The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - "Buried In Mass Graves!"- Inside Mexico's Secret Cartel KILLING FIELDS, Missing Persons Epidemic

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

In this episode with journalist Jorge Ventura, we break down what’s really happening at the U.S.–Mexico border, Trump’s deportation strategy, and the hidden crisis fueling cartel power. From mass deportation plans and urban ICE operations to cartel smuggling networks and the shocking rise in global migrants, this conversation goes far beyond the headlines. We also dive deep into one of the most disturbing stories rarely covered in mainstream media — Mexico’s missing persons crisis — where thousands are disappearing and families are forced to search for mass graves on their own. This is a raw, on-the-ground look at immigration, cartels, and the future of U.S. policy in Latin America. Topics Covered: -Why border crossings dropped — and why they’re rising again -Trump’s deportation strategy and why it backfired -Inside ICE operations in cities like Minneapolis -How cartels smuggle migrants from China, the Middle East, and beyond -The role of countries like Nicaragua in global migration routes -Media narratives vs reality at the border -Mexico’s missing persons crisis (200,000+ disappeared) -Cartel forced labor, recruitment, and human trafficking -U.S. foreign policy, CIA involvement, and future military possibilities Go Support Jorge! YouTube: @Venturareports IG: https://www.instagram.com/jorgeventuratv/ 00:00 Mexico's Disappeared: The Missing Persons Crisis 04:48 Cartels, Kidnapping, and Community Power 07:26 Border Policy Shifts: Trump vs. Biden 13:01 Cartels & Special Interest Migrants at the Border 18:42 Fears of Terror Cells and Cartel Smuggling 25:23 How Cartels Use Forced Labor and Disappearances 34:43 Inside Parent Search Groups & Mass Graves 42:45 The Economics Behind Kidnappings and Forced Labor 49:22 Cartel Networks, S*x Trade & Exploitation 54:57 US-Mexico Relations and Military Involvement? 01:01:41 Mass Deportation Pushback: The Minneapolis Story 01:13:39 Protests, Community Resistance & Political Impact 01:20:44 International Shifts: Foreign Policy and Mexico's Future 01:27:30 The Scope of Corruption, Disappearances, and Daily Life 01:34:02 Reporting in Mexico: Human Stories & Lost Voices 01:39:39 Continuing the Coverage: Future Investigations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You survived the Miami weekend, nailed the speech, and maxed out your credit card in the name of friendship. Now you've got one hangover, four pastel dresses, and zero reasons to wear them again. Sell them on Deepop. Just snap a few photos, and we'll take care of the rest. And you at least get some of your dignity. Money back. Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Deepop. Where taste, recognize. his taste. Right now, the soft estimate is there's 200,000 missing Mexican nationals right now. They've been disappeared, kidnapped. 90% of those cases go unsoft, which is just insane. These poor people

have literally no help. By them having the power to disappear people, that's how they actually hold power over these local communities. If they're able to go to the population and then forcefully recruit young men, then the labor never stops. The network doesn't stop. So we were in this very rural area. He says, I found a bum. bones of my son and we found 25 other bodies. It's so dangerous that they need Mexican military to be escorted to these areas, these clandescent graves. We could literally be lit up by the cartel any day. Something evil is going on in Mexico right now and almost nobody in the mainstream media is talking about it. Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of people have gone missing

throughout the country, most of them in cartel-dominated regions like Halisco, Sinaloa, and Baja California. I sat down with award-winning journalist Jorge Ventura, who reveals how Mexican cartels are kidnapping people, mostly young men, into the ranks of their organizations, then killing them and burying their bodies in unmarked graves throughout Mexico. Jorge has traveled down to Mexico to meet with the families of the disappeared, who have dedicated their lives to locating the corpses of their loved ones, and who are demanding justice from the Mexican government, who are, of course, attempting to silence them. Make sure to go subscribe to his new YouTube channel where he puts out groundbreaking news coverage.

A link to that will be in the description below. Ladies and gentlemen, he's literally risking his life to bring you these stories. My brother, Jorge Ventura, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Last year, when we had you on, I think it was a month into Trump's first term. Yeah. He had just locked the border down. Crossings fell off by like 96%. Which I think they're ticking back up.

they're taking back up. So the cool thing, bro, is if you want, we could start there, and then we get, you know, we'll get into the geopolitical and hit with the Trump. Oh, we already started, baby. Oh, we just started with that first question. Well, now we're in this kind of Trump 2.0 of his mass deportation plan. But now the administration is like scaling back.

We saw the huge, I think like the big kind of difference is like the last six months, Chrissy Nome was just empowered by the Trump administration. And then that led to her empowering Bovino. And they tried to do this brass like, wear boots on the ground. They call it Roving Patrol. So the Roving Patrol actually, what people don't know, is started off in Southern California first. So Bovino, were literally, and his board patrol agents,

would be literally driving around L.A. area. And if you're brown, if you're, like, filling up your gas tank or whatever, they could literally just come out and ask for your ID. So that was the first roving patrol. And that started off last year, but it kind of graduated when he started doing this whole, hey we're going into Chicago Operation Midway Blitz. We went into Louisiana. Then they went into Minneapolis.

So she empowered Bovino. And essentially what we saw was the battle, and this is what I analyze more is media optics. And the optics of Border Patrol fighting crowds, throwing teargrass. And I'm not saying that some of these crowds behave, you know, many of them agitized and followed Border Patrol and interfered in some of the operations. But just those, the optics and the headlines were such a nice. negative hit to Trump. And then we started to see the talk of deportation really pull extremely low. We started to see like Latinos who supported Trump heavily, especially when it come to deportation operations, start to scale back because they were like, hey, we thought you were going after the

worst of the worst. And really, Minneapolis was the end of it. I don't mean the end of it, but that was almost like the killing of the mass deportation agenda. We saw Chrissy Nome fired from that. Bovino is now being essentially like forced to retire. Holman came in and now it's all about optics cleanup. And we're not going to see any more border patrol, kind of roving patrols. It's going to be ice and more now back to we're just going after the worst of the worst. We're not going after the Tamale lady. So it seems like this whole thing has really backfired on the Trump administration from the voter perspective.

And in the other challenges, his base doesn't care. His base wants those deportations. So there's just like this multiple angle to like this fast. Well, there's two, there's two facets to immigration and border enforcement, right? There's the people that are in the country, and then there's the actual border itself. So putting aside everybody that's in the country and ICE looking for the Tamale lady or actually going after the gangbamor with the murder on his rap sheet, right? Talk about the border itself. What did they do to seal it off?

like why did deportations? I mean, it's pretty obvious. Biden was just like opening it up. I mean, the, what is it called? The weight in Mexico policy. Amnesty was the big one. The reason that they were able to move so many bodies, the cartel with the Mexican police,

that's why they were able to move so many people across the line under the Biden administration. Why did the numbers scale down so much on the actual crossings. And do you see those ticking back up? And if so, then why? So what's interesting is when I first came on and we talked about this, like you mentioned,

it was like the first 30 days. And they came down with executive order after executive. The big one was that remain in Mexico. The other one is like simply that they just follow the same federal law. So under Biden, technically, like when someone crosses illegally, they're supposed to be actually like arrested and charged the whole thing, you know, deported.

But under Biden, they were being paroled. So the Trump administration, essentially hasn't really changed anything. they're just following that federal law. So, I mean, like, now when you cross illegally, there is no parole, there is no release into the country that we saw under Biden. And I remember, like, back in March 20, March 2021,

was when I first hit McAllen, very first time reported on the border, and the word border crisis started to hit the news. And I remember I ran into 300 migrants. And I remember running into, like, women and children and stuff. And when I approached them, I was shocked because they were like, where is the border patrol? And I go, oh, he's like down a couple blocks.

And they go, oh, can you take us to him? And I go, you know, I was like, I kind of had like a mine app house. Wait, no, aren't you supposed to want to? This is new? Yeah, I'm like, no, no, don't you guys want to run away? You're supposed to be telling me to like avoid him. They're like, no, no, no, we want to go to him. So under Biden, that was like the first kind of like click in my head.

I'm like, oh, they're being paroled. Right. They want border patrol. So essentially under Trump is, they really didn't change much. They just followed federal law, but the remain in Mexico. became a huge one because it forces some of these migrants that could have court cases in the U.S.

to literally remain in Mexico and have to wait and that that deters illegal immigration. The other thing is that they just came out and were very aggressive with the language. Obviously, like, if you go on social media, they were, like, blasting out the deportation videos that were making, like, memes about it.

Right. And the game changer was, this is Trump's mass deportation plan, but Trump, like, at the end of day, he's like a golf club Republican He's like not that aggressive on deportations. Like if his CEO buddies want to protect workers and stuff, he'll do it. The one who's like the mastermind behind this, and we'll talk, we could talk about foreign policy too.

But on mastermind on this is Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller's the one who had meetings with all DHS, all the higher ups and goes, I need 3,000 arrests per day in the interior. And I don't care if they have criminal record or not. And that's where ICE was like, that is like not possible. Like there's no way we could get 3,000 arrests of like, just. criminals we're gonna have to obviously do collateral so that is when Stephen Miller really took advantage of that but on the border they didn't change much literally enforcing law and obviously when you blast out the social media

of deportations that's gonna deter migrants from coming right other part though is full on blitz and this is more mark where Marco Rubio comes in full on blitz on Claudia Shainball hit her on all fronts meaning hit her on tariffs hit her on fentanyl hit her on like we're gonna just hit it flood the zone and that came actually from Bannon. Banon. Banon wanted to put the flood the zone. Right. So they put that same policy, that same game plan

on Shimbab. Flood the zone on her to the point where she got pressure to put like 10,000 troops on the northern border, crack down on fentanyl, turn over all these kind of cartel closet bosses. And that's when we kind of see more of Mexico than say, we're going to have to step up

on the illegal immigration front. Right. Okay. So that's what we saw the crossings really go. But on the border, it's not like they built more wall. It's not like they employed more border agents. It's not like they have some new technology that they didn't have under Biden. Well, they deployed National Guard. Trump did military some parts of the border.

So right now, parts of Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, literally, like, the Department of Defense has taken over, and they put, like, actual, like, soldiers on the ground. So if you're, like, a migrant and if some other crosses you in that area, you're not only going to get deported, but you're going to get charged by the DOD. The other part now that they did is, I don't know if this deters too much, but they started hitting some of those Mexican cartel drones with lasers on that border through the military, through Pete Hex-F. So all of that deterred the human bodies.

Can you talk about the drones? You mean the drones that the cartels would use to help them with the smart way? Yeah, so just for like for context for the audience. Like just in the past six months alone, on the U.S.-Mexico border, they recorded at least 600,000 drone incursions. So these are drones coming from Mexico into the United States. States. They obviously can't take all of them down. They can't shoot all them down. But in certain areas of the border, like some sources are starting to leak that the U.S. military is starting to use lasers. And I don't know for sure, but I think that's why like it was like a month ago when

that whole El Paso story came out with like something was in the air and like, oh, we're shutting down the airport for 10 days and ended up being like a couple hours. I think something happened with a laser, but they shot, they thought they shot a drone when it was something something else. Okay. So they didn't militarize the border, you could say. Okay. Okay.

