trend whatever how to say it um they see that and it doesn't feel good because they know the backlash goes right to them and it's for some reason to them and not you know the executive branch making the decisions yeah so it's a strange thing but i would say that if you're looking for the pulse of the border patrol the border patrol boots on ground the dudes are actually down there doing doing the work, not the higher echelon. The Border Patrol Union has a good grasp of that.

Okay. Now, what about guys – you always would hear about Sheriff Joe Arpaio and some of these dudes along the border who are like sheriffs of towns or something like what's their jurisdiction to take those types of actions versus like where the border patrol can kind of come in and be like no no this is our jurisdiction uh it's interesting because every state will have a different law um good friends with sheriff um lamb out of arizona he's part of panal county he's panal county sheriff is that a cowboy hat cowboy hat yep i think sean ryan had him Yep. He's a good buddy of mine. He's very outspoken on the subject. He's been able to get his because his – so if you understand where Pinal County is, it's not necessarily proxy to the border, but it is proxy to the drama from the border, if you will it's you still got to take a lot of miles to get to the border but they manage

and deal with a lot of the the freeway that that is a direct hit from the smuggling and illegal migration so they are given an opportunity to to to manage some of the border stuff uh they're given another i forget what title it is that they're given so the opportunity to enforce but i don't know guys like them are good assets and good support to the border patrol those guys they support the border in their capacity when they apprehend an individual who is determined that they're illegal they still don't have the right to do any kind of illegal illegal immigration process they don't have the federal capabilities to do it so

they can house them if they want to based on their their county law or their state law but at the end of it they end up handing it over to border patrol right so the whole thing that happened in texas right this whole thing at shelby park and eagle pass do you remember that where the national guard got involved they kicked the border patrol out of the the park they weren't allowing do you know what happened? No, I don't remember. Dude, so this was probably February, I think it was, of this year where there was a massive influx in illegal immigration in the border of Eagle Pass. It was just – I mean I'm talking – they were coming to Groves, dude.

I'm talking probably 6,000, 7,000 a day at one point. And it was on the news. Just in Eagle Pass. Just in Eagle Pass. Just an Eagle Pass. It was crazy. Holy shit. And so the news obviously blew it up. They made it to look like as bad as it really was.

It was bad. The Border Patrol is doing the best they can with that situation. Same thing. They're doing the same process whenever the policy was in place. But Texas got frustrated and said, Texas, we're going to start doing something about it. And they closed off Abbott

he closed off the park and put the National Guard in charge of that and so what they did was they put in conics boxes and they blocked it they put up these buoys that people were deemed it could be dangerous they put a barbed wire they did everything they could to disrupt it and it fucking worked, right? It did work. The problem was any time that the DPS was apprehending those guys in assistance with the National Guard and Abbott's laws that he put into place, they housed them for like 16 days, and then they had to get back to the border yeah so it looked good on paper it looked good on the media political show right it was just a posturing like you every time they've gone to fight that to gain the right of doing an immigration process every Arizona Texas doesn't matter they get they end up

getting the fucking no and it still gets handouts straight to the border control right and so yeah that's the problems like it would be great to have them do that but they don't even have the means to deport they don't have the ability to deport they don't have the financial backing to deport it's expensive as fuck and so they do their best to make make the best you know waves and they do their best to kind of slow down the traffic and help in this crisis but in the end of the day as it goes up the chain of command legally it just gets shut down sometimes it can also you know it it what you don't see in your backyard you don't understand it applies to everything right and so you've seen this put one example of the political posturing outside of what you just gave is you've seen let's stick with abbott you've seen him put

buses of migrants and send them up to new york you know a few years ago eric adams had to take over for fucking bill de blasio who was the worst mayor in the history of mayoral whatever the fuck and has actually done like a nice job cleaning a lot of shit up but the migrant thing was one thing like he wasn't focusing on yeah and abbott is the governor of a state where he has to because he's like well easy for you to say up here in New York so he sends up different buses I think um the fucking Florida guy what the hell's his name yep yep um DeSantis DeSantis also did the same thing it turns into a political move and chess piece that's just that is what it is but now like it's hitting home like Alessi here

has a YouTube channel where he's been doing videos at some of these sites. Actually, Alessi, let's get your mic on here. So you've been going to some of these migrant centers in New York and to the people around them as well. And like a lot of the Manhattan citizens are like, all right, this is out of control. I mean, they're just standing – they're sitting here in a hotel not doing anything, no? Yeah, everyone is pissed. Like it was unanimous. Like if you ask anybody off the street and I was asking a couple of random people, everyone would be like, oh yeah, the border, it's an issue. And I'm like, so how do you feel about it? Oh, this is, this is horrible. Like we don't want this. Like everyone felt the same way. Like, and it's so funny. Cause then you

see the media and there's just so much like, oh gosh how dare you you call me legal aliens like use the political correct term is so bad and it's like everyone in new york city unanimously like i couldn't find anyone that was anti for it that's been living there for a long time you might have students yeah who don't live there who are there for four years those are the bane of my existence right now, dude. Students kill me. Yeah, dude. So it's funny you did that because, look, it's like Borderland. I interview anybody, anyone who's an expert, right? Yeah, your show is great, by the way. Thank you. Thank you.

And if you're an expert, even if it's on the side of the political spectrum that I think is like, oh, this is going to be a battle, let's hear it, right? Because I lead more center. Yes. You know, more towards, you know, I carry guns. Let's hear it right because I lead more Center. Yes You know More tours, you know, I carry guns look at your issue, right? Right and so these dudes this guy brilliant guy the conversation was good, but he's an immigration lawyer and Hmm in the one question I asked him that I just was like after that I was like gotcha Was like don't you want a safe school and safe city for your kids? And the one question I asked him that I just was like, after that, I was like, gotcha.

I was like, don't you want a safe school and safe city for your kids? He said, I do. I said, then you should be more concerned about illegal immigration. And he froze in a second. He was just like, these, these political activists and kind of organizations that say that they forget, like, you still want a safe city. And the only way you can determine if it's going to be safe is being able to determine who is coming into the country. This isn't racism. No, no this is pure like i need to know who's coming into this

country so i can vet that whether i want that or not the same way in the book i explained you have a front door in your fucking house well then you get to determine who comes into your house and you get to determine how long they stay as well and you also i love this i want to add to this you also pointed out when when someone comes to your door do you just open the door no you fucking if you're a normal person you look out the little thing or you like kind of got the little camera like how can i help you yeah who is that right i know dude and it's it's no different for us i don't care if you're farthest leaning left as possible everyone could come here knock down all the walls like let everyone come in

you're gonna sit there and be like is my family safe because that should be a fucking concern that should be a concern and if it's not a concern you're missing it because that's an important part of our lives is i want to be able to walk the streets safe i want my kids safe i want my wife safe not saying people that come across the border all dangerous not at all i still want to know who the fuck is coming yes i deserve that right as a country to know who's coming and why and if and if the people at bay who are the ones who are supposed to secure them if they're doing their interviewing and doing the job then then i'll be like that makes me a little bit more comfortable that someone is at least kind of deciphering who's

allowed to come in and who's not it's crazy that anyone argue like that's not fair yeah i i agree with you and and you know like you look at our history and and how we're a nation of immigrants in so many ways i mean three of us in here can all speak to that for sure it's like even the system that certainly wasn't perfect but the system of where people arrived on the boat to ellis island over here they at least still had an idea okay this person came here right they didn't have electronic monitoring yes you got some fucking i mean look at the buildings there they were built by gangs of italians so you know like there's still some shit that happens but it was it it's crazy to think

that now you know a hundred years plus later this system is far more chaotic and we know far less including like we literally people are ghosts they come across we don't even know they came across dude that's a whole that's a whole different thing and it also leads me to to open up the topic of the history of the war patrol because that's another thing you cover in your book and this is something i had zero yeah understanding of but this goes back like a hundred years or something they've been involved so many years doing so many different things and nobody realizes it. And I put the history of a buddy, Joe Banco, I think his name is. He's the one who wrote that excerpt because he writes a lot of cultural history books. And they're small little books.

You can find them on Amazon. Joe Banco? I think it's Banco. Well, shout him out. Give him some love. Yeah, Joe Banco. You can put links to his book. I might have fucked it up.

It might be Blanco too. Yeah, my dyslexic ass is fucking it all up. Isn't it Blanco? It might be. I hope so. God damn it. Who knows? Either way, he's the one who helped me in that.

There you go. You were right. It's Blanco. There you go. Now, that looks like a stereotypical Border Patrol agent to me. That is. That is. But the dude is brilliant.

He writes these excerpts, these books about the Border Patrol history. They're fucking awesome. And I said, hey, dude books about the Border Patrol history. They're fucking awesome. And I said, hey, dude, my goal in this book is to give people information. Let me write something specific for my book. And he just wrote a quick rundown of all the things that the Border Patrol was involved in that were high, I guess, would be considered like high-profile cases. And, man, we've been involved in so much. I mean so much so even until now when you start to like – now the world is seeing Bortek and Boarstar. Now the world is seeing them and you're like, yeah, bro, we've been around for a long time doing a lot of cool shit.

They were doing stuff like during World War II, like some pretty serious stuff I think? I don't know. That's a good question. I know early on the Border Patrol was created back in the day. It was a 100-year anniversary just recently right and before then it was just several people on the borders trying to you know from the texas rangers and stuff trying to help kind of manage that and then it kind of evolved into the border patrol and so on and so forth and kind of continued to change after 9-11 boom department home and security created you know the more focus on on home and security right and so that's where

the big shift in my world that's where i was like kind of involved boom from that point on is like that's the that's when shit got real because we started worrying about the terrorist potentials and not just immigration yeah i kind of wonder about like pre-911 think like 1999 2000 because i don't know much about this like what kinds of things like we know a lot of the cells for al-qaeda and stuff literally flew here and things like that but also think about all the support they had to have quietly and tacitly on the ground and if some of that may have come through the border well i don't know you know the the the individuals who did 9-11 were here on a visa so they were here legally on a visa but the problem with that visa was that that visa was awarded to them and i and i sarah was it sarah evans i believe who i

had her on my my my podcast she's incredible she she former cia intelligence uh adams yeah yeah yeah she's crazy dude she has she's's incredible. But she was explaining how like they were here on – there you go. She's been on Sean Ryan. If you can have her on the show, I'll get you connected with her. Yeah, you just had Boosty on there. I saw that. I've had all kinds of dudes. Yeah, you get a lot.

But she talked about how like she believes that their original visa was awarded to them in kind of a nefarious way, right? Like in support of this and that. And I'm like, what? And so we didn't get to dig into that, and that's something that's pretty interesting. But since 9-11, the implementation of the whole Homeland Security, it changed everything for the Border Patrol. And that's where the special operations teams have gotten involved, and that's where the future of kind of my career went towards focusing more towards terrorist potentials and dismantling and disrupting the cartel. When you first got there, those two years where you weren't in Special Forces though

and you're being trained and then actively as a Border Patrol agent, again, you're coming from someone who had been in afghanistan twice in iraq in 05 during mosul and all kinds of things that were going on there at the time so like you've seen the worst of the worst but like how how much of it how much of it kind of like you talked earlier about seeing dead bodies and things like that but how much of it hearkened to like you tying in all the things you saw and how that could then be used with the with the uh what's the what's the vulnerability of the border that you were seeing even like back in 09 2010. yeah i i could see easily like damn this is dangerous um i full

heart wholeheartedly believe like we were going to get attacked from the border because it was just so kind of porous even even though we were doing everything we can to stop it there was dudes that got away like we were still calling and gotaways like hey i got two got away you know and who knows who the those two were you know but i felt like i was really prepared for like the worst if it happened and i and not say i hoped it did but like i think any special operation was always like let's get into some shit So I was definitely prepared every night to like I hope some shit goes down so I can fuck some dudes up you know what I mean? Say hello to my little friend!

I mean every every operation like you just like part of you hopes like I hope this is the one where shit goes down You know what I mean? but you know when you're down there and you hear dudes are coming across and There looks like they're wearing vests you're like fuck this can get real you know what i mean and that started having vests vests like uh plate carriers oh yeah and that kind of yeah and you see those on the heat you know on the on the the fleer cameras that we have you can see the the body armor kind of changes the the the heat uh signature on the bodies and you can identify when they're wearing vests

but that happens more so when when you're in the special operations side of things. After the two years when I was able to try out, that's when my eyes got really open to how much cartel activity happens on the borders. And you hear about it, you see the dope from them, you see the kind of identifying markers for each different kind of cartel little faction. But when you're filing special operations and the mission is to disrupt and dismantle, you know, the cartel,

that's when you really start to understand like the Intel behind it. And that's when I was finally privy to all that information. What was in those first two years, you know, what, what was the schedule like for you? Are you on for three straight weeks and then off a couple of weeks? Are you working 12 hour shifts? How would it work? It's a, what was the shift? I think it was, you have your normal eight and then off a couple of weeks. Are you working 12 hour shifts? How would it work? It's a, what was the shift?

