The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 391: Border Patrol

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Steven Rinella talks to Richard Fortunato, Charles Trost II, James Searl, Janis Putelis, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: Pistol packing bagpipe players; the U.S. Border Patrol's role in public land and critter management; Jani's daughter's incredible turkey gobbling skills; the time when Steve and Jani got pulled over by Border Patrol; wild horses; establishing base truth; darting eyes and deception; templing; HR concerns; speaking Yiddish on The MeatEater Podcast; picking up your poop with your bare hands under threat; the Makushi story about the disappearance and reappearance of the white-lipped peccary population; why pronghorns and dogs smell like Fritos; operating between ports of entry; what you can't bring back from Canada; when do you know that you've crossed the border?; making a meaningful entry; the Tick Riders; big ass blimps; monitoring critters with Border Patrol surveillance cameras; skilled at tracking; carrying diamonds across the Boundary Waters; wildlife smuggling; the pronghorn roundup; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Alright everybody, we got the room packed with, apparently, it's packed with pistol pack and bagpipe players. I mean, I know you guys play bagpipes, but you guys, I'm assuming you pack pistols, is that a word? Yes, sir.

Pistol pack and bagpipe players. Why don't you introduce yourselves? My name's Rich Fortunato. I'm the acting chief patrol agent of the Haver sector border patrol sector. Hold on. Say that real slow. Richard Fortunato, the acting chief patrol

agent of the Haver sector border patrol sector. So you're patrolling the Northern border. I'm patrolling. Actually, the AOR for Haver sector is Montana, east of the Continental Divide, Idaho, east of the Continental Divide, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. So we do work throughout that entire area. Colorado. I hope you catch them before they come in from the north, I imagine.

Well, yeah. So the stuff that we try to do down in the States, in Wyoming and Colorado is more of a task force working with other law enforcement partners. Gotcha. And working on that type of traffic. The border nexus stuff is obviously in Montana. Got it. Yeah.

I got a bunch of questions about the Northern border. I've been- The quiet, I don't know, the quiet border. Well, I wouldn't say it's quiet. I would say that it's, uh, it's different, right? So it's, it's, uh, the traffic that we have on the Southern border is definitely different from the type of traffic that we have on the Northern border. Yep. So obviously the stuff that they see, uh, down South is, is, is Central American, uh, South American based.

And the stuff that we see on the Northern border is more based in eastern european romanians and what was that right yeah oh okay we'll get into that uh sir hi charles trost um currently the tucson sector public lands liaison agent u.s border patrol i just finished up a three-year detail as a national public lands liaison agent program manager okay so get, I get it, but, but get, approach it with a different set of words. So, um, basically, um, I, I served as, uh, the, the first point of contact for our land management, um, agency partners, um, you know, being the border patrol, you know, typically we're along the border, that's where we're working. Um, but we don't actually own any property, any land out there. So the areas that

we're patrolling, it's other people's property, if you would, you know? Um, so, and that's typically along the border, that's department of interior or U S um, department of agriculture being forest service land. Um, so BLM land and forest service land. Well, and not just BLM, you have fish and wildlife service refuges. Okay. You have, um, you know, you have the national conservation areas with BLM. You also have national parks that are along the border areas. And so, you know, that's just part of it. And then you also have like. Oh, that's good.

Yeah. Big Bend, right? Yeah. Big Bend National Park. Huge national park along the border. Organ Pipe National Cactus Monument. Another big one. Coronado national memorial.

I mean, there's a whole lot, the Hukumba wilderness, um, in California, there's all kinds of areas. And so, um, you know, those land management agencies, when, when we're patrolling, you know, if there's an issue, I'm usually one of the first person, either myself or within the sector, there's a PLLA that they would contact and they would work out that issue. Along with that though, it's not just issues. Like if we have technology deployments that we're working on, we would reach out to them. And it's usually the PLLA that's, you know, helping to initiate that conversation and work through that. And then we find, you know, different collaborative work to do, you know, cross-agency training, because a lot of people don't really know about the areas that they're working in. Most border patrol agents,

they don't typically come from the area that they're assigned to. And so you're coming to this new land. So one of the things that the PLA program helps to do is not only improve the knowledge of the border patrol agent of the area that they're working in, but we also reach out to the public lands managers, and we teach their new employees about what the Border Patrol is, because they may not have any interaction with BP. And so we kind of try to teach them, hey, this is the work that we do. So they aren't just thinking we're out there roaming across their property,

you know, infringing on their resource. Like there's, there's a method behind the stuff that we're doing and we try to broker that and, and just kind of make sure that we're all on the same page that we're out there trying to protect the resource as a whole. We just have different approaches to doing it. And the end result being that the area is safe and that people can enjoy the resource for what it is uh are all you guys former military um i think i'm the only one okay yeah got it brody former uh former trivia master look at that scoreboard brody henderson why in my day over there in day, I was quite the trivia master. It'll all be decided. It'll all be decided.

That's right. The playoffs are coming up. Are you ready? I want to keep doing my old man Brody thing. I'm totally ready. Corinne's here. Phil, and then James, go ahead. Hey, James, go ahead. out to communities and find unique and different audiences to, um, communicate what the border

patrol does. Um, not just through what people see, uh, on the lens of mainstream media, but actually, you know, find, uh, find more intimate settings to communicate who border patrol agents are, um, and, uh, and engage with the public and, you know, provide additional transparency and tell them all the other things that we, you know, you're not going to see just by watching big news. Um, tell, you know, what, what's, what's in the other things that we, you know, you're not going to see just by watching big news. Tell, you know, what, what's, what's in the gravy that makes up border security. And like Charles explained, working with, you know, three letter agencies to on, on various lands to, to do our job and border security mission, but also in further their missions as well.

Was it, it was you that reached out with like a thing of like, you guys talk about stuff that is that has implication has border implications absolutely and you had a a many many a very detailed email of many episodes where we bordered on the borders yeah first first paper first paper i wrote on reaching out to you guys was back in 2017 and uh and when uh what happened? It's just different times, sir. And- You wrote us in 2017? Oh, I wrote a paper internally to my organization on doing outreach with Meat Eater back in 2017. Oh, I thought you meant that you tried to get ahold of us and no one called you back. That's happened two more recently, but-

Really? Who specifically? I had to phone a friend. I had to phone a friend. And I believe the team in Havre reached out back in early summer, I think. Right. But just through the regular website contact. You never know who you're going to get.

Yeah, probably wound up in a junk box. People need to get a hold of, I hate to say it, but get a hold of Corinne. Corinne, you should, oh, never mind. People already do. Phone number out of family business. All right. We're going to cover a bunch of this stuff. So let me give you a couple of for instances, though,

and then we're going to talk about a couple other things. Wait, and Yanni's here. Oh, sorry, Yanni. Good morning. Yanni, play your... Real quick, play your daughter doing the... This is great. Yanni's daughter's learning how to gobble

like a turkey but he's got a video and when he showed me the video she's sort of dressed up real nice and facing the camera i thought she's gonna sing the lavian national anthem but instead she rips out a turkey gobble a couple turkey gobbles you've never seen a cuter uh how old is she she's eight soon to be nine uh a few of the episodes that that we talked about where we got into the landscape of what the Border Patrol does. We had episode 179, the Weed Warden. In James's words, this episode touches on cartel smuggling to support illegal marijuana grows on public lands. While this focuses on state conservation officer enforcement,

U.S. Border Patrol is part of the largest uniformed law enforcement agency in the nation that on an average day seizes 4,732 pounds of drugs, much of which crosses through or is seized on public lands. Did you guys see that video Heffelfinger posted when he was hunting in Arizona recently? Yeah, that was pretty interesting. Dude, uniformed smugglers. Yep. Yep. In matching cable outfits carrying backpacks. Yeah, he thought it was a bunch of hunters.

He realized, oh, shit. Yeah, it's fairly common. They were decked out in uniforms. It's fairly common. Yeah, he was impressed by the professionals. You'd be surprised on the level of copycat with not even just uniforms, but vehicles of what these folks will try to do. We've seen Border Patrol. We've seen FedEx. We've seen UPS.

A whole number of different things. Yeah, clone vehicles. That smugglers will try to use to get their product. Yeah, you guys almost busted me and Yanni one time. Remember when we were driving around in Douglas trying to find a place to go into someone's house? We were kind of lost in Douglas, and we were in a rental van,

and eventually we got pulled over by Border Patrol. Nothing suspicious about that. As soon as they looked in the window, they're like, what are you guys? Oh, we said, they're just basically, get out of here. But we're kind of lost, stopping and starting. Well, yeah, because we had to, I forget, we had maybe, we're going to leave a gun that we didn't have the proper permit for. We're doing a firearms delivery.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, basically, we're going to stash a firearm for a week while we were in Mexico and then come back and get it on the way just at a buddy's mom's house. Couldn't find her house. Found it. I just quickly run to the house. Drop off a gun. Come back. And yeah, that got us flagged. It makes you wonder

if they were following you the whole time. We got into a wild horse episode. And that touches you guys in a handful of ways. which is interesting. We'll get into that. Breaking wild horses is used for Border Patrol stuff. That episode, James' words, focus on impacts of wild horse overpopulation to public and tribal lands

and efforts of the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program, which U.S. Border Patrol is a consumer of. U.S. Border Patrol employs wild Mustangs for horse patrol operations in strategic locations on both the Northern and Southern borders. That's a trip. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

What do you guys, tell me again what you guys pay for one of those horses? I don't know the exact dollar amount, but compared to like buying a bread quarter horse, it's, you know, pennies on the dollar from what I understand. And a dog is eight, 9, on the dollar from what I understand. And a dog is eight, 9,000 bucks.

Yeah. Trained. Trained dog. Yeah. Trained dog. Trained horse is 300 or something like that. Yeah. Five maybe. Man.

Um, I don't know what that says about dogs and horses. We, uh, we said we, uh, covered episode 102 El Surpaiso, the gray ghost. Touches on dangers of crossing the border and hunting near the border in cartel country. Head on Chairman Rob Bishop, former Chairman Rob Bishop, exploring the potential impacts of infrastructure on public lands. U.S. Border Patrol owns the requirements that inform the development of barrier systems

along the southwest border, often referred to as the wall. Let me ask you a quickie. If you guys had to rate, okay, one being, ten being laying in bed with your spouse at night and how you might feel at liberty to talk about your opinions. Okay. That's 10. One being you're with the president.

Tracking. Where do you sit in your liberty to express opinion right now? I think it depends on the question. Okay. So. So I'd say low. No. Again, I wouldn't say that.

I mean, I think it just depends on the question, right? Because obviously we're a branch of the executive government, so we're bound by the administration. But my opinion kind of falls along with that direction, but it just depends on the question. Okay. Well, we'll see. Maybe that'll be Yanni's little job is he'll rate how honest he felt the replies. Okay.

But I feel like, I don't know if you did a good job of setting the parameters. I feel like you have to be honest with both your spouse and the president. No, dude. Let's say you're one of these fellas and you get invited to the White House. You're not going to go in there and let me tell you what I think. You're going to go in there and be like, Sir? Yes, sir. And take a picture and you're out the door.

You're not going to go in there and be like, hey, can I get a minute? From a personal opinion perspective. Yeah, but at night, with your wife, you'd be like, this is just the most fucked up thing I've ever, you know what I mean? Like whatever. Charles, what would you say? I just finished my details. So I think I'd be more at liberty to just let you know.

No, but no, I think with all of us within the patrol, you know, I feel comfortable saying that, but no, I, I think with, with all of us within, within the patrol, um, you know, I feel comfortable saying that, you know, just like what, what chief was just talking about, you know, I mean, we do have that, that executive branch, but along with, along with that, I mean, we all overall, we have the mindset of, you know, we want what's best for the country overall. We want to do what's right, not only, you know, for our fellow agents, but also for, you know, our fellow man and woman, you know, and child for the country. We're all looking at what's best for creating a good setup for national security. Although within the border patrol, you have additional things that you need to be concerned about. What's best for the technology deployment? What's best for recruiting and maintaining our cadre of agents? For me within public lands, not only what's best for national security, but what's best for the relationship we share with our land management partners and our stakeholders. And so it's trying to find that good balance and then being able to deliver that balance in a way that's palatable to both sides to understand and to accept, based on expert, based on opinions of being around, when I ask about any insights you guys might have around the question of wildlife migrations and the border wall. Yeah. So I'll be the only, no, no, don't do it now.

I'll just say this. I would say that if I was asked to go into president and provide my opinion on X topic, I would provide my opinion. And whether he decided to take it or not would be completely up to him. Yeah, my thing isn't yes. We have data that says they work. If you were to ask me, in my opinion, do I support walls? I wouldn't answer that question because I'm in line with what the administration wants to do. And that my opinion as a leader, walls work because the data says that walls work. Whether or not I agree with walls or not is my own personal opinion. And I think it's good business to keep my personal opinion out of professional. So.

Like you're interested, you're, you're, you're comfortable with an opinion around, or not an opinion, you're comfortable with objective analysis, but not like subjective opinions. Absolutely. Okay. Uh, so when I wanted to ask about, I don't want to spend a ton of time on this, but I think Corinne spoke to you about my desire to get a person to come in here to administer a lie detector.

Okay. The meteor office fish heist mystery. Well, I got a new lead on it last night. Oh, really? No. Oh, man. Yeah, good lead. Uh-oh.

It's ongoing. Oh, man. No, no, no, not the crime. Not who stole my fish. I got a good lead on getting a lie detector person in here. How much exposure do you guys have to administer in lie detectors? Me personally, I mean, I led the recruiting division before I left headquarters. James worked for me over there.

So I have a little bit of information on, on the CBP polygraph, but I was in law enforcement in Colorado and have taken many polygraphs. So. Okay. Do you, um, short of having one of them polygraphs, what's the, do you guys have a hot tip from, uh, from being an enforcement, a hot tip about how to tell when someone's spinning you a yarn? Well, I would say that the best way to be, and we'll talk a little tip about how to tell when someone's spinning you a yarn? Well, I would say that the best way to be, and we'll talk a little bit about read techniques, right, when you're, you ask somebody a baseline of questions, right?

If I'm talking to you on a second, I was, hey, where were you born? And he would give me that response and I'm, I'd be watching what he's doing. So if I was- Like whether or not he has a lie detector hooked up to him. Right.

Well, not, you don't even need a lie detector hooked up to him. So if I was to ask Yanni, what was the great- Do it with him. What was the greatest hunt that you ever had? Oh, that's when I went with Steve to Kentucky and we killed squirrels. Okay.

He's lying to you. Well, okay. So, and that would be based on the baseline questions, right? Where I'd ask and watch in his eyes. So historically, when people access a part of their brain that's truth, they'll look to that side of their brain. So when they go to tell a lie, they'll look to the other side because now. Like their eyes literally move?

Their eyes literally move. What's the true side? Well, you'll have to do, that's why you asked the baseline questions. Things that you know are true. What's your name? Where were you born? You know, how old why you asked the baseline questions. Oh. Things that you know are true. What's your name? Where were you born? You know, how old are you? And you watched their eyes.

