The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | February 14th, 2026: The Iran–China Axis Exposed & Immigration Sweep Concludes

Episode Date: February 14, 2026

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: First up — The United States continues ramping up pressure on Iran, but some analysts argue the real strategic target may be China. We speak with Joshua Philipp about how Tehran fits into Beijing’s broader geopolitical ambitions, and why moves in the Middle East could be part of a much larger contest with the Chinese Communist Party. Later in the show — The Trump administration announces it is ending Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota after more than four thousand immigration arrests. Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies joins us to break down what the operation accomplished, why it is winding down now, and what it means for immigration enforcement moving forward. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Acre Gold: Start building physical gold with simple monthly payments and enter to win two Ancient Collection gold bars at https://GetAcreGold.com/PDB.  Trust & Will: Estate planning doesn’t have to be complicated—create your will or trust online in minutes with Trust & Will and get 20% off at https://trustandwill.com/PDB  BRUNT Workwear: Get $10 Off at BRUNT with code PDB at https://www.bruntworkwear.com/PDB#Bruntpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Intuit Enterprise Suite. All your data in one place with built-in AI for real-time insights. Learn more at intuit.com slash ERP. Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. And yes, Mike, my shirt does say Boise lacrosse. How about that? All right, let's get briefed. First up, the U.S. continues to intensify its pressure on Iran. but is the real target China.

We'll speak with Josh Phillip about how Tehran fits into Beijing's broader strategic ambitions. Later on the show, the Trump administration says its ending Operation Metro surge in Minnesota after more than 4,000 immigration arrests. We'll be joined by Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies for more on that. But first, today's situation report spotlight. The U.S. continues its pressure campaign on Iran. confronting Tehran's nuclear ambitions and raising the stakes diplomatically and militarily. But this may be about more than just Iran. The Iranian regime sits at the center of a broader

China-Russia alignment, providing Beijing with energy security, regional leverage, and a key pillar in an emerging authoritarian bloc. Pressuring Iran could disrupt China's access to discounted oil and fracture that partnership without directly confronting Beijing. So, Is this Middle East containment or geopolitical chests aimed at squarely at the CCP? Here to help us break it down is Josh Phillips, senior investigative reporter for the Epoch Times and host of Crossroads, which you confide on YouTube, add Crossroads with Joshua Phillip. He's also got a brand new show on YouTube called The Josh Phillips Show. Josh, thank you very much for joining us here on the Situation Report.

Real pleasure being here. And no shortage in news these days, if anything else, right? Yeah, I just don't know what we're going to find to talk about. When all else fails, we can talk about the Drake-Kindick-Lamore beef if that's still going. Ah, there we go. There we go. A good idea. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. People always turn to me for cultural touchstones. Let's start at sort of the big picture. When we're talking about Iran, I think sometimes, you know, people tend to think about things in bite-sized chunks, right? And so they look at this focus on Iran right now, and they imagine it's the U.S. versus Iran, right? That's all it is. And it's happening in a bubble. But on a larger geopolitical stage,

if you could talk to us about, and I know this is kind of a broad, wide-ranging playing field here, but if you could talk to us initially about the relationship between China and Iran, if you were to look at it through my eyes, I would say that Iran and the story with Iran and the possible overthrow the regime there. It's just as much related to Cuba, where Trump is talking about regime change in Cuba. It's just as much related to Venezuela, where Trump just, you know, took out Maduro, the leader of Venezuela, just as much related to, I think, what we may see happening in other countries, because basically Iran is one of the three main pillars of the Chinese Communist parties, like a system of power globally. You could say that Russia, China, and Iran are

like the three core ones on the periphery. You actually have Brazil, Venezuela. You have, for example, North Korea, and, of course, you know, a few other proxy states, but those are kind of the main ones. This also ties into the Chinese Communist Party's war plans. And if you were to ask me about what's really going on with, hey, why did Trump capture Maduro? Why is Trump talking about regime change possibly in Cuba or Iran? I would actually say this was about a possible war that was going to take place and maybe still

may try to take place, but I think Trump might have actually checkmated them already. So this goes back to one of Xi Jinping's main advisors, a guy named Chin Kan Rang. And his plan for war for the Chinese Communist Party, this was public, this was before Russia invaded Ukraine, this was before the October 7th attack on Israel. Xi Jinping's main advisor said that if China were to invade Taiwan and possibly start a war with the United States, they would effectively have to get America involved in multiple other wars. So he proposed a four-war strategy. He said that America needs to be involved in four wars, so our military is divided enough where we wouldn't be able to fight and win.

Basically, on the analysis, America's military can fight two wars technically and still come out on top. So they wanted a war with Russia. They wanted a war with a terrorist organization, Iran being, of course, the puppeteer of that. They also wanted a war in Latin America. The original plan was actually to have Lula in Brazil to start a war. Lula got pushed out. Again, a prosecutor was in prison. He got brought back out now, and it looked like things are back on the table.

And so now that I see Trump kind of overturning these regimes, for me, this looks like Trump is to prevent these wars from taking place personally. Yeah, I mean, I'm with you on the concept of getting an engagement with Russia in some fashion, getting an engagement with a terrorist proxy organization. The Latin American side of things, you know, I think that might have been a difficult angle for the Chinese regime to work. I could blame it. I almost happen.