I think it was, you have your normal eight and then you have your extra two, your 10 hours. And then sometimes if you have to go over because you're chasing a group, when I was possible, but at the time they had a thing called AUO. I think it was like a loud uncontrollable overtime. And so we just get, it was like an extra 15% in your,

in your pay just so you, you had to do that extra, the extra two hours after your shift. But it was a rotating schedule. So for a month or so, I think it was a month and a half or so, you would be night shift and then you rotate the swings and then you rotate the days. This is just Eagle Pass. Some areas might have a different rotation system, but I'm just only speaking for Eagle

Pass area. So when you're on days, when you first get the shift it's pretty good because as the sun's coming up that's when the action usually happens towards the swing shift it's usually kind of a dead shift because it's so much light you know why why move any kind of traffic during that time but it does happen you know and then night shifts is where like most of the action happens as soon as the kind of the sun goes down throughout the rest of the night there's probably gonna be some kind of activity happening and so you got like night vision goggles. Yeah. Well, if you want it to, not everyone chose that, right. And depending on where you worked as well, some people were just high

point, high vis, uh, that's a form of deterrence of the border patrol users where you're just at a point where you're just sitting in your vehicle and just kind of observing and waiting for either cameras to detect something or sensors to go off. And so it really depends on where you work and how you work the area. Um, a lot of the time in those two years, I try, I was working with a couple really good partners that were very active in trying to find something. And so we would find locations, gather some Intel and work on doing layups. And so we kind of get dropped off and sit there for hours and hoping they can cross, you know, high areas of traffic that we know are common. We kind of sit and wait for that. Probably the coolest shit you'll ever do because it's like hunting.

You know what I mean? You're like, you you're sitting in your like you're blind you know what i mean you're like i got five i got five coming you're like i see him here we go and then you go you know what i mean and then the chase is on really cool work if i were coming across the border and i saw your ass running at me i'd be really pissed off about america i'd be like this this is not what i signed up for i got a o-lineman coming at me jesus christ so i pulled over a dude one time and um it turned out to be a pretty big case but it was a black dude on the border and going the wrong direction and all of his all my investigative like questions i knew he was there smuggling right it was like going up meaning going back to the other side going towards the border and um I just saw him like pulled over and looking

at his tires and I'm like this doesn't look right let me see if he needs help but also it's an area that usually picks up dope so like he's already in the wrong place at the wrong time and I'm like let me go check this dude. And, you know, he's a black kid who, in the border town, in that area that I was at, there's not a lot of black kids. So there we go. Another suspicion, like, wow, weird, going the wrong direction.

Vehicles parked, going the wrong direction. He's in an area that's known for dope. And he's a black kid. And it kept sticking out to me. I'm like, this is strange, man. Like, why is this dude here at this location that always pick up? Okay, I think he's picking up dope, but we'll see hey man what's up man um you need help he goes oh no man

it was just uh my tire i was like well where which one is it and so as i'm doing all that i'm like hey uh what are you doing here dude he was like i was just uh and he's not answering i'm like i'm gonna ask you one more time big guy i was like are you supposed to pick up dope he goes no bro no i was like i was like you're lying time, big guy. I was like, are you supposed to pick up dope? He goes, no, bro, no. I was like, you're lying. You know what I mean? He's like, oh, bro. And he broke down, dude.

And he broke down and just started spilling the beans. And he's like, yeah, man, I'm just getting paid to just pick up some load. And I'm just driving up north. I don't know what it is. I'm like, OK. American? He's an American dude. Oh, it happens all the time, right?

Americans are always the ones who get picked to do this. So he was supposed to pick up this load and head up to San Antonio. I was fortunate enough to be able to break him just for conversation, right? Just like just saying, hey, come on, give me the truth, right? He didn't touch his collarbone? No, no, I didn't do nothing. Nothing, nothing at all. Secrets are good here.

No one's listening. I did say at one point, I said, listen, don't try and run because I'll fuck you up. That was my one use of pure intimidation. At the time, I was fucking jacked and lean. And I was like, I don't want to fight you, big dog, but I'd fuck you up. You know what I mean? So I just told him, look, don't run. I'm going to go make a call.

If you run, I'm going to fuck you up. He goes, bro, I'm not doing nothing. I was like, OK, good. And we ended up fucking catching the load, catching the next load, and building a really big case on this. And it was part of a big smuggling kind of network. Started working with you. Yeah, okay, good. And we ended up fucking catching the load, catching the next load, and building a really big case on this. And it was part of a big smuggling kind of network. It started working with you. Yeah, it worked out.

Yeah, he started giving us a lot more information. And he started giving us all the contacts that was in his phone that was associated with the pickup. And it was connected to a big drug smuggling kind of ring that happened in San Antonio. And so just by chance, right place, right time, and I had the right instincts, the experience of knowing that this is a good drop zone, knowing that this dude didn't look familiar to the people that I know in the city. And, and he looked kind of lost and confused. They call it articulable facts just based on experience. And then just my questioning was enough to, to, to get enough out of him, uh, that I knew like I was right. And then boom, it just kind of blew into a

big case. Wow. I don't know if I'm right to right to make this, to like draw this conclusion. So correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like outside of two things, number one, where you're chosen to be stationed in your case, Eagle Pass. And number two, when you go into a shift, what area of the Eagle Pass you're told to roam. After that, it seems like a lot of the job is very much on you and your decisions and where you're looking at what you want to do and what you want to be investigating. Is that fair to say? Yeah. You kind of choose how you want to work your area. There's certain areas you cut the drag and you go back and forth. And then you can sit on a high point the rest of the night if you wanted to. Or you can say, I'm just going to park my car here, high-vis, and I'm going to go walk to areas that I know are known for trafficking.

Hopefully, I fall upon something. And so, yeah, you can be as active or inactive as you want. You find the guys on the shift that are – that work at your pace and you usually connect with them. Be like, let's get some shit done. It's fun to fucking try and find drugs, bad dudes carrying a lot of weight. It's fun to try and get yourself into that kind of shit. I really loved it. And it's also fun to try and track someone for 20 miles and eventually catch them.

Because why are they hiding so bad? Why are they trying to get away so bad? It made me uncomfortable thinking, who are these people? You know, because it could just be a dude wanting to work. But it also could be that one dude that has connections to al-qaeda that i'm gonna miss and so my head was driven to try and chase that that was that's where i was driven like okay i got five here who are these five i have no idea but if at some point one of these dudes is a bad dude i'd feel like dog shit for

letting it go so i'm gonna work this motherfucker until can't. And that's how a lot of us thought. How often in those first couple of years, did you run into situations where it was kids or even situations where you just see kids, like they got left there? Yeah, there was probably, I mean, I think a majority of it is kids and mothers, you know, a lot of time was kids and mothers. Um, the quick trips, the ones that you kind of caught, you know, there's guys too, for the most part it was a lot of family units during my time meaning parents and kids coming across at the same time trying to you know seek better opportunities uh it's it's the majority of what i did uh during those two years was that you know there was drugs here and there right there was dope loads here and there but for for the most part unless you're

tracking someone like like i said those 20 those 20-mile tracks, those 10-mile tracks, those longer – those are going to be pretty good in shape dudes. You know what I mean? You're not going to see too many kids walk that far. At some point, if it gets too far and strenuous on the families, they quit and they just come up to the road and you find them and you just take them back to the station. Now, when you run into the drug stuff during those years,'re not in in the sog units yet yeah so when you run into that though and you get a determination like oh we got we got cartel here are you like required to call them in at that point call them in in what sense i mean like get them on the scene as well to take this down if this is a part of a great special operation yeah no no the agency you could just do it the agency

manages the whole thing yeah we're good we catch plenty of dope and we have no involvement of boar star boar tack usually so boar tack and boar star we'll get into it more are very specific missions that they do yeah let's do it now i think we're there cool so let's go let's go boar star boar star is border patrol search trauma and rescue boar star is the closest representation of if you have to connect it to a military special operations unit, it would be the pararescue jumpers. We are medics. Some of them are paramedics. Some of them are steer medics, depending on the level. But they all start at EMT level with the opportunity of doing IVs. And so we're allowed to do IVs and throw tubes in a basin depending on the training.

So it's a little bit higher than your regular EMT on a box truck, right? A regular EMT that works fire. We're allowed to do IVs. Most EMTs don't. The only reason that the Border Patrol EMT level is allowed to do that is because we're so far from definitive care. So BORSTAR is medics who are also federal agents. So we shoot. All right, so you're probably the I can say it's a high-level search from a rescue with shooting capabilities Board tack is your SWAT board tack is your dogs do these are the dudes who do high-risk warrants These are the dudes who plan any kind of op when it comes to disrupt and dismantle cartel Smuggling in the United States of America on the borders. These are the the top dogs they're highly trained some of them some of them are snipers um sometimes they have medical training

a lot of ex-military in there too sometimes depending on the years not now right back in my time there was it was probably half military currently you don't have as many military as you used to um why is that I don't know recruiting I think it's also the change of the time, man. You know what I mean? I don't know. I go back and speak to them sometimes and I'm like, hey, if you're military, raise your hand. I'm like, oh, shit. Not like it used to be.

You know what I mean? But just very high trained dudes, really good shape. You know what I mean? These guys are your top notch kind of level guys. They're trained in all kinds of different things from breaching. We have dogs. They have bite dogs. They have all kinds of different things from breaching we have dogs you know they have bite dogs they have all kinds of stuff you know high level dudes um there's some capabilities that they're doing right now that it's the only one in the nation that are doing it

yeah so they they can you can you give an example of that or uh yeah yeah uh well. So they have halo insertion training, so high-level altitude training for any kind of operations if they needed to across America. Anywhere. Yeah. If they get called in. Wow. Yeah, if they needed to. They have the capability of doing it. Whoa.

Yeah. But you went on to the Boar Star side. I went Boar Star. You know, my time as an Army Ranger was good, man. I'm very proud of my job that I did there as an infantryman. But something that my father pushed me to do EMT early on as an 18-year-old kid before I even joined the Army. The medical side has always kind of drawn to me. And I've always felt that my training as an Army Ranger would make me a really good medic because I'd be a trained shooting medic.

And so Boar Star felt like the right place for me at the time mentally. I was still dealing with shit from overseas, losing friends. I lost a couple friends on a deployment that I missed. I was in the rear. I had to help get all their gear. I did their ceremonies and all that stuff, and I know that was that was i was hung up on that for a long time and and i think i just was disgruntled about the tactical world for a little while i was like fuck let me just be a medic and be a best medic i can't be for these tactical dudes that's what my heart was at the time i was struggling with my faith in god not struggling

with it but questioning you know on what i'm far past this now, but at the time, you know, um, you, I started to question, um, you know, in my, my walk with God in the sense of like, does he judge us for what we do overseas? And so a lot of it was like, well, how do I earn more points back in a way? Right. And so let me, let me try and save lives. What do you mean earn more points back um because you felt like you were you were killing being instructed to go hunt people

that you shouldn't have been hunting no it's more so the collateral the collateral and it's the worst term to fucking use for human life but collateral damage of war you know i've seen a couple missions where you know innocent bystanders were killed by us or by the enemy. But whatever the case, that stuck with me for a long time. Still kind of bothers me. And just being, knowing in the big picture of war how often that happens was just fucking, was a hard pill to swallow at some point. And so I would just kind of like, let me, if there is a pearly gates and there is judgment, I hope that I'm able to balance that out with being a medic. And so that's where I was.

Can we take a tangent back on that if you don't mind on your military a little bit? Because like you're a serious dude in the military, Army Ranger. I mean that's really – that's hard to do. We already mentioned you did multiple deployments, but I believe, was it your father who was in the military? Yeah, he was. Is that right? Yeah. So was that always something when you were growing up that you wanted to do?

Not at all. I wanted nothing to do with military because my dad was such a scary fucking bastard. So what changed your mind? I was kind of in a corner, man. I had a daughter who was born with a woman that I wasn't sure I wanted to be with. I was playing college baseball and trying to chase the dream of being a professional baseball player. That's all I fast because immaturity. I was a big drinker, big party, or big fighter. I wasn't really good with just following what I needed to do. I became academically ineligible. In the dumbest way, bro, in the dumbest fucking way, I failed ceramics.

That's – yeah, yeah, because I just never showed up to fucking ceramics that's what i'm saying yeah because it was this dumb class that i didn't give two fucks about you know i mean i'd rather sleep in from the long night of drinking i shit shit you not i was hours late of dropping the class and it would have kept me with my it would have kept me my full ride and i fucking slept in and i missed the fucking the cutoff date for dropping in the last class that would actually lower my gpa so if i didn't need the class i could have dumped it and i still would have had a 2.5 it would have been good enough to play i would have 2.6 or whatever the fuck it was shitty grades yes but um just couldn't get my shit together you You know what I mean? You just weren't disciplined. Yeah. No, I was a fucking immature idiot.

And I lost my full ride. I tried out for a couple of independent pro teams, got cut because I was very immature. I got an opportunity to play in Germany, a team called the Richmond Roosters. The Richmond Roosters, baseball, and Germany. Yeah. That sounds like where baseball goes to die that's what it feels like yeah the program the program was they would put me in a house they would pay me enough to fucking kind of eat I'd play baseball for them for a year and then also turn around and help teach baseball to the

younger generation of Germans but I couldn't bring my daughter and so they didn't they didn't sound like a good idea at the time. And so I just went to the recruiter. I was sitting at a Buffalo Wild Wings. I was, yeah. It's an interesting place to start. Well, it started at Texas Roadhouse. And then when the shift ended, when I finished work, I went to Buffalo Wild Wings to drink with everybody.

Yeah. So you're sitting at the wild wings yeah we're sitting wild wings and i'm watching this news video i don't know if you remember it but i don't know if it was cnn fox whoever the fuck it was but a marine was putting the american flag over the storm statue in his unit pulled down the statue and it was really kind of a yes i remember kind of a timeless fucking thing and um i kind of looked at my buddy and his family was in studio and they're crying and they're so proud of their son and i was like jeez i don't think my family's ever been proud of me like that and i just felt like if i was going to do anything it was the right time you know it was like go to war

i lost everything i loved at the time was, was baseball and see it firsthand, do the hardest thing I possibly can. And if I die, then it's okay. I've died serving this country. My daughter gets $450,000 for her future. You know, my parents are proud that they have a son who sacrificed his life for the country. And I answer all those questions with just one, one opportunity of just joining joining so i joined as an army ranger intentionally infantry because fuck it let's just go straight to war and that's what i did and so you didn't this is interesting though you looked at it like it's almost like an introspective like i feel like a failure like i've let people down absolutely in a way absolutely and so all right what's the ultimate way I could rip off the Band-Aid?