Yeah. So a follow-up to that would be, uh, to, to determine truthfulness would be, uh, so Yanni, you know, what would you say to someone else who wants to go on a hunt in Kentucky for squirrels with Steve? Would you recommend that? Hmm.

Hmm. What, his eyes, his eyes. Did you see his eyes move? So when I asked him the question about. His eyes darted leftward. If you, I asked him the question about. Why did your eyes dart leftward? So I'll just give you.

I'm just part of a test here, bro. When I asked him what his greatest hunt was, his eyes actually flittered to my right or his left. But when he asked him the other question where he was going to make something up, they dotted to his right and my left. So that's how you can determine

whether or not they're being honest. Really? Yeah, I use it with my kids all the time. They hate me. So Steve, if you get, you know, if we get a couple more tips, maybe you could actually be the questioner. I'm going to start wearing shades around here. But when you do get a situation,

let's say you just encounter someone and you just talk you encounter someone in you and you just talk to him i we had a cop on the other day um but he wasn't here as a cop he was here as a walleye tournament person but i said to him man you gotta spend half your time having people tell you telling you bullshit or whatever and he said yeah but you probably spend half your time people telling you bullshit because it's just it's everywhere it's not like it's just in my world you know but how do you uh like how quickly do you know someone's not being forthright so you use like i said when you establish that baseline of questions you got an idea where they're going to look and then you start so that really is something you go to

absolutely and then when you start digging down to the questions then it's the other non-physical things they can't control. They cover their arms because they're, they're creating a barrier between you and them, or they push themselves back. They lean back. They put their feet up. They create barriers.

So whenever somebody is lying to you, they're, they don't sit comfortably. They, they physically can't control themselves. So they create barriers. So when you talk to people, you can see them starting to do those kind of things. You shouldn't be telling people this. Because now when I'm lying,

I'm going to look dead straight on and I'm going to lean toward the person. Unless there's an absolute sociopath working to me and it might be tougher. But isn't it like, isn't it if you are looking like dead straight that you're not able to hold that consistently? And if like someone is being questioned and they're trying not to lie,

they'll try to do the opposite of the thing that's anticipated of them. So if Steve is looking at you dead center too much, that might signal something in your mind. Breaking the tension of a gaze would be a nonverbal cue. Hold on, what does that mean, break? I know what it means, but what does that tell you? I mean, if they're locked on and they can't, they can't look at you straight while actually telling something that's false, they can't physically take the tension of looking you

directly in the eye to tell you that. It's easier for people to hold the gaze, tell them the truth. It's easier to tell them. Yes. Yes. You're going to be someone who's truthful is going to be actively engaged in the conversation probably like remembering pointing at things the the cooler was here uh this and they're because they're recollecting things that actually happened whereas someone who's lying is going to be searching and breaking that that tension so there's actually a video out there manuel noriega back in the, in the late nineties, where the, he was being interviewed by somebody on, on the news. And they were talking about a

bunch of things and he had exactly what you're talking about, where he had this set gaze and they got to the question, well, how much money do you really make? And you can watch the video. His eyes go from here. This is how much I make. I can't tell him that all the way over here to, this is what I'm going to tell them. And that, that video is actually out there on YouTube. So if you go and find that, it'll give you a pretty good idea of the video where he's locked in and they ask him a question and he looks and in that you can see that whole eye movement go back and forth. Nixon in the, uh, in the whitewater is the famous videos. He, he, he, he has a tell he, oh yeah.

Right. Like before he says you know i didn't there was no misconduct he says like three different things to prepare the national audience to you know listen to me i want you to hear me clearly he's like i'm preparing the nation to for what i'm about to lie to you about he's trying to like re-encourage everyone that what i'm about to say instead of just telling the truth he prepares everybody for what he's about to lie about. Incidentally, Bill Clinton did the same thing on the whole Monica Lewinsky thing. Oh, okay.

When he came out and said, I want to tell the American people. Can you talk about this? Templing. This triangle signal. Templing. Templing. When you're templing, it's like a show of dominance. Like I am, it's like I'm over you type of situation.

Can you describe what that is like your pointer well crit was describing this to me over the phone i thought it was clinton's signature deal where he like imagine you make a fist so i'm just to the audience imagine you make a fist that's sitting vertical so your knuckles are lined up vertical clinton would then roll his thumb over the top so it left so his thumb would rest on the middle knuckle of his pointer finger i think it was like i think he must have had a pointing habit i think he did that in that you know i did not and he's like driving the the point forward yeah and i think that someone said don't it's too aggressive and so he started to go up in that but he would then roll that pointer finger

and he'd have that little thumb pointing out and it was widely parodied so when criminal talking about clinton's hands i thought she was talking about that but you're talking about him making a some uh and and i guess him putting his fingers together making a little church yeah it's like templing is what i believe they call it yeah it's a it's a show of dominance over who you're talking to apparently Apparently it's a subconscious thing. Yeah. I think I do. You're bringing me on at my kids.

But I associate with trying to like calm myself down where I'm like, listen, look me in the eye. Yeah. I'm establishing dominance for sure. Yeah. All right. Uh, got'm establishing dominance for sure. Alright. Gotta plug our trivia tournament. We're gonna crown a

2022 Meat Eater Trivia Champion. Three tournament episodes. So the way it's gonna go is it's gonna be like an elimination thing. I'm trying to think of a good sports analogy, but I can't. Help me out. Any playoff. It's a playoff. Help me out. Any playoff? Playoff.

Bracket. Any bracket? Ever? We're going to start with 14 players. Do you guys play along? The Meteor Trivia? Ever? It's unfortunate we're not having one today because we were all prepared. I came in thinking we probably were.

Me too. Spencer's not here. You'd have been in trouble. I came in thinking we probably were. Me too. Spencer's not here. Spencer's gone. You'd have been in trouble. I continue to hear from Tommy Edson, the blue-collar scholar, who always sends me his scorecard on his steering wheel. I think he does it on lunch break or something at work.

And he sent me the other day. He had a night. Tommy Edson thinks he'd be the reigning champion, but then we had him here, and he didn't win. I don't know what his performance was like had him here and he didn't win. Wah, wah. I don't know what his performance was like. I just, I don't know.

I got to get him back here. He's always telling me he won this and won that. We're going to start with 14 players and weed them out as we go. A lot of drama and surprises along the way. Will Brody Henderson. on the way will brody henderson um you know i'm gonna i'm gonna talk to hr about this ageism thing that's going on while you're doing it you know uh i'm gonna go down there with you yeah because you know what i learned is ageism did you know that you can't dog on someone for not knowing technology. That's ageism. You can't say,

oh, he's not tech savvy of a person of my age. And that's all anybody does is goof on me. I get skinny shamed. I get tech shamed. Yep. So yeah, let me know when you go down there.

You better watch out for that ageism, man. We'll go down there and I'll be like, Brody has some complaints about me and I have some complaints about everybody else. Was it inappropriate for me to say Phil

sounded twice his age? I don't know. Yeah, it's kind of complex. Maybe you come down with us and find out. Sure, yeah. I don't know if I have any business here or not, but I'd like to tell you. I was like, I got a complaint about these

podcast guests we had on. I thought you'd get your take on something. This guy wrote a really, see, I'm telling you, I got two stories for you guys, but they're appropriate because they both border on law enforcement and law breaking, kind of. So a guy wrote

in, it takes a lot of something to throw yourself under the bus like this. Takes a lot of I don't know, gumption, let's say. Chutzpah. Chutzpah. Yeah. Yiddish. We use a lot of Yiddish.

Oh, I was wrong on a Yiddish word recently. Making love is to shtup. Oh, I didn't know that. Not shtuk. It's shtup, not shtuk. Shtup. Didn't know that. And someone wrote in to crack me on Yiddish.

Will, so check this out. Will from Omaha, Nebraska. This is insane. This is an insane story. He's hunting a piece of land. So he's in Nebraska. He's hunting a piece of land accessible only by boat on the Missouri River. Okay.

He had decided to take so he's going out scout and he wants to take down his own deer stand because he's got a camera out and there's no action on the trail camera he says he had noticed that there had been a stand that had been sitting in the same spot in the woods for three years on the same piece of public land in nebraska a stand becomes legally abandoned after February, right? So if you put a stand on public land in Nebraska, you got till February to take it down,

at which point it becomes part of the public property. He decides to, as he put it, acquire that stand. And then he proceeds to go down, do some scouting. And that's, I think that's like a good thing to do because he's not only acquiring his stand but he's cleaning it cleaning the woods up oh man there's one i got my eye on on a chunk of state land it's been there for three years well talk to this guy

first this is where the story gets crazy he also had set out a line for catfish so he goes to check out his line for catfish he's messing with his catfish line and another boat pulls up. Asked him if he's seen anyone in the area because they just had a stand stolen. He says, quote, I messed up by panicking and not confessing that it was me and tried to play it off like I didn't know. He was looking to the right side of his brain. Like I was shocked that this guy's writing in about this. He says, they then decided to check my boat and found their stand. They went and do a theory.

And when I tried to explain my reasoning, it made no difference to them. They demanded under threat of violence that I show them my ID and then asked if I had taken a shit by their setup. I had. He says they had a whole illegal camp set up with two by fours nailed into trees to make a windbreak and a picnic table and a fire pit. But he thought this stuff was from years past and it was obvious they had been there a long time. So nature called. I took a dump there. They then demanded once again under threats of kicking my ass that I pick up my shit with my bare hands and discard it. So I did what I had to do to not get beat up.

I then left and was told to not come back there again. I'm still going to hunt there because I did see some nice scrapes and rubble. That's the best part of the whole thing. That's man dedicated to the cause right there. He wanted to get our opinion on it. I have no opinions. I have one opinion. He's a service shitter.

Oh, yeah, that's bad. Oh, yeah. That is a good opinion. Yeah, but the other guys are in the wrong too. Oh, no, 100%. Two wrongs don't make it right. Sort it out with a game warden. Two wrongs don't make it right.

He should have buried his shit, and then he at least would have had half the problems that he had. He says, Also, I'd like to serve as an example of how even if you're not breaking the law, you can still find yourself in trouble. And once caught, just tell the truth. Because if you don't't nothing you say after that will be believable also don't shit in other people's camps um here's what i want to bring

up but it's this is gonna this is gonna take some production skills we got it yanni do you remember long ago? What episode number was that? 60. Double digits. Episode 60. Long time ago. We recorded an episode in Guyana with a Makushi man named Roven Alvin. I do remember this.

Do you remember what Roven told us was going on with the local white-lipped peccary population? No. I remember something about that. He told us. He told us that they were having a problem because there was a village down the river that was jealous of his village's prosperity. Okay. And they had a shaman who had locked all of their peccaries in a mountain. And they had a young shaman in their village that they were hoping

would get trained up and develop the necessary skills to unlock the peccaries from the mountain because they hunt white-lipped peccaries the other day i'm looking through my emails and there's a i subscribe to a news uh list and there's a email there's an article a study called the case of latin america's mysterious disappearing and reappearing white-lipped peccaries and it gets into how so they look very similar to a javelina which is a collared peccary but they run in herds of two three hundred i mean there's there's a video attached to this article that just is like a like a a trail along a. And it just goes on for seven, eight minutes. My kids love it.

It's just seven, eight minutes of white lip peccaries just flooding through across this trail. Uh, and it goes on to talk about this research to document large scale white lip peccary disappearances and wild population cycling across their range in Latin America. And it alludes to indigenous people's mythologies that were built up to explain how it could happen that one minute there's hundreds and you're living off them.

And the next minute they're just gone. And the article talked about that very thing um other more what would you use for it not a cult that's not the right word spiritual x i don't know is that the right word spiritual explanations what would you say yeah otherworldly explanations maybe spiritual explanations for a phenomenon that researchers are just now trying to understand it goes on and on but i think we should revisit that story um from rovin as much as much as possible and then think about that where this paper it goes on and on about these wild population migrations and fluctuations and talks about this being a long-standing puzzle among indigenous peoples

rovin we talked about something privately and if you don't want to talk about you don't have to but would you mind talking to a public audience about what happened with the peccaries or is that something you don't want to discuss like why you're not seeing them right now? Well, we have a shaman. They are like the, I would say they are like the doctors, nurses,

whatever you could call it in your country. But here we have like shaman, they are like the doctors nurses whatever you could call in your country but here we have like shamans they are knowledgeable they have the power of using we call it a marine high science they can do anything to a fish the river to animals such as peccaries 12 approximately 12 years ago we used to 12 approximately 12 years ago we used to have lots of peccaries coming close to the village

a white lit peccary which would come like 100 or 200 of them at a time yeah they're like a hog, pig kind of yeah we call them wild hogs we have the collared peccary which is called a javelina this is a bigger louder more gregarious javelina species of have collared white-lipped peccary so this this hogs wild hogs peccaries used to come and feed in in the end of the ponds you know feeding on fruit nuts worm and as you go travel up the river you can bump into

them you can hear them from a distance but even smell them is the fact is that we used to have a lot of fun like shooting and we have like meat you can barbecue a lot of barbecues fresh meat now in order I'm ringing villages they in other American villages They have people that have very knowledge like you said shaman and because of we Having a lot of food and where They're done Now there's like jealousy If forever if I'm jealous of Steve, Steve is accurate in shooting. I would do my high signs on Steve and next time he wouldn't shoot accurate. Anything he shoots, he's like, miss, keep missing.

Like throw a curse on him. him so people are like like that here so what they do is like this top the pickeries they lock them up somewhere well I don't weird but somewhere between the mountains I have no idea using their high sense now to get the picker is to come out from there we have to get another another shaman that could do the high science to get the pickers out from there because they are locked up there now if we have one like that we could get the speakers out now they will be there all over again yeah but that's how the pickers had me stopped how did this shaman get that get to that level?

Well... Is there someone training it? They learned from their parents. Their parents was like a shaman. He smoked tobacco through his nose. Like dirt? Yeah. They do a lot of things.

They can bring down a fish spirit by shaking the bush in the house doing their things and stuff like that and then they can bring them like a picarist picarist leader I would call it that way now hey you know job with him take a little shot of local drink you know by spirit and then if the shaman said okay what I want to lock you up here for a while two three years four five years how many years and be dear and don't come on I want you to be there I want you steady that's how the the shaman works they have like a little power the signs they are working. So they are like good and bad ones. So I don't know if you were here and you saw the picaris, but we used to have a lot of picaris here. We used to have a lot of myths, we used to have a lot of fun. But now there is no white white peccaries we just have the colored ones around

did the did the shaman or the other village that used the high science to lock up the peccaries did they tell you that they were doing this or did the peccaries just disappear and then you you you speculated that that's why they... Yeah. We know. Because for a while we didn't see any pickeries. We have our shaman in the village. He's not perfect, but at least you can get some experience. Or he could tell you what is happening. He knows what's happening.

He knows what's happening. So he said, well, there's somebody locked them knows what happened so he said there's somebody like them up there so they're there that's a they're not coming out anymore even with the fish like if somebody like do something to the river you will hardly get some fish hardly get some turtles otters ca caimans, and so on. So that is how the shaman works. There are good ones and bad ones. They could do anything. Yeah.

