The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott Explains How Cartels Control Southern Border

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Whether it's a family or a single male, the drug cartels play a role in every illegal crossing into the U.S. at the southern border, former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott says. “They're either directly paying the cartels or the cartels are controlling their movements for another benefit, meaning to systematically overwhelm Border Patrol, create a gap in the border security, and then bring the narcotics across,” Scott says.    Scott, who worked in U.S. Customs and Border Protection for three decades, served as the 24th chief of the Border Patrol from Jan. 24, 2020, until Aug. 14, 2021. Through his decades of work on the border, Scott says, he observed that “every single day, almost without exception until January of 2021 [when President Joe Biden took office], the border was getting more and more secure.”  The cartels are taking advantage of the Biden administration’s border policies, Scott says, explaining that because most illegal aliens coming across the border are released into the U.S. interior, the cartels “push [asylum-seekers] all across at the same time.” The result, he says, is that “it overwhelms all the law enforcement resources so that [the cartels] can push a second wave through, commonly referred to nowadays as 'gotaways.'" The gotaways tend to be individuals who are "willing to pay more to not encounter a law enforcement officer,” Scott says, adding, “That's where most of the narcotics [are]. That's where most of the criminal aliens are.” Scott joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the long-term implications of Biden’s border policies and why Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is allowing the crisis to continue at the southern border.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Feeling festive. Catch classic holiday favorites like Home Alone, the Santa Claus and Die Hard, along with holiday episodes from Family Guy, Abbott Elementary, and more with Hulu on Disney Plus. From festive Disney flicks to binge-worthy Hulu originals, Hulu on Disney Plus is your home for the holidays. Celebrate the season with Hulu, available on Disney Plus in Canada. My entire career, every single day, almost without exception, until January of 2020. the border was getting more and more secure over every single one of those presidential administrations.

This is the day of the political podcast for Friday, February 10th. I'm Pridina Allen. And that was former chief of the United States Border Patrol, Rodney Scott. Mr. Scott served in Border Patrol for 30 years and says every president worked to make the border secure until President Joe Biden took office. So today, we are digging into the realities of what is happening at the same. southern border, from the role the cartels are playing to the long-term implications the border crisis will have on your local community. Plus, we get into why the Biden administration has

allowed the situation at the border to become so out of control. Stay tuned for my conversation with Rodney Scott after this. Hi, I'm John Carlo Canaparo. And I'm Zach Smith. And we host Scotus 101. It's a podcast where you'll get a breakdown of top cases in the high court in the land. Hear from some of the greatest legal minds. And of course, get a healthy dose of of Supreme Court trivia. Want to listen? Find us wherever you get your podcasts or just head to heritage.org slash podcasts. We are continuing to see a record number of illegal migrants crossing our border and here with us to talk about not only the current crisis but also the long-term implications is the former Border Patrol chief and the current distinguished senior fellow

for Border Security at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Rodney Scott, Mr. Scott. Thank you so much for being here. No, thank you for having me today. I look forward to the conversation. Now, you served in Border Patrol for three decades, and you were the 24th Chief of the United States Border Patrol. Explain what exactly a normal day is like in the life of a Border Patrol agent. Help us understand what exactly the job entails.

That could take hours. And the reason I say that is you see a lot on TV. But it's the United States Border Patrol, not just the Southwest border. So it can change minute by minute. Day by day, it's very unpredictable. That's what I loved about the job, and that kind of what is a driving force for a lot of people to apply. But day in and day out, the average border patrol agent, you come into a station. You get your equipment in a vehicle, but you're giving an assignment for the day, just like any other police department would do traditionally.

However, when you leave the station, unlike most law enforcement, you're going to be on your own for the rest of the shift. You may or may not have a partner. You're going out. You could be in San Diego where you have backup pretty close. But most, if you did average, they're going out to patrol wide open sections of border kind of on their own. When something happens, they might call a partner, but it may take 30, 40 minutes for that guy to get there. So it's really a really cool job normally. And you know that you're out there protecting the country.