Well, if I died for country, I'd be a legend. Yeah, that's exactly. I was like, there's nothing else. I didn't really care about my life at the time when I lost baseball. It really was a hard thing to do. I played baseball until I was four years old, dude. I knew nothing else of myself besides baseball. And so it was just a way of like, well, almost running.

You know what I mean? Like join infantry, special operations. We'll see. I had no idea what I was getting into. I did not know second of the 75th Raging Regiment. I didn't know the Raging Regiment. I didn't know the history. I knew nothing other than people said it's really fucking hard and you're going to go to war.

And I was like, well, I would like to challenge myself and let's go to war and you know what the action yeah and so we we went through the training got through it i learned a lot about myself got to range battalion within the first week first day of getting to range battalion in processing uh sergeant red uh an nco came over he goes get your dcus you guys are going to war i was, here we go. We're going to war within the first week of me getting to the radio battalion. In Afghanistan? Well, what ended up happening was Pat Tillman was killed. And so I stayed in the rear. And we just did any kind of detail they asked us to.

While the rest of the teams got back, like 30 days, they got back. And within almost two months after that, we got deployed to Afghanistan. What was that like? Uh, it was an eye-opener dude. It was an eye-opener because you train, we barely trained. So I don't know how to be an army ranger other than what they barely were able to show me in the two, three months we were there. And, but I was willing to like whatever you need just say it because i was older i was 23 years old 24 years old like these kids are 17 18 they haven't even lived a life dude i have a daughter i i i've lived a full kind of like young adult life already with

college and you know living away from home and all that shit so i wasn't intimidated by anything other than like uh what am i gonna expect from this shit you know what i mean what am i his name was a star first class campbell he said you nervous i was like yeah a little bit and he goes well don't worry about it he's like you know 90 of people go to war don't never see anything uh you know i think it was eight percent uh you know might see a firefight and two percent will ever have to engage i was like okay cool i like those yeah that's not bad right kind of calm me down a little bit and then you know the first mission i got to do in afghanistan i was part of the

gustav team which is a 84 millimeter recoilless rifle really heavy heavy thing but i was a big guy so they gave me the big stuff to carry. I carried all the weight. My, the gunner, his name was Phil Tudor. He carried the gun. And one of the first missions we did was supposed to just go to, you know, some, some rural area in Afghanistan. We ended up not being able to land.

So we had a rope, which was fast rope. And you're like, well, fuck, I've done this. You know, I've done this in training twice. You know what I mean? I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. I have this heavy ass rucks this in training twice. You know what I mean? I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. I have this heavy-ass rucksack in the back. I'm going to be the one jumping last or second to last because we have the heavy stuff.

And I remember there was a tracer rounds flying, and we're like, are we getting shot at? What's going on? And then flares from the fucking helicopter go off, and I'm like, okay, we're at war now, right? Look down, I see two people crawling. And I was like, what happened? Did they get shot in my head? I'm like,

fuck, everyone's dying. In my head, it's like the worst day ever. Fast rope, fast rope, boom, broken ankles is what happened. So, take the Gustav off the back. Take the Gustav rounds off my back. He takes the Gustav off. Now, we have to be just regular riflemen and we're following

Sarn Braz into the rooms. Whoa. Yeah. I mean't everyone says you don't know what you're made of until the bullets start flying yeah did you did you feel like your body just went into focus like train mode or did it or did it more stay in that adrenaline shock no i think i think, I think throughout, throughout my time as an, as a ranger was like, we trained so much, dude, we trained so much. Like it's, it is like the easiest time in the world when you're in combat in the sense of you have nothing to stress about other than going to war.

You've trained like a motherfucker. So let's get it done. You know what I mean? And I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. So like Mosul was like the one where we had a lot of action. In Iraq. Yeah, in Mosul, Iraq in 2005. So this is like a year or two after.

It was seven months after. We came back seven months later. We're back now. We're in Iraq. Did you do ranger school when you came back? I came back. Nope. I did it after Mosul.

After Mosul. Yeah. I was a saw gunner in Mosul. I had the chance to go to ranger School and I chose to go to the deployment. So at that time, it's like, after the first deployment, you're allowed to go to Ranger School. And then you compete with all the other young dudes to have the highest PT test.

The top, like, ten dudes get to go to Ranger School. I had an option to do it, but I'm like, well, I don't want to miss Iraq. Because when you're there in Ranger Town, like, you don't want to miss the fun shit. You want to be a part of it. Yeah, you fun shit. You want to be a part of it. You want to be a part of it. If you already have Afghanistan

under your belt, I don't know, maybe I'm the only one who thought, but I was like, fuck yeah, let's see Iraq. And so when they said, hey, your next appointment is Iraq, I was like, cool, I'm going. And I told my squad, I was like, I'm not going to Ranger School. I'm going to Iraq first, and then I'll go to Ranger School. And he's like, cool, let's do it. And so that's what I did. I told him, I don't want nothing to do with going to Ranger School right now. I want to go to Iraq. Let's go to range school. And then he's like, cool, let's do it. And so that's what I did. I told him like, I don't want nothing to do with going to range school right now.

I want to go to Iraq. Let's go do that shit. And this is 2005, 2005, Mosul. That's when it was. So the cool thing about our deployment, you know,

I think we had nine purple hearts in that deployment, something like that, just from, we had a lot of action, you know what I mean? And I can't tell you exactly how many missions we ran, but in the four months we were there, we did a fucking ton of missions. Sometimes it was four in a day. What kinds of things were you doing?

Killer capture, anyone on a target list and any kind of intel that happened from there, called time sensitive, time sensitive targets. So we were using, um, cell phone information. We were using any kind of intel information and we were gathering the data and we were using cell phone information we were using any kind of intel information and we were gathering the data and we were being able to kind of hit the houses where they were at and so you know you'd have one mission you know taking out one of the higher guys in the Mosul

kind of area and once you get him it seemed like phones were going off left and right so we gathered the data from their phone we pinged the next person we find where he was boom we go hit his house next That's we're collecting a bunch of dudes collecting a bunch of Intel and gathering follow-on missions And we were doing mission after mission after mission I'm talking like for tonight was not uncommon from the doing striker hits and then coming back grabbing that dude boom turn around going to do Do an air assault mission going back to it again and most of them were ending were ending with you capturing not necessarily

Yes, sometimes yes, it went yes it just depended on how the mission went yeah for us we were in the mindset of the more dudes you apprehend the more dudes you collect the more data the more information the more intel more missions yeah right they're way better alive than dead yeah and is that so when you guys are doing that are you working with just r Rangers or is that a multi front? So during that? deployment we were We were the main effort for our own selves and then Delta was we rotated days if They needed us a support and fuck. Yeah, we're support for them all day long So the days that we were on mission they were on QRF for us or other Organizations or other units would be QRF for us. And Dells would never

do QRF for their way bigger. But if it was a big serious deal, we could ask for their support. For the most part, we'd have other striker units or whatnot as QRF for us, quick reaction force. So we find ourselves in a bad, we got hit one time with an IED and it destroyed the whole mission. The vehicle in front of us got hit, boom, dudes were hurt, all that. The vehicle was like fucking a dead stick. It wasn't going nowhere. So we had to get QRF to kind of pull us out of there. And so things like that happened. We had a day mission where a helicopter got shot. Boom.

We engaged on some enemy dudes. During the day, we don't do missions like that too often, kind of weird. And so we were kind of in a bad spot. Boom. QRF had to come snag us out of there. And that's just more so for us to have more security, more guns on target, and just get us out in a safe manner so we can tend to our casualties, whatever the case. Are a lot of these guys you're collecting and, say, the insurgency hunting you're doing, was it, to your knowledge, directly tied into the hunt for Al-Zaqawi? Yes.

Okay. Yes. So the network we were trying to dismantle in Mosul was the lead guy there. The top dog was, if I remember his name, they called him Abu Taha, whatever the case, right? Abu something. Abu Taha for sure was his name. Yeah. I'm going to call him Lake Tahoe. So it was the first time in – since the war started that we were able to do a mission complete, meaning here's the target we're trying to get. Here's all the names around it. You've seen those kind of target lists.

Oh, yes. Person in the center and all the people. We were able to capture everyone in here and also the main dude, which was given – we were awarded a presidential citation award for the for the battalion because how many months did that take that's amazing four months in four months i'm telling you we did so many fucking operations bro so many missions it was insane i'm talking like day after day after day after day and it was just like go go go go go boom we'd rest the next day we're qrf for for delta or whoever else whoever it was and then it was so on and so forth. And we were just mission, mission, mission, mission. Well, you're far past at this.

You're a couple years in. You're far past the dude sitting in Buffalo Wild Wings who pissed away his baseball career and is feeling upset about himself. Obviously, now you're like, all right, I'm a badass. It is what it is. Now that you're in this – the most dangerous place on earth at the time and you're doing all these high-octane missions, is your mind starting to shift again towards like, oh, shit? Like rather than being I don't care if I die. Now it's like, whoa. Like anytime we go out here, we might come back. It's funny.

I'm writing a book right now exactly about this deployment and not focused on the missions per se because i say it's not time for me to tell that story yet but i'm focused on my internal perspective of how the fuck did i get here you know what i mean as a you know 25 year old kid sitting in fucking iraq in my hooch drinking fucking coffee blueberry jam on a fucking graham cracker and i'm like how the fuck did i end up here you know what i mean yeah it's like four days yeah four missions in a row we got contact one's a fucking hand grenade blew up and fucking dudes another one's a fucking id fucking blue vehicle another one's a fucking ambush interview like we're getting fucking we're getting hit and you're starting to sit there like goddamn bro is it my turn next and so my biggest issue at that time was my second daughter was ready to be born and i'm like my first daughter

was a tough one for me because it was my first kid. I didn't get to see her for the first year. Cause I was in Kentucky playing baseball. I joined the military. So not until like I graduated, I saw her spend some time with her. I got to see her little pockets of her life, but I already knew that, that I was trying to get connected to her, but I had a better chance of being connected to my second one. Cause I'm there, you know what I mean? The same woman, right? I ended up marrying the same woman so I was like well fuck man now I'm like older and I'm like I am pretty good at this job and I do see a future here if I wanted it and I want to be a good dad to these kids will I get a chance to fucking see her be born you know and that's where I said I mean dude we're getting rocketed every night oh yeah dude we came back from a mission, a day mission, came back from a day mission.

I remember this like we parked our vehicle and within fucking not even fucking 50 yards from us, you hear rockets, doom, doom, doom, hit. And they end up hitting some fucking Delta dudes. Like the fucking best fucking random shot ever. You hit three of the fucking dopest motherfuckers you can think about. And that's how our deployment was. We're like, you're doing missions, but at night you hear them coming in and you're like, please don't hit me. fucking dopest motherfuckers you can think about and that's how that's how our deployment was was like you're doing missions but at night you hear them coming in you're like please don't hit me you know what i mean and so it's just really fucking weird what they call it mortaritaville

was one of the places i've heard that yeah well dude it was not uncommon for the you know the fob to get hit all the time right next to us and you just kind of sit there like is it my time or not and then your missions are happening and we're doing, you know, we're doing some serious targeting. So it's like, is it our time there? And so I definitely was questioning like everything and wondering if I was going to get a chance to see her. And fortunately enough, they flew me home about a week early because they found a bird that I can get home because my daughter was about to be born. And I flew to LA and I was able to watch her. It was a beautiful thing, but yeah, I remember sitting there questioning it all. Like, what did I do in my life that I probably could have changed and not end up here? And I just,

I think everything happened for a reason. And, you know, I was there for whatever reasons and, and I was very fortunate to be able to, to get out of there without injury and be able to experience it all and learn a lot about myself, man. What made you, because you did the second one in Iraq, then you do ranger school, and then you do one more in Afghanistan, and then you leave. What made you want to leave? We lost two dudes after I graduated ranger school. I had a brachial plexus nerve damage in my right shoulder, so the arm was dead. Oh, wow.

They called it rucksack palsy. I fell during mountains phase phase the first phase of mountains no the second phase of a mountain's phase i fell and it severed a nerve i had no idea i woke up thought i had a fever and i told my buddies that bro i don't feel good as i go to put on my shirt i'm like dog i think i slept on my i slept wrong i thought i slept when my arm was dead but it was a different kind of dead it wasn't like the tingling where it hurts your fingers kind of no that was dead i didn't feel nothing different kind of dead. It wasn't like the tingling where it hurts your fingers kind of. No, that motherfucker was dead. I didn't feel nothing besides I can squeeze, but I couldn't lift.

This whole lift portion of the shoulder was gone. And I was like, I don't want to recycle, bro, so I'm not going to say shit. And so my little buddy system group, we fucking worked through it. You know what I mean? They helped me put my rucksack on every day. You know what I mean? Luckily, it was my right hand, not my left. I could still wipe my ass.

But, yeah, we got through fucking mountains phase, got through Florida phase. I graduated, distinguished honor graduate, like got lucky as fuck. With like pulsing on the right side. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. And then, yeah, I was saluting. You were holding your arm. Yeah.

It was pretty. Wait, it didn't affect the right side of your face, did it? No, no. Yeah, I know. It was just perfectly. Fucking Rambo over here. I know. And so when I got back, they were set to do a reach back bird is what they called it.