I understand whoever, like, I understand why someone would be jealous of Rewa village because it's a beautiful village that's wonderful to visit. So I understand how someone that had a bad village that wasn't this way and this friendly and such great people I see how they would get jealous.

But I don't think that you I don't think that I hope that your peccaries come back. I hope they come back soon. Som hope that your peccaries come back. Yeah. I hope they come back soon. Someday I'll start to become a shaman. Bring out all the peccaries.

I hope that they come back. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt

app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones aerial imagery 24k topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.

As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit on X maps dot com slash meet on X maps dot com slash meet welcome to the on X club y'all guy wrote in why I always say that pronghorns smell like Frito Lake horn chips

it's a bacteria dogs get it dogs can get it it's not harmful but that dogs can get the same bacteria lay corn chips. It's a bacteria. Dogs get it. Dogs can get it. It's not harmful, but that dogs can get the same bacteria that makes them smell like corn chips.

So I wasn't lying. When you guys round up those pronghorn, do you ever get a whiff of Frito smell? I'm going to say, I don't recall. What's his eyes doing right now?

Yeah. I saw him dart wild. yeah they went to his right what does it smell like it smells like the desert yeah i i can't say that i've ever smelled corn chips i'll tell you exactly what it smells like not just corn chips frito-lay well because i was i was thinking about a while back, I can't remember which guest it was that you had. He was talking about how like one of his favorite smells is like when your dog is sleeping and you know it's a really good sleep because your dog gets up and it smells like corn chips. Yeah. And he said that I was in my car listening to that. And I was like, oh my God, I'm not the only one that's ever smelled that. Like I thought, I thought for sure I was the one that was crazy.

Like, because I talked to my kids about it and they're like, I don't think I've ever smelled that from the dogs, dad. And I'm like, I swear, like sometimes when the dogs sleep, if it's a really good sleep, they get up and it smells like corn chips. And I just heard it. Somebody else, somebody else has a dog that does that. And I was super psyched that, okay, I'm not crazy. Like this is, and now there's scientific information that backs up.

My dogs can smell like corn chips and it's okay. I actually think that's on their pads of their feet. It's on the pads. Pads of their feet. It's not harmful, but it can spin out of control. It talks about dogs control their The pads of their feet. It's not harmful, but it can spin out of control. It talks about dogs control their body temperature by panting. Since they don't perspire, the only place dogs have to

cool down is on the bottom of their feet. She emphasizes, this veterinarian emphasizes that the Frito smell is completely normal and doesn't mean that your dog has a bacterial or fungal infection. However, it goes on. These older, they can get out of control

and your dog can get unhealthy feet, bumps, redness, swelling, or changes in your dog's behavior. So watch out for that. All right. Do you guys want to start with the southern border or the northern border? How are we supposed to do this, Corinne?

Your call. Hmm. I don't know. You guys like rock, paper, scissors. I don't know. You guys like rock, paper, scissors. I don't know. What way is the wind blowing today? Is it coming from the north still? I was going to say north.

I don't know why it's my decision, but someone's got to make a call. Let's start with the north. Let's do that so we don't forget as well. I feel like the south is the carrot. Okay. Oh. What? Yeah, okay.

Patrol on the northern border. I made a joke about it being sleepy. But what are the primary, what are the primary things that, like, what are the primary illicit activities that happen along the northern border? So, in reality, so just a quick one-on-one on border patrol. Border patrol is one component within Customs and Border Protection. And I want to make a clarification that there are three law enforcement components within side Customs and Border Protection. Oh, can you touch on where Department of Homeland Security comes into this?

Department of Homeland Security is the mother agency. So CBP is basically an agency with inside the Department of Homeland Security, which is basically the- Don't do all the acronyms. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

So DHS or Department of Homeland Security is the cabinet level. Okay. And then the agency level is customs and border protection. A better analogy would be Department of Justice and FBI. So FBI is an agency with inside the Department of Justice. Got it.

And so that's where CBP falls in. Border Patrol is a component of CBP. There are three law enforcement entities of CBP. Air and Marine. Air and Marines are the folks that fly all the helicopters and do all the deep water stuff, right, out in the Atlantic Ocean. How have I never heard of that?

Well, probably because most people don't, most people, when they think about the Border Patrol, they think about the people that you encounter crossing the border. It's called Air and Marine. Air and Marine. Yeah. Air and Marine operations.

And they are, they are the component. They fly all the way. Not Coast Guard. Not Coast Guard. Coast Guard is an entity of DHS. Okay. So do they run like the edge of U.S. waters and international waters?

Like, is that the extent of their range or? They, they do along with border patrol. So the separation of what we call deep water and brown, blue water and brown water. So me being a sailor, right? I'm a blue water sailor, Coast Guard are brown water sailors because they hug the, they never get out, out of sight of the shore. So our air and marine folks, those guys go into the deep water because the, they have

the bigger boats and go out and interact, uh, stuff like you'd see the Cuban refugees and things coming across in Miami. And then our border patrol agents still operate air and marine boats, but they operate in the coastal waterways, the Great Lakes and things like that. And they operate within about three to five miles of the coastline. So can air and marine operate in international waters? I'd have to, do you remember back in your days? From the, on the, on the water? No, I don't.

I don't think so. I don't think they get out far enough in the on the water? No, I don't. I don't think so. I don't think they get out far enough in the water, but in the air, uh, they have a lot more, uh, liberty. Right. For some of their operations they do. So I would say that historically they probably stay within.

Federal waters. Federal waters. Right. And if they are operating outside into, into international waters, they're probably working in with the Coast Guard because Coast Guard has that ability to do that type of stuff. Got it. So air and marine, they handle, like I said, they're probably working in with the Coast Guard because Coast Guard has that ability to do that type of stuff. Got it.

So Air and Marine, they handle, like I said, they're all our pilots. There are, and they handle all the, all the deep water, blue water activities. Office of Field Operations, those are the blue uniforms. Those are the folks that you're going to encounter at the port of entry and trade and

at the airport. So their responsibility is 100% between the confines or within the fence line of the port of entry. That's what OFO does. So when you guys go to Mexico or go to Canada and come through a port of entry, you're interacting with officers from field operations. And then the border patrol is the entity.

Those are green uniforms. We operate in between the ports of entry. So all that traffic that comes in of the legal entries is what the Border Patrol is encountering and working on. Got it. Okay. That's a unique. Okay. Let's say you're crossing.

I know we're back to, I just can't. I'm going to go to the southern border for a minute. Okay. You're crossing at the Agua Prieta Douglas crossing. Mm-hmm. You're, when you're in that customs process, you're not dealing with border patrol. No, you're dealing with field, the office of field operations, customs and, and border patrol.

Different color uniform. Different color uniform, different component within. But if I go off 20, if I go east or west 20 miles and try to do the same thing. If you're hunting south into Mexico and you find yourself up on the line because you're tracking something and you cross the line,

then you're going to be dealing with the Border Patrol because you've just made an entry at a place in time not designated as a Border Patrol. Oh. Did you know all that, Yanni? I did not.

It makes sense. Okay. Go on. So that's how, that's basically the 101 of Border Patrol and we operate between the ports of entries

and somehow I've lost the question. So. What, on what um on that on that wide open lonely border that northern border between the u.s and canada what kind of um dark shady stuff goes on up there uh for so the difference between the northern border and southern border on the northern border because obviously we're dealing with weather and uh the geography is a little bit different along the northern border and southern border. On the northern border, because obviously we're dealing with weather and the geography is a little bit different along the northern border, obviously. Not that Arizona doesn't have mountains, but the mountains are bigger in Colorado and Montana, or in Montana, than they are in Arizona. The traffic is a little bit lower, but you deal with what we call a little bit more exciting things. So just here recently we had a gentleman from Canada kidnap his living girlfriend and their two children. And he was a sex trafficker and ended up coming south. He came through a place not designated a port of entry.

And we ended up with a task force. We apprehended them. I don't know why this guy went to, to Sturgis, South Dakota at the time of Sturgis, when they had every cop in the world there, but that's where he ended up going. And through a task force, we ended up apprehending this guy. This guy was the, his, his girlfriend had some mental incapacities, um, but his goal was to take the children to use for child pornography. At Sturgis. At Sturgis. For whatever reason, he went to Sturgis. I don't have to struggle for reasons why he

would have went to Sturgis. Obviously, he had no intelligence. That's the last place I would go during bike work. Because of the law enforcement. Because of the law enforcement coverage. But that's where he is. There was also a handful, oh well.

Yeah. So it's those type of cases that we run into. And the other stuff that we get right now, guns are super, super popular in Canada, um, because of the gun laws and things in Canada, Canada.

So a, a, a weapon, a polymer 80, right? Those, those Glock clones that we buy here for what? A couple hundred bucks.

They're selling for five and $6,000 a piece in Canada. So that's the stuff. So that stuff moving the other direction. That stuff moving the other direction. How is that your responsibility? Uhushing borders out. The Border Patrol, we want to be partners with all law enforcement entities. And our focus is on, and what I would call border security and more along homeland security and pushing those borders out and making the entire border safe. And we can only do that by working with our Canadian partners

and our Mexican partners. So, yeah, I never thought that if you're at the border, you're also looking southward. Yeah. So that's the concept that we are like that we're working on in Haver. Like I'd commented earlier, we go all the way down to Colorado and Utah. Our focus is on homeland security entities, right? Those things that have an impact on the entire homeland security, trafficking of children, trafficking of people, smuggling of weapons. And I don't need to talk about fentanyl.

All you gotta do is turn on the news and see what's happened in fentanyl. So with the border patrol and our law enforcement capabilities with Title VIII, Title XIX and Title XXI, which is Title XIX is a customs and tariffs law, Title XXI is the narcotics law, and Title VIII is the overall criminal

statute for the United States. We have authorities in all three of those titles. So that gives us the ability to interdict all that traffic. So that's what we're trying to do in the Border Patrol, is go after those things that are dangerous to the country. I mean, everyone has child traffickers off the streets, and we want to get fentanyl off the streets. And that I mean, everyone has child traffickers off the streets and we want to get fentanyl off the streets. And that's the direction that we're trying to go with the border patrol is not so, not be so much focused on the border. We're focused on the border, but we want to focus on those, on those things that have an impact throughout home, homeland security or public safety. How do, how do people move? How do people move guns across the like if you're trying to move guns into canada

how do you see it done do you see it done at you see it done at not at crossings oh you actually see a mix right so again the and like we had talked about earlier smugglers go through great great stints to try to hide whatever product they're trying to trying to smuggle um we've seen we've seen narcotics on abtrak coming from seattle going to New York or to Minneapolis. And then the cash that that's coming back, we see in most cases, a lot of that stuff is probably happening between the ports of entries where they've go out just like you would hunting to go out and scout an area to see where traffic is, where they can actually get across. And they bring across through either smuggling through a port of entry. They use hidden compartments in vehicles for narcotics, these body carriers, a they ever get stuff to Canada and then into the U.S. from Canada? Or does that just add a lot of complexity?

Well, again, I think, like I said, this new paradigm, right? We're seeing smugglers go through different stints to try to make money, right? I mean, when we talk about people trying to come to the United States, there's always somebody out there that's going to prey on that money, right? I mean, when we talk about, when we talk about people trying to come to the United States, there's always somebody out there that's going to prey on that person, right? They're going to, they're going to, they're going to drive them into slavery. So they're going to say,

I'll smuggle you. It's going to be $20,000 per person. So this person brings him in there, his five family members. So now he's, he's in destitute to the smugglers. So he doesn't have that money. So they put them to work, to work for them. And so they're working for him, but they're also destitute to the smugglers. So he doesn't have that money. So they put them to work, to work for them. And so they're working for him, but they're also having to pay the smugglers rent.

They have to pay the smugglers, the electricity and all that stuff. So all the money that they make to try to pay back being smuggling, they never touch because they're, they're hitting them on all these other factions. They're shopping at the company store. Yeah, absolutely. So they're, they're, they're just destitute to doing that. So that's the type of stuff that they do. I think that cartels are going to do whatever they can to make money.

And if there's a way to make money to take a product to Canada and come south, they will. In fact, I think that I wouldn't be surprised to see it with Mexican nationals. I mean, Canada has a very liberal visa waiver pro program. So the visa waiver, the countries on, on, on the visa waiver list for Canada are like 300 or 400 countries are on there. All you have to do is be from that country.

You come into Canada and you're given automatic status in Canada as a non-immigrant and they give them money to live and survive for approximately 12 months. So I wouldn't. So a good first step is. Good first step is to make it into Canada and then utilize those social welfare programs.

And then when that's done, then you can come South or if you can get Canadian citizenship, then it's a free boat, right? Because we're, we, it's open borders for just as it's open borders for us to go right? Because it's open borders for, just as it's open borders for us to go to Canada, it's open borders for Canadian citizens to come South. Canadian citizens, whether they're naturalized or born Canadian citizens, they can come back

and forth. So because that entity's out there, the things that we look at is there's a possibility for somebody to come up, utilize those programs, and then be smuggled back down South. A lot of the 9-11 hijackers flowed through Canada. All four of them. It was a hell of a lot more than four.

I mean, all four crews. The four on the planes all came through. Oh. Actually came through Swanton, Vermont. Really? And then over in Swanton. Huh. Who, just the other day I had a conversation

with someone where they're telling me that they had gone black bear hunting in Canada okay like many people do there's places that run like bear bait factories in Canada and so many you know guys go up to hunt bears in Canada and he was telling me and it's the thing I hear all the time he was telling me that they told him you can't bring the meat home no that's that's not true i know but there's so much confusion about if you ask 10 guys you're gonna get 10 different answers about how it works with that you can't bring your gun you can't bring meat you can't drive from alaska even though i know you can

you can't like take alaska meat from alaska into the lower 48 because of da, da, da. Who's bidding, like who is setting those rules? So those rules, those are the ag specialists that actually work for OFO. What's OFO? Office of Villed Operations, the guys at the port of entry. So if you come into a port of entry and you see somebody at the primary and they're wearing a weapon, that's an officer. They also have folks that aren't armed. They're non-law the primary and they're wearing a weapon, that's an, that's an officer. They also have folks that aren't armed. They're non-law enforcement types and they're ag specialists.

They're the ones that set those responsibilities. So moose is a perfect example. You can go up and hunt moose in Canada. The only thing you can't bring south is, is any of the contents of the head because of the. Brain, because CWD. CWD, yeah. Okay.

So, so with. But the meat can come across without a problem. So tell me what someone would need to do. You go bear hunting in Canada and you want to drive up with a gun and you want to come back with the bear meat and the bear hide and everything. So if you follow the proper stuff,

there's no reason you can't do that. No, not at all. Not at all. And I just did it in my personal capacity too i went up to i went up to new brunswick shot a black bear and just did just this past september and went through that entire process brought the whole thing home yep uh uh it can't bring can't bring the baculum back um can't bring gallbladder gallbladder yeah um and and quite quite, quite frankly, it's the, it's the, uh, I don't know their, what their

official name is, but it's basically their version of U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the Canadian, uh, Fish and Wildlife for lack of a better term. They're the ones that actually did the, the rigorous inspection on the way out of the country on their side. Um, uh.