Your job is more simple than anybody in the big, you know, like Washington, D.C. tries to make it. It's simply to make sure people use our front door. So once you're out in the field, there's really no immigration debate. There's no, like, debate about, you know, fentanyl or whatever else. Your job is literally just to make sure that no one sneaks into our home without going through the front door, which is the ports of entry. So all the politics go out the window. But you do, it's a little challenging because when you're encountering somebody, especially in the middle of the night, the agents don't know if it's drug smugglers or if it's economic migrants that are being used as cover for drug smugglers or it's just, you know, people trying to sneak into the U.S. So you have to approach it very cautiously every single time.

But they flip, they have to flip that switch really quick when all of a sudden it's a family group versus, you know, people with backpacks full of heroin or fentanyl or something else. But again, that adrenaline, that unknown is really kind of what attracts a lot of people to the job. Wow. Well, and I know you've experienced so much in your time in Border Patrol, and you had the opportunity to serve under several presidents, under both Democrats and Republicans. What are some of the differences that you would say are critical and key between what we've seen under the Biden administration versus what we saw

under Trump or Bush or even Obama. Sure. So before I step into that, for all the listeners, I want to make sure they fully understand I was a 30-year, almost 30-year Border Patrol agent. Even as the chief of the Border Patrol, you're what we call a career government official. It means you're not politically appointed. There's not supposed to be politics involved. You rise through the ranks, and basically you earn this job.

And it's all about the mission. It's not about the right, the left, Republican, Democrat, nothing. But with that said, night and day, this administration's approach to the border, I won't say border security because they don't have any, was night and day from my entire career, not just the Trump administration. I got in in 1992. Some of your older listeners and viewers might, you could research this. It wasn't until about 1994 that the country really said, holy cow, we're losing complete control of our border. Bill Clinton, Janet Reno, they're down on the border, they're looking left and right, and we started having a strategy to systematically reestablish or gain control of the border.

Tons of video out there people seem to forget about. But again, under the Clinton administration, I was a pretty young agent, but I stood beside Janet Reno and San Diego, kind of explained what we were dealing with every day, and we started controlling our border. We literally started building barriers. We started coming up with better strategies that were personnel, technology, and infrastructure. We didn't use those terms back then, but that's what we were. we were doing. But from my entire career, every single day, almost without exception, until January of

2021, the border was getting more and more secure over every single one of those presidential administrations. And it really was because of this. One, it wasn't just the resources. Border Patrol grew under, while I was in the Border Patrol, we grew from just over 4,000 to 21,370 before Congress defunded them down to a little bit below 20,000. But we were rolling out also policies and we were making sure there was a consequence for an illegal activity because you can throw all the infrastructure you want on the border but if there's no consequence for the illegal entry then they're just going to keep coming the Biden administration reversed not just the Trump's administration that's that's the talking point of the day but they reversed every one of

those administration's efforts to secure the border reinstated catch and release so basically most of the illegal aliens today that crossed the border the Border Patrol even in counters are being released into the U.S. That creates this draw, but the more importantly, people need to understand, the cartel is now using that every single day. Basically, they look what's north, how many border virtual agents and law enforcement agents are on the north side of the border. They hold back however many illegal aliens that they think.

Now, you know, some people would call them asylum seekers. And in this case, most of those are people that are willing to surrender to border patrol agents, and they push them all across at the same time. What that does is it overwhelms all the law enforcement resources so that they can push a second wave through, commonly referred to nowadays, as Godaways. And those are the individuals that are willing to pay more to not encounter a law enforcement officer. That's where most of the narcotics is. That's where most of the criminal aliens are. And this administration literally stopped border wall construction.

They stopped the due process that we created with the migrant protection protocols. They stopped the safe third country agreements that we were establishing with. other countries to make sure asylum seekers could get safety, but they couldn't nation shop. And they created literally this catch and release process that is now a complete disaster on our southwest border. So it's really a complete reversal of not just the Trump administration, but three decades of my border security of Republicans or Democrats, they reversed all of that. So when we look at the differences, what now compared to, you know, what your life was like

as a Border Patrol agent, in contrast, what are Border Patrol agents having to deal with today that they really weren't having to deal with or maybe weren't having to deal with to the degree 10 or 15 years ago or even five years ago? Or two and a half. Or two and a half years ago. So as we started off when I explained them, like what the average day of a Border Patrol agent is, that was my experience. Yeah. We still had processing.