So they were going to bring me back to them because they're already deployed. A reach back what? Bird. So for Ranger Battalion, if you missed the initial deployment, there's reach back birds throughout the deployment that they can bring you back so you can come back and support the team. So if you were out of training, if there was a kind of medical situation, this time they went deployed for a six-month period because they did a – I think it was called a surge, and then they went into the regular deployment cycle. And so they were there for about a six-month deployment. While I was in Ranger school, they were deployed. Then I got back, and halfway through that deployment,

I could have come back for the reachback and joined them. But since my shoulder was like that, the PA, the physician's assistant at the range of town, didn't allow me to deploy. So the morning of the reachback bird, I had all my shit, all my gear. I already said bye to my family. I hugged them, hugged my kids, told the wife, bye, I'll see you in a few months. I'll let you know what's up. One-arm hug? One-arm everything, bro.

I'm doing physical therapy, trying to keep the shoulder from locking. So we're doing all the things to... And you're about to go into a war zone. And I was hoping. And then that morning they said, you can't go. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Thank God. No, I wanted to go, bro. I know you wanted to go, but that's not... That's a recipe for disaster. I thought there was something I could have done.

But either way, during that deployment, we ended up losing Braz and Brim. They were clearing a room, and they were shot, and both of them killed in the same room. The one you weren't on. Yeah. Yeah, and so we got the call. Sart Red, by coincidence, again, was on reach back because he was injured during a jump. So me and him were the two senior people there i wasn't an nco at the time i was a specialist with the tabs that's that that's considered you know i'm ready to be a senior leader with them whatever with the tab

where are you when this happens i'm at second range of town and we get the call and we both immediately were just like like you can say any other name and you would be like, damn, that sucks. But you said those two names, especially Sombraza, it was hard to really believe. It's like the most respected and one of the most influential dude in battalion. And I'm talking across battalion. That's what I felt. The vibe you got from other people like Somb brazo bro that dude's a man you know like he's one of those characters and so when you heard sarn brazo was killed and sarn brim who was the team leader under

him it was a hard pill to swallow for all of us and we didn't even know what to do we were like what so we we had to call everyone back and so everyone no one could go home. We had to bring them back. And then we ended up kind of just partying and drinking all night in a sense. It was just almost like trying to grieve this shock. And then the next few days was gathering their gear. They already contacted the families. We already talked to them. It was a crazy, crazy experience for us because, like, I already lost one of my buddies to

training in range of town and just a very unfortunate event wait he died in training one of my buddies that in training during what happened we're doing we we go through cycles alpha Bravo and Charlie goes through cycles we're doing a live training and so there's this these buildings that are built in a way where you kind of keep clearing forward and if any of the targets move it could potentially be put in a bad spot well the range safety officer at the time wasn't paying attention to the target dropping and lifting it back up eventually the target moved to a location that became what we call hot wall and they shot

through the target and hit my buddy right in the throat while he was pulling security on the other side and so he was killed in training and um that was the that was the first time i lost a friend in in the military in that one in training yeah that's what's the was hard that was hard and he's he was an incredible kid we went to basic training together airborne together rip we started and then he ended up having it recycled but really good friend of mine and that was the first like holy shit i just lost a really good friend and in a way that i just was like damn that's fucking crazy there was everyone people got in trouble for it right like they got in trouble for what they did but it's kind of an unforgivable event you know you lose someone a good dude like that but um then brim and barraza that was the next that was probably the

that was enough for me i was kind of hurt by it because we talked a lot about what they were doing after they were both getting out like within months of coming back from this deployment you know barraza's family we were close with you know i was close with broad even though our rank was different we were still close i think it was just kind of the two kind of big Hispanic dudes. We became close, you know, when one of our good buddies, David Kane, got married. We were all part of the, you know, the group that carried the swords and all that shit. Even though my lower ranking, I was the same age as these guys. I was actually older by a year to these dudes.

And so it was kind of like we were all same era dudes but my rank is different because i didn't join the same time as them and so losing them was a hard one for me and and that's when i was like yeah fuck this i want to try and do something outside of that and so that's when when i started thinking about trying to join the border patrol because i knew that was his dream but like fuck maybe it could be mine too yeah. And what's interesting is going back to when you first thought to join, you were just callous about your own life at that point. You're not, you know, you're such a good guy. It's very clear. And I'm sure a lot of people loved you even back then when you felt lost yourself, but what ends up, what ends up bringing it home for you is not like, oh, a bullet just grazed my ear.

I almost lost that. It's more like, oh, shit, when you're in this, your friends die. Yeah. You know, like, because then you live, and you've got to live on with their legacies. That's painful, man. I would have gladly taken the place of any of those dudes. I just think they were better people. You know, I think they could have done more in this world than I ever will. And so I, I always held them at such a high regard that like, I would easily trade places with them. Uh, even today, like I,

I would still, I would still sacrifice my life for the greater good. I don't, I don't mind it. Even though like my kids would hurt, I personally don't care in the sense of like, I'm willing to serve this country. I'm willing to serve a greater purpose. I'm willing to down the street to someone's I'll protect them. I'll try and help. And if I get killed, it doesn't bother me. It does hurt losing friends. And I've continued to lose friends to suicide since. Right. And so like, I still have a mission here that I'm working on. But the point is like, yeah, that fucking sucks. And, and you know i would much happier i think for a long time it's a long time i was i was haunted with that idea of like i wish it was me than them and that uh survivor's guilt in you know that then haunted me for a long time i was like it just sucks it just sucks losing people like that yeah but you you go and do what i believe barrazo wanted to do yeah which is be in the Border Patrol. In the Special Operations.

So that's where we were, and this came up because we were talking about your decision to join BORSTAR instead of BORTAC because you put it in a really good way, but it was something about— I wanted to be the best shooting medic that they'd ever have. Yeah, but what was the other thing you said where you talked about evening the score or whatever a little bit? Yeah, I wanted to – I feel like I had points to earn with God. So you make the decision to join Boar Star, and this is like 2011, something like that? Yeah, yeah. What's that training like? And we broke down BoarTac, BORSTAR we're still getting to.

So can you just reiterate all the things they do? Yeah, BORSTAR, search, trauma, rescue. And pretty much what I was trained in was swift water rescue, long line rescue, search and rescue, medical proficiency with putting even IVs, crikes, chest tubes for breathing, for airways. Any way we can, you know, get someone to definitive care within like two hours because of where we work. Trained in tactical medicine, trained in many different forms of kind of the search trauma rescue space. And so at any point we can do a lot of those things. And during my time as a war station, I was able to do every single one of those type of rescues especially swiftwater rescue because it's weird that the border has those but they do yeah and then you know because of my proficiency as a you know army ranger i was invited to be the tac med guy for bortac the what tac med tactical

medicine kind of like tactical medicine professional for Bortech. I explain it in the book and it's a really weird thing. And even today, I've heard that it's still very weird. But Bortech is kind of built by these guys who want to be the tactical world. They're very SWAT mentality. Probably more like a, I i don't know seals slash ranger slash deltas those kind of personalities type a dudes kicking doors lift lift weights that's all cool we've had a few of them right right yeah you've had yeah you have a long list

of these fucks love them all those are very particular personality. As much as I was that as well, there's a big part of me that was not too as well. And trying to fit in into those worlds was always weird for me because I think I had a lot more empathy for people. And then you have the medics. Now, the Bortac, those really tough guys weren't very excited about BORSTAR when the BORSTAR was created. BORSTAR was created to help migrants and agents, right? And early on, it was search and rescue that was focused a lot towards, like, you know, hydration, you know, giving guys hydration and also fixing feet. A lot of blisters of long walks, right? And so they kind of used that as, like, go fix some feet, medic.

You know what I mean? And you're like, oh, fuck off, right? So it's kind of this internal, like, fucking tough guy kind of use that as like a go fix some feet medic, you know, I mean, you're like, oh fuck off, right? So it's kind of this internal like fucking tough guy kind of fucking shit happened Yeah, it created a lot of division between the teams as bore starter kind of gained more Taskings and started doing more training and start doing you know The big serious special operations mission with kind of this the SAR world the search and rescue world They also started learning how to do tactical medicine. Tactical medicine is a very important skill set that if you carry a gun,

why not be a good TACMED, which is the army had TCCC, I forget what it is, casualty collection, something, whatever the case was. But TCCC was kind of what they used to learn TAC medicine. And then eventually BORTEC was learning it as well, but they weren't as proficient because these are already medics. You know what I mean? And so at the point when I joined, there was a little bit of a conflict for me as a tactical dude to teach medics tactics of the medical.

And so we went through a little bit of a phase of people not really liking that I was teaching medics how to be tactical. I believe it's extremely important if you're going to be attached to BORTAC to be able to be proficient at tactics as well. Oh, yeah, dude. These are shit. You're dealing with cartel motherfuckers. I know. This is serious shit. So because this weird internal struggle, I fit in really well because I was the tactical dude now connected to them.

So they attached me to them for a lot of their missions Wasn't as common as you would think and so it was me and one other dude Chris Milo a very badass dude and who I absolutely love Me and him were the ones they trusted Chris was not a military guy, but he is a very high-level shooter And so we were attached to Bortech and so we would do missions with them quite often and it was not common and so I was very fortunate to live during the time where they allowed me to they also trusted me because of my combat experience to attach with them and I ended up doing uh almost the rest of my career attached to Bortak from that point on wow yeah so you really you you straddled the worlds in a lot of ways yeah a lot of social media thinks I was Bortak

I was not I've always said that but it's because it's not common to see the Borestar guy attached to Bortak as much as I was. I think I was having, in your book, I was trying to follow that a little bit. Yeah, I was trying to explain that. It was a little hard. I was a Borestar agent. I never got to try out for Bortak

because my career ended early because I chose to. At the one point I was going to try out for Bortak, I was going through a divorce, and so I didn't want to miss all that drama. So I decided to focus on that instead. And then I became the single father, you know, I became the custodial parent of four kids. And so it didn't really work with my life. Yeah, I'll say. Yeah. And so. Yeah. Daddy's on the borders for 14 hours a night. Yeah. yeah it didn't work out so i just stuck with the boar star side things but you know i became attached to them and eventually lateral

transferred over to sog and started that phase of my life okay and what what year was that approximately 2013 and is that when you started really doing heavy cartel shit when it was SOD? When I was at SOD as well, when I was a dirty bird down in Del Rio, we went over to McAllen for – it was a two separate – Wait, SOD? I'm sorry. Special Operations Detachment. And who was – And that's BORTAC and BORSTAR in Del Rio. Got it.

So they got assigned a tasking to go down to McAllen at the time. It was abed for illegal immigration, but also drug smuggling. And so heavy cartel work down there. And so I did two different missions, two different iterations, which total of the six months, remember I was now divorced, so I had nothing else to do. And so I was like, let's just go on mission forever. You know what I mean? And so I stayed down in McAllen. I'll see them soon. I got to go to work, but six months, pretty much two different iterations, two different teams is what I mean, is that I rotated for down in McAllen. And so all we did every day was we set up shop and we disrupted cartel organizations. Now, how are – I really want to dig into this because we hear a lot of the high level like, oh, there's fentanyl coming in everywhere and stuff. And the cartels run Mexico and now they run America.

But like how organized are their operations coming across the borders versus how much of it is just cowboys trying to hopefully get it across? No, it's pretty well organized. Now, let me – I'll state this. During my time, it was heavy marijuana, heavy marijuana, very little anything else yeah during my time I'm talking thousands of pounds of dope and when I say dope marijuana just weed just weed at the time this 2012 they're not even taking a risk it was different so it was a lot a lot of drugs getting pushed across but it was all weed during my time it was weed heavy you'll see cocaine more at the port of entries those are the ones that get caught through the

vehicles and all the way you know all the ways they're disguising that but during our time it was a lot of weed and that was a big deal because they were that's where their money was so it wasn't so much like how we see weed now we're like i'm just weed no dude that was all their money they made money off of weed and they needed to get it across. And we did everything we could to dismantle it. It was so crazy to see the whole city work together to help them get the weed. And this is no shit like. When you say city.

Anybody in those towns could be considered a scout, meaning a lookout. And when I say anybody, you see a little abuelo sitting on a chair in front of his house fucking whittling some piece of wood you pass by and he gets on his phone you're like fuck that's a scout tube like no shit bro this is not even a joke we had to change vehicles almost every week because we'd be burned so much so that one time me i got dropped off late at fucking night to fucking go to a high point. So I can kind of observe Intel that dope was going to be crossing at this point. I dropped, dropped off to a point where I swore, no, there's no fucking way. Anyone's going to see me and see me walk in five miles to a location.

That's how like we're trying to really, and I'm sitting behind this high ass fucking shrubbery, just waiting for the time to get to the point where I want to go walk forward. And so I'm just kind of standing by and no shit the dude rolls up and goes hey we see you homeboy and i was like shit how the fuck did he see me like i feel like i'm pretty good at this shit and no shit they all know the whole city kind of in in line as soon as they see our vehicle they're all tracking and they were able to identify that and then the missions burned bro and this is on our side of the board absolutely dude absolutely fucking lootly eventually we were able to track some dope to the vehicle to the drop point right to the house right

we were able to this is a whole fucking it's a pretty big mission that i'm catching like the house as well so now the house is done but you go to the fucking house that has cameras all over it in the same city in the same city right this is this is mccallan bro this is smaller offshoots outside of mccallan city's little towns called like rio la grulla um shit like that they're little little offshoots that are all very heavy dope but dude this house like you walk in you're like oh yeah cartel owns this because it's like the dopest house in the area cameras everywhere you know i mean there's a little spot where they were they were doing bundle and stuff on vehicles so they can hide the dope and stuff like that yeah so like it's a very very orchestrated thing and weed's hard to move because it's so big and so heavy yeah cocaine's

much better yeah well once the big bundle you once you cut the bundle then there's little bricks yeah so those big bundles you see on tv are just the wrapping the out wrapping once you cut the bundle, then there's little bricks. Yeah, so those big bundles you see on TV are just the wrapping, the out wrapping. Once you cut that open, then there's just little bricks. It will look like cocaine. It looks like kilos. Weed. Yeah. Just little bricks in there. Yeah, absolutely. But it's still statistically like

I mean like the amount of money you can make on this much cocaine versus But at the time, that was the demand. At the time, that's the demand at the time that's the demand so they're making their money they're making plenty of money and they needed to do it so at that time that was their biggest market with the lowest amount of like risk were you guys i mean you talked about you told the one story 40 or 50 minutes ago about the the dude who looked off being in the area and then turns out he was smuggling drugs and became

a source like were you guys within these towns also constantly trying to get cis and people who would be on your side or was that really like hard to do the border but the border patrol themselves us and special operations do not do that allegedly. There was ways of we would gather intel just by being in the right place at the right time. That would help you learn more. Barber shops were really good. I go to barber shops. I know what I look like. People talk very freely.