To make sure you weren't bringing down stuff that has a black market. Correct. And, and extreme, you fill out a survey, they do a deep dive into what outfitter you're used. They, we were talking about investigative techniques. They investigated, they separated me and my best friend who was the driver talked to us just to see if we're telling the same story, but asking us about what outfitter we used. Did the outfitter get the animal in the field? Did the outfitter himself take anything back from the gut pile when he came

back to camp? How many days we were there? Um, huh. So like that's, and because they're trying, because of the black market trade for all of the animal parts specific to, uh,

controlled species in Canada, they want to make sure that those things aren't being transported illegally throughout their country or back into the United States. Um, as far as the process of just going over and coming back, it was at this time round, you know, uh, you know, we were kind of nervous because of all the things post COVID with the Canadian restrictions on, on going there, there's a new app you got to fill out, uh, to arrive can and whatnot. We thought it was gonna be pretty difficult and it was actually really, really seamless. things considered uh the the bringing in a gun you could bring up to i believe up to three guns per person um it's a simple form they where you just identify

what guns you're bringing up serial numbers and i believe you pay a 25 permit fee and you just have to keep it on your person the entire time you're hunting and on the way back um it's it's just an inspection by canada on the way out uh by their uh by their fish and game agency to make sure of all those things we just talked about but uh taking the meat back taking i had already i cleaned my skull and we boiled our skulls in canada so i don't know the restrictions on brain matter for bear because i don't know the restrictions on brain matter for bear. Cause I don't know if, if their brain matter is a disease carrying, but, um.

Not that I know of. Yeah. It might just be that they don't, it might be that they don't create a whole bunch of room for interpretation. Like if you're, my experience and what I kind of sense from them is if you're bringing like the entire head, the entire animal back, uh,

absent internals, there's a lot less of an issue. Whereas if you just like, if you tried to do things like pull the claws and just bring the claws back, they ding you on that. Got it. But if you're bringing back the entire head, the entire hide with the skull inside the hide and the claws still on everything, no issue.

So long as you're not bringing back the restricted items like baculum and gallbladder. Hmm. I didn't know there was a black market on baculum. Did you know that prior to going? Have you heard this? No, I only knew and gallbladder. Hmm. I didn't know there was a black market on baculum. Did you know that prior to going? Have you heard this? No, I only knew about gallbladder.

Yeah. You mentioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Do you guys work with them a lot for like illegal trafficking, endangered species stuff? Like, is that a big partnership? Yeah, that's one of the things that we do work with them on. Um, you know, not so much on their investigative per the whole investigation side of it, but

like some, sometimes it's initiation of, because of a lot of the training that, that we do that, that, um, cross agency training and interagency training, like when there are, um, you know, it's like certain times of the year when, um, there's a lot of, um, herpetology, uh, what's, I can't remember what the, we call them like herp thieves or poachers. Um, so they'll come out and like the fish and wildlife service will let us know, Hey, you know, it's springtime. We're going to get a lot of, um, her poachers out. And so we'll, we'll get together with them and we'll create like little campaigns within, um, you know, within the patrol, within the sectors and stations to like create little, um, kind of like posters and emailings out that we'll talk about it or musters and say, Hey guys, you know, fish and wildlife, you know, they're, they're going to be out there, but these are some of the things to look out for. And if you happen to see that, you know, from, you know, while you're out there patrolling,

here's the contact information. So they're interested in people smuggling across the border? Not, not even. Or they're just interested in people out in the landscape stealing. Yeah. Snakes and lizards and whatnot. Yeah.

I guess, I guess I was asking more like when you see a news article, like man gets busted with 47, whatever endangered species in his suitcase or whatever. Like, is that like, do you work with the U S fish and wildlife service on those kinds of things? So when it's something like that, where it's like you said, you know, busted in a suitcase with, you know, 25, you know, endangered bats or sparrows or something. A lot of the time, that's what, like what Chief Fortunato was talking about

is when it's an ag specialist, that's probably caught that at a port of entry. Like they were going through the port of entry and they were inspecting the, the contents of the bag. And then they found that, you know, on the bag or on their person and stuff like that. Um, but, uh, again, with border patrol, we're working in between the ports of entry. So like, we'll do stuff with like the, the land management, LEL for, you know, the, the wildlife refuge or the park, um, you know, or even, you know, one of their biologists specialists,

let us know about something. And, and I actually think it depends on the area too. So if you go down to, to the Rio Grande Valley, there's a, there's Santa Ana refuge, you go down to the Rio Grande Valley, there's Santa Ana Refuge, which is right on the Rio Grande River, which is a very big populated location for smuggling back and forth across.

And I don't know if you guys have ever been down south, but in a very heavily trafficked area, the landing on the riverside is destroyed. Plastic bags, water bottles, these makeshift flotation devices and things like that and that Santa Ana Refuge is is known for a spot for them to come across in that area and it just riddles the entire public land where people in Santa Refuge it's a hiking area and things like that but they have to go down and and see all that type of stuff so when the when somebody

comes across there it's often a fish and wildlife person that might encounter them first, they would come up and we would encounter them and, and, and work that direction. So I can think a lot depends on, on, on the area that is in proximity to the border and, and things that go along that. I know also in, in Rio Grande Valley with the, with the river, fish and wildlife is, is on the river. So there's a lot of times where they'll, they'll jump on a boat with border patrol and then patrol, which then takes the, the scope, the scope and authority a little bit bigger.

So now you just don't have the scope of authority of the border patrol agency, you have the scope authority of the fish and wildlife officers so that you can do more things. Same thing with Coast Guard. When we put a Coast Guard person on our boat, we now have all the authorities of Coast Guard so we can do checks and things

like that. Uh, I got to, here's another question about the Northern border. What is, if you imagine the most, I don't know, the most remote areas of the Northern border, like say the boundary waters or. Oh yeah. Okay. I worked there for 11 years. How do you know, do you know when you've crossed the border?

So, so in, in reality, right, so yes and no, right? Because we use GPSs and things like that. Like in the boundary waters, right, it's a pristine, there's no mechanized traffic. Yeah, but there's no cut line. There is no cut line, right? So in the thought process, this comes on. And the same thing with the Rio Grande River.

When you're working that, our concept is you can't take water and split it in half and say, this belongs to the United States and this belongs to Mexico, or this belongs to Canada and this belongs to the United States. They do it all the time. Well, they try to, but the reality is as long as, and this is our thought process, as long as you don't make a meaningful entry and a meaningful entry on water would be to stop and drop acre or drop a fishing line or something like that. And you're just cascading through, if you're on a canoe and

you're canoeing, as long as you don't make a meaningful entry, stop and do something, then you just keep on going. It doesn't really matter. It's when you actually stop and drop a fishing line or stop. That means you're in Canada. That means you're now in Canada. You made a meaningful entry. Really? Yep. So if I just nudge my foot across the border, I've broken the law. Did you make a meaningful entry?

So in reality, and James, you worked in Del Rio. It's probably the same way. We actually didn't consider folks coming across the river when I worked in McAllen, Texas. We didn't consider them making an entry until they made landfall. If they were standing on the river. When I worked in McAllen, Texas, we didn't think we didn't consider them making an entry till they made landfall. If they were standing on the US side and still ankle deep in water, we didn't touch them.

Cause they haven't made a meaningful entry, but the moment they come on land, they've made a meaningful entry. Now I'm not saying that people probably weren't grabbed because that probably did happen. but the reality is in most cases you could step and say until they actually leave the crest of the water, they haven't made a meaningful entry.

Okay. So if you, if you stepped out to go to the bathroom, then you made a meaningful entry. Like if I was canoeing up in the boundary water. Yeah. They would say that you made a meaningful entry.

Let's move. Before we move on to the southern border. You got another north question? I do. No, please. We hear this threat in Montana of wild pigs coming down from Canada. Wild pigs? This is new to you?

Supposedly. Feral pigs. Supposedly Saskatchewan has like a little population of wild hogs. Game farm. Yeah. Escapees. Maybe population of wild hogs. Game farm. Yeah. Escapees. Maybe even in the regs. There's always like a little blip in there about like if you see, you know, feral pigs when you're hunting up, you know, in that Haver area, you know, on the High Line or whatever along the Canadian border to immediately notify, you know, the local warden.

But no thoughts or I guess there's, there must not be that big of a problem if you guys aren't aware. You never pulled your pistol on a wild pig. No, no, no, no. Sounds like a lot of fun. Show me your ID. Um, I, I would relate it to, I don't know.

I think that the, the similarities would be a livestock on the, on the Mexican side. So we have, we have tick riders down in, in Texas. Yeah. And there's a lot of feral pigs, horses, and cattle that come across the river. And that would be tick riders that would go out and interdict that traffic because of, of the

ticks and things down. Hold on, who's that now? The tick riders. Do you remember, I think they are, uh, an interior, they're Department of Interior. No, uh, what's the, um, it's the international, do they work for the International Water Boundary Commission?

Yeah. No, I thought they were at agriculture. I think they're, yeah, it's the international, do they work for the International Water and Boundary Commission? Yeah. No, I thought they were at agriculture. Yeah. It's, I don't think it's, um, I think they work for, um, boundary water. Yeah. So they, they are, they're, they're a law enforcement official.

They're sold job. They ride horses, they go out and they, they look for livestock or traffic or animal traffic that has come from Mexico to the United States to apprehend them, to take them and dip them because of the ticks in Mexico. Just livestock, not wildlife. I haven't heard anything.

Well, I'll tell you, you guys are real. You guys' colleagues are real stickers about when someone wants to bring a deer cape. Let's say you're hunting coos deer in Mexico, and you're looking at the U.S. border, okay? So you imagine a tick, like an ambitious tick would just lay to that deer, walk over the track. But you can kill a deer inside of the U.S. border, and when you go through customs, you can't have a single tick on that cape. Oh, no, they'll take it.

Oh, I believe it. Yeah, so that's part of it. That's why we would not, you know, I get it. Like, you don't know where it came from, whatever. You got to do your job. But I would laugh about, well, how many ticks right now are crossing that border on coyotes? I mean, the animal, on whatever the hell. Yeah.

Pronghorn, mule deer, coos deer. Like ticks are back and forth. I had no idea that there's someone out actually cruising for ticks. Cruising for livestock just because of the ticks. Do they got a badge that says tick control? They are. They are a law enforcement. I think they're.

I think Steve wants a badge. Good job, man. I actually think they're Department of Agriculture, and I'm not sure exactly what they work for, but they are a law enforcement officer, federal officer that works, and that's their sole job. And it's mainly horses and cattle and hogs. Yeah, wildlife would be a lot harder to pull off.

Wildlife would be hard to, I mean, how are you going to determine? Yeah, because wildlife just comes and goes. But if there's a Mexican cow that comes across and gets through the double tick fence and onto some rancher population. What's the double tick fence? They have two, particularly in Texas is where I know it, is they have one basically barbed

wire fence right on the water and then another one like 10 yards off of that. And it's to try, if anything gets past the first one, at least it's contained in that one little barrier close to the repairing zone right there. But then if it gets through that second one, so they try and contain them in that little, that little corridor right there. So they don't make, you know, infer them into whatever property they're on. Yep. And they start mixing with, if they, if whatever they're carrying gets with the cattle that these ranchers are running, it becomes a bad day.

And we've had situations where like a smuggler's horse gets through and then we have the season and it's, it's a ton of paperwork when you're dealing with a, with a, with a horse from Mexico. Is that right? It's a bad day. Smugglers use horses.

Oh, for sure. Absolutely. What's even worse is if, if, cause you don't know where they came across. So if you're out patrolling, you see this horse or something walking on the drag road, you don't know where it came from.

They just know it's not supposed to be there. You call a tick rider. And if it happens to be just the local farmer whose horse got out, oh yeah, they get a little fired up. Dude, man. I wish you guys had brought up this tick rider thing because I wish I knew that.

I wish I was the only guy that knew, the only media person that knew about tick riders. To answer your question, I haven't heard anything about feral hogs coming South from, from Canada. Oh yeah. I forgot about it. Well, good.

They're on the lookout. If you look at where I used to think that hogs would buy sort of like by definition have to be, would be confined to the American South. Um, but that's not true. No. If you look at like maps of where Where hogs could feasibly

You know without any sort of human persecution Where hogs could feasibly live It's the lower 48 Didn't you guys just do a question on that recently? It's like 35 states It's like some ridiculous number That's incredible 34 states have confirmed

That's absolutely incredible And there's no reason that they I mean I guess You could In the northern great plains You could feas, like, the landscape would support them. Probably. I would think so, yeah.

Because you need to be like, well, I thought it'd be too cold. But then you think about where they're at in Siberia. Well, Yonius is up in Latvia. How high is Latvia? It's not. It's like the same latitude as Juneau. But it's got pigs. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. That sounds pretty cold to me. Native pigs. Yeah, it's got pigs. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That sounds pretty cold to me. Native pigs. Yeah, it's got native wild hogs. Well, I guess, yeah, because I think of Juneau as within the context of Alaska and like the southeast of Alaska is just nowhere near the extreme temps as up north.

It's like the Arctic Circle. Not the Arctic Circle. Yeah, latitude wise. No, they could have a tremendous, they could, they could be there. I think it'd just be easier to obviously eradicating hogs on the Northern Plains would be like a much easier job than out of heavily Georgia.

Yeah. Than out of swampy, jungly shit. I mean, even though, even though it's mostly private land, Texas is pretty open and, uh, that problem. Yeah, but they got not open like that. They made a business out of it, so. Oh yeah.

And I'm real skeptical. We, we covered this recently. We had a guy, we just did an episode in Hawaii and we're on a coffee plantation and you know, all the pigs, you know, they don't, all the pigs cause so much damage. And I asked my buddy who loves to hunt them. I said, do you really want them gone?

No. Exactly. See, in my personal opinion, I'd say, you Montana boys better start shooting them pigs before they post regs. I was saying, if you really hated the pigs, I was telling my friend Danny, who's been on the podcast for us, if you really hated pigs, you put up a big sign that said, please come hunt my land.

I said, your pigs be gone. And he said, but can you imagine what kinds of people would show up? And my buddy Callahan said, barbecuers. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated.

Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land,

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the southern border. We're already kind of talking about the southern border with the tick riders. How many tick riders are there? I think they're mainly based in Texas. A handful. It's not a big agency. This article I was just reading, they are under the USDA. Okay. In 2017, there was 86 of them. Yeah.

86 tick riders. Not very big. I feel like it's, I don't know, sizable. You need to write a little balance, Steve. Use your horse or your horse. The ballot of the tick guy. I was going to say, it's too bad Larry McMurtry's not still not around to write like a thousand page novel. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.

He'd be tick-rated. He'd be titillated to the extreme. Oh, you know the double, you're talking about the double fence? Mm-hmm. I was on a friend's ranch not long ago, and one of his line fences was a double fence. Yep. And I asked him why he has, why one of the line fences is double fence. And I thought that it must've been some dispute, you know, whatever, like who'd go

through the trouble putting fences like five feet apart, six feet apart. So I said, what's going on with that? And it's to keep, um, it's from keeping the cattle from, uh, stooping through the fence. Think of that. Stooping with the neighbors, Kevin.