Now, illegal crossings, getaways. Yes. I see that they are ticking back up. Yes. Do you think that's just kind of naturally going to happen after a year of just massive pressure? Because you can't keep up that kind of militarized. You can't be on 10 constantly, forever, indefinitely.

Do you think that's just kind of naturally like some of the law enforcement gets exhausted or gets deployed to elsewhere in the country. Do you think that or do you think the cartels now are finding new routes, perhaps, in the more rural parts of the border? Well, it does seem like right now they're focusing on more of the attacking those rural areas, especially the no border wall areas. I was like there like literally just a week ago, California border reporting. I was doing a more report on the smuggling now. Cartels moving in those special interest aliens, especially from Middle East and China. But the same day that I was there doing that report,

an official from Texas Department of Public Safety, so back on the Texas border notified me. He said, hey, this is extremely weird. He's like, the crossings have been basically dead. Obviously, you're still going to have Mexican cartels moving the smaller groups. These are more Mexican nationals, camouflaged. He's like, but he's like,

we're noticing that some of these cartels are moving in Pakistani nationals. So they started catching Pakistani nationals in Star County. But when they caught those Pakistani nationals, the cartels making sure that each of those nationals had either a fraudulent or it was a real permanent ID, a permanent resident ID issued by the Mexican government. So I'm thinking the cartels coordinating some areas with Mexican government to essentially make sure that these special interest aliens have either fraudulent documents or they'll issue them the real documents like that they get illegally traveled through Mexico. But once they get to that Tijuana, California border, they'll be smuggled in. Most of them are destroying their documents too before they enter,

something that I've been reporting on. So there's that little element now where we're seeing kind of that increase of the special interest alien. And if you're a cartel member, it's like, why would you not? Like the Pakistani, they'll pay up to 50 grand to be smoking. I know Chinese national highs I've heard is up to 35. But I know from that Middle East, they'll go up to 50 G to make it over. And then Nicaragua is a key country because Nicaragua isn't requiring that visa from them.

So Nicaragua is becoming that kind of hot, that hub for, I mean, it was under Biden massively, the way the cartels and smothers used Nicaragua. But Nicaragua was a key country, bro, and all of this, I'm telling you. Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and it's time to kick off summer right. When I'm getting ready for the first big weekend of summer, total wine and more is my go-to, especially when I'm firing up the grill with family. I'll grab refreshing beers, easy drinking wines, and some hard seltzers for the cooler. And with everything that goes into summer, it's nice knowing you're getting the lowest prices.

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So they'll do is they'll get issued fake passports and stuff from, from Turkey, whatever the documents that they'll need. And all they need to literally do is land in Nicaragua. Nicaragua does not require visa. Also, Nicaruan officials kind of know the way the game is being played. I remember I interviewed a Cuban under Biden back in like 23. And he was like, hey, man. And he's like, in Cuba, a one-way ticket to Nicaragua is $6,000 for us because they know

that we're not, we're never coming back. So he's like, he's like, then he said it's like, it's kind of an inside joke that when you get on a, you know, on a Cuban flight to Nicaragua, they'll, like, when you land, they'll be like, hey, guys, enjoy your vacation. We'll see you soon, knowing that, you know, they're obviously coming up to the United States. So Nicaragua plays, like, a huge, huge hub in this that, like,

a lot of people don't know. And there's a lot of connections with, like, Venezuela and Iran right now. Yeah, so I've heard, I've just seen clips of yours and heard rumors. And to me, it sounds like a lot of fearmongering, but let's talk about it because maybe it's not. The worry, of course, is that the Hezbollah and Iranian terror cells being smuggled by the cartels through the border. Have we seen that? So can we verify any arrests that have actually collared some of these guys?

Or is that just, you know. So this is, so on our reporting on the ground, so when I'm talking about this sleeper-so, 90% of like the reporting on this is, fear-mongering. It's really like pro-war headlines, like anything to really get like the American people kind of amped. The clear two example, when I read the story I already knew it, was the one like it came out two weeks ago was ABC News. The whole thing with Iranian drones were going to hit California. I mean, you don't need to be in a military

expert to know like that was not. That's like not even legit. Ended up being that ABC News got an unverified tip and still led with that story. Yeah. So when you have that, obviously American people like anything that comes out of that is it's a sigh up yeah so back in back on the borders around when I started covering the border crisis the first year year and a half two we weren't I wasn't running to any individuals from all over the world it was Central American and then at second year we got it we got hit with that Venezuelan wave which was like felt like it was nonstop around 23

I was the first reporter I got tipped off of the Chinese national surge in south Texas so I got a share of calls me, he's panicking. He's like, we have a night. He caught it as 1,000% spike in Chinese national apprehension. So I go to South Texas, and this is when I start trying to organize this reporting of like, how is this Chinese population making it in to Texas? But also this Chinese population is coming in like, their clothes were like fresh. I wasn't seeing what I was seen when I was seeing with Venezuelans, Guatemalas, Salvadorans, what, you know, et cetera. So once I started connecting with the Chinese nationals, I was able to get into their WhatsApp groups, telegram groups, and interviews and found that

just long story short cartels from Ecuador and Mexico were basically banking in that these Chinese nationals will fly to Ecuador, visa free and then would make it into the U.S. being sold. I broke this down on that episode. So I started covering that. I was hitting that Chinese

angle hard and then what started to kind of surprise me a bit was when I would go to the Mexican side and then started working with my Mexican fixers on the story is that all the Chinese nationals were being ordered the cartels to destroy their documents on the Mexican side. So when American authorities were apprehending these individuals, A, there's already the language

gap, Mandarin, English, but they had no identification. There wasn't anything to verify. And even if there was, China won't share that information with the United States. So they're considered special interest because they require that extra security screening. Then we started to see the surge in the Middle East. So migrants from Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, all those countries started to come in. So I went back in the Mexico to understand why this was happening. And we found that Nicaragua connection. And same thing. They were paying cartels up to 50 grand to be smuggled documents destroyed. The California border plays particularly an interesting angle to the store because of that Tijuana airport.

Many of the special interests in Chinese, when they enter Mexico, they all had to go through different cities, but one of the main one was Poryo Varyarda. They would get to Poyo Varyarda, and then from Poryo Varyana, they would get to T.J. from T. smugglers within Cornita travel to at least they'll get to a Takata Mexico. And if anyone's been to that Takata area, it's extremely dangerous on the smuggling area. But on the other side, there's no wall. And then the other side is Jukuma Hospice, California. So if you actually just go to the Mexican side, which you could just see this all in my reporting,

once again, the Middle Eastern migrants are same thing, order to destroy a bunch of their documents. So I was working with some law enforcement sources. And since 22, when we saw that surge, like on the California Border Patrol, I think the first year they apprehended like 90s. individuals on the FBI terror watch list. So these are individuals with legit terrorist ties entered through the southern border

and then via smuggled through the Mexican cartel. So law enforcement was able to get those connections, but they were like, we've just never seen anything like that. So since 22, before that on the California border, they were getting maybe 10 a year of special interest aliens, and then it went up to 200. So they were getting 200 per year from all over, literally all over the world.

Individuals were terrorist ties. But the thing is, they were destroying their documents and they were being paroled into the United States. So are these guys going to be like legit, activated sleeper cells? Like, you know, they get a green light and they're going to blow up a boat. I mean, that's all unclear. Like, that's going to be on law enforcement to investigate. My angle was, I was reporting on this since 2022,

and we've matched it up with the sources with our reporting. And this is like, if there's going to be like any actual national security, threat, it was this. It was via southern border. So there's no overhype. And then we, yeah, we made that huge connection. That T1 airport has played like a huge, huge key role. So it sounds like these migrants from special interest countries have been on the watch list,

but there has none that have had a record of terrorism, terrorist acts. And it doesn't sound like any terrorist acts have been committed by people from those countries that have been smuggled in. Exactly. As of yet. As of yet. I see. So that's where our reporting focus on.

Understood. I just wanted to get that clear because... Because a lot of this stuff is overhype. It's pro-war. It's like this... Like, it's very, like, it's very, like, silent. Like I said, when that air... Like, no one believes that drones were going to hit the California.

Santa Monica was going to fucking blow up. When I saw that, I'm like, you guys aren't even trying. Yeah, you're not even trying. You're not even getting creative. And then, like, I said, the same week we were there, Texas guys were a little bit alert of, like, why we're getting this on this week, we're getting special interests in Star County.

It was super unusual. that they were finding these individuals with the permanent resident cards issued by Mexican government. So there's just like a lot of connections. My reporting always, like I always hit more harder, is on Chinese because of all the illegal, like, because I follow the illegal marijuana trade and then to find out how infantry the Chinese. And right now the Chinese in Mexico got a very cozy relationship. If you go to Mexicali, it's basically mini Beijing now.

If you, like I just crossed right now San Francisco into San Diego. If you just go through that port of entry on foot, you used to go and all the signage is obviously in English because it's Americans going in. Now it's half of an English and other ones in Mandarin. Well, how do you think they got Hong Kong from? What do you think they got Hong Kong and Tijuana from, dude? The Chinese relationship. So, like, yeah, there's more interesting. I'm always interested in the Chinese angle.

So it sounds like we're back to just healthy, small-scale, localized human smuggling. as the right things used to be Yes, yeah. So right now they're smuggling but it's once it gets back to smaller groups Yeah Back to obviously that you want Individuals Yeah completely evade authorities

Yeah You're not going to see too many Like the families being smoked It's always going to be individual So Star County And right now in California They're starting to see that That surge a little bit

So I'm a bit fascinated To see how the Mexican authorities react Yeah Well I think I think just like drugs when they see us attacking, you know, basically starting World War III in the Middle East a whole planet away, they're like,

their focus is off, go, send them. I think they think like that. They do. The thing right now is Trump and Rubio, I think in their vision, they want to change a new world order. And they feel like China's having a huge influence. So that's why they're getting involved

in all these foreign entanglement. So we're war right now if we run, We still have Ukraine in Russia. And right now they got Cuba on the eyesight. And then they're still doing, they're flooding the zone on Mexico. Now, from my reporting, and this is where I was trying to hit on is,

the Trump administration wants to take down the cartel. They want that sexy headline. Marco Rubio wants it to. And I think, you know, I don't know how it looked, but it looks like at some point this year we'll see some type of U.S. military troops on the ground. CIA is already flying drones over Cinaloa,

High League. This is all stuff that we know. It's nothing new. the mistake that the Trump administration and Marco Rubio make is they win a shine bomb and said we need you to curb fentanyl trafficking so obviously it's shine bomb they're doing it they're curbing it they're getting all these raids even last night

they did like a big one in Tijuana and the numbers look sexy yeah they're turning over guys it looks sexy fentanyl is getting fentanyl's getting weaker fentanyl's getting weaker it's all those headlines are the sexy headlines the issue that they are not doing anything and I don't get how you just don't attack it

is you're never going to dismantle these networks until you solve the disappearing people crisis. That's like, that's really the bottom line of it because you could take out all the leaders all day. We could take out El Chabo could snitch on this person and mensho gosh, all this, all the movements can happen. But if the recruitment is still there, if they're able to go to the population

and then forcefully recruit young men, men, then the labor never stops. The network doesn't stop. Yeah, the heads could change. And that's one thing that, like, that I've been learning more now that I'm covering this missing person's crisis in Mexico. A few years ago it caught my attention, and I remember I went down to Baja, California,

and I met a man named Eddie Carrillo, whose son was kidnapped by the cartel. His son's a U.S. citizen, was living in Monterey Park, California, came to visit his parents, kidnapped by the cartel. and I remember I met Eddie and he was like that that moment was his purpose and then after that he started the Allosomos Eric Carrillo's foundation and he basically started this foundation where he set up all these parent search groups in Baja California and basically made it his mission to go out and find these kids that the carc um the carter has disappeared that the government has already gave up helping him police won't help him out it's so dangerous that they need Mexican military to be escorted to these areas, these clandescent graves.