Yeah, please do. Yeah, please do. Yeah, please do. Yeah. So what it happened was. Okay, so let me give some background. A few years back, I was investigating the border crisis. I actually went down to Panama. I was in the Dary and Gap. I got access to the migrant caravan camps. Did a documentary and I found that basically the whole thing was being run through a United Nations program called the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and regular migration. I even gained access to some of the United Nations areas. They didn't like me recording, but I did. And dug out that whole story. But what a lot of people, people were telling me down there is they were getting ready for a war. They were preparing for a mass influx of migrants because you would have had a humanitarian crisis and a lot of displaced people.

So the story was this. Maduro in Venezuela had laid claim to Guyana, the country just north to them. Guyana, several years back, they found one of the largest oil reserves in the entire world, massive oil reserve. This is a very small country, basically no ability to defend itself. the issue is America has a lot of oil interests there. There's Exxon Mobil stations there. There's Chevron is there for, of course. China's very heavy there. Basically, they found one of the largest oil reserves

and everybody in the world wants it. Now, Maduro and Venezuela claimed that they had historical ownership over the entire country, and especially over the oil rich parts of it. They actually passed in their own law that they had this. They challenged it in the International Courts. The International Court said they did not own it. And they said, well, you know what?

We're going to do it anyway. Just before Trump started taking out the drugboats, what did they do? Venezuela moved its military to the border. They were doing war games. They moved their Navy right next to the Chevron stations. Lula in Brazil was going to back them up. And they were probably within a few months of invading Guyana. Now, had that happened, you would have had China, Russian,

involvement there. Iran is very heavily involved in Latin America, which also would have created a lot of problems for U.S. involvement. They have training camps for Hezbollah, even Mexico, even in Tijuana. They work with the cartels and IEDs, improvised explosives. They work with them on tunnel building. They have political parties in some countries like Peru, for example. I mean, this is not just a one country type thing. And then also, what would have happened was, is had they invaded, you would have had a mass humanitarian crisis. America would have been dealing possibly if we intervene with terrorist attacks. We would have been dealing with course with Hezbollahs. We would have been dealing with a huge influx of people fleeing these countries and we would have been dealing with

massive, massive migrant caravans. It would have been a destabilizing force for the United States. Now, what had happened was Secretary of State Marco Rubio actually went down there and told Venezuela, you know, told Maduro, hey, you do this, there's going to be consequences. And I found it to be no, no odd thing, actually, that soon after that, they started launching his attacks on the drug boats and then, you know, took out Maduro. Okay. No, I mean, it is, I, I think the connections there make perfect sense. We have talked about the Giana thing with, with, the relationship with Venezuela, that historical tie that Venezuela was claiming, gave them. than the rights to this fine, the reserves.

We've talked about that on the PDB before. The Iran connection, I think, would confuse a lot of people. Perhaps not confusing, maybe surprise them as a better word. In terms of the depth of their operations in Latin America, could you talk about that just a little bit more? You know, okay, so we don't often really consider what's going on in Latin America. Right. I think the Trump administration and its focus on the Western Hemisphere, you know, they're pulling back from the Middle East, they're saying that Russia is, you know, Europe's backyard. He wants

NATO to handle that. Trump's main focus now is the Asia Pacific and the Western Hemisphere, the Americas. He's bringing back the Monroe Doctrine. He's called it the Don Roe doctrine. And I think Trump is actually facing the reality now and recognizing that a lot's been going on in Latin America that deserves a lot more attention. So what had really been going on is this. Now, Cuba is kind of one of the main proxies here, as was Venezuela, as was Brazil. So what had been happening was post-collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba needed money, right? Cuba needed money. Now, Cuba has a lot of intelligence agents, a lot of intelligence services, and they've effectively, you know,

infiltrated different militaries, different governments throughout the entire Latin American region. If you talk with experts in Brazil, especially the conservative ones, they'll tell you this. There were a lot of conspiracies in these countries, including in Venezuela as well, that the Cuban intelligence services were puppeteering their governments, that they had infiltrated their politics, that they were actually even some generals in Brazil are suspected to be actual Cuban agents. If you go back in time, again, Castro and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela were very, very close. The oil deal they made basically bailed out the Cuban economy, and, you know, they were the money Cuba, Cuba was the intelligence. intelligence networks. Between Brazil then with Lula previously and Fidel Castro, the established an organization called the Foro Aal-Sal-Sal-Palo. The Farras-Apollo had, you know, FARC was involved, Shining Path was involved, narco-terrorist organizations. Most of the communist

organizations throughout Latin America were all involved. They facilitated the pink wave, which was the socialist and communist takeover of the Latin American countries during the late 90s and early 2000s. Then if you get into Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, they created several intergovernmental organizations designed throughout Latin America to push out the United States and to bring in Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence. So they talked about getting out the gringoes, as they called it. They pushed out America. They made deals that would exclude the United States and Canada, and they were signing literally hundreds, hundreds of deals. with China, hundreds of deals with Russia, and a lot of deals with Iran. The other big picture is that

as this was all happening, Fidel Castro was also working previously with, again, China, the Chinese Communist Party on the drug trade. And the drug trade, we think cartels, we think money, it's not like that. Drugs are a tool. Basically, drugs are a tool for weaponized corruption. And the basic idea is this. If you can control a country, if you can control a tool, country with gangs. If you can make the gangs control the politics where a politician, you know, if they say they're going to overthrow it, they get assassinated. If you can bring a country to its heels using drugs and gangs, whoever controls the corruption controls the country. And that's what they've effectively done. They use the drug money for political campaigns. They use a drug money