We still had transportation duties where you were doing, quote, not enforcement kind of care and feeding, but it was a very, very small percentage, maybe out of a five-day work week, you might get assigned that once. It really has shifted now. So there are a few Border Patrol agents out there still at the beginning of the shift that are doing kind of what I just told you. But unfortunately right now, and I think earlier this week in testimony, one of the chiefs testified to Tucson sector, the largest sector out there,

at the beginning of the shift before anybody knew is arrested that day, over 20% of the agents never leave the station. They're assigned right out the gate to what we'd call administrative non-enforcement duties. Care and feeding, taking aliens to the hospital, processing. But what he left out of that is the fact that within an hour or two of this shift, because the cartel is holding these groups and strategically pushing large groups across or multiple small groups, most of the agents out in the field, in many, many cases, 100% of the agents out in the field, are then tied up with a group of illegal aliens.

and then they have to either transport them back. And I think it would help to give a little bit of a visual here. Yeah. Think of a group of about 150, 200 people at a time, and you're pretty far, say 30-minute drive from where they need to go. And you can think, this is usually remote, but think of whatever, it's almost irrelevant, in a 12-passenger van. So this isn't like they pick them up and move them all at one time.

It can take hours to get a single group of 100 out of the desert back to a facility to process them because you only have these 12 passenger vans or a Tahoe. You can only put so many people in. So they're just having to run back and forth and back and forth. Correct. So then really they're all taken out of enforcement. So even though the testimony was 20% are not doing patrol enforcement duties, that's at the beginning of shift.

It's a little misleading. By an hour or two in because of the way the cartel scripts this, every agent is stuck doing processing or transporting. So they're not doing those patrol functions that I talked to you about before, which is what we pay them and expect them to do. So we're leaving hundreds and hundreds of miles of border open every single day. Luckily in Arizona over the last several administrations, again, not just the Trump administration, we'd rolled out some integrated fixed towers, some new technology, some new sensors.

So that's when you hear gotaways, those are only the known gotaways. That means one of those sensors or one of those cameras identified people illegally crossing into the United States, but we were completely out of agents and there was nobody left to respond. So those are documented Godaways. But there are huge sections in New Mexico, some areas in California, and pretty much most of South Texas were we never got there. You know, the Trump border wall included sensor systems and included new technology that was in the ground. I'm getting into all that maybe a little bit later. All that got shut off by the Biden administration.

So even if there's a physical barrier, none of the technology got deployed, so they're blind. As soon as agents aren't in those areas, we literally can't document Godaways. because there's nowhere there to document it. And then, I don't know if you saw recently, CBP lost funding for their aerostat program. An aerostat is kind of like that Chinese balloon, basically, except it's on a tether. So it provides a camera overview where there's not a lot of other technology.

We're using a lot of those in South Texas because it's so flat. CBP's funding for that just got completely cut. So we're going to lose that eye in the sky, so there's going to be less situational awareness. So for the Biden administration, Godaways are going to go down. But it's not because they really went down. It's going to be because nobody's out there to report them. No one's seeing it. Wow.

When these migrants are picked up by Border Patrol, where is Border Patrol taking them? What are some of the destinations and where is Border Patrol having to bust them back and forth to? Sure. So it varies dramatically. And for some of your listeners, I want to clarify the term migrant. So from a legal standpoint, I even use the term migrant a lot, anybody that's like moving from point. made a point B, like migrating, if you will, up to our southern border. I even call that a migrant.