They don't think I'm a fucking agent. Pull the badge out. You're all fucked. I don't say nothing. They're like, okay. But like, you know, you're all i don't say nothing you're like okay but like you know you're able to get enough information and at the time uh you know people weren't looking at their their you know biographical data that they're putting on pictures whatever they call that right the the

the geotags on the photos oh yeah and so you're able to kind of go onto facebook and grab some of their information know exactly what they're going to be, see where they hang out and be able to, to, to, to, to apprehend people in ways like that. And so there was a weird loose version of investigation, but we're not, we weren't capable.

We didn't have the capabilities of it. We were able to just kind of put, put enough pieces together and be like, okay, this dude's a big dude in the game. We know how to get him. Do you do some of this stuff? Like,

are there times where the DEA is coming in or other agencies are coming in and you're a part of the mission or you're told to stand down? There's things like that. There's task force. There's attachments. A lot of BORTEC gets attached to U.S. Marshal warrants. We have the numbers, so we have the teams, so we can be facilitating facilitating the martial warrants for them things like that and so we do a lot of you know Bortech does a lot of warrant a lot of warrants on the border yeah in assistance with other organizations okay now a lot of these cartel guys though are also heavy into human smuggling yeah and I'd

have to say this to the camera right now everything Everything we're discussing today is in an educational context. It is strictly that way. We are not showing any images on the screen. This is someone who is a professional in the scenario, describing it for the people at home just like you would in a classroom. So we are complying with the fully monetization principles. We've had a lot of problems with this on YouTube. So let's – we'll make a mark of that timestamp. We'll put that at the front.

But anyway, so a lot of these guys are moving in bodies. They're moving in – it could be anything from – and this has been going on for a long time. It could be anything from people just looking for a new life who then pay them whatever they can, whatever money they've saved up to be able to do it to some illegal smuggling of people that is that are not necessarily voluntarily coming including kids who are then sold into god knows what yes do you remember your first experience with this and and realizing what was happening uh like it's during my time there was this is probably not the best explanation of it right during my time was like once i was in boar star and attached to boar tech it was genuinely focusing on dope dope dope the big time is when i started doing the investigative side of it of the the journalism side of my life

you know the borderland and that podcast is when i really started to learn heavy into this interviewing people that are experts in the field investigative journalists from from from different organizations wow so back when you were doing it you didn't see this as much and now you're seeing it like crazy yeah it wasn't like the topic of conversation like you see human smuggling in the sense of a bunch of people crossing in a coyote is following them, right? That version of it. The very common migrant who crosses with 20 people and they're just trying to get across. And those are majority of the time people really just trying to work, right? You saw that.

And if you caught the coyote, cool. Normally the coyotes were like 14, 15 years old. So the Texas – They were that young? Yeah, because Texas wouldn't process that because that's not an adult. And you just deport them back to Mexico and they come around and do it again next week. So much so that they would roll their own fingerprints and be like, where's my burrito and my drink? They knew the system.

They knew the system. And eventually Texas got – they understood that, and they started kind of trying to prosecute some of these as adults when they were 16, 17. But the cartels would use young coyotes to do the smuggling whoa and this like i said this was a different kind of smuggling bro this was genuinely majority of the time real people just working like and i say working kind of like not the threats that you would normally think of that's happening now the threats then were just illegal immigration your average migrant that most likely was some kind of worker who crossed for whatever reason and need to come back, right? So it wasn't what you see today. What you see

today, and this is based on solely based on my investigative journalism side of my life with Borderland and all those experts that we interview and learning from what's happening in the world. Now, the cartel has shifted. They don't make great money off weed anymore, so you don't see it as much. They make a lot more money off of human smuggling. And this is across the world, human smuggling. I'm talking Africa, India, Afghanistan, Turkey, China. Like when you start talking those exotics is what we used to call them. That's where their money is now big.

And that's where they're making so much money off it that like the drug side of it when I talk – when I say weed is almost – I mean you don't even see it that often. Yeah, they don't even care. It doesn't happen often you know you're still got your cocaine in the keys right you still got cocaine in because that's a good form of means of travel and way you can you can circumvent the system through the through the water right you still got your fentanyl and how that's transported all that but like genuinely like bundles on backs with weed is almost you don't see it as much you see bodies because that's where the money is so the shift in this whole system has gone strictly heavy heavy exotic

bodies when did that happen to the best of your estimation and i really think it happened it happened a lot during this administration only because the loophole system of the asylum situation and i'm not like this isn't like oh it's therefore i'm just saying soon as you see that there's a system that is in favor of smuggling they exploit it the cartel is very very smart these transnational organizations who make money off of this are very smart they see what we put in place they say how can we beat it there we go and that's why you have this massive influx because they're all rates demand right and they show up with a paper of an address and they just walk up

to me like seeking asylum boom and you're like holy crap i mean if you just live in san diego if you live in any of these cities you'll see it just by what you'll see it and you'll be like oh like i was driving to the airport and there was 12 taiwanese just standing there on the corner you're like oh and i watched them and and then an uber shows up or not uber uh what are those food ubers fucking called i don't know postmates whatever food one is they dropped off food for them and they sat sat there eating Vietnamese food or Taiwanese. I don't even know. And I was like –

All the same area. And they just crossed. So they have enough knowledge to know that, hey, you can cross. You can order some food and you just stand by and seek asylum and you're good. Yeah. So when I had – I want to get to some of the stuff Jorge Ventura talked about because he's been doing some crazy reporting on this for a while. But when I had Nick Shirley in here for episode 214, one of the things he was able to recover was actually the Chinese directions that the Chinese nationals come here with. And he had it translated and everything and it has down to a t down to

when they're fucking 30 towns and four courts into the system legally yeah as to where to go and what to do and where to be and how to be and it's like if you are looking at this and you think about this because you were in the goddamn military right like if you're looking at this from a national security standpoint yeah i'll bet some of these people are perfectly fine. It's whatever, but I'll bet some of them aren't, and I'll bet some of them are here for reasons that maybe serve the CCP. Yeah, I mean I've interviewed enough of people that all in agreeance that there's a good majority of the Chinese nationals that come to this country illegally have ties to ccp and and i mean i agree yeah to be clear but what are they basing that off of based on their experience in intel you know what i mean uh there's a there's a gentleman i can't think of the last name but his name is cory he just recently you know um testified about this

whole thing he lives on the border. I'm going to get you connected with him because he has an incredible story. But he recovered several phones, and he was able to get into the phones. And from the phones, they have a telegram. And there's hundreds of telegrams that tell you everything that's happening and from directions. I mean everything you can think of conversations about how to do it when not to anything that happens politically immediately something pops in there about like hey it's a good time now you guys yeah right come across yeah yeah you know i mean all

the concerns with catholic ngos on your side let's go right i did a whole thing on the ngos man oh all right put a pin in it yeah i don't want to get you off this. Yeah, but yeah, so there's enough investigative journalists, there's enough independent reporters that are seeing these cell phones and the information and the intel gathering is so thick, dude, that it's actually like how are you not concerned with the potential, what this looks like. These transnational organizations are communicating exactly how to get into this country, exactly what to say, exactly where to go, and who to use. And it's like this is a very intricate system, and it's making the cartel more money than what we did. Lesley, can you pull up a map of China farmland U.S. military bases? Have you seen this no i've heard all right well it's not it's not a it's not a great yep there it is so what we're looking at on the screen here is where i believe it's the red is where they is where chinese nationals or chinese multinational companies and stuff own a significant amount of let's call it just land for purposes of this.

And then all of the black spots, which you can see are over the red, are some famous forts we have around the country. There's even Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where all the alleged UFO stuff is. So when I see something like this to dovetail off what your intel guys are saying, I go, causation, correlation, looks pretty good. Yeah, it's crazy. It's fucking scary, man. Real quick, I just gotta go to the bathroom.

We'll be right back. Alright, we're back. I actually want to get to NGO stuff because you had me curious. You said you did a lot of shit on NGOs. I did a whole episode on NGOs from an independent investigative journalist who looked into the money and is pretty fascinating. Pretty fascinating, dude. I'll send you the link to her article.

Her name is Maddie something. But what she ended up finding was that – so a lot of the money that was given to the – so first, an NGO is nothing more than some kind of organization that fills the gap with something that the government can't provide. massive influx of immigration, but also the massive influx of unaccompanied minors. There was nothing set in place to help house them, not even house them just to get them kind of ready and prepared and then try and find out how to take care of them. And so the NGOs taking the spot of something that the government doesn't have. And so if the government created something, we wouldn't have the NGOs to do to to do what they do the government has nothing in place for that so they started to hire or fund ngos so they can create uh the housing situations and also kind of set up the safety parameters how they manage these unaccompanied minors and then

how they get them into some kind of um what's it called foster care and so when they allotted all this money to these ngos for some reason they lost oversight and so when they lost oversight they started to see a lot of issues and that's where government losing oversight that would never happen rocco yeah and so in her investigation showing the money it was crazy to see the top four or five that were getting millions if not close to billions one of them was billions billions yes billions to help this housing of unaccompanied minors and also the safety of the unaccompanied minors they start to notice that there was such a massive influx that they were losing control of it and at one point at some point they stopped

doing the deeper background investigations of the people that they were giving the kids to and it started to get a lot of issues where sexual expectations of these kids during in some of these housing facilities and issues like that were starting to pop up so much so that right now they're actually i believe there's a case that just happened that's that's highlighting these ngos for what they're doing but some of the um ceos of these ngos were making upwards of like $400,000 to $700,000 a year. That almost seems low. I'm serious.

It doesn't surprise me. Well, yeah, one of the top ones, I think it was $1.5 million is what he got. But, yeah, the CEOs of these organizations who have crazy, crazy scrutiny on them right now, but as they should, they were their lack of oversight on protecting these kids. And actually the lack of oversight on who they were giving the kids to, there was a couple instances where they identified. Essentially, our taxpaying dollars were going to these NGOs based on the areas of, you know, that we needed to kind of fulfill in protecting these unaccompanied minors, was going directly back into human smuggling. Because the people that they were identifying some of the cases

that they were giving the kids to were frequent flyers and identified as connections to the cartel. Whoa. So what's the chain of custody there? The kids come across the border. Somehow it's either given to ICE or given to an NGO to temporarily house them. Yeah, well, ICE will either hand them off to the NGO because those NGOs were said to have created the facilities to house them. And then from housing them to who they were going to give them to after in the sense of what they call it.

What is it? Chain a chain of custody yeah no but when they i forget the word of it whatever it is but yeah they're putting them into these houses right and so what the fuck i don't know how i mean my mind would blink on that but either way so yeah so the chain of custody of it is they were usually doing a background investigation on the individuals who were going to be holding them, right? Who were going to be – Jesus, I can't even think. What is it called when you fucking – when these kids go into these housing situations? Just said it and I can't – Temporary something? Don't worry about it.

People get the point. Either way. Yeah, so there was supposed to be a deep background check on these people and it got so overwhelmed that they stopped doing the background checks and they started to identify once they did that they realized that these houses that were housing them right um identify that some of them had nefarious causes or had backgrounds and ties into the cartel and so they were – the cartel identified that there was a hole in the system essentially and was able to put people in place to secure these kids.

What blows my mind is that because in this chain of custody we talked about earlier, border patrol to ICE to deportation or whatever, because of so many people claiming asylum and there being such a backup in the legal system, again, because so many people are coming across the border. We now have all these situations where you're even hearing about kids then who aren't being deported back, but they're just like escorted maybe with someone from Homeland Security if they're lucky to an airport and sent on a plane somewhere else in the country to Uncle fucking uncle fucking rico and some other foster care foster care yeah that's what i'm gonna say and then it's not someone on the other end it could be it it often is some sort of like trafficking organization yeah so like you know the whole claim of like 300 000 missing kids you have to assume well how and where and what are the and it has to be part of this whole system that was already, you know, the lack of oversight.

And like these kids come missing from this, you know, you give them to someone who's supposed to be holding accountable and fostering these kids. But then, you know, they lose oversight of that. And then they find out that some of these people that they were supposed to be doing background investigation don't have them. When that's where you start finding the holes in the system and that they're still receiving these billions for this it's really it's a really weird system you got to see that article she really digs into the four top ones that that received so much money and there was more but she just wanted to highlight the four top ones isn't one of them like a catholic organization yes yes they all start as some kind of most of them start as some kind of christian cath Catholic organization and then they kind of go and go into this kind of space of supporting this issue and you know when money gets involved

it kind of gets sloppy it's also you know sometimes it just feels like a giant diversion machine to me in the sense that when you have an issue like this you are going to divide society and you're going to also turn society in on its worst impulses. And you know exactly what I'm talking about. OK, people are coming from Mexico. Well, then, you know, fuck the people who are from Latin America or whatever. And it turns into like a race thing as well. And you look across Europe where they've had, you know, a lot of open border issues in recent years.