for corruption. The money is being, again, run through the cartels, but the CCP is supplying the precursors, they do the money laundering, they supply, you know, they run the ports effectively, and a lot of the politicians who get in through bribery or whatever else, you know, they're oftentimes CCP proxies as well, working very close with the Chinese Communist Party, Russia, and Iran. And so this is, this is not just about money. It's, it's about weaponized corruption. There's a lot to unpack there. But the big point, I think, that you're 100% correct. is, and I think it's something we talk about somewhat often frequently here on the PDB is nothing happens, right, in a bubble anymore. The world is very interconnected. So you can't look at,

as I think the tendency was, to look at what is the U.S. and Venezuela, what are they doing? Why do we care? What are we interested about? Now, of course, the easy answer was we're interested in resources, oil, you know, because the president was very clear about that and social media came out at a certain point during the counter narcotics operations on the water and said, you know, we're not letting up until we get the oil and land you stole from us. So he made that fairly clear in social media, but I think what's then typically missed is how that plays out on a larger stage. And so I think your points in the way that you're tying it together is absolutely brilliant. But having said that, we have to take a quick break, Josh. So if you'll stay right where you are, we'll be right back

with more of the PDB situation report. So, you know what, stick around, please. Hey, Mike Baker here. Let me take a moment to talk about personal finances and the importance of diversifying your assets. So here's the question. Do you own physical gold? Well, in today's world, with its ups and downs and general instability, owning gold is something that everyone should consider. And here's a top tip. Acre gold makes it simple. That's Acre, A-C-R-E. With acre gold, you pick a plan that fits your budget, you make monthly payments, and when you've accumulated enough, they ship you a beautifully designed 24-carat Swiss gold bar. It's that simple. Gold is up, you see, 70% year-over-year, and central banks, well, they're still buying at record levels. The reality is,

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Josh Philip. Now, if I can remind you, if you don't mind me reminding you, you can catch Josh on YouTube at Crossroads with Joshua Phillip. You can also catch his new show, the Josh Philip show. How long are going to take you to come up with that name, by the way? Yeah, a lot of brainstorming, you know, really put our heads together on that way. Yeah. Yeah, I just see, I know. I know you got to, you're crossing out a lot of them and then you finally say, hey, this works. Well, listen, thank you very much for stick around, man. I want to pick up where we left off and just acknowledged something you had said during that conversation, which I think is very true, having been around during that period of time,

the 80s and the 90s, I would argue we took our eye off the ball when it came to Latin America. We did not expend the resources, the personnel, the focus that we needed to in that part of the world, right in our own backyard. And then we acted surprised when country after country began tilting and leading forward towards China, towards Russia, and away from the U.S. We acted as if there was, what is this all about? How could this be happening? And it was, I would argue in part because, well, we were focused elsewhere and we seemed to have a hard time multitasking at points. And I think also there was a failure to some things. agree in it to miss the the the overall strategy that was in that was in play. So I'm very glad

you brought that up. I do want to kind of go back and and ask just about the Iranian involvement in Latin America because again, I think people understand Belden Road. They understand China's been out there. They certainly understand, I think, the relationship with Russia and Cuba over the years and and again I think it was it was a very good point to raise the the pervasiveness of the Cuban Intel services right which were created by of course the Soviet Union and then have exported their expertise as it were throughout Latin America and to some degree Central America so but let's talk about Iran if we could just you know take it wherever you'd like to but I'm you know curious

about that connection between Iran and Latin America and the importance of it over the years. Well, you know, they were brought in right alongside Russia and China. And it's not something we often talk about because you never really hear about it. But as all this was happening, as the United States is being pushed out, as the Monroe doctrine is being rejected by the governments throughout Latin America as part of this, you know, new deal they made. When they were bringing in trade deals, when they were bringing in kind of foreign companies,

when they were making oil deals, Iran was just part of that. And so they were making trade deals not just with China in the Belt and Road initiative, but Iran was part of that. The other big thing, though, is Hezbollah. And if I were to explain kind of the role that Iran plays globally, you could say that it's oil, it's, you know, those types of deals, but a big part of it is terrorism. And what we haven't talked about probably since the 90s is the drug trade is very deeply tied in with terror networks, very deeply tied in with terrorist funding.

because it tends to be black market, it tends to be non-traceable. If you remember back in the 90s and they had like the whole, you know, post-9-11 campaigns and they were talking about marijuana, they were saying, you know, if you do drugs, you're supporting terrorism. That's true. A lot of terror financing is tied in with drugs. And there's a few reasons for that. One of it is weaponized corruption.

Another part of it is untraceable financial networks, but another part is smuggling networks. And this was explained to me also, but I was trying to understand Chinese involvement and why they want to be involved with the drug trade to the U.S. It's because if you establish networks to smuggle in, you know, kilos

or, you know, even truckloads of drugs, you can bring in other stuff as well. If you understand they're bringing in toxic chemicals, they're bringing in, you know, gangs. There are groups, for example, that patrol the border in the United States and they find the cartels are bringing over like Middle Eastern guys

and they're sometimes escorting them on horseback and dropping off one Middle Eastern looking guy wearing like camo. There's a very deep tie between the cartels and Middle Eastern terrorism and a lot of that does go through these same networks.