And I remember just I was taken aback by that story. And I remember just like promise myself, like, when I have the means, I'm going to come back and we're going to go and bet it. And you did it. And you did it. Yeah, yeah. So let's get into it. How bad is the disappearing person's crisis in Mexico?

I don't even think words. There's like no words. Right now, the soft estimate is there's two. 200,000 missing Mexican nationals right now. They've been disappeared, kidnapped. In Mexico right now, 90% of those cases go unsolved, which is just insane. These poor people have literally no help.

And this is right here, like the whole, the number one issue with the cartel story is, by them having the power to disappear people, that's how they actually hold power over these local communities. Obviously, the extortion and everything else other angles. But this is the number one because they go after

the community's youth. The boys, particularly in Baja, like every state is different. We're in Haleasio, Sinaloa, the boys that are being forced into the cartel,

majority are being forced to be gunmen for the cartel. But in Baja, what I found is the majority are just being forced to be drug runners because that's literally

what all they care about. They don't need gunmen, of course they need gunmen, but right now drug smuggling in Baja, that Tijuana Board, that's number one, so they need drug runners and they need drone operators.

The women are getting pushed into the sex trade, and that's a whole other dark world that the young women are being pushed into. But like even the start of this year, so like start of 2026, boom, off the bad authorities, found 32 missing people in 15 different Klandesan graves just in Baja, California. Then they found, and they arrested, like, four TJ police officers finding that those police officers were being, were forced, were not being forced, but they were working for the Tijuana cartel, and they were disappearing people.

So then you have the law enforcement angle to it. So I just went, literally went back to Baja, California, met again with Eric Carrillo, who was the main organizer of this parent search group. When I met Eric, he hasn't found his son yet. And I remember, like, the locals I was with were like, this guy's never going to find his son, man. So Eric Carrillo, his son, Eddie, the one who's missing, why would Eddie, an American, a Mexican American from L.A., why would he be disappeared? So, according to, Eddie's a daddy and then Eric's his son who's moving away missing,

but according to Eddie, his son was disappeared after a night out, was basically forced by the cartel to be a drug runner. They try to do a ransom, and obviously these people are dirt poor. And then after that, they literally just stop answering and then literally disappeared his son. What was interesting is, I went back. back last week and uh once it get embedded with eddie and eddie pulled me to aside and he was like i just want to let you know in 2024 i found the bones of my son and i was like wait what he says we got

a tip of a clandestine grave and rosarito he says i found the bones of my son and we found 25 other bodies went to go get those bones tested and and it was his son and then i mean if when you as an American, like, there's like no words for the, you know, I'm a dad to like a four-year-old. I can't even imagine that. And then even in that day, all these parents who have no help, like Eddie had their back, like handing out

shovels, any, I mean, all the little things you need. And like the day that I went in bedded, Mexican military denied their escort. So knowing that day, they said, we could literally be lit up by the cartel any day. Particularly that area was controlled by C.J. and G. And those disappearances were linked to that

cartel. So we were in this very rural area that I can't I can't see on camera. It's private land. It was actually a public clandestine. Okay. So in this area, they found four bodies in the past two months. So that day, I was in, I was in that area with this group. We're denied a military escort.

At any time, it could be over for us. And I met this one dad, Jorge Rankel. His son was disappeared in May 2022 with his brother-in-law. Same story where they were actually lured with the fake business model. with the, oh, we need telemarketers. You know, we need, you know, you can make calls. And if you can speak English, you know, call center. They got learned by CG and T.J.

And then got disappeared. Jorge, Rahel was interesting because he had, like, these tears in his eye all day as he's, like, just, like, going through this dirt. And he's like, it's gotten to a point. He's like, I quit my job. He's like, every day, this is all I do. And he's like, my wife's here, too. I met his wife.

And the strength of this. couple, I was like in tears. And I remember like the wife telling me, she's like, she's like, this is hell. This is a nightmare. She's like, could you imagine if the cartel killed your son? At least give us the body. It's already done. At least give us the moment to say goodbye or at least give us the moment that we know the answers.

And he's like, they won't even give them that. They won't even give them that. And it was those stories that I really wanted to get out there. So you went and you went to a great. grave, I believe, where they were digging up, they found bones. Yes. Right? Yes.

Okay, tell us about that. So this, so that one, basically like, so a year ago, I went embedded with another, with these same search groups, but here they actually, we didn't find bones. We found the bodies of four migrants that narco traffickers literally gunned down headshot, execution style. So with these same search groups. So that just shows you, like, these parent search groups are actually like literally making a difference in these clandestine.

great. So we were finding even migrant bodies in the T.J. border. What would be the point of killing migrants? Yeah, that one, I don't know. So that must have been some unsolved, you know, altercation. So Eddie found the bones of his child, his son. Yes, yes.

Can he, do they find the cause of death? What do you do with bones? Do you take them to the authorities? Do they do forensics down there? So they do forensics, but people don't know it's like a huge, their forensics, it's like, they're obviously not in the United States, but their bones was enough identify, we were able to get an ID, but at the bone, you don't get, you don't get cause of death.

And the stories are like, I mean, like I said, they were heartbreaking. The thing that it did remind me of, like, from the reporter perspective, like, when I was like with Jorge Rankel, and he was like, looking for his son was, um, it took me back to the, to July 5th of last year. And for people who don't know, I was the first national reporter to go to Curville, Texas when the flooding hit. If you guys remember, the first. Headline that came out of there was 20 little girls missing in Camp Mystic. For people who don't know, that flooding killed over 140 people. It was like 100 kids that died in that flood.

Many went missing for like several days. But the next day on July 5th, I was in this area where like their homes were completely like literally lifted and then were taken. And I remember there was a man, a Mexican man who was digging in these holes, like going through these trenches. And one of the neighbors comes up to me, she goes, hey, that man is looking. for his nephew. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, he knows he's going to find his nephew dead. And he's, he knows like no authorities right now or helping him.

He's looking for him. And it's just him in his shovel looking for his nephew. And in that moment was like this like, almost like, it was like, to me it was like, that's what real love is actually, you know? But that's what Mexicans have to deal with all the time. No help from authority. And actually, according to Ed Calderon, now, especially in places where this has really been on the media's radar, like in Halisco, with, you know, these mass graves and tens of thousands of people that disappeared out there, especially in the last couple of years, right? And it tracks as homicides go down, disappearances go up.

He, according to Ed, authorities actively try to stop these search groups, actively try to impede them. So and I've already seen it myself even that day that we went with that search group when the military when the Mexican military denies an escort They're doing that to also deter the search group from going out there right So authorities play a massive role in attempting to stop these Yeah, that's why I think and we're trying to do the highlight our reporting is the Trump administration could do though the Target all the leaders they want they could even blow boats off the coast they could even put troops on the ground CIA could fly drones all they want but if they don't go after this issue the the disappearing crisis, the labor network of these cartel groups was never going to stop.

They're always going to have power over their local communities. Right now, if you go to Tijuana, I encourage anyone to do this, go to the migrant shelters. You're not going to find, I mean, yeah, you'll find some from Central America. The majority of people in migraine shelters in Tijuana right now are Mexicans. And then asking why they're in the shelter with a Salvadorian. Because the cartel took over my ranch, because the cartel took over my state. Now I'm a migrant in my own country. And that's the other issue too, Johnny, is the crime culture is different, meaning that there's a woman out here.

Her name is Zoe that, uh, Zoe Carmen. And I've been following her story since 2023. Her mom is Maria Del Carmen. Her mom is in a Mexican-American, U.S. citizen, went to Kulima. They have a house in Kulima. And their mom disappeared. And authorities through investigation in our own reporting, essentially individual, individual, with a crime group went in there for a home invasion.

And normally, for example, so here in the United States, a home invasion normally does not involve an assault or things of that nature. Normally it doesn't. Obviously, there's going to be altercations where it does. Normally you don't see that. But in Mexico,

even in a home evasion and the way it works over there is just because she witnessed the crime, they'll disappear. Yeah. So Maria, which is, she's an older woman, and she witnessed the crime. Obviously, it's her home.

They then disappeared her, and those individuals tried to get a ransom from Zoe here in the United States. And I think when they disappeared, they didn't realize that they captured a U.S. citizen. But once again, it's like stories like that, too. It's U.S. citizens that also get disappeared. And here in America,

Mexican Americans are being called and, you know, getting threats too. So that... Was that crime ever solved? No. No. No, Maria's still missing to this day. Zoe, credit to her,

still blasting out the story every single day. We're going to put her story in this piece because I think America is need to understand. Like it's not just, oh, it's just a Mexican that's disappeared in a town that I'm not connected to. It's also Mexican Americans, U.S. citizens. So disappearing. The disappearances happen when the young men usually, but also women in Tijuana, when the young people that the cartels kidnap refuse to work for them. So they disappeared on, I mean, it could be, it can happen on both occasions. The, the disappearance first happens because they're being forced into that criminal underworld now.

Right. Now, we find out that these individuals are then killed off if they were refused. I think the starkest and deepest example was that was that ranch in Halisco where eight out of the 10 young men recruited to be hit men were murdered. So 80% were refusing and then literally being killed off. In Baja, we haven't found like that rate of homicide up with that connection. But we found that the majority of men were being pushed to be drug running. even the women are being pushed to be prostitutes and work in the kind of the sex underworld

of Baja California and the whole sex tourism because right now Baja California, it's not just Americans, but it serves as a huge hub for sex tourism for women under 18. It's particularly a lot of, and I got this from my own sources through sex workers too,

is a lot of men from China and Middle East will come into T.J. to have sex with teenagers and stuff. So the cartel has to feed that underworld. Now look, if you go to Hong Kong as an American, you're fine. The cartel needs that running clean because they need that to follow the laws. They can't have that shut down.

But the outskirts, that's a different underworld. That's a different customer base. And that's men from the Middle East, men from China, who are looking to have sex with Mexican teenage women. And obviously, those women are being forced into that world. And if they're not, they're either murder or first, what they'll do is they'll threaten the family members because they do need those individuals on the streets.

And what have you heard? Is that cartel related? Or is that just small groups? of, you know, independent criminals that that's their business and maybe they kick up to the cartel, but that's it. It'll kick up to the cartel.