So now suddenly that's turning in on itself. Does it ever feel to you like it's some sort of social experiment just that we're, we're losing, you know, it's like this, um, part of my background in military was psychological operations, right? Yeah. And so it feels like there's a, a part of all of this, if I want to get into the like deeper, deep, like, man, what does it have? Like, you know, cause it's hard to understand why this is all going down and why, who would let this happen. But part of me feels like a big plan of slowly dismantling you know the american culture on the part of who i don't know maybe china right there's there's some there's some intel that says china you know china's long game you know things like tiktok things like social media

things like you know um multiple different things, but, but dismantling kind of, you know, the, the American ideology, the American culture, and so the massive influx of immigration could easily start to cause that, right? You see a lot of little factions and people wanting to, not wanting to assimilate fully to American culture. You see that the Hispanic culture does this to itself a little bit more. You're either, you know, I said in the book, like you're either Mexican, you're too Mexican or not Mexican enough.

You know what I mean? Um, so a lot of the, you know, Hispanic, uh, countries who, you know, they,

they, there's a lot of internal turmoil between each other, a lot of competitive nature. You see it on, you know, macro, micro scale, but like even in the acting world,

you know, Hispanics don't tend to work well together in the sense of, I don't see a lot of guys trying to help each other. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Like you go over like, Hey man, you know, I need some help tend to work well together in the sense of i don't see a lot of guys trying to help each other you know what i mean yeah like you're gonna be like hey man you know i need some help and it's like cool cool story bro should take my role in there yeah well you know as a competitor the competitive space of it but it's also the the the scarcity of it they believe that you know i could be taking their role but you know you see it in that sense but in a big scale you have a lot of people when the show came out one of the biggest you know one of the biggest hispanic shows ever and we got shit talked

on by like oh this guy doesn't speak good spanish or this guy he's not even mexican or this guy he's you know all this weird fucking semantics of the bullshit that they just wanted to fight on it's no different than like the the the struggles and difficulties of how people assimilate to American culture and the fear of like assimilating too much, you're whitewashed and you're considered a coconut, you know? And so when you have a lot of pockets of that, you have some people,

it's, it's what you see now of like, now we have two national anthems, you know what I mean? Yeah. The national anthem, but then, you know,

when you have too much of that and it continues to kind of dilute what the foundation is, then you kind of lose, you of lose the culture of this. Yeah. It seems like we had such a nice middle ground forever before all this where we talked about Ellis Island earlier. People came in. That's the reason we got great fucking Italian restaurants everywhere because Italians kept that part of culture. But like became a part of America too.

You know what I mean? Maybe the first generation is 40 years old when they come here, they speak with broken English the rest of their life, they talk like this, but the next generation is talking like this. Yeah. And it's a beautiful thing about this country. And now we're in this cycle that you're talking about where it becomes multi-generational where they're like,

no, we're going to just stick with ourselves. Well, you say it's a beautiful thing. It was a beautiful thing. Now it's actually looked – it's frowned upon if you're too Americanized because then you're considered to be too white. And it's like – but that's not – that's not how – it's turned racial. I don't know. Well, that's the problem is like too many extreme ideologies have hijacked some of our – you know, the American culture and turned it into, you know, an enemy, right? So, like, when people see the American flag, there's some people that see it as racist.

And you're like, what? You know? And then, you know what I mean? When you see that, when people start hijacking the flag and what the flag represents, right, that's dangerous. That's dangerous because the flag should also represent your struggle. It represents everybody and all their struggle and all their their their hardships. And the fact that you can represent that flag and say, well, yeah, well, because of this flag, I can fight against it, too. And that you look at the recent political history of this, this is one I think about all the time because it's like when Trump was coming up, you know, just like everyone else, he's allowed to love the flag too, right? And he loved it. You know, you remember the picture of him like hugging the flags and stuff. Every press conference he did, there's a hundred million american flags behind him and somewhere along the way passively yeah it's like the left decided to give him the flag when i see someone's

bio yeah on social media and there's american flag in the bio i know how they vote yeah that was not that way eight years ago it shouldn't be it's crazy it shouldn't be yeah well yeah because you being on set in hollywood if you wore American flag shirt, some people would be offended by it. That's so fucked up. And you're like, it should not do that. But people allowed jargon. People allowed the media. People allowed all these people to hijack the foundation of what it should stand for.

Yes. It should stand for oppression as well. It should stand. Yes. It should stand for oppression as well. It should stand for freedom. It should stand for all those things. And because of that flag, you can fight for what you believe in. That's what it should represent. But it turned into, now people see that as conservative. And you're like, well, that's not fair because it's not conservative.

It's American. You know what I mean? And I think, you know, if you're very what i mean and i think you know if you're very liberal and and you know you feel like you're oppressed for some reason well then you should fly that flag even fucking higher and you should fucking carry that flag in a way like yeah but i can't fight for because of this flag you know what i mean and that's what it should be it should be the flag that fights for you you know because it always has and that's where it's unfortunate because it's turned into this weapon it's weaponized now you know and when you have this massive

influx of immigration now you have people really questioning like fuck i'm scared to say anything because if i say something i'm gonna you know i'm either racist or this like that's me writing this book bro i thought like the hispanic culture would be like dope book bro you wrote a really good book that really explained this very very intricate complex thing and no the hispanic culture attacked the really bro death threats dog why death because one they wouldn't even read it right they wouldn't read it because a mexican man who was in the border patrol is 60 70 percent yeah yeah exactly the mexican guy who serves in the border patrol is the colonizer is what they would call me oh i got all of them i got the colonizer you look like a colonizer i got

i'm the i'm uncle juan which i didn't yeah i didn't know that was a thing, but it's like an Uncle Tom, I guess. I got coconut. I kind of like that one. I'm not going to lie. That's good. I got coconut. I got whitewashed. I got all these things. And you know why?

So there's a really big Latino social media page called Me Too, right? In Spanish, Me Too, right? And that's like they have all kinds of like Latin pro Latin American stuff it's really cool stuff they said hey I'd love to write an article about your book and I was like fuck here we go they're gonna fucking dust me dog I knew it right away so I wrote the best version of what I would like my answers and knowing like I'm gonna get shit on and they posted it on their social media and I'm talking thousands of comments of fucking people talking shit and then they finding me and saying fuck you're a

traitor all these things right and these are Americans right this is this discussion wasn't in Spanish dog this shit was in English right so like 99% of these motherfuckers live in America hating on the fact that I serve the country and in the capacity of a border patrol because what we said earlier because the weaponization of the border patrol because what we said earlier because the weaponization of the border patrol during the trump era and not because of trump but because of the media and then fast forward to the biden era now like the the counter of the argument but still the border being weaponized as the bad guy now that i'm hispanic and served in the border patrol i'm

the bad guy now if you talk to firstgeneration Mexicans who know the Border Patrol and their kids become Border Patrol agents, it's because, like, yes, we all serve the Border Patrol. It's a good organization, but also make sure that you're taking care of our people in the right sense of, like, if they're coming across, don't abuse them, which we don't. But, like, that's part of the idea is, like, go ahead. Do a good job. Serve this country. This country's done us good. You know what I mean? And so it's a really interesting thing is that it's not the first generation Mexicans or Hispanics that are mad at the border patrol. It's like the second and third generations who are so far removed from it, they really don't have an understanding of it. And their lack of education of the subject makes

them more angry because they don't understand it. You know what their lack of education of the subject makes them more angry because they don't understand it you know what i mean it's like people who don't understand guns they're scared of guns yes very similar right someone who like raised around guns i'm like i'm not afraid of them so i'm not really scared of them it's the same conversation it's that second third generation who wants to make a stance on something but really doesn't get it but the first generations are usually like man i came here and it's i've been given the opportunity to to work i've been given opportunity i serve this country i love the country like it's turned into like they lived it yeah and it's very interesting

it's the third generation that usually is so far removed from the reality of like what the country has done for their own family and the opportunities that it's presented to them and the argument they use is like well this country was taken on stolen land and all the oppression and it's like what country yeah yeah yeah we can get into that but i mean we can't change the past by any means all we can do is focus on what we have right now and what we have right now is the chance that if we continue to go this route if the country continues to allow a massive influx of immigration if they continue to allow this to a point where we don't even have the resources you see what's happening in the hotels you see what's happening to the to these these states that that have welcomed it in and

then now they're like you know now they're in their state of emergency right you've seen the possibility of what happens in the future with the the accountability or the lack of accountability of who comes in this country There's a chance that we're slowly dismantling the culture of America and we lose this country It's a different kind of war. You know I'm saying it's a smarter version of war and I Mean who's funding all these motherfuckers that come from way down there here. That's that's the question We should be asking and you think a lot of that could go back to china yeah i think china and some of some of the um you know al-qaeda some of the extreme um terrorist groups right okay i mean i think about the the idea all the time of

like democracy being used against itself by outer interests it's like in this country let's let's juxtapose us and like the ccp in this country we can say what we want about any politician or whatever and and the great thing is we have free speech so we don't go to prison when we do that as long as you don't make like a death threat or something like that and the ccp it's off with your head yeah when you do that in the ccp they can have a lot of innovation too in their companies, but they get to own their companies. So they get to tell them what to do and they get to handle all those things. Over here, that's not quite the case. There's obviously some weird relationships between corporations and government, but at a high level, corporations are thinking for their bottom line

and governments are thinking for their bottom line. and it's just this constant battle, which means that corporations from China who are working on behalf of the Chinese government by choice – I'm sorry, by force can therefore come in and fund things here that spell profit for someone in our private markets that then use the rules of the fact that we allow that in America, because it's supposed to be freedom, right? To use our freedom against itself to turn it in on itself. And you're looking at a situation now where, you know, yes, we've had wars over the past 80 years. Christ, there's wars all the time. We haven't had a war that really hits us at home across the mass population since the draft of Vietnam, I'd say. A lot of people like to go World War II. I'll go even shorter and I'll say Vietnam. And so when you combine that with the fact that we also have not been fucking invaded.

All these other countries deal – I mean you've seen it. They deal with borders. Someone walks right across the border and does something. Our borders is a different kind of invasion. It's not like a military invasion in that way at this point. We are so complacent as a society in this time of peace that you talk about the second and third generations of, say, immigrants. Think about the third and fourth generations and fifth generations of even Americans on top of that who have known nothing but peace and buying their iPhone and going out

on Friday nights and whatever. They're the other ones. It's no wonder why we're turning in on ourselves here and why it's so easy for other places to maybe fund that on itself. Yeah, I think it's accurate. I think it's interesting that we have internally we – when I get to meet non-documented – I don't even know how to say it – illegals, immigrants, it doesn't matter. Any kind of migrant you meet on the border who just came across who is genuinely here for the opportunity because they're running from persecution in their own country. They're running from de-civilization, whatever it is, economic relief. They fucking love America, dude.

They love America and they love the opportunity for it There's there's a there's a there's a few of them now that do come because they know they're gonna gain a lot of opportunity right because of Some of the financial stuff that they the purse that is receiving some of the illegal migrants, right? But for the most part like I'm coming to work right and they're really happy, right? And it's crazy because you have Americans like you said fifth sixth generations that fucking hate america and you're like what is happening like internally we're imploding in a way that's just hard to understand like some of our high level colleges are teaching that right a lot of our high level colleges are not showing like the love of america but almost the disdain of america harvard so it's

proven proven like yeah like just read half the books these fucking kids are coming out with that they wrote and you're like shit you know like there's no love lost on this you know what i mean and it's a confusing time man it's a confusing time like i you know obviously i raised my kids to understand america and love what we have the opportunities and and not to ignore some of the shit america's done too right oh yeah you know we've destabilized countries absolutely and run over a government or 10 yeah for sure exactly you know and we've caused a lot of our own fucking shit that's happening right now absolutely and i say we this is a higher power it's not us dog it's right fucking you know it's the governments

who are making these choices for us that we didn't even know we didn't vouch for we didn't support but yeah we i could take that on the chin all day okay but that doesn't mean like fucking we turn our backs on what we have that's right we can't turn our backs on the freedoms that we do have this very very fortunate to live in this time but as well it's a scary time to see that we could possibly be destabilizing what we have. Yeah. It's like my friend Eric Zolliger, who was on this podcast back in episodes 163 and 164, he had a great line. He said, people are not their governments.

Yeah. And we equate the two universally everywhere now. And you should be able to love everything great that America stands for from a leadership position, which we still are. We still lead the free world and still have the most opportunities here. We still have the American dream and all that. And let's hope we keep that going, right? You should be able to say all that while also saying, as the top dog in that way, we want to strive to be even better so let's point out the things where we got some fucked up shit yeah and let's fix it the fact that you can only have one or the other according to some of these people you know who you're talking about is ridiculous to me because it it's

it's anti-american too because it it makes no sense when in fact a lot of the people who are saying these things are are only allowed say it because they live here. It's like go – you know what? I'll tell you what. Translize for Palestine, go to Palestine. Go to Gaza. See what happens. I had an interview with someone on Borderland, and the goal of the conversation was to be talk about

deportated deported veterans right something we could talk about right now it's pretty please yeah but this is a new one I was trying to talk to this kid about his story and why he supports deported veterans and for some reason he just went off on this freakin tyrant that like America this was like whoa I can't allow you to sit here and just talk shit on america real because this is my show you know what i mean and turn the mic volume right i was like hold the fuck up right and it's funny because i was thinking my producer's gonna fucking hate me but i don't give a fuck i'm i don't i don't like it i don't like i don't like anyone going on to the show and jumping on a false narrative

and claiming it's truth and it's like no, no, that's not true, right? And then eventually I said, well, why do you even live here? He goes, you know, and I was like, well, tell me a better place to live. And he said some country. I said, well, then go. I said, well, then go. Well, then go. Nothing stops you from living here.