I remember as a journalist when I was investigating some of this I was even told back probably well over a decade ago that Hezbollah even had training camps in Tijuana. that they were working with the cartels, they were teaching them how to build explosive devices,

they were taking lessons from that. Now we see the cartels doing drone bombs, you know, those little handheld drone bombs. I was told that they were helping them on tunnel building, some of the technology they have for that for the drug tunnels. But again, part of the Iranian interest is smuggling networks and again, illicit underground untraceable finances. Yeah, it's fascinating to me how it seemed,

difficult for some folks, particularly during the Biden administration, to understand the national security implications of essentially a porous or some folks refer to as an open border. And look, immigration is a great thing. Yeah, yada, yada, yada. It's built our country, of course it has. But every nation out there wants to know who's coming across the border. And if you don't know who's coming across your border, that's a national security problem. and the idea that the Iranian regime, right, and their incredibly aggressive efforts to build proxy networks that can influence not just the region but around the world, wouldn't take advantage of the cartel experience, right, and intelligence and methodologies in moving people and materials back and forth across a border is insane. They're either being naive during that time or they were being just willfully ignorant. So during that period of time when we really had a problem, and there was almost no vetting,

the database information about the millions of people who came across is incredibly incomplete. And so, again, I don't really have a question for you just yet, Josh, but it's always been an interesting point to me that this was a difficult concept. for people to understand, apparently. Well, let me explain it like this. So, when we think about business deals, oftentimes we're thinking microchips, we're thinking oil, we're thinking natural resources. The world does not work like that.

There are underground, there are surface world economies and there are underground economies. And you have some countries that operate completely or almost completely in underground economies. You know, black markets. Some countries in Latin America are almost entirely black market economies. North Korea is a black market economy. They run four of the largest arms traders. They're including in the Middle East, by the way. They do counterfeiting of U.S. dollars and other international currencies. They do drug trade, and that's their economy. Iran is not entirely, but heavily in underground economy. Many countries in Latin America, what is their money? look, you have multi-billion-dollar American businesses. You also have multi-billion-dollar drug

businesses, maybe probably more than that, in fact, maybe even trillions. You have multi-billion-dollar human trafficking businesses. You have organ trafficking businesses tied in with the Chinese military, for example. There's a lot of money in crime. There's a lot of money in crime. And some countries treat that like a business. I want to step in real quick, Josh, I'm going to step in And just a warning for the kids out there who are watching, that's not a word of advice from Josh saying there's a lot of money and cry. This is not a business show. Okay. So, I just know, cry does not safely pay.

Let's put it out. Yeah. That's right. It's exactly right. I've already interrupted you. I apologize. I'm just going to barrel my way into another question if I could because I want to be mindful of your time. The strategy, whether you call it a strategy or let's call it what?

happened so far in Venezuela and the pressure that's being exerted on the Cuban regime, right? I mean, there's reporting that essentially the country is right on the verge of collapse, right, even though the government is saying, hey, we're fine, we're not bending, we're not changing that, you know, and it is apples and oranges when comparing what does a transition of Venezuela look like to what does a transition in Cuba look like. But on a different level, What do those actions mean to the Chinese Communist Party? How do you assess the impact of that, those developments, on the Communist Party's thinking, strategy, planning? Yeah, so a couple points to be clear on.

So in the Chinese Communist Party strategy, the method they're enacting for Venezuela and Latin America overall, it ties into a Maoist strategy. So Mao Zedong had a slogan when he was launching his revolution. It was surround the cities with the countryside. Basically, you did not need to conquer the cities. It was too dangerous. They didn't want to have guerrillas going in there. They conquered the countryside, the surrounding cities, and through that, strangle them out. They're doing the same thing with America.

They're saying, well, we can't take America out militarily, but we can surround America. We can effectively take away what establishes American influence. So rather than try to take over America, they take over Latin America. Rather than take over America, they try to make massive trade deals with Canada. Rather than take over America, the thinking is they're enacting something on, if you want to go in technical terms, they call it the multipolar world order. The thinking is, what is America, American power, it's all the Pax Americana, the unipolar world order, peace under America. they want to effectively make America, the United States, one seat at the global table, and our voice at that table is no more influential than Uganda or Venezuela or Bangladesh.

You know, we're just one voice at the international table. And that's what they've been doing. They've been using the Belt and Road Initiative as a form of corruption. They'll bring about 10% of their budget. They'll bribe local officials. They get them into debt traps. They make infrastructure deals. They make resource deals.

deals, they default on those debt, they have to give them even more of it. Some countries, rather than paying interest in cash, they're paying interest in rare earth minerals. They're paying interest in oil. Venezuela was like that. And so the CCP is effectively conquering countries through non-military means and through corruption. And America is being pushed off the global stage as new leaders come in through, you know, corruption, rigged elections internationally. Through corruption where they're killing the opposition leaders.