It's not like, Haleisco's on the ground. Like, it's there. It's normally Plaza bosses, the little local gangs. Right. But that money eventually, you know, kicks up. The main hub for at least Hylisco in Sinaloa, at least for my reporting in Baja,

is obviously the drugs is everything. That's why you need drug runners, you need drone operators. Constantly. You need the U.S. citizen Mexican who could drive the car, because still 90% of it's going through a legal port of entry. They're still doing the smuggling people through the boat, so you still have pingo boats crash in Oceanside and Pacific Beach.

I love those TikToks. I love the videos. It's like white people will be like on the beach in in La Jolla, like doing yoga, doing a downward dog and then just a couple of fat migrants just speed by them. So let's make my day. So for me, like for me, Johnny, that's where I think the trouble administration is making the mistake, is that they're not focused on like the real. network of how a cartel gets built.

And this is the other kind of little angle is I've always reported in Mexico and it was always unpopular to want U.S. military on the ground. But the people who are connected to the missing person's crisis, they have like the total opposite view. Like they want to see like full on Marines, G.I. Joe. That, that. And if Shine bomb doesn't crack on that, that's going to start to be a problem. I mean, right now she could do her little morning press conference and they could do the whole

homicide is going down. But they're finding these clandess and graves even more. I know they found that the one in Haleigh, at least go next, like, very close to the World Cup Stadium. So that's the real story. That's the real crisis. And these are, like... So the crisis is a kidnapping.

The crimes are kidnapping. That's where it starts. And then you have the other angle where law enforcement just says, yeah, we can't do anything. And 90% go unsolved. All right. So that's where, as an American, it's like that's shocking. Like, you just can't, can't fathom that.

Yeah, it's so shocking. Because, you know, it has to be related somehow to an economic incentive, right? Like whether it's we need soldiers, cicadios, from Halisco to go to war, because we're fighting for Zacatecas. Right. Or, yes, we're in T.J or a C.J.N.J. cell in T.J. and we need mules. We got constantly, 24 hours a day, that border's jumping with drugs. It's got to be connected to that. They wouldn't just be disappearing and murdering people for no room. And also, the cartel is an advantage of you could have your.

meal be under 18 because in Texas, this is a much bigger thing in Texas. I don't know why. Not too much in California. But when your meal was under 18, Texas DPS and Border Patrol could catch them all day, but they have to immediately turn it over to the Mexican government. Like there's no, they serve a day in jail.

There's none of that. They can't even charge a 15-year-old Mexican national smuggling drugs. That's why like if you, like right now in Mexico, they'll be like a 16-year-old driving like three Salvadorians and, you know, Border Patrol will catch them. Right. And they got to like literally have.

him right over. Oh, I didn't know that. So that's what they have an agreement, like a bilateral. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why also for the cartels, a huge advantage to go after young men, not only for hitman, which I see, like I said, that's more deeper in a Mexico. You see like a 15-year-old be turned into a hitman. But in Baja, he's going to be a mule or he's going to be a drone operator. But they need, yeah. And if they get caught by US Border Patrol in California, who had him over and let's run it back? Yeah, I was in Texas. And I remember I was on a ride along and they caught this teenager and the sheriff was like joking.

He's like, oh, this is like her six time six time running into this guy. And I remember I was with Griff Jenkins, Fox News correspondent. And the little teenager's like, hey, are you, uh, Griff Jenkins? I'm like, watch you. I thought my fox.

I was like, no way. And Griff's like, I'll probably see you a couple days, man, like, yeah, go see you four days. So that's another advantage of having the youngsters do it too, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The teenagers.

That is wild. That is wild. So this poor Eric, what was his name? Eric Carillo. He started his own foundation. Allosomos Eric Cario. Because of

that, he's found like over like hundreds and hundreds of bodies. Now how do these people, these ordinary people, how do they find these graves? They literally get tipped off. So they're, because of like the organization, other locals and other communities will tip them off here. Hey, this person went

missing here. Can you come here? And obviously over the years, Eddie got really, really good at it. So they started to find like kind of the hot spots is what they call it of clandestine graves. And normally when someone is missing, they're sometimes actually like buried in those very, very, very close. A hot California near Rosarito has a lot of like just kind of this open desert area that's been kind of been used as like clandestine graves.

So they hit all those spots. The area that we were in was kind of like a landfill area. And then they found four bodies in two months. So the reason we were there was the day before an older gentleman was disappeared. So they said, hey, let's start off in this area. And then they were denied the Mexican military escort, which was like a big deal. And then I was interviewing some other parents who have already been shot at. And they were like, we're still out here.

We're getting threats. We've been shot at. But they're like, we need to search. They shot the search parties. Wow. I was warned even years ago when I found out, they're like, hey, if you're going to be in there as an American journalist, just know, like, these guys are targeted all the time. Like, this work is like not appreciated at all. Why do you think the disappearances have shot up so much?

Is that from the pressure to clean up the image of not only the cities and the Mexican state, but is that from the pressure that starts with the U.S.? You know, on that one, I don't know if there's like a clear, like could answer, but it does seem like Shinebaum's administration is more like, let's win the homicide war in a disappearance. It's almost like they don't care. From the U.S. perspective, what I don't understand is like President Trump has all these security talks and agreements,

and we're sending Rubio, but there's never an agreement on this. If the U.S. wants to have the position that we don't care about Mexicans, fine. Have that position. I can't argue to care about them. But at least have the position saying, okay, we don't care about the Mexicans that disappeared,

but every U.S. citizen, we want them back. And if we don't get them back where they're bones, anything, Klan S and Graves, then, you know, I don't know what kind of threat the U.S. could put on Shima, but I think that's where you have to have that. crack because that's the entire labor force. I mean, it, you can have all the great fentanyl busts. You could bust them in the marina. You could do all this. You could do, you could,

you could do the whole thing. We, we, we arrest the bad guy and we do the photo up. If they could disappear people all day, it's right. What's the point? So you think that the majority of the labor force of the biggest Mexican cartels is run by slave labor. What else can you call this? This is forced labor. Do you think that's true? I think the dirty work, foot soldiers, yeah. Now, are they going to ever let these individuals climb up and be higher ranks? Never. I mean, these are essentially foot soldiers for life.

And the Halisco report was the most damning because when they found it in a ranch to find that 80% of those men being recruited were being murdered when they refused to be gunmen. And then that ranch was a training center for them to be gunmen. And it happens in the United States too. I mean, they sent, particularly with the marijuana, is they sent their own Mexicans up here. and then those Mexicans were kind of like the labor force for the marijuana while at the end of day, a higher up is the one who really owns the operation. And then it's messed up because authorities raid the girl. And then the guy running and never really suffers at all. And so it's a huge, huge state.

But highly occurs, like I said, if you go to T.J. Go to the migrant shelters. You'd be alarmed on the Mount of Mexican nationals. You find sleeping next to it with Haitian. And you're like, and they're like, my whole ranch has been taken over. I can't go back. And then, you know. They've just been run off their properties.

Run off their property. It's like what the gangs, the Jewish gangs and the West Bank are doing to the Palestinians. They just, gangs of people. I'm like, how can you take this guy's a deed to the property? You just ran them off. It's happening in Columbia. We were down filming last year and we were talking to a young guy, Sicario, for one of the guerrilla groups who are the narcos now.

And we're looking at this, like, big area with, like, nice big ranches and cool, you know, Spanish-style hacienda houses. And he's like, yeah, a lot of these were just taken over by armed, armed cicadios from, like, the rifle owners. I'm like, they don't go get somebody? They don't go get a cop? You're like, guys. It's, it's. So can the next, so what can the United States? So what can the United States government an incursion?

Like the United States military coming into Mexico, I mean, would that force the Mexican government to then like start doing something about this? See, that's right. Okay, so like if you would have asked me a few years ago, like, how are you think the U.S. military will ever be on the ground in Mexico, I would be like, oh, never in a million years. And then Trump came in 2.0 with Marco Rubio. And then they just got like aggressive.

the first move the tell-tel sign was already the executive order. By naming like Sinaloa and Halisco and Los Zetas as foreign terrorist organizations, they already told you, oh, we're bypassing Congress. Oh, and by labeling as foreign terrorist organizations, we could bomb them, we could strike them because they are literally now an enemy to the United States. I don't know exactly how it would look like to have U.S. capacity on the ground, but I've already been alarmed that Mexico allowed CIA in. They already land ice into Sinaloa.

Ice, actually, for people don't know, ICE went in there with HSI Homeland Security Investigations. From the U.S. side, they went in bed with Mexican military in Sinalo, and they busted like three massive fentanyl synthetic labs. Like, we've never seen ice on the ground in Mexico. So it seems like we're getting to that point where we'll see troops on the ground. Now, how the capacity looks, I really don't know. The other issue is, like, on the disappearance people,

I genuinely think Trump. a ruby don't give an F. They can't. They can't because the problem is with Mexico. If I'm a citizen of Mexico and I pay taxes and somebody just took my property over or disappeared my kid and I go to the cops and they say, yeah, there's nothing we can do about it. That's like how do you kick a mule?

You know what I mean? Like it doesn't seem like militarily it's something we can force on their culture. They have to change that within themselves. It's just as a tough, you know, I don't even know if I have the right hands. I'm just, I'm the guy who's like, this is not a solution-based podcast. The other thing, too, is, is you could tell, like, Shainbaum was filling the heat. Like, I think she, you know, obviously I don't know this. I think when she saw the Maduro operation for the first time, she was like, you know what,

they could move into arrest me. And notice, like, even a lot of politicians out of Baja, California, they're looking at their visas now. The whole crackdown on Coritos. Right. Like, if they even sing about the cartels. You know, so it seems. like there's something

climbing down and it's going to be all by Marco Rubio. Yeah. But right now who's up next? She was next. Maduro. Not Maduro, Petro. Yeah. I'm already seeing headlines and whenever you see the headlines, you're like, oh, no, the DEA's looking into him.

He's next. This is my prediction. The president, the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro is next or Cuba. But especially if we If we give up and if we if we leave Iran in shame, which I think is going to happen, Cuba's fucked, bro. Cuba is getting lit up the next day. I think, okay, I think they're after Cuba next because of that South Florida contingency.

It's not even Marco Rubie. There's a bunch of other politicians on the Republican side have been wanting this for years. Yeah. Even James Fishback. James Fishback. Who I like, you know, he's anti-Zionist. He's anti-Palentier. but even he panders to his Cuban base.

Yeah. Like they want full regime change. Full regime. Also, like if for anyone to watch, if you go to that South Florida, you won't find any more, and anyone more right wing than a Cuban living in South Florida. More right wing than a white guy living in Alabama.

I'm telling you right now. A white guy in Alabama, the most redneck guy, could be like, you know what? I don't agree with the war, but I'm still mad at it. Right. Cuba, you go over there? Nah, those Cubans are right or die Trump. Dude, they want to see Cuba

bomb to smithering. I think they got Cuba on the map how you said. Lizzie Grab already said the part out loud. Cuba's up next. The other part, bro, is the FBI just opened up their very first drug office in Ecuador.