But the second you cross the border into the United States, by law, under the INA, that is an illegal alien, because whether you're claiming asylum or not, you're not supposed to cross in between the ports of entrance, it's a violation of 8 U.S.C. 1325. Anyway, so, board patrol, once they encounter an illegal alien, or even a U.S. citizen that's smuggling across the border, because that does happen. In my last year's Border Patrol, there's like 1,500 arrests of U.S. citizens smuggling narcotics or aliens cross-aboard, they have to be taken back, for the most part, to a centralized processing facility. The only exception to that is under Title 42. We were

trying to keep people out of stations because of the COVID and everything else. So we do have some remote processing capabilities, but it's pretty limited out in the field. That in San Diego is only, there's 60 miles a border. That could be a five to 10 mile drive, but usually it's pretty rugged mountains, still not super fast. But in Arizona and even some parts of South Texas, that could be an hour or a two hour drive from remote sections of the desert. And again, the cartel usually kind of times this out, maps it out. That's why you see, quote-unquote, asylum seekers crossing through these very remote areas in the middle of nowhere, you're like, if you're going to surrender, why would you go way out there to do it? It's so that they can drag out border patrol's logistics and make

them spend as much time as possible on these migrants that are willing to surrender. So the cartels are orchestrating all of this. There's nothing that crosses the southwest border without working with the cartels. They're either directly paying the cartels or the cartels are controlling their movements for another benefit, meaning to systematically overwhelm border patrol, create a gap in the border security, and then bring the narcotics across. That just seems shocking to me. Everyone, you can say with confidence that every single person that illegally is crossing the border, they've had some sort of contact. with cartels.

Yes. Wow. Yeah. There's a lot of studies to back that up. And you could go to DEA, get out of immigration for many. Go to DEA, go to ICE, but the HSI, the Homeland Security Investigations aspects of it, or go to anybody in Border Patrol. That hasn't always been that way, by the way.

Early in my career, what people kind of visualize sometimes did happen. We used to have groups of people, economic migrants that wanted to come into the United States illegally. They'd line up on the border. They may or may not have a guide that they would pay. And then sometimes they would just rush across and you catch who you can and sometimes they sneak across. But over the last several decades, the control of the cartels in Mexico is just off the charts. And I do agree, by the way, that we need some new laws. We need to attack this differently because they're a bigger threat to the security of this country than most people understand.

They control the border today. And they control the border today under the Biden administration because of this mass migration to a level that they've never had. And I mean like they don't almost worry, they don't worry hardly at all about what they're trying to get in because their success rate is so high. The hearings earlier this week talked about narcotics. Most of the fentanyl comes through the ports of entry. No, most of the fentanyl is caught right now at a port of entry because there's a law enforcement officer with detection equipment standing there every day waiting to greet you, talk to you and inspect your car, your luggage, whatever. when the cartel can systematically remove all law enforcement from a huge section of border for hours and hours on time over and over and over again, how much is coming through there? Because last I checked, we don't have a shortage of fentanyl in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, wherever.

That stuff's crossing the southwest border. So I think the big question is why isn't the Biden administration stopping this? And how did they let it get this bad? I mean, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, he's not dumb. He's a smart, intelligent individual. Why isn't he taking strategic action to stop this? So now that's the politics, right? So I've always tried to avoid explaining why someone else is doing something.

But at a certain point in time, you just have to look at all the evidence in front of you. So this is what I do know. And I'll touch the why maybe, but it probably skirt it for the most part. But this is what I do know. Everything you just said about Alejandro Mayorkas is factual. He was part of DHS under prior administrations where deterrence was working, where we were systematically improving the security of the border. And he is, I've been interacting with him. He's a very smart individual.

Every decision he makes is deliberate. But if you back up, what shocks me more is why are we surprised at any of this? Biden campaigned on this. Everybody stood up during the campaigns and said illegal aliens should have access to health care. They should, we should be more welcoming. People on the south side of the border were literally wearing Biden t-shirts before the election. This administration, literally, if you back up and look at it, they said from day one, we have a plan. We're going to act on that plan.

Our plan will be successful. We didn't, even I as the chief, didn't realize that plan was really to open the border. All these decisions are deliberate. And there's a lot of evidence that. Why? I don't know why. This is damage in our country. And I'm not talking about, like, just the immigration aspect.

I mean the amount of fit in all narcotics. The lack of ability to control who and what enters our country or even no. I don't understand. Because I've never, Tom Homan said this the other day. I've got to give him credit. And it made sense. He's like, tell me what's bad about border security? What is the downside of having good border security?