Look at Mexico, how many officials have been killed because they said they'd stop the cartels. And once he weaponized corruption, you can effectively, people say, you know, art of war, Sun Tsu, this is closer to Machiavellianism. We're in the Prince, Machiaveli talked about how you can actually weaponize a mafia is a tool for political power. That's what the CCP's been doing globally. This is weaponized corruption globally. Okay, yeah. And so I would assume then your follow-on would be therefore changing the trajectory of Venezuela, right, possibly changing the direction of the Cuban regime, that impacts that CCP planning and their strategy and starts to tilt the balance back in favor of U.S. national security interests.

Yeah, well, what is Trump saying to Venezuela right now? Trump is basically telling the officials there, look, you can stay in power. And that's a big question of a lot of media we're raising. Well, Trump took out Maduro, but all the other leadership is still there. What difference does it make? Trump, I think, understands an important truth, which is basically all of these governments are corrupt. Basically, they're all narco states. Basically, all of them have been involved in one way or another, an organized crime.

What was Trump promised when he was on the camera? campaign trail. He said he was going to basically do everything he's doing right now, using special forces, you know, special operations forces to go and take out the drug cartels. He was going to basically make a military blockade, naval blockade to stop the trafficking. He was going to do targeted attacks. And he made an interesting threat where he said any government that tries to stop us, we will expose their corruption in connections to the cartels. And that was a shot over the about because guess what, almost all of them are connected. You're not going to get rid of global corruption. They're all corrupt. They're just about all corrupt. But you can make them play you

play ball with you because you know how the game works. And so what is Trump telling Venezuela? He's saying, look, your oil's locked up. You're not going to do anything with it. And you're not going to sell it until you do what? Literally, this was the word, until you push out Venezuelan Sorry, Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence, that those were the terms for unlocking the world trade in Venezuela. Josh, last question. Have you seen, again, being mindful of time, have you seen any indication that that's been taking place yet? I mean, I know it's early days in terms of Venezuela and a possible transition, etc., but have you seen any indication that they have in some manner started to move away from that influence. We're not getting a lot of details just yet, but it does seem to be the case the discussions

are happening and the oil is now being traded, which does suggest at least politically they're pushing it out. Business-wise, they're going to have to deal with a lot of Chinese ownership in Venezuela. But again, this is not just there. It's all throughout Latin America. We see the same thing right now happening with Panama in the Panama Canal, for example. This is a global policy, it seems. Listen, this has been an excellent conversation.

We've got a lot more questions to throw at you, but we have no more time in which to do that. So I hope you'll come back again here. But Josh Phillips, listen, senior investigative report at the EPUC Times. We definitely appreciate your time, your insight, your experience. And again, I would encourage everyone to catch Josh on YouTube, either at Crossroads with Joshua Phillip or the new show. check this out, the Josh Phillip show. So those both on YouTube, please, pay attention. Josh, thanks again, Matt. Really appreciate your time. All right. There's a lot really to analyze there. But I guess the big takeaway is, you know, yes, you have something happening in a particular part of the

world, but the important thing is to think what's the next level of that? What's connected to that? because, again, it is a constantly shrinking world. We're all so interconnected, and nothing happens in a bubble. All right, coming up next, the Trump administration winds down Operation Metro Surge. Have you heard about this in Minnesota? After more than 4,000 immigration arrests. Now, we'll speak with Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies about what this drawdown signals for enforcement strategy going forward.

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wants the facts so you can make your own decisions, keeping it real with Jillian Michaels is the show for you. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Trump administration says it's ending Operation Metro surge, its large-scale immigration enforcement push in Minneapolis. Since the operation began in late November, immigration officers and agents have arrested more than 4,000 undocumented immigrants, that's according to the Department of Homeland Security, DHS. Borders are Tom Holman says coordination with local law enforcement and enforcement successes led to the decision to conclude the surge with a significant drawdown beginning this

week. The move comes amid heightened scrutiny following obvious controversial enforcement incidents. For more on this, I'm joined by a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, Art, Arthur. All right, thanks very much for taking the time to join us here on the Situation Report. Thanks so much for having me, Mike. Absolutely. Well, let me ask, by starting off with this question, when we're talking about Operation Metro surge and winding it down in Minnesota. Is that because of the success that they've had? Is it because of the obvious narrative that was built up around it

and the unfortunate tragic incidents that took place? I'm thinking of the two shootings. Or is it a combination of both? It's a great question. It's actually a combination of both. One thing that's clear for media reporting, is that there is a bit of a dispute, disagreement within the Trump administration about how to go about enforcing the immigration laws in the interior, how exactly to have, you know, the 6,000 ICE

officers go out, identify, take into custody, detain, prosecute, and remove all of those aliens. On one side of this equation is Tom Holman. Tom Holman. Tom Homan. has 42 years of experience in immigration enforcement. He knows what works. He knows what doesn't. But he also understands the optics of the thing. He understands that in order for any immigration policy, any immigration program to be successful, it has to be politically acceptable. And for that reason, the home and Spain focus, you know, has been on the tens of thousands of criminal aliens who are in the United States and also the million plus 1.6 million aliens who are under final orders in this country. Now, there are others in the administration. I'm not privy to those discussions.

Who would prefer a policy in which we send officers out into the streets to identify individuals and take them into custody? Now, I, you know, Hugh more toward the Homan strategy for a simple reason, Mike. it's a lot more effective and it's a lot more resource effective. If officers, if two officers go to a local jail, identify a criminal alien there or a couple of them, take them into custody. We know that we're going to get that person. If you send people to a target parking lot or the local home depot, hoping they're going to find somebody, you know, maybe you'll find people and maybe you won't.