And they just started going after those Ecuadorian gangs. What does that mean? They're on the border of Colombia. So they're right there. So Petra could be up next. I think Shinebaum right now, from the Mexican side, is doing everything in her power

to turn over as many people. people as they can. The confusing part for Shimbom is there's no pathway to success. Like, what does success look like for her? Like X amount of fentanyl, X amount of cartel members? There's no clear pathway, I think, to the point where Rubio is going to force them to put some type of U.S. military on the ground. Well, I've noticed that, and I've been talking about it just on my Instagram, the raw heroin

is starting to pick back up. Cocaine's picking up, like, massively. Yeah, especially out of Matamoros. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, Matamoros has always been a king hub for Coke, but now it's like, why is that? Well, Montemores, is that the ports right there of Tamolipas? Tamolipas port.

This is like a side note, but if you guys remember those four Americans from like South Carolina that got kidnapped that happened in Montemores, they were in there for a Coke deal, not to get surgery. So something went wrong there. I was the only American journalist that went to Montemores and then dispel that whole story. I went in there thinking, like, oh, poor Americans. are kidnapped. As soon as I cross in, every Mexican was like, come on. I was like, oh. We're down there looking for a connect. Yeah. So Matamoros has always been a cocaine hub. Cocaine's making, making it's way back from my reporting. And I think, John, you might

know more than me, at least from what I've seen and heard, is there is fear within the Sina Loa cartel up, particularly that that crackdown on fentanyl and the crackdown with China. So some groups, some criminal group, that all have once again kind of gone to- To heroin. heroin or cocaine. Just because of that China connection when you need those precursors. Yeah, that's why I mean. They're going back natural.

Yeah. They're going back on the opioid side. And according to, like, there's a report from New York Times. Who knows it was true? But like, I guess Sinaloa Cartel has guys like just watching the sky because they're just waiting any moment.

And I think for the cartel, they know, like, you're against the most hawkish administration to the point where like even the most I think right-wing voters of Trump didn't expect this. Like, yeah. It's a, you know, and I think they see it as, we only got like another year or two in the office. Trump's like, I'm just going to rewrite the whole new world order before I'm out.

So it starts here. I think they're going to hit Mexico. I don't mean hit Mexico as in like bombs and stuff, but there's going to be a military op. There's a reason why they did for, foreign terrorist organization right off the bat to bypass Congress. And you put your department of war secretary, P. Hexov, who's, come on, this guy is super hawkish. Yeah, maybe before the election. He has a whole, I'm not a neocon, but come on, this guy's, this guy. Okay, so what does that

look like? What does that look like? Sending caravans of of troops? Are we talking Marines? It would have to be like, I think, special forces, kind of a green beret But how many, how many numbers, and where do you go first? You know what I mean? Like, this is a bigger...

You could talk tough, but as we're seeing with the straight of Hormuz, things don't always play out the way you think they will in war. And even the drug situation, like, you know, the U.S. You know, there's right now in the news, it's like, oh, we can't even deal with the Iranian drones. We can't even deal with little Jose, six-year-old, and T.J. flying his drone. We can't even, we have 600,000 drone incursions on the U.S. Mexico border.

So I think those are all, like, massive challenges. I think the biggest point I love when Ed brought this up was, like, if you're a Mexican national, if you put U.S. troops on the ground, you can now just go to USA and be like, I need asylum. My country's at war. You guys are bombing fucking terrorists in my hometown. So there's always that immigration angle that Republicans don't want to know the Mexican in here legally. No, of course not. So there's so many angles to the story.

I'm fascinating. I think just Shirenbaum is feeling the heat. I think she even thought, oh, we're going to come in. We'll make some agreements. We'll tell Trump some things he likes. And I don't think they expected this hawkish. And at the end of day, like, the secret government is running all these operations. It's the CIA.

CIA is the one who basically ran that whole Maduro op to the T. and then, you know, CIA was flying drones over Sinaloa. They've been flying drones over the ports of kind of that Sinaloa high-leisco area. They're the ones who tipped off Mexico on El Mancho's location with the whole girlfriend thing. So they're all, you know, they're playing that ink. They're already there making moves. That's what I think, bro. So do I think, like, right now, yes, right now, this moment, we don't have like a G.I. Joe's soldier, American guy on the ground.

But we got CIA. We got, I think, and I don't know it's for sure. obviously, but I think there's chaos agents already in Mexico kind of work in those groups. And I think there's chaos agents inside the cartels. That's how they would get Mitchell's girlfriend, leaked that info, and that of that. And then I do think the CIA probably talk to the military of Mexico says, this is the location. We want an arrest, and we want him turned over. And I think Mexican military was like, yeah, we'll go in there.

We'll see what we can do. Yeah, we'll see what we can do. I don't know we'll make an arrest. A general girl on the phone, like, no, dude, he's got so many pictures of me. Pop that guy. Oh. Yeah. That's what I, that's just my inkling. That's what Ed says.

I agree. I think Seattle is fully on the ground, like, already in Sena Loa, Halisco. And I think that's why these cartels for the first time are like actual panic mode. Is this going to be the end of him? Absolutely not. Like, they're going to survive this Trump administration. Then the next guy comes in. And whoever the next president is going to be way less hawkish unless you get Secretary Rubio,

which he's going to be gunning in in 2020 for that spot. Of course. Okay. So, yeah, and I think long term, I think especially as we retreat, as we shut down shop in the Middle East, which I think is going to happen. I think. You think that? I don't think that. I think the world's long term.

I don't know about this year. The world's getting split up into regional powers. No more hegemon. I'm talking like five, ten years out. I think we will become the dominant, obviously the hegemon in the Western Hemisphere. So I think that's when the government will turn. Because they got to turn the military industrial war machine on someone, and I think it will be on Mexico and Latin America.

But now with their full attention, because they're not in the Middle East anymore, right? That belongs to Russia and Iran and whatever's left of Israel, which more surely is probably not much. But China's not happy with that Venezuela operation. And obviously what's going on. Like, I think China is getting also ready for some type of military confrontation with the U.S. We're kind of seeing that in Taiwan.

They're also buying like a bunch of like made up islands and they're making them like literally making them into islands. Yeah. You have that. The issue for the United States is that we're caught up in this whole Iranian war right now. They can't even stop every Iranian drone or DoD can't do it. We just had the report where a wave of drones just flew over a U.S. military base. Couldn't knock them down. Don't even know who they are.

They could possibly connect to China. China already flew those like balloons over the U.S. The key stat that I was like alarmed about was China right now, I think every year could build like a hundred new ships. And even the commercial ships in China have to pass military standards, meaning they have to have the decks that could carry tanks and all that. U.S. right now could only manufacture with manufacturing, we could only produce three ships a year. So three versus 100. Right. China's already well ahead.

They're not getting involved in all these foreign entanglements. If anything, they're getting other countries in debt and building that one beltway to China system. That's why it's important for China right now to get all these Latin American countries to recognize them and then not Taiwan. Well, that's what I mean. We're falling behind.

So I think some astute American leader is going to see that and say, okay, we got to stop trying to dominate the world and just compete with China in our hemisphere. And the other issue for the United States that China doesn't have is that China is trying to cozy up Mexico and by them doing that, you're essentially setting up a hub in Mexico. The thing that I've

reported on constantly was like this is a big thing in China is that they have a huge system where they have to get their women pregnant and have to have them have that baby in the United States. So that baby is a U.S. citizen and all of a sudden that baby could travel back to communist China and all of a sudden you have this weird kind of system. Another thing with China is they're buying up all this U.S. farmland. A lot of China setting up next to U.S. military bases. I've covered the legal marijuana stuff to the... So the China thing is in, that's why when I've done reporting, I've always hit that angle. I think some of the Middle East stuff is always kind of fearmongering and more to get

American support to bomb. For sure. You know, so we could bring only fans to some women in Tehran. It's crazy. It's like, what are we in 2003 again? But the China one is the real element. I mean, there's already a fentanyl precursor agreement with the cartels. China also does a lot of smuggling through the Canadian ports.

So they're getting the fentanylars through there. Mexican cartels need the Chinese to launder money. The laundering money is the big one. There's so much connection there. Well, listen to this. We just had a guy on that he told me when he's getting ready to make his re-up, he's got connects in Colombia. He's got to get like a million or two million dollars down there.

He goes through his Chinese guys. And guess where they were, Mexicali? So the Chinese guys, basically, you get them in the U.S. And they have family in Mexico. You give them the drug money in the U.S. they then call their family in Mexico and say, okay, because they have tons of money sitting on the sidelines for these things. And they say, okay, yeah, wire it down to Columbia.

And it's easy. They don't monitor the wire transfers from Mexico to Colombia. So that's how the money is moved. Also cryptocurrency, but that's really, it's an old Persian way of laundering money. The Chinese really have cemented themselves in the Western Hemisphere and in Mexico and in the criminal underworld. But what I want to talk about with you, because we talked about, obviously, the disappearances in Mexico, the border wall. I want to finish on your reporting in Minnesota.

And basically, the end of the Trump attempt at mass deportation. Take it away. This is excellent right here. So the Trump administration finishes Midway Blitz in Chicago. And then they go to New Orleans. were like in New Orleans they didn't have an issue, did their operations. Then they get to Minneapolis and they were up against the top boss, the final boss of white liberals and the activists and the organization. Tim Walts?

That but basically like the the literal like population of Minneapolis, board patrol was not ready for how organized those activists were. They thought this is Chicago, this is New Orleans. They went into Minneapolis and faced a city that did not want them there. And this is a city that had seen the George Floyd riot protests. I mean, yeah, they, and yeah, they're just... It's different. It's different there, man. So I reported on the riots in Minneapolis about years ago.

And so I come into Minneapolis in the, I believe the protests already been there from a little bit over a week. And the energy was already different. I mean, like, I got there and every business had signs like ice out, no ice agents. A lot of businesses were closed. But it felt like the entire city was like mobilizing. And I remember I was driving around some of the neighborhoods where there were the Somali neighborhoods. And you just had a bunch of activists around those neighborhoods like looking for SUVs, looking for out-of-state plates.

And as soon as they would locate like an ice agent. or Fed, blast that vehicle on social media, register those plates. Like, they did a really good job of, like, stop in operations. Like to the, I've never seen anything like that. Even the agents that I interviewed. So I get, you know, I'm on the ground. I'm feeling that sentiment. Minneapolis is in the national spotlight.

It's in the news every day. And the energy was there. And I remember just feeling like, I always thought like, man, I always thought Portland was a most organized city when it came to like. Minneapolis, like, took us off the map for that shit, thank God. And one thing we were noticing, and this is where the confrontation started, was they have a building in Minneapolis, which is their federal building. It's called the Whipple Building. So the Whipple Building is where Bovino and all the agents start off their morning.

They'll probably get the game plan, and then they all exit, and they'll kind of start doing their operations throughout Minneapolis. This is the roving patrol that I'm talking about. So this is actual Border Patrol agents in those green, uniform. I think when people see people, they always say, oh, it's ice. These are Border Patrol guys. So that's another angle to the story because these are guys who were California border. They've never been in an urban environment,

especially like Minneapolis, negative 30. We're talking about the weather plays another factor too. So what was going on, and when we started seeing that happen, is they would go out for a roving patrol. Sometimes they had a targeted arrest. And when they would move in to make that arrest or whatever, the agents called it blowing up the spot.