Oh, so like keeping breeding populations away from one another? Yep. Oh, wow. Because they'll stoop through the fence. Wow. Surprise me. Nature's always going to happen, right?

How long have you guys been, how different is working on the southern border now than it was, you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. It's not even the same now as it was three years ago. Right.

I mean, it's just, it's just the, the, what they're dealing with in, in sheer numbers is. The human numbers. Human numbers.

Yeah. They're just the numbers that they're dealing with. Give me a ballpark. Like how many people are on a daily basis, how many people are in some way or another flirting with the border? Yeah, and I don't remember the numbers from last year. I think James is looking.

I think we were for 2022, one point. Border Patrol encounters fiscal year 22 was 2,214,652. And then I think 2021 was 1.5. 1.6. 1.6, yeah. So in just one year, you know, half a million people apprehensions.

If you had so many Border Patrol agents that you guys could stand along the border shoulder to shoulder, would that completely stop illegal movement across the border? So this is going to be my opinion. All right. So you're shaking your head no.

No, if there's money to be made, a smuggler is going to try to smuggle something. So I don't think that we will ever stop 100% of traffic coming back and forth across the borders. It's just not feasible. You got something you want to add? Well, that's, I mean, you could put people shoulder to shoulder and they're going to go

to the air or they're going to go. Or tunnel. They're going to go to concealment rate, you know, through the, through the ports of entry. And so it's, you know, how, how far are we going to dig into, you know, through the, through the ports of entry. Um, and so it's, you know, how, how far are we going to dig into, you know, inspections more so than we already do at the international borders, you know, try and facilitate legitimate trade and travel, um, takes a, you know, a unique balance of, uh, of enforcement and, um, and throughput in order to maintain our economy. Um, so, you know, uh, what is the answer?

I don't know. Um, but putting forth the best, the best known practices of, uh, of, of intelligence, surveillance capabilities, um, in order to get, you know, that, that traffic through at the ports of entry, but also block off what's in between the port, the ports of entry like we do is it's, it's a delicate dance. So everything we do, right? I mean, they're counterintelligence, smugglers, counter, counter-attentions just

as good as ours. They're going to see how we're reacting to certain traffic in an area and they're going to change their tactics. And it's up to us to figure out how they've changed their tactics and react to it. So like you said, we can put a hundred percent, you know, shoulder to shoulder and they're either going to fly them over because if there's money to be made, they're going to do it or they're going to tunnel.

You guys have probably, we've had a rash of tunnels along the southwest border. They'll dig a tunnel and come underneath or they'll expand on their concealment methods like the tractor trailer down in Laredo. They'll do different things to try to get them across. If there's money to be made, smugglers are going to smuggle it. Is there a part of the agency or a different agency that you guys work with that looks at it on a bigger scale, like a social scale? What could we do so that there wouldn't be this money to be made or wouldn't be this demand for these things that cause these issues? Or is there somebody working on it from that angle does that exact question make sense that angle would be a consequence right so

actions have consequences right and if it's a negative consequence you probably won't do that action again so the the the best method of of stopping somebody from doing something is to have a negative consequence on their action. Right. Um, uh, and, and that's the delicate dance, right. To operate within as a chief patrol agent, I'm given a, I'm given the left and right boundaries from the administration. And it's up to me to figure out how to get from A to B within those left and right boundaries to deliver that consequence. I think what, yeah, what Yanni, what, what you're, I think what you're more referring to,

um, I would say it does happen if you look at the way that the federal government might try to go down and engage with governments in Venezuela, governments in Columbia about how to improve conditions, adjustments that they might make where they're not creating an inhospitable environment for people that then we have to deal with at our border. So like take some of that money and try to go to the root cause. Yeah.

So that's going to be more department of state type activities in order to eliminate push factors from these, from these countries. And we have our international affairs division over in operational services, another component within customs and border protection where they, they work with our foreign partners division over in operational services, another component within Customs and Border Protection, where they work with our foreign partners and try to figure out ways to deliver consequences and also to get other countries to step up and assist us in these actions. How is your working relationship with Mexican government and authorities? Is it something you guys work with?

It's like, are they helping you prevent people from crossing the border? Is that not? Well, I, so we work both with, with, with Canadian and, and yeah. And South America. So I think the relationship is pretty good, but the other thing is too, you have to remember

now we're getting into the politics, right? Yeah. The politics of Mexico and the politics of the United States are two very, very different things. And those agencies that we work with down there, whether it's Sedena or any of those other countries or those agencies within the Mexican government, they have the same left and right boundaries that we do. So there, between, between the two of us, we're trying to find the best way to deliver a consequence or help, um, uh, in, in, impede, uh, traffic coming through. Right. Because, um, obviously I think this, the, the country of Mexico wants to do what they can because the impact from South American people coming through Mexico has the same impact on the

citizens of Mexico that it does on the citizens of the United States. So they have a vested benefit in trying to work with us. So it's not like you guys would get a call and be like, hey, there's a big group coming here. We have folks embedded in countries through the International Affairs Program. So that intelligence is shared back and forth. folks embedded in in in countries through the international affairs program so that that then intelligence is shared back and forth i was hunting javelina in arizona um last february for a couple days just messing around a couple friends of mine and we had found a big they were showing

me just a big trail like kind of in an unexpected location. It's like a big crossing trail. And there were areas that had, we went to this one area they showed me where it had stashes that had been depleted, clothing stashes and water stashes. And people would change clothes and then empty water jugs. And they're like, oh yeah, they'll have people come ahead and scout and set all that stuff. Then the people would come over and they know where it's at. It was, I took a t-shirt that I found, brought it home, gave it to my kid and said, that's a drug runner's t-shirt. He got all excited about it.

My wife then took it away from him because she's like, he's going to go to school. He's going to tell everybody it's a drug. Like, what do you, you know, she's like, why do you have to tell him that? It's in my rag bin in my garage now. But he's, she's like, you can't give him like half a story like that and then expect him to know what to say. Probably the best place for it. To know what to say. You know, this is a drug smuggler's shirt.

The question I wanted to ask about it is, so we're in the same place for a couple of days, creeping all around in the woods. And no one talks to us. Like no one comes and checks on us. And my buddy's like, they know what you're doing. Do they? Border Patrol. So again, I, I, I'm just going to speak for myself and, and that I think I can tell the

difference between somebody laying in and hunting and somebody laying in to do something else. Right. Yeah. Um, just like, just like if I'm working at a port of entry and James is coming back and he's got a weapon and I said, well, why do you have a

weapon? Well, I went hunting and I'm going to go through his car and I'm going to see that, oh, wait, he's got some meat. He's also got, this guy's been hunting. There's some validity to that story compared to somebody coming and saying, oh, I went bear hunting in Canada and all they have is a bunch of

rifles and there didn't look like they've been hunting at all. So I think in most cases, most, most border patrol agents have a pretty good idea of their, of the area that they're working in. And, and they also have a pretty good idea of what areas are, are high traffic and hunters and, and that are high traffic and other things. Not only that, um, you know, hunters, Border Patrol agents are pretty good at sign cutting. All of us are. That's the one thing they say about a Border Patrol agent is if you need somebody to help track, call a Border Patrol agent because they're good trackers.

And alien smugglers or narcotic smugglers, they go to great lengths to try to brush outside, where hunters don't necessarily worry about that. Right. Because the sign you're following is obviously something else. They'll brush out their tracks. Absolutely. They'll brush out their tracks.

They will wear carpet on their shoes to try to hide their tracks. They'll walk backwards to make it look like they're going the other direction. One cross and a road or something. They'll carry a leaf blower. Carry a leaf blower. Carry a leaf blower. What? I mean, any number of things. That's great.

I've even seen them take hooves from cattle and strap them to their feet to make it look like cattle traffic and not human traffic. Yeah, you know, the weed warden we had on talked about that. Yeah, he did talk about that. In an area where they had an illegal grow and you just thought it was all cattle.

Yep. Yep. Making little shoes like that. Because they're making little shoes like that and they're strapping them to their feet. Oh, so we have a podcast on our network that's by a guy named Clay Newcomb called the Bear Grease Podcast. He had a guy on there telling a story recently where he had killed a buck and cut the tarsal glands off it and tied the car tarsal glands to his shoes and he about got uh attacked by a buck believe it yeah he said this buck he could hear he kept hearing something behind him and this

buck was coming snorting at him he killed it wow but he said he doesn't do that anymore. I'll bet not. It worked. No, it did, but he said it scared him bad when he turned around and there it was coming for him, you know? Yeah. Let's talk about

those big-ass blimps. Oh, aerostats. Yeah, no, here's where you can't, here's where you're not going to be able to tell me anything. What's up with

those big-ass blimps? Okay. They're not weather balloons no we make a real habit of staring at those blimps when we're hunting down there yeah and we're like that dude he could tell when you're picking his nose when you're picking your nose i don't know about that and i haven't seen the so the aerostats are just like you guys know on the Southwest border, we have a great deal of technology between the,

the, the cameras and the lights and all that stuff that's gone out there. You guys have probably been down there. You've probably seen the scope trucks or the, or the, the trailers that are in the air. Those are cool.

Those kinds of things. They're always up on the good glass spots. Yeah. They're causing problems, right? So we've actually gone up and leaned against those, the fences around us to have glass.

Yeah, so the aerostat is just another, instead of having a helo or a plane flying, we can put up an aerostat and use the aerostat like a camera to look at an area to see where traffic is coming or if traffic is coming across as a way to identify what the traffic is and then give us an idea of how to interdict it. So one question that I had for James when we first spoke was all of the hardware and video cameras and such along the border, that's picking up everything that the camera eye will pick up. But how is that being used to, in your field, Charles, like looking at animals crossing, you know, how that's monitoring wildlife as well. Or, yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And they're like really like cool.

Like you'd be like, Hey, a jaguar. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Actually,

it is exactly like that. We've, we have actually had, um, there have been a few cases in the past where we've, where we have, you know, seen big cats,

um, from those things, not, not from the past where we've, where we have, you know, seen big cats. From those things? Not, not from the aerostat. Okay. Probably from some of our other technology. Other surveillance. Yeah, the Buckeyes. Yeah, through some of our other technology.

Yeah, we get some pretty, over the years that I've been lucky enough to be in this position, I've been privy and able to share with our land management partners on some pretty unique situations that have happened with wildlife and the border. Oh yeah. Yeah. I post, I post a picture every month on, on the Instagram page for the Haver sector chief of stuff that we've seen mountain lions and things like that on some of our game cameras. So you've picked up, uh, you guys have picked up Jaguars. We, well, I mean, we haven we haven't no i'm not picking up but yeah we've had pictures on like on some of our surveillance where we've had jaguars and you know you notify wildlife folks about that yeah and well you know we have to go through there there are some

you know security things that we have to go through internally um but we do you know relay that information out to Fish and Wildlife Service for their, you know, so they can keep track also. Um, and then, you know, occasionally we have some fun stuff that happens. Like there was, um, I think it was maybe a couple of years back, we had a bear that climbed the border wall and then would climb, climb one of the light towers, um,

that's along the border or tried to climb the light tower anyways. Um, and then we had, um, uh, a, uh, mountain lion that actually got on top of the border wall and was like walking across the top of the border wall. Oh yeah. What did he end up doing? I ended up going south. Oh, he did.

Yeah. He came, he came from the north. Speaking of like what you're talking about. So he crossed from the north to the south He went north to south yeah And right over the fence Like I feel like there's just gotta be so much Visual information of like

Interesting critter stories that all of that I mean I imagine There are a shit ton of cameras So just everything that you pick up On wildlife We pick up a lot of stuff and it's just the more interesting stuff that, you know, and more unique stuff that we'll share because otherwise like we would inundate Fish and Wildlife Service with like, hey, here's another picture of a bear on this trail, you know, and follow the bear through the trail that, you know, that they're going on or, you know, whatever, you know, whatever significant wildlife. So it's just like the, the more interesting things, like our guys know, like if they see a big cat, you know, um, you know, Jaguar specifically, um, or, you know, a mountain lion in, in something, a unique case that that gets relayed to me.

So then we can relay it to our land management partners. Yeah. Now let's say an agent has a buddy who's a hunter uh great big coos buck walking around and he sees like 120 incher on a camera is there anything wrong with him being like hey you know down kind of in that little zone of this creek there you know i can tell you they're tight-lipped because me and ed, we, when we were hunting javelina, we tried to hit up some border patrol dudes and they were like, you like no Intel. Oh, there's no way those guys don't know what's going on. Well, here's the thing. They're probably hunters themselves.

That's exactly it. Like one of the things that I think this Intel, they'll give you, you don't know where any javelina are. Well, one of the things that I think a lot of people, you know, don't, maybe, I don't know, I don't want to say they don't realize, but sometimes you got to remember is like our job as a border patrol agent is a pretty, I'm going to say it. Sorry, chief. I'm going to say this. It's crazy. You're given, okay, you're, you're hired and you're given, you're given training, how to sign cut, how to do this job out in, you know, in God's country, right? All across the

Southern, Southern and Northern border, right? You're sometimes you're alone. Sometimes you're, you have, you have a partner or two to work with you out there and you come back and you do it again every day, right? You got to be a little crazy to do that kind of job you know and at the same time you also have to be an avid outdoorsman or outdoors woman you have to love the environment have some kind of love and affinity towards working outdoors to do the job that we do which back to your question about hey where, where's this big, you know, where's this coos or where's this, you know, herd at? Well, most of us are hunters too. And so we don't want to give up

what we may know as a good spot. Yeah, I can see that. That's more what I suspect. These guys play dumb about the javelin. I'm like, best I can tell, you've been out here some number of days. Haven't seen nothing. I'll tell you a good thing about Borbittral Asian, and it doesn't matter whether it's because there's a lot of times, a lot of Borbittral Asians, when they're working a load of dope, they'll go down and burn it just so the other Borbittral Asian doesn't catch it.

So it's the same thing when it comes to hunters, right, and hunting. Borbittral Asians won't tell you a thing because they'd rather fail and not get it than see you be successful. Well, now I'm going to look at their little eyeballs. I'll be like, seen any javelina now? First, I'm going to be like, so you work for the Border Patrol. And I'll see what his eyes do. And then I'm going to ask him about the javelina. Let's talk more about wildlife in the border area.

Steve, real quick, just to interject, the big-ass balloons, those are called, the acronym for those is TARS, it's Tethered Aerostat Radar Systems. Those are actually primarily for sensing the low-air domain. Oh! So for aircraft, aircraft sensing.

So they're not watching you pick your nose. No. They're interested in aircraft. There's other stuff, quote unquote, on there. We have other sensing equipment on those, but the primary, their primary role is for, is basically low

aircraft systems. I was talking to a buddy of mine who spent time in ultralights, helicopters, anything that's going in that low space. And an individual SUA, the smaller drones. Right, right. I had a friend of mine in the military.

I can't remember if he was talking about Iraq or Afghanistan. He said they used a lot of those for that purpose. Absolutely. They'd be up all over the place. Exact same capability. Yeah. Tracking aircraft and drones and stuff. Okay.