That's never been the way that immigration enforcement has been done. And honestly, I'm not even 100% sure that that's the way that immigration enforcement has been done under the Trump administration. But that's certainly the popular narrative, which is why, you know, I was hardened, thought it was a good thing when Tom Holman went to Minnesota when the president sent him there a couple of weeks ago. In his press conference recently, Tom Oman said they've apprehended 4,000 people they were looking for in Minneapolis for the greater Minneapolis area. that's a huge success. And I think that that's attributable to, you know, all of the operations that have gone on there. But I think the fact that this has dropped off of, you know, the popular radar, in large part has to do with the fact that, you know, the borders are, knows what works, knows what doesn't,

knows what he wants to get accomplished and got it done. Yeah. I mean, I would argue that there's a real, there's a strategy problem. There's a policy messaging issue here. I'm not sure how you would describe it. But if you look at this from a purely political point of view, right? I mean, because that's how Washington, D.C. works. If you say to yourself, we're coming up on the midterms.

I know this is going to seem like an odd question, but we're coming up on the midterms. What's our message, right? How do we secure all the voters we need to not. you know, have our ass handed to us in the midterms as this, you know, traditionally happens with the party of power. Okay, well, we promised during the campaign to secure the border. That was done, right? Very effectively.

That was done. Then that next step was, and now we're going after the criminals, the worst of the worst. And that was accepted. That was a popular message in a sense, right? I mean, no, it's hard even for those on the hard left to push back saying, no, don't go after criminals, right? Even though they do say that, you know, we're worried about them.

But they lost the narrative quickly, right? And I think in part what you're talking about, this idea that suddenly you had videos of sweeps through Home Depot. And in talking to people, you know, colleagues, friends of mine, folks that I just meet out there while traveling all around, who are, you know, definitely Republicans, not necessarily hard right, but certainly Republicans, right of center. They said, they were uncomfortable with that, right? They were very comfortable with the idea of picking up the worst of the worst. But I think people feel, and this is where I bring in the midterms again, people feel as if maybe they got off track.

and whether they did or not, if they didn't, then their messaging is just awful. They pick up 4,000 people in Minnesota, well, maybe provide more information about who those people are so you can bolster this argument that you are going after the criminal element. And again, you know, I'm just, I'm looking at it from both sort of what you should be doing, but also what you should be doing in terms of politics if you, again, don't want your butt kicked. Yeah, no. And, you know, I think that a lot of this has to do with messaging. A lot of it has to do with a media that largely became complacent with the non-enforcement of the Biden administration. And then a lot of it, Mike, which is why I'm grateful to be here with you today, has to do with the fact that most people really don't understand how it's supposed to work or even what they're seeing. Now, when you see ICE officers pull over a vehicle, They're not pulling over the vehicle because there's some big bumper sticker on it that says that, you know, I'm an illegal alien. And they're not doing it based on racial characteristics.

They're doing it because they're looking for the person who is in that vehicle. They know the license plate they're looking for. They more or less, you know, can use the intelligence to find those people. They're identifying them. But when those images get posted in the popular media, and this happened actually very early in Washington, DC right by the Washington Monument under the Trump II administration. A local reporter happened to be there pulled out a cell phone and suggested that, you know, ICE was just grabbing random people from, you know, right by the, you know, the Washington

monument. Of course, that's ridiculous. That's not what they were doing. They were looking for that person who turned out to have a child molestation charge against him. So I think it was. But the, but yeah, I mean, the images, you know, They say a picture says a thousand words, but often those thousand words don't actually accurately reflect what should be done.

In the face of that, the appropriate thing is to very calmly, the way that Mr. Homan did in Minnesota, you know, address what is being done, you know, what you're actually seeing there. If you go attacking people and saying, oh, my God, you're so stupid, you don't understand what you're doing, that's not a very good strategy. and, you know, like, you know, salt being poured on a wound, the media is going to close around its own narrative and, you know, not differ from it. So I think that, you know, one thing that the Trump administration could have done early on was to speak with one voice, talk about what they were going to do, talk about how they were going to target those individuals. But here's really the most crucial part, Mike, talk about the requirements that those agents are operating under. You may remember Lake and Riley, and you may even remember the Lake and Riley Act, which was the first bill that Congress passed in the current 119th Congress. In fact, it's public law 119-1. The Lake and Riley Act expanded the number of criminals and other individuals that the Trump administration must take into custody, so even tighter than the restrictions that were on previous administrations.

that one requires ICE to go out and pick up every shoplifter, every thief, every larceness. There were 1.15 million instances of shoplifting in the United States last year, Mike. And, you know, I'm not going to say that the majority of those people were aliens, but a significant number were. And now, under the Lake and Riley Act, they must pick those people up. The Lake and Riley Act also requires ICE to go out and pick up all one point. 6 million people who were under final orders of removal. That was not really optional before, but it's really not optional now. And in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, acting ICE director Todd Lyons revealed something amazing. I don't know if you've even heard this.