But this administration is 100% set. They've doubled down on this strategy of catch and release, let as many people come in as possible. they're even trying to create new ways to get around the refugee program to let more people come through this illegal parole process. Why? I don't know. To be completely honest, the only thing I can figure out is they also fought having the census differentiate between U.S. citizens and illegal aliens. And it comes down to congressional seats. The more people in the district or more people in a state, the more congressional seats they get. I can't think of any other real reason that in voting. So when we think then about the long-term consequences and effects, obviously we're seeing the immediate effect of fentanyl overdoses and communities being really overwhelmed by just the sheer number of these illegal aliens.

But let's fast forward five, ten, fifteen years down the road to maybe just a suburban community in America. how could a community like that be affected by illegal immigration? Again, it's beyond the illegal immigration. Let me remind everybody of this as well. Nothing stays at the border. Nobody crossing that border to include the cartel, to include the person backpacking fentanyl or coming through the port of or else. Their destination is not El Paso, Texas.

It's not even really San Diego. It's your town. whoever's listening to this, the destination is your city in your town. It's coming there. So what is that? What is it? DHS, again, we have a short memory, but DHS was created after 9-11 because 19 people. There were 20, but one of them got caught by Customs and Border Protection in Florida and got kicked out.

There were 19 people caused 9-11. There's more behind the scenes, but we're directly involved. prior to this administration, by the way, let me back up, so we create CBP, right? And we work on, they all came through a port of entry. They all came legally. So we worked hard to tighten down the ports of entry to make sure that that couldn't happen to get into the maximum extent, shared information with different countries around the world, have biometrics at ports of entry so that they probably couldn't exploit that as easily again,

knowing full well that they're not going to just go home, they're going to try something else. So what is that? That means you can't get into this country through the front door. You're going to try to get through it in between the front doors. In between. So we've been locking that down for years. But if you go back before the Biden administration, the most individuals in one year that the United States border ever encountered that were on the National Terrace Watch List,

crossing that southwest border, were six. And literally that was just the last, like a year before. On average, it was like three. Last year, there were 98 and were already documented. I think it's a little higher, but official CBP numbers are already up to 38 this fiscal year. Wow. So what's the long-term effect? How many more were in the gotaways?

Yeah. How many criminals? We document gangs all the time that we've been here before. By the way, the only way we really know is they've been here before we've already documented. They got deported, came back, or a small database down El Salvador in Honduras on gang members. They're in your community. So unfortunately, we're not really going to know until another person can, gets killed until a bomb goes off. But this isn't just about illegal immigration. This isn't about,

you know, how cheap can I get lettuce that the left would make it or getting your lawn mode or whatever else. This is integrating every part of our community and it's not just the fentanyl. Fentanyl is a product. It lays there. There's other ways we can attack that. But these are people and a lot of them want to do harm to either individuals and that's what I classify as criminals or the country as a whole. And we haven't even talked about nation state actors. If you don't think other countries aren't, adversaries aren't exploiting this open border and getting their assets into the country and just tell them sit tight until we give you orders or start collecting information that we can use against America long term, you're naive. This is not about illegal immigration. This is about national security simply knowing who and what comes into our home.

And we've given that up. Well, one of the things I've been seeing is we have seen an uptick in Chinese nationals apprehended at the southern. board correct correct and we've seen an uptick just I could have answered yes in the affirmative to any nationality that you wanted right now over 171 different countries that CBP just reported out at another event I was at the National Sheriff's Association over 171 different nationalities were in the illegal aliens that crossed this last year they encountered so there's been an increase in everything Russians Ukrainians Syrians CBP lists some of these by the way on CBP.gov there's a stat sheet

on there. A lot of people don't know about. That's one thing I'm really proud of as Chief, Commissioner Morgan really did this. We started, we've increased transparency to a level that we had never seen before. There's all these, if you go to stats, there's interactive charts that you can kind of select. We didn't get, we didn't get it done as much as we wanted to, but there's more there than anywhere else. I encourage your listeners to go on there and start looking at the nationalities we're catching people from. Well, and what is public? Because if you go on the CBP website, they'll tell you specifically for Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, how many encounters there have been in any particular month?

And then there's just this other category. Correct. But they just expanded the other category. And it's still not what it should be. But this was something we were working on when I was still chief. And it looks like it finally took effect a couple months ago. That other category is a little bit smaller now. And there's a list of about 15 or 20 different nationalities on that same exact chart.