But you sit here and complain complain and that's not the answer either right in the military they say if you're going to come up with a problem you better bring a solution behind that motherfucker you know i'm saying and when they're just angry emotionally ranting without any kind of trying trying to fix this it's worthless to me like don't come onto my show and give me bullshit i want fucking experts to talk about the expertise now he was supposed to be an expert on deported veterans let me tell you about that motherfucker yeah this is this is a little bit of a shock here's what right now we have over 400 veterans who are deported how did that happen well like american

veterans no they were supposed to get their american citizenship after after serving the country and then they find themselves getting in trouble in some capacity some are like holy that's a up thing and some are not so up it could be a drug issue could be could be a dui with you know uh involuntary manslaughter whatever the it is here's how it works you can't serve our military unless you have a green card right once you get a green card permanent resident card well then now you can join the military when you join the military it's usually on the fact like hey i want to join the military so i can gain my citizenship faster this is how i prove my loyalties to your country or to my country right

in the process of doing it some bases um fort sill for instance during my time as a drill sergeant there we had four of my soldiers get their citizenship naturalization after graduating basic training. Boom. Not all bases do the same thing. Not all bases follow that protocol. This is just Fort Sill, Fort Benning, Fort Jackson, Fort Leonard, all those can do it different. Some of them say, hey, go to your station. You'll do it when you get to your unit. Well, early in the war, they'd get to their unit and then they'd be forward deployed. So they'd go to Iraq or Afghanistan before they could get their naturalization. Right?

So then they go to Iraq or Afghanistan and now it's busy. Some of these deployments were a year long. Some were even longer, right? Then they come back from deployment. For some reason, they never got their naturalization paper done, right? It wasn't of importance to their chain of command. Now, there's different stories. There's plenty of guys who got their naturalization, right?

We're talking about the ones who, for some reason, were deployed. The unit didn't take it serious or didn't focus on it. The combat was more important. Whatever the case, they come back. They still don't get it done. After their three years of service, they still haven't got their naturalization papers done. They get out of the service. They get in trouble trouble it could be from post-traumatic stress it could be from drinking issues whatever it is boom now they find themselves deported whoa and so we have

over 400 american combat veterans or veterans some of them not combat because some some later on has not gone to combat because of the time. Get deported because they served the country. They were promised to gain naturalization. They just, for some reason, their unit or themselves didn't make it a priority at the time. They get out. They get in trouble. Boom.

Now they're sent back to a different country. And it frustrated me hearing this for the first time because I'm like, hold the fuck up. Personally, if you serve our country, give them their naturalization because they've proven to them, they've proven to our country that they earn that. And if they fuck up, well then let them do that in the American system, not back at their own country. Let them still reap the benefits of serving as an American and even doing their time as an American. That's what I want to see. And so I'm helping some organizations fight this and exploit this and tell people the truth about that, that it's a really weird loophole that happened. We're trying to get something in Congress where the fact that as soon as you serve after your basic training, they automatically get their naturalization. Now there's controversy on that.

Shouldn't they serve two years first? Whatever the case, I don't care what it is. For me, they should not be allowed out of the military until we know we got their citizenship because they've earned it. Yeah. And so that's what's happening right now in our society currently. It's crazy how many different, how many second order and third order effects there are related to the border and immigration. Dude, I tell people this is a fucking just a branch of the tree of immigration. There's so many levels to this, dude.

So many levels to it. It's crazy. So there's an author who wrote a book called The Undocumented American. Her name is Carla something. She was an illegal immigrant who came across with her dad or her parents left first. They came out here to work to earn money. The grandma sent her to meet with the family. She was still undocumented. Somehow, through relationships, she was able to get into Harvard.

She graduates Harvard as an undocumented. Then she gets into Yale, bro. She writes this book that did nothing other than talk shit on American culture and how the whole time she was scared about being deported and I'm like Bro, she won awards for this book and I was like So our young Latinos who are looking for these heroes to look up to these academics to read their story and then Harvard Yale, yeah, I'll read it and it's nothing but shit talk about America. She went to Harvard and Yale. Free.

Someone paid and sponsored her because, you know, her situation, whatever it was. What is that? I don't, I can't relate to that. None of my business, dog. I know my kids ain't going to Harvard and Yale, dog. I can't afford it. And there's no way they do. My daughter's brilliant, homie.

Brilliant, brilliant girl. And she didn't get into Harvard. I'll tell you that. And this girl's a straightA student since she started school. Whatever. But my frustration – She was born in the wrong country. Bro, my frustration – my frustration is not that an undocumented – not that a non-citizen received a Harvard degree.

Fine. My frustration was in the book she wrote that gained all kinds of attention because of her status was nothing more and showed no gratitude to the country that afford her that opportunity. That 99% of our kids will never be given that opportunity. Never, bro. And then she got her PhD from Yale. and my frustration was the book did nothing but talking about whitewashing and oh it's the best and and it was it frustrated me as an hispanic man saying like damn if my daughter got that and she wrote a book i would have said you better show gratitude man because you've been given a fucking you've been given a fucking opportunity that none of us got and for my daughter to ever get an opportunity like that would be like man you've been given a fucking opportunity that none of us got and for my daughter to ever get an opportunity like that would be like man you just generationally

changed your family from here on out and that's a gorgeous statement you know I mean my mother picked fruit dog my mother picked fruit that's how far I come from my mother was of what picked fruit for money too I was able to put my family position where I was an actor on television that's a big generational you know so lucky that's a jump it's an American story right exactly in Mike my daughter graduated from frickin she's a Buckeye Ohio State and she's going to law school next year oh congrats you know I'm saying like that's a big only in America motherfucker only in America

only in America and that's like something that like i wish more would show the gratitude because she couldn't have done it from where her family was from she couldn't have had the opportunity and she was given the opportunity and at some point i just ask part of that assimilation is at least showing gratitude for a country that's given the opportunity to do that fuck, man. I think what you're doing too, you know, you're not just a guy who served the country in the military. You then went and did it in a way that I guess goes very underappreciated and serving in border patrol for a long time. But, you know, for the, for a moment, skipping over your Hollywood career and look at where you are now versus where you were in between or back when you were with the Border Patrol.

It's like now you're using the platform that you've built for yourself to educate people on this through your book, through your show, through doing sit downs with guys like me and putting it out there on the internet and i think it it comes across to me really heavily just talking with you that like you know you only saw what you saw in in in border patrol so you're getting educated as well with all the latest stuff that you're not that you're just learning about again i'm trying to watch what i say here because i know you got that one thing but like that you're now witnessing that maybe wasn't around yeah when you there. And then through your show, you're bringing in all the people who work on each one of these individual topics. And it's a huge public service, I think, because it gives people both worlds. It gives them the world of someone like you is sitting there learning about some of the shit just like them. But also someone like you understands like how that's approached from the other side because you've been on it yeah it's crazy like being able to interview guys like like ed calderon someone who i follow

for years someone who i he's awesome you know i look for his information because his intel is valuable right and then to hear what's going on in his head now some of the intel that he has that's stuff that i'm not privy to because i don't go into Mexico, homeboy. That's not my space. Because of currently what I do for a living, I don't touch any of that. I stay on this side of the border. I study, I learn, I journalize on what's happening on this side of the border, specifically with the border patrol career field in Homeland Security. That's the world that I'm considered to be more of an expert in. But when i get to interview someone who's like tell me about the cartels what are they doing now damn it's crazy to hear you know el mayo just got picked up right that's that's you know from the senegal cartel and then knowing that the cj and g right the c this the the the new the new generation uh cartel the big up in commerce right everyone's

nervous about that well to hear that ed caderon was like hey bro that's someone to look out for okay well now i need to do even more investigative work i need to see why someone like him would say that and that's a concern that's something that we as americans should pay attention to because what happens is the single level cartel was able to kind of keep tabs on what's going on in the borders they kind of kept control right there the they're the big dog that said nope that can't happen that happened it's just like for example uh do you remember the the the group that went down to mexico and got shot up and they said they were going there just for they they said they were going there for like some some some surgery right some like like plastic surgery do you remember that oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah they got shot up right and did you see what happened just

shortly after like a day later like six dudes were on the floor like these are the guys in charge that's the kind of shit the single oil cartel does like fix that yeah and say sorry essentially right that's exact apologize right that's exactly what that is that's a way of keeping tabs of like hey america my bad that shouldn't have happened under our watch please let our smuggling go on and even even if it was them who did it it was still a sign of like hey in good faith here's i'm being straight up right as weird as that sounds that's what in good faith here's the six right that is the kind of shit the senolow cartel could do uh yeah the cjg doesn't really give a fuck right and so without the single cartel at the helm, down at the borders.

The devil you don't know. Here we go. So what's about to happen now is going to be a very interesting story. I don't know. So I got my connections to these investigative journalists to be like, tell me, bro. Tell me. So then I know how to handle my side of it. My connections here in Texas, my connections here on the border.

How can I help my friends understand and be better prepared for the what happens you know recently i got in contact with the dude who trained the losetas oh do you remember them right the losetas were big right they started out as being kind of the security for the scene level cartel and eventually they started their own little clique well then you're like we had to get power like the whole the whole conversation goes like oh yeah well special forces was the one who trained him and i'm like well that's my world i started contacting people boom i got a hold of the dude so right now i'm working on a story only so we can better understand the ttps and the training that they were taught so we can better understand what skill sets they have and where they have where have they gotten better from then that's

right so it's a it's a not parallel but like a similar type of thing to like we armed the muja hadin in the 80s and then later they came back and used it again correct okay correct and my goal is just to better understand like how how good are they because for a long time we were very nervous for the losetas but i'm like well yeah but what were they taught because i'm not really worried if they're just taught old school vietnam tactics but if you're taught how to enter clear rooms how to make fucking you know exposed devices well then we should be concerned in the world of tactical in the tactical space we should always know what our enemies are capable of doing right that's what we do yes and so me as what as investigative journalists who also has a background in fucking

tactics right like let me know where their foundation is so i know where they probably are at now and then also let me get further into that so we can really kind of understand, like, okay, I know exactly how to handle these dudes in the event that we ever have to do it. You know, like, they're not the biggest of concerns now, but they were at one point. But what do they know and where are they at now is my biggest concern. It's like, how dope are these guys at clearing rooms? You know what I mean? That's where I'm at right now is like how good

tactically are they in the event that they ever potentially bring that to us we should know that well i do i do struggle with all the time like obviously cartels bad leadership bad no one's arguing that but you know you wonder about taking the el chapos and the el mayos out and to i guess ed's point i'd love to get ed in here he he's incredible i've watched him for years but like you know if you have something below that that is even more unhinged right it's like is there another way to go about this from a from a law enforcement standpoint where I hate to say it like this, but you'll leave individuals like that in charge, but you kind of cut off some knees here and there below. I think that's what we did for a long time with the Sinaloa cartel. Genuinely, I believe we did that for a long time. We – there's – go check out that podcast, those who are listening, listening with Ed Calderon and then we did another podcast with another individual either way and call it what that link in the description

Yeah, I'll see. Yeah a color on spoke about how El Mayo had there's a potential that he believes based on his experience that El Mayo had connection to the CIA. Yes. Yeah, and so if that's the case, well, then all we're doing is saying, okay, cool. Just keep tabs on everything for now. He even talked about during 9-11, somehow there was connection to our government

and the cartels that say, hey, don't let anyone cross right now. We're really dealing with some shit. You know what I mean? Like, wait, what? That's crazy.

Well, go listen to that podcast and it really kind of opened your eyes to like, holy shit, who's actually in control here? All right, you know what i mean it's this really weird thing so that's what the big concern is now el mayo's out of the picture is that a version of him retiring and saying hey it's time to head out it's a hell of a retirement

behind bars in the fucking u.s oh yeah it's better than what it could have been i guess you know what i'm saying his sons are already in freaking you know protective custody in the sense of they're probably hiding out here in Dallas somewhere. Who knows? Yeah. So it's that or the other, right? If the CJ&G was getting close to them and he was just like nervous, like, dude, they're going off the hinges. Well, that's a really scary time for him, I guess. So let him just kind of go out and, you know, I'm good.

I'm done. So that's where the concern starts to lie. And if everyone I'm interviewing right now is concerned with them, I think we all should be concerned with them. That's the one that I think everyone should start paying attention to in the cartel world. Now you left the Border Patrol in 2015. And you write about it in your book, but it's not for any reason anyone would ever guess. You were essentially involved with the Sweat and Matt – what was his last name? The prisoners from Dannemora who escaped?

Yeah, yeah. Matt Reed or something like that? No, it's – what is it? Matt and Sweat. That's who it was. Oh, Richard, Matt, and David Swe like that it's it's uh what is it matt's in sweat it's that's who oh richard matt and david sweat that's it yeah so if people remember this story these guys in 2015 sweat was serving life without parole matt was 25 to life they were murderers they escaped from danamoor prison by you know exploiting one of the guards who got them tools or something they dug this hole it was like straight up like Shawshank Redemption. And so they were on the run for like, I think it was almost a week or something like that.

I think it was longer than that actually. Yeah, totally like escaped. And you guys were called in. Yeah. So when I got to SOG, because I was a single father of the four kids, right, we were trying to figure out our schedule and how I was going to work it. So during that time, I became a training officer and I helped kind of rewrite the BOR star selection. And what I did was add the tactical medicine to be more prevalent in the selection because I thought it was important to implement that early. And so as I was doing that, I became friends with the team leader of a Bortech team because he's a former Ranger.