Half, 800,000 of all aliens under final removal orders in the United States right now have a criminal history. That's a significant number of people for ICE to go people. picking up. But here's the other side of that equation. Most of the people that you talk to, that you've talked to, are much like the people that I've talked to. They support immigration enforcement, but they don't like necessarily what they have been looking at. But, you know, there are a lot of other people that I talk to who want to see full enforcement. They like to see, you know, officers running around Home Depot. They like to see Border Patrol agents that that miles away from the border in a parking lot in Chicago. And so it's a very, you know, tight balance

that the Trump administration has to go through to, on the one hand, satisfy their base. And on the other hand, you know, get those, you know, uncommitted voters and bring them along with the policy. And here's really the disconnect, Mike. If you follow, you know, the strategy that Tom Homan has laid out, you're actually going to, you know, encourage, if not physically remove the vast majority of aliens who are lawfully present in the United States. Because if dad is a criminal and he gets deported, mom and the kids are probably going to go too. And other people in the neighborhood are going to think, well, ICE might come after me next. So there's a reason that, you know, Tom went into Minnesota that he implemented the plan that he had there, that it's been effective. that it's almost, and it's curious, you know, when you think about Tom, Holman borders are,

being the savior that many people, you know, on the center and, you know, on the center right have been looking for, you know, it really just sort of, you know, reveals how far off of balance, you know, some of the earlier things that we saw were, but they're definitely effective now. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, Tom Holman was, you know, given a medal for, his service on immigration by President Obama. So it's, you know, it is possible to, you know, to satisfy both sides if things are done, you know, in a strategic proper manner. And again, I would keep arguing and the messaging, because you can't do anything without good messaging these

days. And the messaging is appropriate. Listen, if you, Art, if you could stick around, I just looked up at the clock. Look at that. I've actually got an analog clock, so it takes me a while to figure out what time it is. And we've got to do. got to take a quick break and then we'll be right back with more from art arthur here on the situation report stick around hey mike baker here with a message for all you folks out there that work hard and need your workwear and to be tough and durable and comfortable don't forget comfortable that's very important look over the years as an example i found that too many workboots are made by legacy brands that don't deliver quality and that's why i want to tell you about a great company

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See full terms at mintmobile.com. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Let me bring back my guest, Art Arthur.

He's the Resident Fellow for Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. As you might imagine, there is a lot to discuss here. Art, thank you very much for sticking around. Let me ask you this. And this is going to tie into a article that you wrote recently. I'm wondering about the quality of information that ICE works with, right? The databases. Because if you think about the period of time during the Biden administration and the millions that came across,

providing information sometimes inaccurate, sometimes completely bogus, what is the quality of that database that they're working off of? Because if they're talking about prioritizing and you're saying, and I assume they are, right? I mean, that would be logical. We're going after the worst of the worst. We're going after the criminal element. Okay, fine. We've got a tier one, right?

Those are the, they land on tier one, the criminals, or those with final orders. How good is that information in terms of being able to go out and, and, and, you know, locate the simple act of saying, here's the individual, now let's go pick them up, right? And you've got the other issue, which, again, I think the part of the problem that doesn't get discussed enough is how the sanctuary city, sanctuary state policies have negatively impacted the effort by eyes to do this in a responsible, reasonable, quiet fashion, right, that's safe for the communities. And to some degree, that played into the narrative, obviously, that I think the hard left certainly wanted to put out there, which is all of this is unacceptable.

Anyway, I know that somewhere in there is a question, Art, I hope you can find it. Of course, I can't, Mike. Let me begin with the fact that the Biden administration actually kept pretty good records on the people that it apprehended and released into the United States. So 2.9 million people almost were paroled into the United States under the Biden administration. We have their pictures, we have their photographs, we have their demographic information. In addition, another 5 million individuals were, you know, haught at the southwest border and were released into the United States. Those individuals were also photographed, were also fingerprinted, and officers and agents found out where they were headed in the United States. once they were released. Now, a lot of that information isn't accurate because a lot of those people

didn't tell immigration the truth. But with those fingerprints, with those photographs, and with the names and dates of birth of those individuals, ICE is able to compile a database of people that it is looking for. Then, anytime anyone is arrested in the United States and fingerprinted, those fingerprints go to the FBI, and the FBI sends those fingerprints to what's called the Law Enforcement Support Center in Burlington, Vermont. In real time, the LESC checks all of those fingerprints against its database of aliens that are known to be in the United States. That's how ICE is able to send out all of those detainers for people who are being held in county jails in Dubuque or, you know, state prisons in Montana. They know who those people are.

are in real time. At that point, ICE will issue a detainer for those people. And most, you know, local sheriffs, most, you know, state systems want to get their criminals off the street. They want to honor those detainers. But you talked about sanctuary jurisdictions. And all of California, thanks to Senate Bill 54, SB 54 is the sanctuary state, they won't hand those people over to immigration. Big places like New York and New Jersey, Maryland, and Minnesota, their sanctuaries too. So, you know, they will slow walk those detainer requests. They won't respond at all.

And it's situations like that that require ICE officers to then go into the community after those criminals have been released from state and local custody to find them. So one third of all ICE arrests take place in just three states, Florida, Texas, and Georgia, because those states cooperate with ICE officers. They let them into their jails to take custody of them where they know that those aliens don't have weapons. That could be done very neatly. But in California, New York, in Chicago, and Minneapolis, they actually have to go into the communities to find those people. Now, Governor Walts in Minnesota, Mayor Jacob Fry in Minneapolis, they knew that.