So these activists did a really good job of tracking the agents, like literally following them, trekking them. They had their own database where I guess they were registering the license plates. They're like cartel scouts. Dude, they were even better. I mean, they were efficient. And I mean, these are like your soccer moms, like kind of like your average Joe, your average person in Minneapolis. What was wild to me too, I saw a video of a guy, just a big, disgusting white guy from Minnesota with a fat beard just look like a fucking Trump supporter. And he had an AR and he was like, I'm here to protect my community. And I was, I actually, I get chills. because I'm like, that is what the Second Amendment is here for.

Like, he is... He is that right. This is a white guy defending... Immigrants. This is a white guy defending non-Americans. Using the liberty of America to defend non-Americans. It was kind of touching. But anyways, as you were saying.

But we did see a lot of that. But when these activists basically interfered in the operations, that's what you saw the clashes. So that's what we started seeing the clashes of agents. And then by the time I arrived, The Nicole Good shooting had already happened. That's why the kind of the approaches have started. Right. So we started seeing more of these clashes.

I started seeing the interfering of the operations. The other thing is they started to hunt down all the hotels where the agents were staying. So every night, they would find out where the agents were at, and they would target that hotel. They would cause a bunch of ruckets outside. But some of them, they would actually attack them. So I was covering a lot of that. They were attacking the lobbies and things of that nature. I'm the one, I don't know if people saw it, but there was like a viral moment where one of the hotels

being attacked to the point they had to call like a backup federal unit. So these federal officers came. And you say attacked, what do you mean? Like basically like just breaking the windows in the lobby, kind of like just kind of vandalism towards the property. Not that. But just mobs of people just. But not like actually attacking like the actual agents.

But kind of like, you know, causing destruction of vandalism. But I remember they called these a federal backup, these agents that came in. And one of the agents took some type of object to the head. so he was discombibibulated. There was this viral moment where he's kind of guarding it was like a Marriott and all the windows are destroyed.

And he's surrounded by like activists. There's like people like me like press. And then he had this moment where he was like, I have a message for the media. He's like where is Minneapolis Police Department? How come no one has our back out here? And as soon as he said that, you could tell he regretted it saying it

because we caught him on camera. But it was kind of like the microcosm of the story where you had these agents feeling like they were going against the city. and they were just disrupt, like I said, hotels, everywhere. So I think the morale of the agents were getting here. And the targets, you said there were some targeted arrests. Who were they?

So, I mean, according to them, like when they would do the press conferences, it'd be like individuals with like serious crimes. It could be like sex crimes, violent crimes. And those were targeted arrest. And in those operations, the activists interfered those. Sometimes when they made that target arrest, if they run into other individuals who are undocumented, they would make the, that's what called collateral.

So that's another way to boost up the number. So we were seeing a lot of that. We were documenting that. And then it was a Saturday. I think it was like my day seven there. So I was there for a week. And it was a Saturday. And that was a day I was actually,

I'm supposed to fly out. So I did all my reporting, kind of, you know, just kind of covering all the clashes and everything. It wasn't slowing down any time soon. So I was getting ready to catch my flight. And then boom, I get a notification. an X and it goes board patrol agents fire shots at a mail on the colliate and 26th Avenue South Minneapolis so as soon as I got that I canceled the flight because I already knew

tonight's going to go down so I catch that Uber go down and as soon as I get down there was already huge police line and a huge crowd of protests are already kind of fighting and as soon as I got to the ground or when I got there I didn't know this yet but it was Alex Preti who got shot and obviously ends up dying and I get there in a huge like armor vehicle goes into the crowd and it was like the whole day was chaotic. So it was like riots in the snow, tear gas, clashes between the police, state police

deployed. And it was just, that started off another wave of violence of between the crowds. And then all a sudden like, the story started to shift where ice and board patrol from

all angles were getting just that negative news headline. And like, for me, as a reporter, I like to study the optics. So I remember saying all of this, like this is, this is bad for Trump for the deportation operation. Then it doesn't help that you got Chrissy Nome calling Alex Pretty domestic terrorist and she had to walk it back. And then Trump was like, when he heard those comments from Nome, he was like, oh, I don't

agree with that at all. So then the administration wasn't agreeing. Their messaging wasn't right. And then boom, I, every day, too, I was attending every press conference of Bovino. And Bovino's messaging is aggressive, man. He comes off the bat, very against the media. and I remember on the final press conference I didn't know it

it would be Bovino's final press conference he came out with like this try to do a thing where like every pro everyone has a choice and when a protester interferes in operation he makes a choice and he makes you know that was this kind of his lingo

and then later that day boom the news comes down that Bovino's out Tom Holman comes in the next day Tom Homan does his press conference and the optics have already changed Bovino comes in like with that like

military guard trying to very look very like I don't know I don't know the image that Bovino wanted to portray but Tom Holman did his press conference in a suit and was very emotional and was more like was touched about the deaths of like of Nicole Good and Prady and wanted to I remember he was already saying there we're going to scale down scale down scale down still down even I think it was like

couple weeks later they took they scaled down that whole operation and that right there was the ending of Trump's mass deportation agenda. Not saying that there's not ICE operations that being done. But you won't see something like that again. You won't see Operation Midway Blitz, any of that.

You won't see Border Patrol, doing the Roeby Patrol. That's done. You're going to see less and less of like businesses being targeted. Tamale lady being targeted. It's back to the worst of the worst. All right, everyone. Welcome to Arco Rewards Orientation. I'm Hannah.

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I don't care about all this stuff. I'm just here to tell the story. The damage has been done. I think their voters, they're going to get hit because they went after too many people that had no criminal record just so many stories of that. Then they started going after like people who are like

from England who are like on a legal green card and like literally doing everything right. Like I know I have bad teeth but I'm not Somali. Yeah, yeah. So then it started arresting like green card folks and like it just kind of got crazy. I always thought the optics of having Border Patrol like in urban cities was like just not good.

No. And so we saw the ending of that. You saw Chrissy Nome's base. Basically, whole thing end after that. Stephen Miller has almost been like sideline. You don't even hear from Stephen Miller anymore. And I doubt, I mean, I don't know is for sure. I doubt that DHS is being pressured to make 3,000 arrests.

If anything, like I think political came out with the report where it was like Trump administration wants to stop talking about deportation operation. So it's starting to hit him on the polls. I think the damage is done. Now, you know, we heard during the pandemic over the George Floyd riots. that happened all over the country. We heard a lot about agitators and potential FBI whipping up the mob and, you know, piles of bricks laid out for protesters and rioters to smash windows. Did you hear of anything like that?

Like, do you think this was real or do you think everything that happened in Minneapolis was like paid actors almost? For me, it was 100% real. Because I always thought Portland was the most organized kind of protest. as activist city, but when I saw Minneapolis, it took it to a different level. Not only that, but like I did numerous of interviews because I've always wanted to know, like, how do these people, what's the mindset here, right?

They, from their mindset, ICE is Nazis. And these Nazis came into my community and they're kidnapping, not arresting that ever, kidnapping my Somali brother and sister. So we could either shut up and let the Nazis take, take over the city or we could step up and bring the fight and they view it like that. In Portland, it's just your fringe left that view it like that. And then you drive around the city, yeah, maybe you go to one or two coffee shops.

You'll see a sign, I want ice dead. But the majority, it's just like regular folks. Minneapolis, everybody, bro. Everybody was like, no, we're right or die. These guys are Nazis. We're going to do whatever it takes. and they were one of the most organized protesters active. I think there was a group called like Minnesota 501

where they had all these chats where like every single ICE agent who had a license plate was registered on there. They were getting the idea. I mean, it was to the tee. So those people did feel like they were standing up for their brother and sister. And at the end of day, like no matter how you paint it, whether you're right or left, you're a Trump supporter or not,

the protesters won. Yeah, they did. Ice got kicked out. All those operations stopped. Bovino's literally been forced every time. Christian Nolan lost her job. Yeah. Like they got the W that they wanted and they fought for.

I didn't get a sense, and I've been anywhere where you kind of sense some stuff as not organic. Yeah. That they felt like they were at war. Wow. Yeah. That's remarkable. And you could go into any businesses in Minneapolis and everyone was in the fight.

You go to a little shop, hey, we're making flyers. And you go to another shop, hey, whistles. You go to another, like, it was. You didn't see any, like, counter protesters or anything like that? I mean, you might have like a one right wing dude who drove. from like out of town and comes down and then it's like, yeah, but it was as legit as it

could. So it sounds like it really crossed the political spectrum. It was really more like community. It was apolitical. It's us versus them. Whether you're a Trump voter or you're a blue haired fucking Democrat weirdo, it's like we have to

these are invaders and we have to push them out. That's exactly. That's the other guy and like I said, they before that border patrol, like the The city that they just came off was New Orleans. And they didn't have an issue in New Orleans. No one processes them in New Orleans. No.

They got to Minneapolis and they just did not give up. Yeah. And we're talking about we're out there negative 30 and people showed up. You can't pay, you can't pay. And I remember like I always got asked too. Like, hey, these people have to be paid. I'm like, dude, there was a day on, there was like a Friday. They all shut down their businesses and like 30,000 went out and hit the streets.

Like, yeah. I mean, they won so much. They defeated. Trump's next or the Republicans next term probably because not only well I don't think the mass deportations were ever going to happen really because all of the businesses the slaughterhouses the hotels the agricultural centers yeah they're all paid Trump's like dog you're taking my lay you're taking my workers cut the shit out it was never going to happen but it really the Minneapolis really like not only did it turn off

Moderates, like moderate, I'm not a Republican, but like a moderately like right wing person, or at least on the immigration issue where I'm like, yeah, you got to have some border enforcement guys. But when I saw them like kidnapping, really, and murdering U.S. citizens, I'm like, okay, well, you've lost me forever. Not only did you lose people like me. You lost the super, uh, Groyper Nick Fuentes types. Because they're like, we wanted a, we wanted three million people put on a train and sent back

to Mexico. Like, and that's clearly, so you lost them too. This is why, bro, I think right now Trump, they can't win with this one now because the damage is already done. So you lost, like you said, you lost normie voters. People even might not even supported it. You lost them. But then you also are losing your base because your base is like, you're not even doing enough. Right. You're not charged. Like, so right now this one was a, a massive, massive, massive L. I think, and I think that's why you could see some uptick on crossings at the border because people are like, okay, they've scaled back. Like they're not going to do this.

So now is my time to, I want to come in and work. I want to come in for whatever reason. And I think that's, you could see, that could be a correlation. I could see that. The other part two, pay attention to the White House social media now. Notice how they don't post no memes about deporting people,

no funny music of them being chackled up on the airplane. I don't see any of the YouTube commercials. Yeah, yeah, all that stuff. We've got a plane ticket for you. Yeah. All that they are quiet, quiet. And I think that tells you everything. Stephen Miller, to me too, like, they used to have this dude all the time talking to media and stuff. He's kind of been sidelined.

