--:-- [Sound of a news theme plays]
--:-- John Bickley: Good morning, I'm John Bickley, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Wire, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I'm Georgia Howe, co-host of Morning Wire. Welcome to our show.
--:-- John Bickley: Today, we're discussing the crisis at our southern border. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached by the House of Representatives this week, and last week the Senate border bill was defeated.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Meanwhile, states including Texas and Arizona are left to deal with the flood of illegal immigrants.
--:-- John Bickley: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has taken action to secure his state's border despite efforts by the federal government. In this episode, we talked to a reporter who spent several days on the Texas southern border about what's actually taking place on the ground there.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's February 18th, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now to discuss what's really happening at our southern border is Daily Wire reporter Cassie Dillon.
--:-- Cassie Dillon: Hi, John.
--:-- John Bickley: So you spent several days patrolling the border with Texas state troopers by land, by air, and by Rio Grande. What did you learn during your time at the southern border?
--:-- Cassie Dillon: I spent four days at the southern border near Eagle Pass, Texas, where the state troopers really gave me an up-close look at what they experience on a daily basis. As you said, I traveled the border with them by boat, helicopter, and patrol car.
--:-- John Bickley: I couldn't help but see how frustrated both the state troopers and the National Guardsmen were at having to do the job of the federal government.
--:-- Cassie Dillon: Since last month, the feud between Texas and the federal government has spiraled into a nationwide issue, with 25 other Republican governors backing Abbott, and 13 of them actually traveling down to the border to see the situation for themselves.
--:-- John Bickley: Just feet away from the Rio Grande, the governors gathered together to accuse President Biden of failing to do his job as commander-in-chief.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Governor Sarah Sanders of Arkansas spoke with us about the tensions.
--:-- Sarah Sanders: Governor Abbott has been stepping up, or the federal government is dropping their duty. And so states are coming together, working together to help do the job of the federal government.
--:-- John Bickley: What comes next, hopefully, is the federal government sees that Texas and other states are capable of doing the job that they claim is impossible, and that they'll start helping in the process.
--:-- Sarah Sanders: If they don't, you'll continue to see states step up because we know that we have to protect our border and protect the people of our states.
--:-- John Bickley: Several of the states sent troops to assist the Texas National Guard in guarding the border. One of these states was Florida, which also sent state troopers with patrol cars and airboats.
--:-- Cassie Dillon: Along the border, we saw makeshift barriers made of shipping containers and razor wire.
--:-- John Bickley: In the area of Shelby Park, where there is once thousands of migrants crossing and being processed by border patrol, crossings have significantly decreased.
--:-- Cassie Dillon: We did, however, meet small groups of migrants who swam over the Rio Grande and were stopped by the razor wire.
--:-- John Bickley: Where's your mom?
--:-- Cassie Dillon: Venezuela. Everyone is Venezuela.
--:-- John Bickley: One man we spoke to from Venezuela was on the bank of the river, behind the wire with a three-year-old who he said was his wife's daughter.
--:-- Cassie Dillon: He said his wife swam over with him earlier in the morning, but was currently giving birth somewhere in the U.S.
--:-- Lieutenant Chris Olivares: They're saying that his wife was pregnant, that her water broke. And that's why... Here? Yes, here. On this side. While they're waiting here. Right, just right now. After she swam across the river. Right, this morning.
--:-- John Bickley: And that's why National Guard, they took her out to the hospital to get her medical treatment.
--:-- Lieutenant Chris Olivares: So to be that far in your pregnancy, right, they had to know more or less, okay, when she was going to give birth in order to cross on this side and have a child here in the U.S.
--:-- John Bickley: Is that baby a citizen now?
--:-- Lieutenant Chris Olivares: Chances are yes, because the child is going to be born here. And we see that a lot with a lot of pregnant females that are coming across.
--:-- John Bickley: They'll wait usually when they're about to give birth, and then they'll cross into the United States because then they'll have the baby that same day, or they'll have it like right at the river as they're crossing.
--:-- Lieutenant Chris Olivares: So his wife just managed to get across the border and now their child may be a U.S. citizen. Correct.
--:-- John Bickley: What specifically has Texas changed in terms of taking action on the border when migrants cross?
--:-- Lieutenant Chris Olivares: Migrants would cross the border, turn themselves in with Border Patrol, and wait to be processed and released into the United States. But now with Texas in control, migrants are stopped by the barriers and told to swim back and are only assisted if there is a medical emergency.
--:-- John Bickley: I understand they're desperate, right? But they're really placing their children in danger, especially crossing the river.
--:-- Lieutenant Chris Olivares: And not only that, too, then you're paying a criminal, a smuggler in Mexico to get across, too. So there's a lot of just a lot of concerns with that in general.
--:-- John Bickley: And that's why, because of the federal government and what they're doing right now, they really don't acknowledge the fact that it's OK for people to cross a river with a child. To them, it's fine. They ignore that issue.