I've brought up a bunch of times over the years to listeners, especially when the idea of an impenetrable wall became an issue. I would bring up, when considering all of the factors, a thing to consider is wildlife movement. And people get riled up and they get pissed to even mention it because how dare you question the legitimacy of it of the wall i'm like i'm not i'm just saying it's a thing to consider but the more i think about it too i'd have to imagine that there are with just the amount of human traffic human activity in terms of people crossing illegally, people trying to catch the people crossing illegally, all the vehicular traffic, then you add in the wall. It has to have big implications for wildlife. I'm going to answer this a little bit, and Charles, you can correct me when I'm wrong because I'm pretty sure I'll be wrong.

I'll just talk about this section in, in Yuma, Arizona. So one, one of the problems they have in Arizona that. So the wall that that's built in, in Yuma doesn't impede that animal's ability to go back and forth or, or, or, or in any direction. A lizard. A lizard, right? Yeah. Well, I think it'd be more thinking about lard, like mule deer. Mule deer, yeah. So it certainly does affect the, the, the, the ability for them. So, um, I, I don't know, I'm going to let you answer a little bit because I think I'm going to get into trouble.

That's okay. Um, yeah. Um, yes, there's, I mean, is there some kind of impedance? Yes. That's, I mean, it's a wall, you know? Um, it's a border wall system though, too. That's, that's the thing I think a lot of people don't um don't take into account for is that like it's where we aren't dhs isn't trying to put up just a border wall we're trying to put up a border wall

system um and that does take explain the difference you know two things so when when you say oh well it's just you know it's that wall it's that wall well yeah it's just we're talking about specifically just that one component of what should be a system which is the wall there is an enforcement zone or you know some some way for for an agent to traverse that area along with technology so all three of those things working together okay to to help maintain the safety of the border. It's essentially of the nation. Um, and, and so when you look at just the wall as the impedance, yes, there is that impedance, but border patrol, DHS, CBP, um, we are working with the land management agencies to address and mitigate some of that impedance on the environment and the wildlife.

For example, you know, in low water crossings, we have, you know, gates there. So we can allow for the sheet flow of the water during rainy seasons or outside of rainy seasons, if there's an event, we can, you know, open up those, open up those gates to allow for, um, for the water to flow, which, you know, also allows for, for wildlife to cross through. Yep. Um, along with that, there's also, I just got back, um, about two weeks ago. Um, maybe a week ago. I don't know. My dates are running, running together. It's been busy, but, um, we just got back from actually ground truthing, um, what are called small wildlife patch passages. Okay. Um, so it's like what, uh, uh, chief Fortunato was talking about in Yuma.

It's one of the places where this originated from as they were putting, uh, putting in their are bollards on the border that are, you know, about every four, four inches, um, there's a, a circular bollard. And so you have a four inch gap essentially that lets the border patrol see what's going on South. So it provides some visual security for us of what's going on South, but it's just a four inch gap. Yuma sector started at the bottom, putting in, um, larger gaps. Uh, I think there's like, it's like a six inch by two inch gap. So they, they'd notch out a portion every, I don't know how many feet of that, um, uh, uh, of the bollard to allow for that lizard to freely go through, it wouldn't be impeded. In Tucson sector, and they're, they're doing it in the, in the newer, um newer border wall system that they started putting in, it was placed on pause on January 20, but within the system, we started putting in small wildlife passages. So in order to even put those in, we got with Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture, being Forest Service, essentially,

Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, all the land managers that were along the border, we got with those land managers and we talked with them about, hey, we want to put in these small wildlife passages on the border wall system to allow for, to better allow for wildlife to migrate through the border wall system. And what we did was we let them pick the locations of where they think it would be

adequate to put these, um, small wildlife passages in. But then we also got with them physically, went out to the border and said, okay, this is a GPS location that you said you would like to see this passage because they had the information on where wildlife would traverse. And if, you know, there were some places where they looked and it was already in a wash. There was already a, you know, a gate we were putting in there. So we would say, hey, you know, what if we move this up into a little bit higher ground? That way it's going to be in a place where wildlife can, can pass through. And it's not a wasted location because there's, you know, there's already a gate at the bottom

of this wash. Let's maybe put it a little bit higher. When you say small wildlife passage, like what size animal are we, like a deer could pass through this or? Not a deer is, I wouldn't consider deer small wildlife. Um, I'm talking the talking the size of the hole. So the small wildlife. Is smaller wildlife.

It's not describing the kind of wildlife. Yeah, the kind of wildlife. So like it's essentially the gap's going to be about eight and a half by 11. So, you know, and really when you're thinking about it or when you look at that, that's a pretty significant amount of space because like I said, the original gap is only four inches, approximately four inches. And so I just don't want anybody to go down there and go, oh, that truss guy said it's, you know, four inches and this gap is 3.75, you know, or it's 4.2, whatever, but it's approximately four inches. Right. Or it's 4.2, whatever, but it's approximately four inches, right? So we're essentially making that gap, almost doubling the size, the width, and then we're increasing it, you know, 11 inches up. So we came to that, it was years back when they actually came to the reasoning why I'm not exactly sure what the reason why essentially it's that the reality is the reality is that most normal human beings that are going to be coming through the international border they

aren't going to be able to fit that but the amount of wildlife that you can that can fit through that is you know greatly increased because just from from putting that kind of passage allowable for the wildlife to go through. Imagine a chart that has two lines on it. One is, okay, let's say one line is spending. Spending on border security. U.S. spending on border security and the southern border. And the other line is um traffic across said border

they rise in tandem or don't they we're spending more and more and more but more and more people are coming across if you like let's say you drop the spending line with the other line increase even more. Oh yeah. The gap would, the gap would just decrease. It'd be like, it'd be an alligator mouth. Like if there was no,

no obstruction whatsoever, you feel it'd be like, I'm asking an obvious question. I like no obstruction at all would be more than whatever million people. Yes. I'd hope, I mean, I'd have to think so. Yeah. Again, it goes back to that, like I talked

about the consequence, right? You have to have the border wall system and tied with the consequence system and the criminal and being able to charge them criminally. All that is what's going to help bring those numbers down without it. It's just going to continue to fly because there has to be a consequence and that consequence has to be greater than the amount of money that smugglers can

make. That's the reality. Where do you, you got it. You see, I don't even want to ask cause you won't be able to answer it. I think I was going to ask you where we sit right now on consequence. I'm doing the best job I can within the Haver sector AOR

to deliver the highest consequence possible to all those that break the laws that I'm authorized to enforce in Title VIII, Title XIX, and Title XXI. So we levy Title XXI fees if you come across illegal. You come across the border, if you're Canadian, you come across the border through a POE and we apprehend you. We're going to deliver you a consequence either through Title XLII or Title VIII. So Title XLII, expel them back, or Title VIII, charge them with illegal entry in the United States. And I'm also going to hit you with a $5,000 fine for evading inspection at the port of entry.

So we're doing everything we can to deliver the highest possible consequence that I can, knowing that the U.S. attorney in the state of Montana is going to charge. They have their responsibilities and they have their prosecution guidelines. I have those prosecution guidelines and I do everything I can to prosecute and deliver consequence to anybody that enters or any crime that's committed within my AOR within those prosecution guidelines. Do you get more trouble from crossing the northern border than you do the southern border? Like is it more illegal? No, I mean, whether you cross in Mexico or whether you cross in Canada or whether you, for whatever reason, if you can do it,

you can evade going through customs at, you know, the international airport. It's all the same. The laws are the same. You're going to get treated the same way. You're going to get treated the same way. Really? Really? Really? Yes.

Why are you so skeptical? I just feel like if some dude like with nefarious intentions snuck across the northern border and gets picked up, I just feel like it's going to be, he's going to have a different outcome than someone that did the same thing

on the southern border. Worse? Oh, yeah. I would have to think because it's just going to be like, I just feel like it's going to be worse. So, again, that goes down to the prosecution. Like you'll be given a trial date and turned loose? I guess it depends on the parameters of the case, right,

and some of those things, right? So as the chief of the border patrol, the only thing that I can do is interdict and charge and build the best case that I possibly can. For that person to be actually be held in custody, that responsibility falls to the director of immigration customs enforcement. So the director of immigration customs and enforcement is housed in Salt Lake City. It's his responsibility to find space for whoever I apprehend. If he doesn't have the space, he has the

authority to release that person into the country with a court date. Okay. So I have no control over that. I can utilize whatever network I have and whatever arm twisting I can or whatever pleading I can, whatever relationship I have with them to, hey, this is the one guy I think I need that you really need to hold. But ultimately it's his decision on whether or not he holds them.

And then the same thing when it comes to the actual consequence. I have no control whether the assistant U.S. attorney in Missoula, Montana, prosecutes that person that we apprehended and charged. All I can do, and this is what I tell my agents all the time, our responsibility is to protect the homeland. And if somebody violates that protection and violates a law. Our job is to apprehend them and charge them. Once we're done with that, our bullets downrange. Everything else that happens after that, we have zero control over. Whether they get held is up to somebody else's responsibility. And whether or not they get charged or whether that charge is dismissed or whether that charge is plead out, is it the responsibility of somebody else? I hear from friends of mine in law enforcement that sometimes people will develop, like people in the field will develop a little bit of fatigue about doing their job and not seeing, not being happy with, you mentioned the down, the downrange bullet. Yeah. What happens to it once, the downrange bullet. Yeah.

What happens to it once it gets downrange, that it leads to fatigue and a little bit of ambivalence. Well, and I'm just going to speak for, for the, the agents that I supervise in, in, in Haver. And, and it's probably typical of most Border Patrol agents, probably even the four of us sitting in this room. As a Border Patrol agent, it's just not good enough to apprehend them to charge them. We want to see something happen to them.

And because we're all type A personalities and because we believe in protecting the homeland and we believe that as part of doing that job is bringing a consequence to somebody that breaks the law. And yes, the fatigue does come in because all in all, and you guys correct me if I'm wrong, an agent gets sick and tired of doing the best job that they possibly can to see them just walk away with sure. And it's not just the border patrol. Like you said, it happens, it's happens all the way across law enforcement agencies. It even happened when I was a police officer in Colorado, you would charge things. And, you know, often the attorneys that decide how things go decides that the ultimate thing that happens with that case. So I know that, uh, that is one of the big challenges that we're

facing in the border patrol is that our border patrol agents are working hard every single day. And, and they voiced to me that, uh, they're sick and tired of working hard and, and not seeing a consequence delivered. And that's my job is to try to make sure that those consequences are delivered. I got a, I know where this happened. I don't want to get too many details, but I got a friend who, uh, his buddy owns some retail space and he had a woman leave. Uh, he rents his retail space to a major, um, drugstore. Okay.

He watched a customer of his leave the store and get mugged and have her bags and purse stolen. And he couldn't get the cops that were there interested. And he, this is, this has nothing to do with your department. He couldn't get the cops interested. there interested. And this is nothing to do with your department. He couldn't get the cops interested. And the cops said to him, oh, what would you like me to do?

Apprehend him? Well, I can tell you. Like the apathy, right? Yeah. And I get that. That's a police officer needs to have a talking to. I can honestly say that if a Border Patrol agent was standing there, I guarantee that person would have been apprehended,

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Steve, on what you described as far as budget a budget investment versus, you know, the, the, the increasing flow, like they're like, they, they kind of go hand in hand with one another. I don't think it's there. And, and, and anyone could look up the CBPs, uh, custom board protection statistics for every fiscal year. Um, you know, budgets, uh, I'm just, just speaking plainly. I'm sure, I'm sure government budgets for all manner of departments go up year after year. That's just seems to be the way of things in federal government, but you know, the apprehensions and, and encounters that we see, um, in the border patrol and CBP wide, it's, it's, it, it very much is related to the, the push factors from where people are leaving

from, whether it's socioeconomic, environmental, you know, a lot of, you know, communism, issues with communism in Venezuela right now, an earthquake in Haiti, when any one of a combination of these factors can push a large population of people out to find refuge someplace else, combined with how whatever political parties in power in the United States at any one time, how their priorities are loaded against the laws that are on the books, which typically do not change. It's just the, the priorities that they put in place on how those laws are enforced. It is, is what becomes the pull factor. That's an interesting point. Yeah. That's an interesting point that the laws

don't change. It's just how you categorize, how you prioritize them changes. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So while, while budget probably increases year after year, I would say, at least for

Homeland Security, because of, of what it means, um, the, the, the, uh, the encounters will vary upon the combination of those push and pull factors. So it's not necessarily a correlation between budget goes up, apprehensions and counters are going to go up. That's not necessarily the case. It'll flow depending on those factors.

Do agents that you guys know, do people start to feel a little bit of whiplash about, uh, changing priorities year to year is it you know i mean is it a is it a cause of i don't know i feel i've been in just about 25 years now i think i'm used to it i've i've kind of chameleoned to what what we're doing it's nothing uh i guess i'm just used to it and and it's you know that's that's just the way a government we're not the only people impacted by this it's every single agency uh i know you guys have had a, a myriad of, of, of land management experts on, on the show over the years. And I'm sure they have, uh, you know, how long has it been since, since Forest Service or BLM has had like a budget to sustain roads and whatnot. I mean, like they're probably waiting decades just because things like Homeland Security and, and international terrorism, when I probably got in the way of those budgets being fulfilled and who knows how long. So it's, it's just not, it's just not us. So every, every, uh, every department and agency, even the federal government has, has to evolve to whatever the priorities are.

Yeah. And I think it does, it just comes down to the length of time and service. Again, I've been in almost 26 years and in in 26 years I've seen, what, five presidents. So that change of response has happened that many times. As compared to somebody who's only been in the agency maybe three or four years, they come into it, this is all they know. They just don't have that concept of it's an ebbs and flows kind of thing.

The reality is that is that, uh, you know, how we, uh, how we can deliver, how we work comes in, in line with what the agents, with the administration wants us to do. So a lot of that does come into length of service. Those guys that are younger or those agents that have been in a little bit less amount of time struggle with a little bit more than folks that have been in. Like what they perceive as a real change in direction. Correct. Yeah. Right. Do you have a hard time finding agents? Is it tough recruitment?

So recruitment has been a struggle, not just for the Border Patrol, but I think law enforcement nationwide, right? The Border Patrol in particular, like Charles said, you have to be a Border Patrol agent. You have to be willing to go out and work in the outdoors and be outdoors and not be next to bathrooms and be willing to lay in with ticks and scorpions and spiders and, God forbid, snakes and all those other things that come along. And it takes a certain kind of a person to want to do that. And the other thing that we're running into is a generation issue right now, right? The generation of folks sitting around this table have a concept of hard work and true grit, and they're willing to go out and do that type of work. The generation nowadays is not that they

don't want to work hard. They just want to work as hard as they can for as little hours as possible. Yeah, they want to fish walleyes. And get as much money as they possibly can. He's talking about Seth and Chester. Right, so that they can go enjoy life. They don't want to live to work. They want to work as little as possible and make as much money as they possibly can

so they can go fishing, go kayaking, go hiking, world travel, do those kind of things. So trying to find people that want to do both of those things is, is becoming difficult. Speaking of that, is there, is there places around the country that are like choice posts for border patrol agents or just employees in general? Like hunting and fishing agents? Places, yeah. Like places like that's the place to be. So I guess it depends on the person, right?