I just, like, just from a journalist's perspective, it's fascinating to see how Trump 2.0 got here. Yeah. They did it, you know, they're losing on the deportation front. Yeah. They're in a war. The economy sucks. It's just like, I don't know where they go from here. and Trump right now has left

he's doing his boy JD Vance so dirty because he was supposed to leave JD in such a good standing that JD's like oh I'm gonna beat Newsome all day and now he's leaving JD with that shanky poor a little bit right now I think I think once this is how I think things are gonna work

just from me covering this stuff from all these years your average American like you and me bro were obsessed with the news or news junkers we're like every missile flying to Iran and the one outward we know about it. But your average American obviously doesn't.

But what your average American does care about, how much is gas? And I've been hanging around like the, like what I try to do, bro, is I try to look, not politics through my lens. I'm a media obsessed guy, news junkie. No one looks at it like me. I try to look through politics, bro, through the lens of my dad.

A guy in his 60s, immigrant from El Salvador, middle class, U.S. citizen, who's a trucker. You know, like stuff that he cares about is probably what the average American cares about, right? Kitchen, issue tables. My dad doesn't know all the updates on Iran. Probably doesn't know how many American service members got killed. Right.

It doesn't know, probably doesn't even know how much Israel's role play, isn't it? But he, what he is telling me, though? Hey, that diesel on that 18 wheeler, it's killing me, man. And it's going to get worse. And then now you go to, maybe go to a grocery store, the single mom. Hey, I went to go fill up gas like the other day. Do you really believe it's going to go on going up? The news is that's

going to hit seven. You think it's going to hit? That when the Americans start to, when that starts to happen, then they were like, wait a minute, we're at war for how long? He said we were never going to be in the forever wars. And that's when the polling... 50 days. Don't worry. 50 days.

Also, you notice the cute... Not 48 days. 50. Nice and clean. Notice the cute little poll that CNN does? CNN does the... How much support has Republicans lost on Trump for the war? 100% support and zero are against it.

It's like, bro, Kim Jong-un just did election in North Korea. At least he does the 99.5 and leaves like a little wiggle. No. We truly have third world dictator propaganda now. And guess who just bought CNN? Wow, shocker, the Ellison's. Did you see the cringe thing? They're trying to make a podcast style, bro?

They're trying to do the mics in the studio. They're trying to put like Jake in his little bedroom. Like, dude. Insane, guys. It's over. It's over. Don't be hip. Right now, turn on CNN or Fox.

Just remove the logo. You couldn't even tell. It's distinguishable. So this is where we've come. to. And we knew, we've known for decades that this is where it's coming to, the monopolies are they keep consolidating every year, every generation until now it's like it's one oligopoly, you know what I mean? It's just one entity and it's serving the state. It's serving state power. It's all it's there for. And now corporate media is trying to do the

whole thing of like, oh, trying to attack the podcasters now because the podcast is against the war, corporate media is obviously for war. So now they're trying to do the whole thing. It's like, oh, the podcasters are out of touch. Every American is supported. This war, 90% of support. So they feel that threat. But right now, it's all pro-war.

CNN, News Nation, Fox News, all pro. And some of the independent media, because they bought out from some of these bigger guys. Now they're pro-war too. Free press, all they do is defend it. They never talk about like the lives lost, human impact and all that stuff. People don't even know that we were bombing Tehran to the point where like they're literally their skies were black filled of oil

And but at the same time Mary like I said once the gas starts to become an issue that's where you see the polling hit and I think there's no I don't know how Republicans are going to climb climb out of this one. Okay, so All right Let's give me a Just say Trump survives the next three years. He doesn't die of natural causes or whatever whatever it gets It's impeached and it works by when the Democrats flip the House this year in the midterms. Just say three years, right?

What happens in Iran and how does that affect Mexico? The cartels there and the U.S. war games in Mexico, Cuba, and Latin America at large. Fascinating. So I think that in three years, we're still going to be in Iran. And I think I might be one of the few people who think that. I think a lot of people think we have an off ramp. I don't see it right now. We're about to deploy, like, I think,

around 2,000 Marines from the San Diego Camp Pendleton base. So I think we're still going to be Iran in another foreign entanglement. I think China's going to benefit to what that benefit looks like. I don't know. I'm not like an international analyst. Could it tell you that?

I think they're going to go after Cuba because the voters, Trump's, Trump does have a base that wants that and he wants to serve them. And I think, with Marco Rubio there, it's just a matter of time. They're going to go after Cuba. Now, does it look like same thing as the Maduro operation,

we'll have to wait and see? I think Cuba's going to have to give up way easier than that. They're just going to have no chance. I don't know if they use that new weapon, the Havana syndrome thing on those on Cuba, but I think they're going to go after Cuba. I think Shinebomb. And when you say after Cuba, what do you mean?

Do you talk about toppling the regime? Are we talking about like Maduro style just grab the dictator? Or are we talking about like sending troops? I think they're toppling the communist government of Cuba. I think they're going to topple the regime, but I think what they'll do is they're going to try to get an agreement with them. And if they don't, they'll just move in, literally U.S. military. It could look like Maduro just in and out, take the guy out.

But that won't topple the government, though. They need to go in and... I mean, they'll probably install somebody. They'll probably install, like, some Cuban. Like, they'll probably have a guy that they want to install. Like, for instance, like, the Venezuela operation, people don't know this. Like, U.S. first primary goal was to install Juan Guido as the guy.

That's why like when Juan Guaido would come to the U.S., Nancy Pelosi and the Republicans, would call him president of Venezuela. Then obviously they had to give that up. That never came to fruition. So I think they'll do some type of installment there. But I think he was done. Like they're going to, that's like on the radar next. They'll topple it.

And it'll be a huge win for the South Florida Republicans. Marco Rubio's that's like web dream. He's going to have that. On Mexico, I think that Shimon won't get arrested. I think that would just. break norms and Mexico's too much of a friend, like throw our neighbors. We won't arrest Scheimbaum, but she's going to be pressured to a point where she's going she's going to have to allow U.S. military on the ground.

Now, I'm not a military expert. I don't know if that looks like you send in the Marines on the port. Do you send special forces, a unit of special forces in Sinola, one in Halisco? I don't know what that looks like, but I think Shyamount is going to get to the point where Ruby and them are going to be like, you could do this our way. you know or it's like literally gonna be like we'll literally just we'll bomb boats we don't get we don't get we don't care right so I think she's gonna be pressure to to a point where they'll have US military on the ground

I don't think the cartel situation is gonna be like over because of it but it's gonna be interesting where the new cycle goes there yeah the big thing I think just from the if we're talking about international is to see how kind of China counterpoints so all this because they need that Mexico relationship and they're not gonna want they'll live in a soil like get away but they're not gonna want US military troops on the ground like China's there's no there's no way so there's so many interesting um elements we still were like people forget we're still in this like ukraine i think russia and and and wins yeah um it's just

fascinating it's just my my big thing is 2028 because it's either going to be jadie vans or rubio from the right and it's going to have to go against newsome and normally in politics we always had that pendulum swing and and and these guys are making it way easy for newsome even where a guy with a horrible record yeah could come in and win and i think if news is that you're some wins, he's going to have a very pro-Israel foreign policy. That'll be a whole other thing. But I think right now,

I don't see how we're not in Iran in three years. Like I said, I see troops on the ground in Mexico. We might even see troops by the World Cup. There might be an agreement where you might have to have... That's in three months. That's in three months. Where you might have to have

some type of U.S. military presence on there for the World Cup. to protect, like there might be something there, but I think it's coming down. And if we don't see U.S. troops, it doesn't matter. CIAs all over Mexico right now. And so, and I think Shinebaum, come on,

they have their intelligence, too. They know CIA's on the ground. I believe Shinebaum's like, yeah, I think she feels like, I think the Maduro operation changed the way that they're like, oh, it woke a lot of people up. They're like, damn, yeah. I'm not safe.

Exactly, yeah. So, the thing is, for Trump, though, for Trump world and MAGA world is like you need to leave if you want this agenda to fall through this new world order of MAGA you got to leave JD in good standing and if you don't then you know if we have a Dem come in

they're probably not going to be they're going to be nowhere near as aggressive to Mexico on this and I even say that's the right approach is just kind of the fact situation but yeah I think the crackdowns happen on Mexico's already because they're pulling visas on politicians like they're it's common man I'm telling you bro if you would ask me a few years ago

I'm like, there's no way. And that's why these people are disappearing. It's because they're told by their higher-ups, we got to turn the heat down in the major urban centers. So it's like season four of the wire. Remember when Marlone and his crew, they're trying to keep things quiet. They're burying bodies in the vacant houses.

And I think Shinebaum, there must have been some type of order to law enforcement all over Mexico. Keep that homicide rate down or like don't record. Yeah. And on the disappearance doesn't matter because the Trump administration, they don't, you know, that's not even in English. They care about. So my angle, bro, and it's going to be this going forward, probably the next year,

is I'm going to go all over Mexico. We're going to keep doing these stories. Yeah. And those Mexicans, when you're interviewing those parents, they'll tell you directly, this is the whole cartel force. This is how they're alive is through this brutal system. And then the female situation is a whole other thing, man, being forced into the sex rate, especially in Bahak.

California, when you got men from China, Middle East, these countries, and like, they're, in their countries, they're like, you know, they can have sex with a teenager, and it's like, they're not frowned upon. I mean, you know, a lot of us like to look, we like to believe that the cartels

are recruiting people because they need money. And sometimes people try to make them look cool and I get it. The aesthetic, but, I'm not calling them cool. I'm just, I'm just marveling at the fact that they can't recruit enough people

by the money. They can't, they can't. You know, they have to force labor. The money's more bro. All bribe. You know, you turn over politicians all day. You turn over businesses, all the stuff. But when it comes to like the actual young individuals,

it's a, it's a brutal thing how they do. It's a lot of so many college students. Kids who are in school, universities are always targeted. I know right now is reading a report, we're on the way to you. Cancun, like seven young women missing in Cancun, all Mexican national women.

So they're probably going to be forced into the sex trade. Right. Obviously in Cancun, because you have a lot of tourists there that you have to serve that underworld. And I, look, when I talk to my friend, this might sound like a joke, but it's just the reality is when I talk to my friends

here in the U.S., and they're like, hey, can I party in Tijuana? Can I do the thing with the ladies and stuff? I said, the safest spot, and it sounds insane, is Hong Kong. For sure. Because the women have to be over 18. Yeah.

The cartel needs that one location running to a tea, meaning like if you're, if you sleep with a prostitute from Hong Kong, uh, you could drink all day and you could pass it out of your room. You can have like a thousand bucks in cash. You'll wake up, a thousand bucks would be there because she knows she's such as $1.

Her head's gonna be cut off. Well, they're so on the map. They're so on the map. They're so out there. So, and by the way, those guys are definitely connected to organized crime. Yeah.