--:-- Lieutenant Chris Olivares: But when it's involved in the state of Texas, when we put up barriers, well, that's inhumane. Well, that's cruel. But yet we trying to prevent people from crossing so we don't see situations like this so we don't have anybody drowning especially children. We're the only ones really trying to prevent that.
--:-- John Bickley: And yet the federal government hasn't done anything as far as trying to prevent illegal crossings between ports of entry.
--:-- Lieutenant Chris Olivares: But not all migrants are coming to the border and waiting to encounter border patrol, correct? There are currently two types of migrants crossing our border.
--:-- John Bickley: Those who want to be detected so they can claim asylum and those who hope to be undetected and sneaking illegally.
--:-- Lieutenant Chris Olivares: Typically, this group includes criminals and those who do not have an easy time claiming asylum.
--:-- John Bickley: On two days during our trip, we joined Texas State Trooper Jacqueline Gooding on her patrol shift near the border to find human smugglers and illegal migrants.
--:-- Jacqueline Gooding: So yeah, in April of this past year, we encountered two suspects that were involved in a human smuggling operation. They were smuggling six undocumented individuals.
--:-- John Bickley: It was a pursuit when I tried to stop the car initially, and we were able to capture the two individuals that were involved in the smuggling event as well as all of the undocumented individuals.
--:-- Jacqueline Gooding: It happened that the suspects were armed at the time. Both of them had firearms and the driver had an active warrant for murder out of Louisiana.
--:-- John Bickley: And we were able to bring justice to him and be able to transfer him off to a federal agency, not only for smuggling charges where we worked together with them, but then the other agency in Louisiana was able to pursue him for the murder warrant.
--:-- Jacqueline Gooding: Gooding says she has encountered illegal immigrants, minors and American citizens smuggling because there's profit to be made.
--:-- John Bickley: Money. It's all about money, right? So the cartels and gangs are at the center of the smuggling trade, and anything that they can make money off of is a commodity to them.
--:-- Jacqueline Gooding: So you have to remember with undocumented individuals, as much as we view them as humans and want to protect them as well, to these gangs that are benefiting from them, they're just money.
--:-- John Bickley: And that's what it's all about. They're a commodity that can be reused and even taken advantage of after the stop to get more money out of them.
--:-- Jacqueline Gooding: How much money are we talking? Your average driver per vehicle that's, we call it, loaded with individuals, they're going to make $5,000 to $10,000 on average.
--:-- John Bickley: While we keep hearing the phrase, every state is a border state, the people who truly suffer the most are the ranchers whose properties are being decimated by the flow of illegals on their land.
--:-- Cassie Dillon: Wayne King manages an 8,200-acre ranch of exotic African animals that his clients can hunt recreationally.
--:-- John Bickley: You can hear the frustration in his voice as he describes how migrants have cut through his fence thousands of times, causing the ranch to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.
--:-- Wayne King: So they cutting into your fence Oh yeah they cut plumb through it I had them cut big holes big square holes where they can get through I had them cut from top to bottom lay it back drive through it cut chains on locks on gates on the other side, get out.
--:-- John Bickley: And what's the danger of them cutting holes?
--:-- Wayne King: Game gets out. I've already estimated we've lost about $400,000 in revenue from game being out.
--:-- John Bickley: If they really wanted to do this right, why are they coming through my pastures? Why are they destroying water troughs, water lines, windmills, fences? Why are they doing that? Why don't they just cross the bridge where they can get all of the government's handouts and everything's hunky-dory?
--:-- Wayne King: Now, Governor Abbott has tried to help the situation for the ranches, correct?
--:-- John Bickley: He has. His Operation Lone Star empowered many counties to have more resources and tools to crack down on criminal activity along the border.
--:-- Wayne King: One of those tools that has been in use in recent years, depending on the county, is having ranchers give state troopers the ability to access their land and arrest migrants for illegal trespassing.
--:-- John Bickley: Half this ranch is in Kinney County, half is in Maverick. But Kinney County was the first county where we could file charges for illegal trespass.
--:-- Wayne King: Well, when they did that, the big thing that it helped, because most of my holes at the very first of this was due to the coyotes.
--:-- John Bickley: And they'd cut big holes where they could get a group through, keep going.
--:-- Wayne King: But when we started putting them in jail, when we caught them, it pretty much curtailed the coyotes. Now it's just those what the government wants to call getaways.
--:-- John Bickley: King said he is very appreciative of Abbott standing up to the Biden administration and says he's really beginning to see a difference.
--:-- Wayne King: Abbott is doing his utmost best to protect us here on the border. Because, man, we're, it's just crazy. I mean, what else you want to call it when our state is trying to protect us, but yet our federal government is trying to stop the state from protecting us.
--:-- John Bickley: So overall, our trip to southern Texas showed us that people on the ground really believe that Governor Abbott is making a difference by taking responsibility for securing the border so far.
--:-- Cassie Dillon: Well, a very complex and problematic situation happening down there.
--:-- John Bickley: Cassie, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cassie Dillon: Thank you.
--:-- John Bickley: That was Daily Wire reporter Cassie Dillon, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- [Sound of a news theme plays]