It was exactly what you said. And the vast majority were in other. If you go 171, the vast majority are still in other, but it does list Russia, China, Syria. It lists a lot of the countries that I've been pushing hard. I honestly think it should be every single nation. I don't know why it's not. I'm actually pushing Congress to legislate a mandate that ICE and CBP published that publicly. But we'll see how that goes.

Yeah, keep pushing for that. Step in the right direction with transparency. We need that. How is that bad anyway, too, right? Exactly. This administration is so opaque. They claim they're transparent, but why aren't the chiefs allowed to speak? Why were so many chiefs prohibited from going to Congress?

They were only two were allowed to speak. Transparency is what America deserve. Absolutely. It was interesting during Biden's State of the Union address. He, of course, he had to talk about the border. It would have been, it just wouldn't have been appropriate if he hadn't have brought it up. So he did reference it briefly, and he obviously kind of picked and chose, he wanted to talk about. But he said that since we launched our new border plan last month,

unlawful migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have come down 97%. Is that true that from these specific countries that we've seen a 97% decrease in illegal aliens coming across because of policies that Biden put in place? So the real numbers haven't been published yet. So we kind of have to assume that in the state of the union, he's not going to flat out give a wrong statistic. I mean, it's not the first time. So even if it is true, there's always more to it. Because there's a lot of stats they throw out there that are technically true, but in the big picture or not. For example, they'll tell you that most migrants show up to their hearings.

If they get an NTA or they're allowed into the U.S. that they actually do show up to their hearings. But when you go all the way through this process, you find out that 90% are denied any legal right to stay, but only 6% are ever actually deported. They won't talk about that piece. And this is a little bit similar. Rhetoric does matter. It does. It affects cross-border activity. So let me give you an example. When Trump was elected, based on his campaign rhetoric, we called it the Trump effect. All of a sudden, all the cross-border illegal activity dried up at first. But then when they realized that there was no real policy changes, there was no law change at first. This is, you know, beginning of the administration. It came back, and we started seeing those caravans. So I think a little bit of it is that, that literally you heard all the campaign, you heard all the rhetoric about this new program. We're going to let all these people in.

If you cross illegally, you're not going to be allowed. So my sources and contacts in Border Patrol and in Mexico still that we worked with before tell me all the shelters are packed, all the loadhouses are packed, the aliens are there, the migrants, because they haven't crossed yet, they're not illegal yet, they're all there ready to go, but they kind of like slowed down all of a sudden because they heard this opportunity. Will it last? And what is your objective, though, as a U.S. citizen? Because they haven't said they're going home.

They're just now going to try to use the illegal parole process that this administration is put it in place to hide them by bringing them through a port of entry instead of in between the ports of entry. Does that allow Border Patrol to expand out and then basically be able to patrol and find those gotaways? You would think so. However, they talk about an overall decrease in cross-border illegal activity. It was 300,000 in December. That is so over the top, the Border Patrol is so overwhelmed, dropping it in half even down to 150,000, because by the way the 97 is only those specific countries. So there's some rhetoric out there right now that January numbers will drop by almost 50%. That would still be 150,000 illegal aliens crossing

the border into the United States and between the ports of entry in a month. We simply don't have enough agents to handle that. That still gives the cartel everything they need to shape the border to bring in every single threat they want at will. So you got to dig in a little bit more as my point to all that. Yeah, got to be aware. Now, with those sheer numbers crossing, What's the impact on private entities in America, whether it be hospitals or businesses, how is it felt in the private sector? I think it's felt a lot more than people would think, and I'll just give you a couple of examples, and I encourage your viewers, though, to open their eyes, because if you're not looking for this,

you literally won't see it. Maybe the first one's not a good example, but you'll see this one. Try going to an emergency room or an urgent care within 50 miles of that. the Southwest border right now. You're going to be waiting hours and hours. On average, and this is just an average, on average, the United States Border Patrol is making 24 trips a day to local medical facilities. They have some medical, like they have doctors, well, they have some doctors, they have some medical capability within CBP. They're trying to build that out. But anything serious, they have to take them to whatever the local hospital is where your kids go, where you go.