There's a lot of folks that are here in Montana. Part of the reason why they wanted to come to Montana is because of the ability to do that kind of things. I think a lot of folks live in Arizona so that they can have those kind of concepts. There's a lot of folks that want to go to the Rio Grande Valley because they're fishermen. They want to go do the offshore fishing and things like that. So, yeah, there's a lot of folks that want to do that. The problem with the Border Patrol that most law enforcement agents don't have is we're constrained by geography in that when you come into the United States Border Patrol and you get hired, you're going to one of the nine southwest border sectors for your first assignment.

Really? Yeah, you're not. You don't start in the north. You don't start in the North. You don't start in the North. No, in fact, I went North to Grand Marais, Minnesota in 2001. It took me six years to get there. They send you to the South. Yeah, you go to the South.

So when you come on, and the difference between now and when we all came in, I didn't get a choice. I got a FedEx man and said, hey, congratulations, you're hired by the U.S. Border Patrol. You're going to McAllen, Texas. And I had to look on a map and say, where the hell is McAllen, Texas? On an Atlas.

Yeah, on an Atlas. On an Atlas. Not on my phone. I had to look on an Atlas to see where McAllen, Texas was. But nowadays they get a chance to pick. So as they go through the process, and of course they have the technology at the tips of their

fingers, they can look on and see, well, you know, I don't want to go to Presidio, Texas. Cause all you got to do is look on a map and see where Presidio, Texas is and realize it's eight hours from anywhere. Right. So, well, I'd rather be in San Diego, California. Right. And so that comes down to the mentality too, because we're going out and, and cabin, these kinds of people. And, and, and we've got folks, and it happens today, that are from New York that don't even have a driver's license.

They get a driver's license to get a job as a Border Patrol agent. So they've never driven a car until they go to the Border Patrol Academy and we teach them defensive driving and high-speed tactics. James, was that you? Yeah, that might be the two of us. He's from the Bronx, I'm from Manhattan. When I showed up in Dor Rio from the Bronx, New York Everyone in Del Rio

Was asking me, you know, you drive? And I'm like, I've been driving since I'm 16 What are you talking about? And then And the opposite side too I'm from Colorado, grew up and was born and raised In Colorado and I went to McAllen, Texas And one of my classmates sitting on the plane with me

He's freaking out, it was the first time He's 28 years old, first time In and one of my classmates sitting on the plane with me, he's freaking out. It was the first time, he's 28 years old, first time in 28 years he's ever been on a plane and left the state of Texas. Never been out of the state of Texas in 28 years until he got on a plane to fly to Charleston, South Carolina to go be a

Border Patrol agent. I once read that, I don't know if it's true, man, that someone from, like a citizen of Texas is more likely to leave the state than the citizen of any other state or some shit like that. But didn't make sense. I thought about what about people in Rhode Island who can't go get a cup of coffee without leaving the state? Yeah. I shouldn't even bring it up.

There's something to this though. Yeah. So recruitment is tough. They have a high likelihood of going on vacation or something I don't know so recruitment is tough because we're trying to have that dynamic of folks that want to go out and work in the outdoors and

encounter large groups of people right as a police officer in Colorado you know the largest apprehension or arrest I ever made was maybe two people at a time and after going down to McAllen Texas Texas, one of my first apper hit 150 people. So how do you go from, and you're the only one,

right? So how do you go from maintaining control of 150 people? Because let's be honest, if they want you, they're going to take you. You could be the baddest guy in the world. You're just like, stick them up! Yeah.

And all 150 people. No, so it was kind of funny. You could do things like, so what I did with them is the first thing I wanted to do is identify whether from Mexico or from another country. So I had 150 people walking out singing the Mexican national anthem just to keep them

occupied because it was the only way I could control 150 people. I had two sets of handcuffs. Who am I going to pick? Right? You just get them all singing the national anthem as you're walking out of the trail to, for the bus to come pick them up.

So it's an interesting dynamic to find people that really want to go out and step in and do that type of law enforcement work, especially when they can go work for Bozeman PD and patrol here in Bozeman or even work in Denver, Colorado or Kansas City, Missouri, and just patrol and have backup 30 seconds away. For us, backups in a lot of cases, minutes, 10, 15 minutes away. How many agents do you guys lose on like every year in line of duty? The ebbs and flows, we lost almost 52 CBP wide probably because of COVID in the last couple of years. Um, I think we're at,

uh, two or one, I think we're at one or two so far for, for this year. So it's, it, it, it's up and down, right? It's up and down. There's, there's no way for us to depict that. What's, uh, what's the, a pathway into that line of work? To board patrol? Yeah. Like how do people, how do people flow right um so uh you wake up one day and you'd be like man i want to i want to join the u.s border patrol there's a variety of ways that people people get involved in it i mean myself i mean i grew up in a in a you know in a neighborhood in in new york city where i mean most of the guys that i knew you grew up became cop firemen or, or, or construction.

And I was going after the police route and taking police exams all up and down the East coast, the North Atlantic coast. And, uh, and Border Patrol just happened to be the first one to, to, to send me a letter of acceptance. So I, I jumped in blind and it was best thing I ever did. Um, but I mean, there's, there's, there's, you know, there's CJ programs across the country that, you know, try to place their students into different law enforcement paths. And then for us, I mean, a third of our workforce are veterans. So it's a natural. Oh, is that right? Yeah, about a third of our, of the CBP workforce is veterans.

And so it's a natural transition. Plus they our, of the CBP workforce is veterans. And so it's a natural transition. Plus they carry over a lot of their benefits and whatnot. So if they're mindful of that, they're able to bring over their federal benefits and time and service from the, from their armed services to the board. And you get to add that to your retirement? Yes. Yep. Oh, no kidding.

Yeah. And we get, we get a lot of folks that want to jump from state or, or, or local law enforcement to the federal. So the pay is a little bit better on the federal side that it is in the state. But to your point about recruiting, it's a, it's, it's a, uh, like all the things, 2020 was a referendum on, on law enforcement goes without saying, you know, nationwide, it was a, it was a, you know, it forced agencies to take a look at what law, you know, policing in general meant. We're no exception. Um, and you know, uh, you know uh and and focusing on how to bring

in uh you guys look at reactivating hunters you know it's one of your tenants that you guys so we're very much in the same situation actually i think all industry is looking to trying to get people out back to work in some form or fashion but we're no we're because of how scrutinized law enforcement as a whole was from 2020 through now, it's made it tough. And while, as they say, the economy is kind of difficult right now, my daughter, good, bad, or indifferent, had the choice of going to school, finding a blue-collar job, going to college, or trying to get on YouTube and make a million dollars a year or, or something like that. Like that, that's an actual viable option, which blows my mind nowadays. Um, so, uh, not only competing about, uh, the changing sentiment towards law enforcement and enticing people, um, to go in that career field, but also, uh, making it a viable option to all

these other things that are there, you know, we've never would have perceived were, were at their disposal to make money, uh, 30 years ago or something like that. So, uh, but, but I think it, it, anyone who has that sense, uh, for us in particular, speaking of boards, anyone has that sense of adventure, um, uh, or, or wants to, you know, all the, all the areas that we talk about, Charles mentioned God's crunch. If you want to make that your office, this is a natural way to, a natural way to live in that, in that kind of office environment every day, where you get to experience these, the great outdoors and protect it, even though maybe, maybe that's not your primary mission

is to protect the actual land, but just by this, just by your actual presence on the landscape, you're protecting it. And it takes the right type of person to do that. And there's still a lot of those folks out there that have that, that are wired towards that, that career field. So if you wanted to get a job riding horseback

through, uh, Big Bend National Park. There's a way to do that in the United States Border Patrol, a hundred percent. They get to camp out? Uh, actually Spokane does a lot of, uh, a lot of details where they, where they go remote, uh, with horse patrol for weeks at a time. Really? Yeah.

If you want to, if you want to go camp out in, in, in the Glacier National Park and here in Montana, we got details you can do that. If you want to spend time in the BWC, the Boundary Water Canoe Area in Minnesota, there's a, you can go out there and spend, I've spent 10 days. Yeah. Cause. Canoeing. Canoeing. I spent, I spent 10 days days. Yeah. Cause. Canoeing. Canoeing. I spent, I spent 10 days dog sledding through the boundary waters.

Really? Yeah. As an agent. As an agent. Because it's not, cause it's non-motorized. Cause it's non-motorized, non-mechanized. And what was your, what's the craziest thing in those 10 years that you spent up there that you

encountered as far as something crossing the border that you had to interdict? Craziest thing would have been body carriers with diamonds. What? In the boundary waters. In the boundary waters, yeah. You're kidding me.

What did you call them again? Body carriers? Body carriers carrying diamonds. Trying to dodge terror? Are they? Well, because they were getting hit at the port of entry. So they were taking them to the one section and on the Canadian side where they can

actually get vehicles to, and then they were bringing them across in, in canoes. But it's not illegal to have a diamond. They're trying to avoid what? Oh, the, the customs, the, the taxes. Oh, I see. No kidding. Yeah.

Were they in canoes? They were in canoes. That'd be a sweet job. We caught them in canoes. They were in canoes. Did they seem like they knew what they were doing? Or could you pick them out from a mile away? You're like, those guys are sticking out. He ain't fishing walleyes. I believe they beat us nine times before we caught them.

Really? Back to that 90%. Yeah. I have no clue, but I believe when we caught them, they were shocked to see us. So they had been successful on multiple occasions. Hmm. Yeah.

I want another like a couple of highlights or like craziest events of my career on the border. I was in Texas. So a lot of those high fence, high fence ranches down there with all sorts of animals from all over the border. I was in Texas. So a lot of those high fence, high fence ranches down there with all sorts of animals from all over the planet. And so, uh, getting attacked by emus was one of my early, and, and finding out they like to

pull your buttons off your shirt. Really? Oh yeah. It's a strange thing if you ever seen one before in the middle of the wild, but as you can imagine all the, you know, the manner of things that, uh, that they put on those ranches out there that we have to patrol on and, you know, seeing a zebra or a, or a, you know, a

kudu for the first time driving around, it kind of blows your mind. Hmm. Yeah. I think, um, when actually when, when Sammy and I were, were back in Laredo working together, there was one night and it wasn't me that, um, that, that made the apprehension, but,

but we were working one night and we got a call and because they didn't, the guys in the field didn't know who to call. Um, and we didn't know either. We got a call from an agent and they're like, Hey, we're, we're out here with a group. Okay. What's the big deal? You know, you guys got 30 and whatever. And then they're like, yeah, we have this group, but we have a tiger.

Remember that? And, and we're like, what? You have a tiger? And they're yeah, we have a group of 30 and one of these guys has a tiger. On a leash? A real, yes. It was a baby cub tiger.

He was bringing it across because I don't know, I apparently the black market trade and stuff, he was going to sell this tiger to somebody. It's happened a bunch of times. Yeah, parrots, parrots are real popular in the southern border. Toucans. People smuggle in parrot toucans.

Toucans. Monkeys. Foot traffic. Yeah. Yeah, on foot. On foot and at the bridge, trying to get them through the bridges, but also through just carrying it in a duffel bag across the border

for sure. Huh. Kind of monkeys. Those, uh, those little, I don't even know what they're called, but the friends ones. Was it the merit? The compusable. Like a little, I don't know.

Yeah. It's the kind of monkey that can jump on your shoulder. Yeah, yeah. Not like a big. Not like an orangutan. Not like an orangutan. Little bitty tiny monkeys from Africa and things like that that they were trying to bring in. Really. Yeah. Not like orangutan. Little bitty tiny, you know, monkeys from Africa and things like that that they were trying to

bring in. Really? Yeah. How could there be enough money in that to make that worthwhile? If there's money to be made, people are trying to sell it. Unfortunately.

Just, and I know we're probably getting off topic, in South Texas, used clothing is a big thing. So you see pallets of used clothing. So clothing we would throw away, they put in and bind in a pallet and they smuggle that South to Mexico. Same thing with chicken, raw chicken, raw chicken goes South because in Mexico they charge a tax. The government charges a tax on chicken. So you're trying to get out of the tax. Trying to get out of the tax. So they're smuggling chicken South into Mexico. And then we call it

ropa usada, used clothing, going south into Mexico for people to buy used clothing. And a funny story, in McAllen, we had clothing going and we were tired of him, right? So we said, oh, we're going to bust your pallets. We cracked the pallets, $100,000 cash wrapped

up inside one of the bundles, which was a mistake because then every bundle going south was getting cracked open by a border patrol agent. There was used clothing all over the border. It just turned out to be a nightmare. But yeah, that's the kind of stuff that happens. So whenever something's going north, cash is going south.

Hmm. When you guys found all that money, you probably partied that night. No. Oh, honestly. Ouch. Yeah, avocados is also

a big thing. Avocados come in north, people smuggling avocados. To avoid, to avoid taxes. To avoid taxes

and then the avocados in Mexico are actually quite a bit bigger than the California avocados. So in Texas, avocados are

pretty big. People smuggling avocados across. So if you go, you can go to Mexico and buy an avocado, but they take out the bone. It has to do with the bone. There's some sort of agriculture or some

disease that's in the seed or the bone. So they dodge that by smuggling them. So they dodge that by smuggling them north because they can get more money. And obviously if you hold a Mexican avocado next to a California or Texan avocado, it's like a softball to a baseball. It's, so avocados are really popular.

Cigarettes on the Northern border now. Cigarettes on the northern border, no? Cigarettes on the northern border, especially over in New York. Going north or coming south? Both. Both. They call them toonies. You go into the Agnesoste territories and buy. It's really kind of crazy.

It's the equivalent of a carton of cigarettes, but they're just thrown in a bag because they're nondescript, non... My buddy had a girlfriend in Canada who had, she only had one leg, and she would put all kinds of cigarettes

in her fake leg every time she went across. She'd come over to the U.S. and then fill her fake leg with a cigarette to go back to Canada. Which brother was this? No, a buddy of mine.

Oh, a buddy, okay. A fella named Kurt. So if there's money to be made in smuggling it, they're going to do back to Canada. Which brother was this? No, a buddy of mine. Oh, a buddy. Okay. A fella named Kurt. So if there's money to be made in smuggling it, they're going to do it. Yeah. We all thought it was funny. I never thought to report her. I've seen.

It just seems semi-harmless. Yeah, boots. And then we start talking about Western boots and things like that. Of course, reptile styles and things like that. A lot of those things are restricted from coming in. You'll see loads of boots coming across and reptile belts and things like that.

Like wildlife trade. Yep. Huh. Do you ever see when we're down there across and they have a thing about all the cats, like ocelots. And what else they got in there? Turtle shells. You know that big poster? Yeah, I know the poster there? Turtle shells. You know, that big poster. Yeah, I know the poster you're talking about.