One of the owners got murdered recently. Yeah. They're paying the piper. Yeah. But yeah. And when you go in those areas, it's, it's, it's, it's, there's security.

over, like there's T.J. police all over. When you get to the outskirts and then you're dealing with those women, that's a different level because those are women directly under some type of plaza boss and they were probably likely forced into that. And the thing too, like, and you know this John from just even traveling Mexico and is even in being around those areas, you just walk around, every light pool is covered to missing, missing, missing, missing, all the way to the top, all the way to the top. Yeah. There's a monument that we went to in Guadalajara. It's right in the city center.

And it's just like thousands of these missing persons posters. And it's everybody. It's old people. It's young women. It's middle-aged men. It's nice-looking people. It's pretty, it's descended to something that Mexico's never seen before. It's, it's, yeah, devolving into something you would see.

I mean, I don't know where. don't know of another example on earth outside of ethnic cleansing and war where this is happening. Can you think of one? I can't think of a country like that. I was just watching like a documentary on the Ukrainian war where like there were a bunch of the, this little local town had to bury a bunch of their own Ukrainians and they just had a big old hole and were like dumping the bodies. That country's at war. This is like Mexico on a regular day. There was a new, there was a story from the AP news that, um, that the locals in Halisca were pissed off because I guess there was an area where they had a bunch of these walls,

obviously covered with missing persons posters, and that the authorities were ticking him down, getting ready for the World Cup, getting ready for the whole world to come in. That's why they were, when the arrest of Mencho, they did not want that. That was a complete CIA working with the generals move because they didn't want that bad press before the World Cup.

No. You know, the Civil War kicking off the way it did. So supposedly that the United States was going to send ice to Italy for the winter Olympics I could totally see situation when they'll do like, okay, well, we need ice or we need some type of U.S. military in Halisco or wherever those World Cup games are going to be. But yeah, they started to find, like, it's gruesome, but they started to find like hundreds of bodies near these World Cup stadiums in Halisco, these mother search group discovered all by themselves, which I'm always astonished by these stories of these people.

Like to me, that's why I also want to highlight. these characters. These are the strongest people in the world. There's no glitz and glamour. No one's giving them a hand. And are they funded? Do they have any funding from anybody? No.

Wow. No, no, no. And this guy, the Eddie Carrillo guy is like, I mean, even when I was there, the parents go up to him. They're like, just thank you, man. They're like, without you, we wouldn't even have a chance. All those people are asking this for a chance. Even if it's 1%.

They'll take 1%. Being shot at and then still going out there. Like, that's, there's something beauty, beautiful in that. And I think as a storyteller, that's obviously we're trying to tell everything and try to hold the powerful accountable and hit all these angles. But that's one thing of like the human element that I would like the audience to take away is that. Like that to me is real, like I said, when I was in Kerrville and I'm watching this guy

look for his nephew all by himself with a shovel, it just hits you different as a human. You understand like that, that's a different strength, a different love that I didn't know about. And when I was with those parents, bro, it was a Saturday. and I'm over here thinking like, man, just on the other side, people are just like watching the game football, go to SeaWorld, going to Sea World, hitting Pacific Beach. So for me, I'm like, and when I started learning more and from the parents, I'm like, this can't be a one-off.

Like, we're going to have to come back again and again. And it's not going to just be Baja California. We're going to go to Halisca. We'll go to these other areas and join all these search groups until he's important. People were literally not given. There was a one man, bro, that was literally shot at. His interview was talking about him being shot at.

His shirt was the picture of his son. We were shooting on March 13th. His son missing March 13, 2022, literally on the three-year anniversary I'm with this guy and just like, doesn't, no fear. So that's what we want to highlight. And this has not been on the media basically at all.

No. Not the mainstream media, not even really the podcast media. I mean, there was that one week last year where we heard about this mass grave in Halisco. and that was it, yeah, yeah. And that was it. And like I said, like the start of this year, January, like the first few days, boom.

Baja California was like, hey, we just felt 32 bodies at 50 different sites. And then they started finding out that some of the local law enforcement connected to those disappearances. I had a situation. I mean, it wasn't anything like insane, but you could kind of like, it kind of made me think. Like, there was a situation when I was on the Tijuana streets. It was like me drinking in a bar. Literally, I was out with like just a beer. and then boom

police pulls up sees me with the beer and was like you can't drink in public and I'm like okay my bad went to throw away by the time I went to throw away they handcuffed me

and they put me in the back seat and then they drove me around and they were like who are you? I'm an American and then right off the bat I knew if I don't use this journalism card

I could be F tier so I was like look man I'm a reporter I'm like you know off the bat like American journalists so if something goes down like people I got my location on

and they drove me around and then they did they drove me to an alley that was like literally no lights but I thought like okay this is where something would happen and all they did was they drove me to an alley with no lights and then they just all they did was basically they robbed me all of my

American cash was like I think I had like a G on me took that and then like uncuffing was like all right you can go back to US whenever and then right there I was like you know what like this is how little things like that happen with law enforcement where like now can't you imagine

them finding a young girl walking around the streets of East Tijuana with fucking no stoplights and and rabid dogs and no government anywhere picking her up and handing her over. Like we're going to the U.S., like if that situation, let's say that situation happened in the U.S., right? The cop comes out, hey, you can't do that. All right, fine. But I'll write you a site. There's a, there's a process. He went from a, you can't do that. I'm like, cool, I went to throw it right? And he's like, but we're taking it right now. It's a kidnapping. It's a kidnapping. Drow me around TJ.

And a robbery. Did a little interview with me, and I knew off the bat, from my experience with some stuff, I'm like, I got to use the, I'm an American journalist because these guys are going to freak the F out. They're going to know, okay, we cannot touch this guy. They'll leave the cat. They'll take my catch. It's fine.

The cops have to be in on this in a major way. That moment was a big telling. I'm like, okay, this happens way more common in Baja and Tijuana than I even. I thought they're doing this in Mexican nationals all day. Oh, yeah, they're running the system. You got to be careful, man, because that's a big, I mean, that is the most serious business cops. I mean, they just arrested 30

Tijuana cops. I think they were federalis or state cops. I don't know if there's a difference. I'm always doing right along with them and I was like, I don't even know if this guy's like legit. You can't trust anything. You can't trust anyone. And as I told you about our experience down there. That's a great one. It's all

smoking. It's like theater. You know? And everyone's an actor. Everyone's an actor. You could send out 15 fucking you know, Baclava AR-15 toting state cops could go to a crazy raid on some criminals

and arrest them. It turns out they're all fucking, they're all working for the other side, right? It's the craziest country on earth. But I think that's why you and I bro are like addicted to get stories out of there because it's like this... I think you

a little more than me. It's this place that like is insane and it's like right next to our country. But it's, you know, I was talking about this with Ed. Like, this is the golden era, the golden age for reporting on Mexico because I do think, you know, 50 years from now, it's going to be, it's just everything's going to be so different. We're going to be, hopefully we're going to be on a Bitcoin standard. It's all of the North America, I don't think it's going to, we're going to have nation states. I don't think it's going to be Canada, the United States and Mexico.

I think it's going to be smaller territories and I don't know I just I think it's going to be better I think it's going to be a lot more I think the future is a lot more positive after we get over this like transition we're making to AI and shit and we got to get the boomers out of the way

they all yeah and I don't mean again I don't mean like we need to like send them to an old folks home they all need to die they need to cease they need to turn into vapor and go into the heavens because they're the trolley car holding the rest

they're the caboose holding the rest of the train back. Try to move on. At least they get their social security, bro. You and I, we can get enough. Fuck no. You can't enough. We're done.

So, I mean, this is such, there's so much I want to know from this story. I want to know, you know me. I'm obsessed with why. Okay, who's doing it? Why are they targeting these kids? Yeah, are these slave laborers? Are they also actually paid?

Like, did, did Eddie Carrillo? Eric Carrillo, did he, when he was kidnapped, did they then say, okay, but you're working now? I haven't found it. Of course not. I'm just saying, like, yeah, there's so many on to answer questions. Well, this is what I want. Is this next year, bro, is we're going to tag on this store.

We're going to do like a series. But I want you to hit the ground with me. And we, like, hit it from all angles. Like, we should do a day we're embedded with authorities on this stuff. Maybe one day you and I could maybe talk to the actual Baja, California. foreign and state attorney's office, like, why is forensic so poor? Why do you guys give up? And then also just be like completely embedded with the families.

I think just doing something like that. And also just speaking to your regular Mexican national, getting like a pulse on the ground about all this, I think it's like super important. But I think there's something there. Even when I left that like my day reporting with those parents search groups, they were all like looking at me like, hey, you're like our last hope of getting a message out.

no one cares anymore. In Mexican media, it's like normal now. It's like it's not even a story. They're completely desensitized. Completely. So they are looking for coverage. They're looking for pressure. Literally anything.

And so even just you going down there, man, would be like a huge, huge deal to those people. Like they literally don't have no one. Like what I mean? They can't find anyone to care or sympathize for the cause. They can't even get like a Mexican journalist to like join them for a day because it's like. Yeah. And so I just like someone like me, man, I've reported on, obviously I do all the crime stuff.

That's what people know me for. But I've done so much human stuff. I did the Yuval day shoot. I was the first reporter when all those kids were killed. Kerrville, same thing. Well, that's all crime too. Yeah, yeah. That was crime too.

But those human stories, I think, are powerful, especially like in those people in Mexico. So, you know, if you could hit the ground with me, man, we should hit, you know, hit it all. 100. We'll tell us some powerful stuff. But let's plug your new YouTube channel, man, because you're independent now. So we want to get a lot of people over to check out what you're doing because it's fucking great. So the YouTube channel right now is literally just my last name, the word Ventura, Ethan reports. All in one.

I'll give you guys a link to. I'll be in the description. We'll have that. We'll have like exclusive reporting, documentaries. It's going to be shot very different. So every video you see we're shooting a different. So first one we did was more about like hard news, kind of the connection with the cartel, sleeper cell, special interest alien. This one is going to be shot more like a documentary movie.

where we really follow the people and tell those stories. But we're hitting everything. And then we're hitting stuff from alternative news angle. That's my big thing is I'm always going to find your alternative angle to a new story. Corporate media does already a bad job of covering everything else. So we're there for more of the alternative angle. And we do all types of stuff, bro. Protests, riots, documentaries, investigations.

We're going to do so much more in Mexico. And then stay tuned, man. If the war keeps going, we might have to pop up over there too. You want to go to the Straits of Hormo moves? Just fucking pop over that all quick. We had to jump on a shift, so. But I appreciate you, man, for always sharing my work. Last time I spoke to you, I was working for the other guys, so it sucks.

But now that I'm, it's totally different when you're free, independent. And more than ever, people want the raw, unfiltered content. Even if they don't agree with you. Yeah. At least you're coming from a genuine spot. And they're like, you know what? At least listen to you. And I think we're in a good spot.

Dude, guys like you, the journalist was almost dead. Yeah. Like the old school journalism. journalists, what you did, you investigated. You were like a cop without a gun. Like, that's what you did. And it basically died. And now guys like you have resurrected it.

So it's killer shit, man. It's killer. Check him out. Ventura reports on YouTube or A Ventura on Instagram is a great follow. You're always in my feed. Head over there. He's popping. He's hot.

And we're going to collab again very soon. Thanks, dog. Appreciate it, man. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Peace out. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much.

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