And it's backing that whole system up because the Southwest border, a lot of these are little small towns and they don't have a robust medical infrastructure. So it's taken away. And by the way, if they're in custody, it gets reimbursed. But any immigrant, any illegal alien crossing the border that gets hurt and it ends up in a hospital that didn't go through customs and border protection, you're paying for that. That cost falls on the hospital. That falls on the hospital or some local social service or something. Unless they're actually in government custody, the government does not pay that bill back. How else does that affect you? Well, what does that relate to? That 24 trips a day is over 73,000 man hours that's taken away from border

enforcement because somebody has to take them to the hospital. That's a Border Patrol agent. How else does it affect you? Local social services are being completely overwhelmed. Completely overwhelmed. If you live in the state of Texas, you're paying for border security twice now because under Operation Lone Star, the state has decided that border security is so important And if the federal government's not going to do it, they're going to step in. But guess where all those cops and all those national guards came from? The rest of the state. So there are fewer patrols in Dallas, in Houston, in Lubbock, because they're down on the border right now.

And there should be federal agencies there. This goes on and on. Some people think this sounds racist. I don't mean it racist. I mean from literally a work standpoint, but English is a second language. And your schools takes away from your kid. I know schools that literally it's completely wiped out their budget and they're spending so much time now on English as a second language programs that they're shutting down honors programs. They're shutting down arts. They're shutting down sports because they don't have the money to do all of this. We're talking millions and millions of people coming to this country with nothing. Who's paying for that? CBP, well, DHS just created a $800 million grant program. for sheltering and services specifically for illegal aliens that goes to nonprofits to help them out.

While they were shutting off funding for the border wall, why they were taking down aerostats, why they were getting rid of detention space for ICE so they can't even detain criminals if they wanted to. Nothing stays at the border. All this comes to you. And I think everything from local law enforcement to your schools, to the local medical, to the taxes you pay. And honestly, no one wants to think about it. Eventually, when a bomb goes off, it's not going to be at the border. If there is a terrorist act in this country, they're not going to do that in McAllen or El Paso. It's going to be in the heartland of America.

And I'm afraid that those people already got there. And they're in the process of planning it now. You know, I think it's interesting to look at the perspective that lawmakers have. I mean, we've seen for, I know, on one side, you have Republican Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona who's calling for myorkas to be impeached. And then on the other side, you have individuals like Democrat representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who recently suggested that border patrol agents should be fired if they work with organizations that are on the Southern Law Poverty Centers' hate group list,

and all sorts of organizations on that list, including conservative groups like the Family Research Council. I mean, what do you think comments like the one that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made reveal about the far left's perspective on what's really going on at the border? So it makes you, two things, it makes you question their motives. I really don't listen to anything she says anymore. I mean, when she went to the border and accused Border Patrol agents of making aliens drink at toilet water, and it was proven wrong immediately, and we showed the whole

system, or the whole, the fake whipping incident, basically she's just trying to fan her base. They accuse, both sides accuse the other, like, fanning their base. But here's the thing. All their arguments are completely void of fact, evidence, or reality. And that's the catch. If you look at the other side of it, if you will, Majoricus lied to Congress. So forget about politics for a minute. And this is what I try to talk, because I do have friends that don't necessarily agree with me on all my political views.

But I ask them a couple things. One, you got to separate border security from immigration. So that's the other thing. They always get into this emotional immigration and talk about maybe, your nanny or whoever cleans your yard, the nicest person you ever met in the world. And they don't talk about how this illegal immigration second, third level effects, creates this whole cartel feeds it, allows terrorists to get anything else, right? But it's all emotion.

But that's, border security is not about immigration. Border security is about simply knowing who and what is coming into your home. Do you believe that it's wrong to ask somebody to come to your front door or your house when they come visit you? That's all we're asking is a nation. Don't sneak through my windows, don't cut holes in my walls. Andy Biggs understands that, but when you get to the politics part of it, right or left, should it matter, if somebody goes, especially a confirmed government official, goes in front of Congress and flat out lies under oath, shouldn't they be impeached? And Majorcas has all the stats I had as chief.