I can't remember all the, there's a bunch of birds on it. Just like the wildlife trafficking business. The stuff that we, the stuff that our counterparts, the office field operations, ladies and gents at the bridges that come across,

the ag specialists that have to go through people bringing in fruit and all that stuff. And usually they're, you know, most of the stuff specialists that have to go through people bringing in fruit and all that stuff. And usually they're, you know, most of the stuff they're time they're looking for pests, you know, anything that any kind of, you know, beetle or larva or something that's in with like a dozen roses or some kind of whatever

fruit you're bringing over. But they're the ones that run into like the really, really wacky stuff from like, and like stuff that just shows up that, that these people bring because it's a, it's a totem or something like that. And it, who knows where they got some kind of crazy dried up endangered frog from down in Chiapas, Mexico, and then they're bringing up

and, uh, and it's common for, for these things to just be, um, part of, part of their kit that they're bringing with them. Wow. What else you got Corinne? No, that's better. What do you guys, what do you guys have? Do you want to add that we didn't get into?

Uh, Charles, I think a little bit about, um, the, uh, the efforts on the Oregon pipe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, I mean, one of the cool things, like we talk about, you know, we, you guys, you're, you know, you guys talk a lot about conservation and, and the use of public lands and, and how, you know, um, you know, how

hunting and, you know, and general po- the general population impacts the environment. Um, you know, one of the things that within border patrol, I mean, there's no doubt about it, like the job that we do, um, you know, there is an impact on it. Um, and over the years, like in Oregon pipe, um, Oregon pipe cactus national monument, for those of y'all that don't know, it's, it's a huge national monument on the Southern border of Arizona. Um, you know, uh, the majority of it, the, the whole Southern border abuts the, um, international boundary, um, with Mexico. And, um, you know, there's a lot of stuff that had happened over the years, um, on that property. Um, one of which was the unfortunate death of, of, um, Chris Egli. Um, and, uh, and, and that came about through, um, drug trafficking. Well, I didn't know that was on the, that that was on the monument site.

It was, it, it occurred on the monument. Um, I believe in, in 2003, I believe, and I, I apologize if I don't, um, if, if I'm getting the date wrong, but, um, because of, of what had happened, um, it actually, Department of Interior actually put up, um, a, a border fence on their property. So they, they installed a vehicle barrier, um, on there because, um, uh, Chris was killed from, from cross-border traffic, um, that included a vehicle driving over the, or driving through the international boundary, um, onto the park. And, um, and so again, park service put up that, uh, put up that, that fence. Um, and that was just that, unfortunately that, that was one of the biggest, um, events, but it was a common occurrence that people would drive through, um, Oregon pipe cactus national monument. And so there were hundreds of what they consider, what Park Service considers, you know,

wildcat roads or unauthorized vehicle roads. And the majority of Organ Pipe, it's designated wilderness. So there really shouldn't be too many roads unless it's been stipulated within the wilderness designation. Is it a United Nations protected site or one of

those designations? One of those UNESCO sites? Yeah, I believe so. That I'm not sure of for certain, but I know it's, it's designated wilderness and, and there was over the years because of, of cross-border traffic, hundreds of miles of these illegal roads. And, you know, yeah, did Border Patrol use them? Did the public use them? Yes,

because they looked like roads from people just, you know, driving across. We got some funding from, I believe it was the Secure Fence Act. We got some funding to work with Department of Interior to do some remediation work along the border. One of the projects that we chose to, that we chose, we jointly worked with Department of Interior National Park Service on was to do some road remediation on Oregon Pipe. So what that, what that basically entailed is we took aerial photography of the park. We looked at all these roads. We looked at where Border Patrol had infrastructure, where the park had infrastructure, what roads were the traffic patterns for illegal migration or illegal crossings.

And we overlaid all those. We got together with Park Service and we were like, hey, you know, we got, there's all these roads here. We have some money to do some remediation. Let's start closing some of these roads. And so we spent a lot of money on taking these roads where, you know, hundreds of miles of roads. And we would see that these roads were going,

you know, four or five roads going to the same place. Well, you know, really what's the need for that? Let's start closing some of these roads. So we use that money to do things like, um, what's called, I learned the term vertical mulch, um, where you, you put, you, you put up stuff on a roadway, um, or, or you put stuff, you, you put, um, you know, foliage and, um, uh, landscaping on a roadway. So you make it look like it's no longer a road and you just go as far as like the, I can see

or a couple hundred yards. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, you know, and then you can put a sign there. What's the term again? It's, it's vertical mulch. Huh. Yeah.

And so, yeah. And I was just like, oh, that's, that's interesting. Um, so, so we did that on, on a whole bunch of roads. It ended up being like 200, over 200 miles of, of roads, um, on Oregon pipe that we were able to, um, uh, you know, to close off. And that, you know, defragments the, the landscape. So now the wilderness, you know, the wildlife has more of an area to roam. They don't, they aren't like running into road every.

Sure. Yeah. A couple hundred yards or something like that. There's, there's more area for, for, for wildlife to thrive and the visitors to actually visit and not feel like, you know, they, they feel that, uh, you know, one of the, one of the characteristics of wilderness, they feel that solitude. You know, because you are, you know, you run into a road when you're in the middle of wilderness, you don't really feel alone at that point. Sure. Right. Even, you know, even though you may not see somebody on that road, you, you know, that, that moment is kind of, if you will. Um, but yeah, we, uh, overall we restored like two over 200 miles of road. Um, that year, um, was for me fairly significant. I think for really for Border Patrol,

you know, I hope it was pretty significant because that year the Border Patrol was actually given along with National Park Service and BLM, we were given the DOI West Henry Award, which is an award that's typically has been given internally within Department of Interior for environmental stewardship. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. And so it was the first time that they've ever chosen to give it to an outside agency. Yeah.

And it was because of that project? Yeah. And that was part of, that was the major reason because of that project, because of the restoration benefits from that project. Yeah. Yeah. And that was part of, that was the major reason because of that project, because of that restoration benefits from that project. Yeah. Yeah. That ties into what I was asking about just the amount of activity in these very remote areas and what the implications are for, well, I brought up wildlife, but wildlife solitude, whatever. Right. Yeah.

Just, it makes it like a buzz with activity. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and that's what that border wall system helps to do realistically for both sides. It, it's going to help. It does help to, you know, increase that solitude aspect and the, the, the, I think the, the enjoyment of the resource, um, when, when you have, you know, a visitor out there, because now it's a little bit more safer. They can be a little bit more comfortable going back to what I was talking about with that road restoration and the unfortunate incident with, with Chris Egli, you know, because of that, the park service actually closed like 60% of their park because of that. Did they really?

Yeah. Because of the restoration efforts that border patrol worked with, with park service, the parks a hundred percent reopened now. Did they really? out there, but park service, their researchers and biologists can go back out there and do their research, you know, and, you know, do what they need to do to help, you know, catalog, you know, the cultural and the environmental significance of that area. That's great. Did closing those roads, those roads limit the illegal traffic or did the illegal traffic just

change its method? Well, it's, you know, yes. Really? Yes. Yes. Yes to both. You know, closing it was, again, just part of the whole system because we have the infrastructure on the southern border that helped prevent the, you know, the vehicle traffic to go over.

And then you have agents, you know, we, it wasn't just like we put up vertical mulch and, you know, walked away. It was a joint effort between us. We put up the vertical mulch. We went to, we had park service come to our musters, talk with the agents, tell them about, you know, the significance for the area, why we need to use certain roads. We kept our agents accountable by making, you know, making them call in. And they call in when they go on these off-road, you know, unauthorized roads, essentially. We now, they're now called temporary tactical infrastructure. And they call in when they're going off that road. So we can keep account of, okay, are they, you know, are they using them? How often? And if we need to adjust, um, those, and we, we still go through every few years, we go through what, what is currently there and we'll close off roads that,

you know, need to be closed off. If we, if we need to, to, you know, create, you know, or utilize a new path that's been, that that's been utilized. We work with the land managers to see how we can affect that. You know, so, you know, sometimes it's not necessarily a one for one, but sometimes it works, you know, more in park service favor. Sometimes it works more in BP favor, if you will, but there's still that dialogue that we share

with the land manager. You happy now, Corinne? Mm-hmm. I want to talk about the pronghorn rescue. Okay. Okay. Because I didn't know that the Border Patrol did this until I actually got into this program. But it is one of the funnest times that I have.

And thankfully, I get to have it almost every year. So the Border Patrol works with Fish and Wildlife Service, the Sonoran pronghorn, um, out there in Southern Arizona on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. So, um, we meet throughout the year, but their big thing is that, um, uh, there I think it's around September, October, we'll set up BOMAs and they'll capture some of the pronghorn that are on Cabeza Prieta. And then in December, Fish and Wildlife Service. Hold on, what is a BOMA? A trap? A BOMA is like, yeah, it's almost like a trap. They're like three semicircle enclosures.

Corral. Like a corral. Like a corral. Yeah. Like a corral. So they'll get as many pronghorn as they can into this area. And then in December, we get together, we being Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, Park Service, Arizona Game and Fish. They have contracts with various veterinarians to come out and we'll go in and there's various steps to the process, but we take out the pronghorn one by one. We carry them

out. They get vet checks, you know, new radio callers if they need callers. And then we'll redistribute the herd depending on, on where they, where they need to go. Cause again, going back to that secure fence act funding in early two thousands, the snore and pronghorn was another research, research funding string that we utilize. There were about 50 pronghorn on Cabeza Prieta at the time. Um, currently I, currently I want to say somewhere around like 450. A few years back, it was like a little over 500, but there's been droughts.

There's been some other issues. Yeah. Is it a hunted population? It is not. It's not. It's not. It's an endangered species. Um, and so they've been working to reestablish

in, um, on the Cabeza Prieta. I see. So it's like a restoration. It's a restoration project. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, yeah, it's, it is, it is crazy sometimes of the things that, that happen, just even just trying to get, um, these pronghorn out.

Cause you've got to go in, there's say maybe anywhere from seven to 12 of us on essentially a tennis net and you gotta, they'll. And you got to, they'll put, they try to, they try to, to take, you know, there's 80 in the first boma and then they, they whittle it down. So they whittle it down into the second. And then the final, in the final boma there, they try to have like two to three pronghorn. So you have two or three pronghorn running around, you get this net and you have to go in and you're trying to net them, but they're very fragile. They're also super quick and they jump super high. So a three foot net, sometimes not even close to enough. Um, unfortunately one time this,

we were going in and the person that was a lead, the lead netter, he had a catcher's mask on and it was one of my first years doing this. And I was like, why is that guy had a catcher's mask on and it was one of my first years doing this. And I was like, why is that guy wearing a catcher's mask? Like I got, I'm holding this net and I got, you know, I got gloves on and a hat. And I'm thinking, why is this guy wearing a catcher's mask? The question is, where's my catcher's mask? Yeah. I'm like, what, what did I sign up to do here? Right. So then I just, I hear that the gate open and then you got to be really quiet because you don't want to scare them and i just hear go go go go go and so we're starting to

run we're starting to run run to the door and the guy slams the door shut and i'm like oh my gosh what happened like now we're we all kind of sandwich at the door and then they're like hey come here come here they're calling another vet you know a medic and they go in there and then hear some rustling a minute later the guy with the catcher's mask comes out the mask is like on the side of his face his nose is bleeding his shirt's all cut up and i'm just standing like i'm supposed to be next like what is like i looked at what a pronghorn was is there really a pronghorn in this thing? Or like, is this some kind of weird, like, you know, interagency joke?

And, oh my gosh. But it turns out it was just pronghorn, but they are so fast and so feisty. But it's a, you know, it's a great time. And I never thought when I got into the border patrol, I never thought that this would be an opportunity that I would have like. Pronghorn wrestling?

Yeah. Well, not even, yeah. Pronghorn wrestling. Yeah. Well, not even, yeah. Pronghorn wrestling when you, when you boil it down. But the fact that like, I get to come to work and one of my jobs is to interact with an endangered species and be part of, be part of a project that hopefully rehabilitates, you know, and reestablishes an endangered species, you know, on, on earth, you know, in the country. Like for some kid from Oak Harbor who went to, you know, Washington State University and ends up, you know, helping to reestablish an endangered species, like that's, I never thought that my

life would lead to something like that. No, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. Unexpected turns, man. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And, and that's the great thing I think that with

the border patrol, um, is that I think people don't often see, uh, just how diverse the job can be. You know, um, they think, oh, you're just going to be out along the border, you know, well, yeah, you may, you know, for a little bit, but then look, you could be working with these, you know, these aerostats, you could be, you know, you know, for a little bit, but then look, you could be working with these, you know, these aerostats. You could be, you know, playing bagpipes.

You could be, you know, you could be, you could be working with pronghorn. There's so much. I could see where people would have. I don't have it, but I could see where people would have a limited view of the job but i guess i've just spent enough time down in border country where i recognize the complexity of the role and all the different you know i guess if you're down there and you're observant you just see um how wide reaching and complex it is yeah but i think that you could come from a certain very narrow view and and just an idea of what people are up to. That's a little bit reductive of what's going on. I haven't personally felt that way though.

Yeah. You know, I look at them like, yeah, that's like a lot. Yeah. There's a lot happening with a lot of ramifications, man. I'll say this. If you're looking to, to get into a federal job and make a difference, the United States Border Patrol is one place where you can do that just because of the great deal of things that we do. You can go and you can patrol on boat, you can patrol on ATV, you can patrol on horseback,

you can patrol by vehicle. And we have all these other programs that you can go into and do that you can actually make a difference if something is important to you. So if the environment is important to you, we have an avenue for that in the Border Patrol. If wildlife is important to you, we have an avenue for that in the Border Patrol. If fighting narcotics is important to you, we have an avenue for that in the Border Patrol. So that's one thing the Border Patrol gives that most law enforcement agencies don't have is they're sort of focused on, on one thing where we're trying to focus on, or we have to focus on so many other things just, just, just because of

the virtue of the way we do our jobs. I'll tell you one area you guys aren't focused is, um, Javelina Intel for me and my buddy. Well, listen, we might be down in that spot mid-February. I expect shit to be a little different When I run into some people down there this year Now that you made that public

Keep an eye on your inbox I need some waypoints I want those guys to be ready to airdrop waypoints Because don't play dumb with me I want to make sure one more thing we cover before we go Since we've given you some tools Going back to your Fishgate thing here,

I'm going to deputize you as a junior border patrol agent. Oh, really? This gives you no authority whatsoever. But by all means, wear it with pride, and I hope you find a solution to the fish gate. Oh, when I'm doing my fish stuff, I'm going to wear this. I want you to be able to display some sort of... You need to save that for when you get your polygraph machine. Yeah, I want you to be able to display some sort of You need to save that for when you get your polygraph

machine. I want you to be able to save that. When you hook them up to the machine and you start watching them, this will give you that opportunity. Their eyes are going to be twitching just seeing that patch. Well, I appreciate you guys coming down, man. I've always been real fascinated

by it. Again, just like time spent in, I don't know, like Southern Texas, a lot of time we spend in, uh, in Sonora, Arizona, you know, just be like, what are those guys up to? Well, we appreciate the opportunity to come on. It's a great opportunity for us to come and show the, the work that we're doing in the border patrol to give, give your listeners and everybody else out there an idea of the things that we're doing and giving them a better idea of the things that we're doing in the Border Patrol to give your listeners and everybody else out there an idea of the things that we do and giving them a better idea of the things that we do.

So we appreciate the opportunity to come on. No, it's great, man. It's very educational. Stay safe, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.

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