They knew that those ICE officers were going to be out in the street looking for those criminal aliens. But the really, you know, sort of despicable thing that they did was they didn't provide any state or local backup for when those officers went into the community before Tom Homan got to Minneapolis. And for that reason, not only did you need one or two officers to take somebody into custody, but you needed 10 other officers to protect the two officers that were taking that person into custody. And then the Democratic Farmer Labor Party in Minnesota has on its website that you can, you know, sign up for something called constitutional observer training, which is where you show up, you see an ice officer, and you start blowing a whistle and you start yelling. So, I mean, you know, there are no good guys in what happened in Minnesota, but the closest that, I mean,

aside from the ICE officers themselves, you know, those agents, those officers, they had a job to do. They wanted to do the job. They wanted to do it as safely and quickly as possible, not only to protect themselves and to protect the aliens, but to protect the public in general. So, you, You know, that's really the part of this story that nobody's talking about. The only reason that ICE had to do what they did before Tom Homan got there was because they weren't getting state and local cooperation. Now that the borders are, they are, they are. And that's why they're able to draw down the operation.

It's a very good point. Just in just the logistics of it, right? I mean, ICE officers are, their job is not crowd control, right? Perimeter security. That's a local law enforcement effort, right? And they're trained for that sort of thing. And they're trained to de-escalate and make sure that, you know, we don't have unfortunate tragic incidents like we did with Preti and with good.

So, yeah, there's obviously tragic stories there. But at the same time, it's, as always, a more complex. complex layered situation, then, you know, typically the media will present it as, or certainly one side or the other will present it as. Or you just published a piece, I kind of alluded to it earlier, that dissect CBS News's claim, that less than 14 percent of recent ICE arrestees are violent criminals. That's the CBS News claim. What can you say about that?

Yeah, a couple of things, Mike. first, there's no definition of violent criminals. You know, that's sort of one of those terms that so libertarian think tanks have created that CBS News picked up on. But even then, CBS News reported that more than 400,000 individuals have been arrested by ICE since inauguration Day 2025. Do the math, and you'll see that that means that 56,000 violent criminals, 14% of 400,000 were taken into immigration custody. But, and, you know, this is one big thing that I faulted the author of that report for. The author of that report is very familiar with the Lake and Riley Act, which I talked about before.

The Lake and Riley Act specifically tells ICE that it has to go out and pick up three categories of nonviolent criminals. Shoplifters, those who have engaged in theft, and those who have engaged in Larson, Remember, the killer of Lake and Riley, Jose Ibarra, had a criminal record, but it was for shoplifting in the United States. It wasn't for attacking nursing students in broad daylight. And the idea that Congress had was pick up those low-level criminals before they commit to higher-level crimes. But they never mentioned the Lake and Riley Act. The other thing, Mike, is they never mentioned the sanctuary policies. Again, more than half of all aliens on a...

and lawfully president in the United States live in sanctuaries. If ICE had the ability to go into every California jail and the California state prison system, they'd be too busy arresting and processing criminal aliens from the Golden State alone to do anything else. But they can't. They can't go into the state prisons or the county jails in New York. They can't go into the Chicago prison system. They can't go into the until Tom Oman showed up.

into the Minnesota present system, were limited in doing so. And for that reason, they had to take the aliens that they could find, which drove down the numbers. Now, again, if you're going to make a big splashy claim about, you know, only 14% are violent criminals, which, by the way, I don't know if you saw this, but Katie Kirk repeated it and got slammed down by Rand Paul the other day. But if you're going to make a splashy claim like that, you have to tell the whole story. You have to talk about the sanctuaries and you have to talk about the Lake and Riley Act. That didn't happen. And so, you know, wait, wait, wait, wait, Art, are you applying that the media is supposed to be objective? What? I would expect that CBS News after Bari Weiss arrived would be a little bit more

objective than they are. And, you know, again, this is a reporter who was covered this issue, and actually did a great job of covering this issue throughout the Biden administration. You know that he missed a stitch or two in covering this, you know, article is, you know, unacceptable. Maybe he just missed it, but, you know, maybe there's something more than there. Yeah. No. Well, I'm talking about something more.

I've got more questions for your art on all of this, but I don't have more time. So, unfortunately, we're going to have to wrap it up. I do hope you'll come back because there is a lot to discuss here. and it's obviously top of mind for a lot of people. And certainly going into the midterm elections, I think this is going to be something that's going to play a significant role in how the current administration does or how the Republican Party does. Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, again, listen, man,

thank you very much for giving us your time, your insight today. It's always appreciated. Mike, it's always a pleasure. I look forward to the next time we can talk about these important issues. That is all the time we have for the PDB situation report. Now, if you have any questions or comments, maybe you've got a humorous anecdote or two or a dad joke or a limerick. I don't know if people still do limericks. Please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com.

You know what we do? Once a month, we gather around what is essentially a very large mahogany conference table, right, in our library that smells of rich leatherbound books and pipe tobacco. go. And we choose the best questions and comments, the most interesting. We put them all together into an episode that we call, Ask Me Anything, and yes, we've got another one coming up here for the month of February just shortly. So stay tuned for that. To listen to the podcast of this show ad-free, you can do that and you can do it very simply. Just become a premium member of the President's Daily Brief by visiting pdbbpremium.com. I told you it was simple. I'm Mike Baker. Until next time, you know the drill.

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