We had conversations. Nobody ever before, even in the Trump administration, said the border was secure because it wasn't. We said we were getting better and better and we had a plan to get there. He lied in front of Congress, said the border was secure, knowing that over 2,000 illegal aliens were documented getting away every single day, knowing that we were leaving hundreds and hundreds of miles on the southwest border completely unmanned, that we had gutted the northern border of personnel and were leaving thousands of miles on the northern border unmanned. Thank God, Canada is a little bit more of a reliable partner,

and they were trying to help fill some of those gaps. We haven't even talked about the coast. If you notice recently, Florida's got a significant increase in migrant landings. How could you say the border secure? Yeah. The man lied. I don't care who, what R.D. or an I, you should be impeached. So what are the solutions here?

Just briefly, what can be done to rein in the situation and actually get it under control? So it's not that complicated. In application, it gets a little difficult, but the concept is not that complicated. There has to be a consequence for a crime. And again, let's get out of border security for a minute. If you have children, think about it. If you reward a behavior, you're going to get that behavior over and over again, right? It's simple.

When you let people into the country, regardless of how they entered, and let them hang out for six to eight years before they get their final order that you know they're not going to follow of removal because they didn't meet the criteria, it doesn't end. There are some things Congress needs to do, but we proved through the last three decades, multiple administrations, but to a level never seen before under the Trump administration, we can secure the border. What did that mean? That meant we put due process back in the right order. All these people that want to claim asylum, they have a right to claim asylum. Okay,

that's fine, but you don't have a right to be released into the United States to be free for several years until your case is heard. So we came up with the migrant protection protocols. Why did we do that? Because Congress refused to fund detention. So there's two ways to have due process before you release people before they get their prize. You just prevent them from coming in, or you detain them. By law, they're supposed to be detained or removed. This administration has chosen to release them.

You change that. 90% of the fraudulent claims go away overnight because that's all they want is released into the U.S. Migrant protection protocols or detention, or something similar to that would do it. And then continue to build out the border wall. What did the border wall really do and who came up with it? That was designed over three decades

by Border Patrol agents, the Trump administration came in and said, what do you guys need? How do we secure the border? And then he listened to the Border Security experts. Some of those Border Security experts got ran out, but there's still quite a few there. Just listen to them. The other thing that people don't know about the Biden administration is we had integrated workgroups beyond Border Patrol at DHS of career government officials giving good advice. They shut all those down.

They sent all those guys back home and now political appointees that have never, ever done anything in Border Security, the ones making the policy. flip that dynamic back, bring those work groups back together, listen to the government officials of how we can secure the border, and that would help. But anyway, sorry, the border wall makes every, it buys time in the simplest context. It lets every single agent out in the border, out patrolling, cover a larger area by themselves. So it's a force multiplier, if you will, it's kind of a military term. But it also takes away the ability of the cartel to quickly push a huge group to your left

and then push a big group of criminals or narcotics to your right because you have that barrier and there was supposed to be a sensor with that barrier. Biden shut all that off. So unfortunately, you don't want to have that sensor system, but at least you still have a barrier. Finish building out the true border wall system that included that sensor system, the technology and the physical infrastructure to slow them down. And that's about 80% of your problem right there.

And then you can focus on the real criminals, the cartels, and start systematically dismantling those and fight and basically reestablishing the border period and then ultimately security on that border. Mr. Rodney Scott, thank you. We really appreciate your time. No, this is so insightful. Thank you so much. I think we probably could have kept going for another two hours.

There's so much to unpack, but really appreciate your expertise and you taking the time to break this down for us. Thank you. I appreciate you helping keep the truth out there and all that you guys do for America. Thank you. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Thank you so much for joining us today. And if you haven't had a chance already, be sure to check out our evening show right here in this podcast feed where we bring you the top news of the day. Also, if you haven't done so already, we can just take five minutes to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen. We love seeing those ratings and reviews come in. And it's so helpful for us, both to hear your feedback, but also just keep spreading the word to more and more listeners. We hope that you all have a wonderful. wonderful weekend, but we'll hopefully see you right back here at 5 p.m. for our top news

edition. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.