His name is Chris Voss, well-known, documented that he was part of the mission. Not the Chris Voss who wrote the book. Different Chris Voss. Wrote what book? Never Split the Difference. Yeah, not that Chris Voss. Yeah, not that Chris Voss. When I was reading it, I was like, okay, it's a different Chris Voss. Yeah, this is the Border Patrol stud, Chris Voss, who, like I said, he was a part of the mission. He's a big name in the – The real Chris Voss. The real Chris Voss.

I'm talking the machine, right? But me and him became good friends. He's a former Army Ranger. And I said, man, if I ever came back to the teams, I'd do it to to work with you because I just trust him I think he's just that good of a of an operator and he said well let me know did three years teaching well three sessions three three iterations with boar star class 23 24 and 25 and then I was kind of ready and so I said I'm ready to jump ship to attach to you guys so they welcomed me they brought me on attached to

to Bortec as their medic. And from there, it was, you know, train with them for a little while. And then, you know, we were we were ready to go for any kind of big operation. We did a couple of training cycles, we did a couple of ops. But then, you know, at the time my life, I was going through a second divorce, kind of, I was kind of going through my, my trying to figure out my life with my kids. You know, I was able to kind of do the admission because I had another wife helping me, you know, my second wife, and I just kind of realized I wasn't there a lot. So I was kind of going through this phase of my life of like, maybe I should hang it up. It's time to stop doing the operator life and actually be a better dad.

And we, we prepared a big party for my daughter who at the time, I don't know, she was turning eight or nine at the time. I've missed most of her birthdays because of operations, whether it be missions overseas or whether it be with the border patrol. And I kind of like set up a really big luau party for her. And I was kind of expecting that I was going to be home. We just got done from a really big training cycle. We were in Quantico. We were here. We were there. We were doing all kinds of stuff.

And so as far as I knew, we weren't doing any missions for the next two weeks. But we are an operational team that at any point, if someone calls, we go. And so as I was kind of home relaxing, I got a call from my supervisor. I said, hey, man, we got a call from my supervisor and said, hey man, we got the mission. We already saw these dudes escape. We saw it happening and we're like, fuck, I wonder if they're going to call us. But after like four days, I'm like, there's no way they're calling us because they've already fucked up all the sign.

Meaning, you know, all the tracking capabilities that we have would be a lot harder after four days, after five days. And that's why they would call you though because you guys are expert trackers. Yeah, the Border Patrol, that's what they do, right? And on that team, we have scent dogs and we have bite dogs. And so we can track down pretty good, pretty well.

There's no other team in the nation that was as capable as we were for that specific mission. The FBI has their specific mission they're really good at. All the local tactical teams don't really do search and rescue kind of, or search missions like we do, our job, everyone on the Bortech team and the Boar Star team, we're board of traitors, man, so a bigger part of their career was tracking people down, so everyone has that foundation already, on top of that, you know, they know how to move tactical, and they have the right dogs for the kind of job, and so by the time we got the call, you know, I packed up all my stuff and I was like, I'm out, you know. And so we took off and we knew it was going to be tough because of how many days already gone.

And so we were already kind of given directions like, hey, this area, this area, we can go start tracking and start looking. It was impossible, though, man. Once we landed and we got to the operation center and man there was this is up in new york yeah up in new york yeah this is a i forget the area of new york but yeah upstate new york is what they call it right not that new york yeah not that new york i'm talking green shit dog i've never seen anything like it i was like this is crazy place beyond the pines yeah i didn't know new york looked like that to be honest we had to take a ferry at one point to get to where we were going. Yeah, and so the whole thing was different for me.

We get there, and dude, I just look on the ground just as we get off the truck, and I'm like, holy shit. Look how many boots are on the floor. Like there were so many different organizations, law enforcement agencies. I mean, you name it, they were there. And I just look on the floor to be like holy if this was what's going on out there we're gonna have trouble but we started running off since we were there so late we started running off intel and immediately we got some intel that there was an island someone thought they saw something there you know no one's supposed to be there at this

time boom so we had a boat op we took two boats for our teams we got to the island boom we cleared the island it looked like they might have been there it's hard to tell could have been anyone but it looked like there was definitely sign of someone there a disturbance nothing there boom next day we have another mission uh to a escaped uh sorry an abandoned school so we we took uh two helicopters to that point i don't name know the name of the helicopter were like marine helicopters or navy but very similar to like a black hawk kind of thing so you know we have pictures of us on that bird uh that is kind of famous for that mission um and i'm at my feet outside of the bird just on my way you know what i mean and uh we get there we it was a challenge to clear that one because

it was half abandoned half fallen and so we had to clear up then down and it was just kind of a really weird space but if they were there man that would have been a tough one but it did look like there was some old food kind of cooked there so again we were close yeah could have been them we were close uh they made a few more missions just like that just we get a call we go out there we check it we track we we look nothing nothing nothing this is about six days now and we're like shit we're probably going to be cold on the trail now you know it's so many days we're just gonna have to wait for really good intel we were about to redeploy like i said so many law enforcement there already we didn't need necessarily be there if we didn't have like really good means of trying to track someone so we were just kind of helping as much as we could did you guys but it sounds like you

guys had you were getting intel but you have your own jurisdiction to take action. You're not like reporting to the local PD or anything. No, not at all. If we see them, we act and we were going to fucking, you know, whatever you do at that point. You know, if they have a gun on them, then, you know, if they're a threat, then you take them out. If they don't, then you arrest them. So that's just kind of how we would have handled the whole situation. And so as we're going to redeploy back home, we have another day.

I just told my supervisor, hey, do you mind if I go home? My daughter's birthday is tomorrow. I'd love to catch it. He's like, yeah, go ahead. So as I'm on a flight flying home, they get a call, new intel. And boom. So as history goes, they end up finding one of them, and they – Voss took the shot.

The individual raised a rifle right at him, and he engaged on him. So – Matt did, and he was killed. Yeah, and then Sweat was apprehended the next day. He was in an engagement with a law enforcement officer as well. But this is what being home and off the end of that This is what made you say it's time to hang it up. Yeah, I It was a hard pill to swallow. I try to explain that

You you give the team's 100% of your mind body spirit soul dude and you give your family just what's left and That's why there's a lot of divorce rates in the special operations units. That's why, you know, you don't see these, these operators have the greatest of lifestyles, family lifestyles,

because it's hard to find a woman who's willing to endure that kind of challenge. Yes. There's a few and it's beautiful, man, when you see it, but it's not often. A lot to ask. Yeah.

And so, um, you know, I was at a space where my relationship wasn't going well and I already knew it and I knew I needed to kind of make a decision. And since I made the question of going back home for my daughter's birthday and I missed that event, I felt that they weren't going to get the best version of me because my mind was slightly shifting on terms of focusing on the family. And it wasn't it wasn't fair to them to have a medic that was kind of one foot in right and so i resigned well you had put in a lot including the military and everything you just put in a lot of years

doing high level for a long time and i think i think i think you earned the right to do that at that point but i mean looking back back on it, it seems like you look back on with great fondness. Six years you did that. You loved it. Absolutely. I think the organization is incredible. I think when people get a chance to actually understand what they do, it's a value to this nation. It's extremely important for men and women like that to be serving this country in that capacity. I think it's second to the military and what they do. I think the military is important, but boots on ground on our own soil, there's nothing more important than what they're doing currently in their mission. If you had a magic wand and you were put in control of our system, how would you,

this is a loaded question. So at a high level, how would you at least stem the tide of our current struggle with not just the border itself but like the immigration system? Yeah, I mean you have to address this in two parts, and they both have to work together. And you have to address this in a homeland security perspective, and you have to address this in an immigration policy perspective. One, we have to first look at the original immigration policies that were put into place many years ago and see how we can fix that and how can we make it so it's a more fair system. Currently, right now, it takes about 10, 15 years for anyone to become an American citizen, doing it the legal way. And you're telling me anyone who does it the legal way takes that long, but someone who does it the illegal way can get into this country within one day correct and then there's loopholes in that system as well where they can have a child here with an american citizen or they can get married to american

citizen within now they can circumvent that system again and now they can petition to be american citizen right and they can fight to stay here because of that so we have to find a way that we don't award anyone coming to this country illegally. We have to be harsher punishments for those who come enter illegally. We have to have people that are seeking asylum do it the right way. And we have to have a better system on our asylum situation where they're not coming into the country for several years before they're even seen by an immigration judge. So more immigration judges to kind of streamline that situation. Somehow a more streamlined situation for those who are coming legally, right? And then we have to educate those who are being manipulated and extorted by transnational organizations who

are smuggling them. We have to educate South America. We have to educate those who realize that there's a legal system and the legal way is better and it's safer. And then there is the illegal system that will potentially put you into drug trade, sex trade, or be extorted. And I don't think a lot of the South American countries fully have a grasp of that knowledge from what I've studied and learned by investigative journalists. In a lot of the other countries, they're deemed as almost travel agents who are just helping them get across. And so they're not demonized. They're not,

you know, they're not looked at in any kind of unfair ways. They're looked at as people that know how to transport people across border. And so we explain i think we have a better way of explaining and educating that our system that is already hopefully streamlined then we can show them that there's a fair safe way that is affordable compared to the extortion drugs and sex trade that the cartel and not transnational organizations have kind of created i think like i said it's a multiple echelon attack that we have to kind of approach this. I think at the same time, we have to have better systems in place to identify every single person who comes to this country illegally and making sure that they're

not here for nefarious reasons. During the years I was in with Obama, he kind of proved that when you have repercussions for entering illegally, it devastates the system and slows down anyone coming in, right? Because they see that I don't want to go to jail for six months. I don't want to go to jail for a year. So then it slows down the process of them coming into that. And it was proven because during my time, we did an operation called Operation Streamline. And Operation Streamline was a very particular area of the border that put people in jail no matter what, first time, second time, third time. They went to jail and they went to jail for a significant amount of time and then they were sent back and deported after. That slowed down the traffic where I promised maybe you would have 20 people in a week try and attempt to cross, which is phenomenal numbers compared to what you see, you know, 200 people in a day at times, you know?

So there was proven systems that work. What's happening is there's a lot of ideologies that, that are contradicting now that see the immigration process as racist. And it's not racist when you're protecting your country and you have rules of the land yeah it's not racist to say because this isn't this isn't like against one particular immigrant this is all those who are trying to attempt to come into this country and we have a country that has every race represented right so it's not a racist cause here um but a lot of people want to view it in a

racist capacity which makes them emotional which why they hate the whole system right and it's wrong we have to be able to protect our nation we have to be able to identify who comes to this country illegally we have to be able to have a system that is more streamlined for those who come into this country legally and then we have to be able to to somehow dismantle these organizations who are making money off exploiting innocent people because that's one of the saddest things you'll ever see. Do you have any faith that in the next, say, five years where – I'm not saying it gets fixed, but that we see a way better system than we currently have? I think so. I think – there's people that say like, oh, right now they're doing NTAs. That's never happened before in the Border Patrol. And that's not true because many years ago when there was a massive influx of Brazilians coming into the country and there was – they were having trouble housing them at that time, there was NTAs as well, right? Right. So this isn't this is definitely unprecedented. The numbers that we see because the cartel has identified that they can make a lot of money off of it.

But illegal immigration is not something new. Right. This is common. I say it's been weaponized now by the cartels to to make a lot of money off of, like I said. And so, yeah, we see it in a very particular way now than we ever have. I think it comes in waves. You know, I think the challenges we see in this immigration stuff comes in waves. You know, you might see the next administration, whoever it might be, is Michigan. Next one. I believe, I don't know, but like, that's not a left or right thing. It's a, it's kind of a way of identifying who the fuck is here already. Right. You know, something that,

you know, that was initiated before Reagan and Reagan implemented. Um, I think you're going to see that again. Um, will that help? I think it'll only help us identify what cities are going to be in need of serious financial backing and support resources.

Right. I think that's really what it, what it helps, you know, I'm not going to take you need of serious financial backing and support with the resources. Right. I think that's really what it, what it helps, you know, I'm at, I could take you over there and fuck, you know, but,

um, you know, this is a, this is a challenging thing, but I think it comes in waves. I think you'll see, I don't think you can, you can ignore what's happening right now in our country and some of these

sanctuary cities and how unfortunate it is and how overwhelmed they are and how out of control they feel themselves. I agree. And I think, you know, you've already you've already seen – at one point it was defund the police. Now everyone is like, fuck, we need the police. Like, yeah, man, because you start to see the repercussions of what you thought might have been a good idea. And you might be doing some humanitarian decision. But in the end of the day, we're still a country that has to manage this in a way that's fair

for us who are living here currently. It's like I've always said, the answer's not here. It's not here. No. It's here. It's here. And I wish on these pendulum swings we could find a way to stop the momentum right there, you know, but we never do.

And it just kind of comes as it comes. But there's a few more topics I want to get into with you. I want to talk about some of the drug tunnels underneath san diego i want to talk about some of the stuff i talked about with jorge ventura in california but we're coming up on the end of this episode so we're going to do we're going to do a short patreon episode after this so you can get the patreon link in the description below but we're going to have the link to your book borderland we are also going to have a link to your show borderlands here on on youtube also going to have a link to your show, Borderlands, here on YouTube, which is fucking phenomenal, people.

So go check it out. And I want to make sure we direct link that Ed Calderon episode as well. Yeah, for sure. Because you were talking about that for a while. But Rocco, you're awesome. Your book's awesome. Your show's awesome. I really appreciate you coming out here and doing this, brother.

Thank you. Appreciate it, brother. All right, we'll do it again sometime. Yep, absolutely. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. Before you leave please be sure to hit that subscribe button

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