Speaker 1: On this episode of Newsworld, I wanted to discuss the
Speaker 1: recent ice raids and the protest in Los Angeles, what
Speaker 1: they mean and what I think needs to be done
Speaker 1: to move forward with immigration policy. So I'm really pleased
Speaker 1: to welcome my guests Joshua Travino. He is the Senior
Speaker 1: Fellow for the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First
Speaker 1: Policy Institute and a good friend. Joshua, Thank you, and
Speaker 1: welcome back to Newsworld.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Speaker Gingrich, pleased to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm curious in the wake of the recent unrest in California,
Speaker 1: many Americans were surprised to see Mexican flags waved as
Speaker 1: cars burned. Did you think this was merely symbolic or
Speaker 1: was it part of a deeper, coordinated political message, as is.
Speaker 2: So often the case in human events. The answer is both,
Speaker 2: but it's more one than the other. A use of
Speaker 2: the Mexican flag that is symbolic in certain quarters, although
Speaker 2: I should note that as a Mexican American myself, you
Speaker 2: don't see it much in my native South Texas. It's
Speaker 2: not the case in California, and it's because you have
Speaker 2: a different and differently politicized population there. The challenge for
Speaker 2: the United States at large comes in the reality that
Speaker 2: the existence of these flags and their deployment in civil
Speaker 2: unrest is not mere organic expressions of what I would
Speaker 2: describe as legitimate cultural pride. There are specific political messages,
Speaker 2: There are specific attacks on American sovereignty coming from within
Speaker 2: the United States, and I think most consequentially for US,
Speaker 2: those attacks upon sovereignty are actively supported by the Mexican
Speaker 2: regime itself. And we can talk about the rhetoric that
Speaker 2: they've deployed as this unrest has gone on, but it's
Speaker 2: something that we need to notice and understand.
Speaker 1: What do you think has the protest in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and the way they spread quickly to places like Seattle,
Speaker 1: New York and Chicago.
Speaker 2: The left has spent almost a generation now. I don't
Speaker 2: think it really came to the four until the protests
Speaker 2: against the Iraq War and the George W. Bush administration
Speaker 2: really alerted the mainstream American left to the reality that
Speaker 2: they had a mass mobilization potential that could slide into
Speaker 2: violence pretty easily. And so you saw this develop over
Speaker 2: essentially the past twenty years, moving into the Occupy Wall
Speaker 2: Street movement and then really taking off in Barack Obama's
Speaker 2: second term with the unrested Ferguson and in other places,
Speaker 2: and I think culminating in what was to my mind
Speaker 2: genuinely an insurrection in summer twenty twenty in which the
Speaker 2: violent apparatus at the left was brought to bear against
Speaker 2: I wouldn't even say conservative governance, but simple American constitutional
Speaker 2: governance at large. It is a movement that has really
Speaker 2: brought back unfortunately, political assassination to American civics has really
Speaker 2: made us in the street violence. And So to your question,
Speaker 2: what we're seeing, what we've seen in Los Angeles, what
Speaker 2: we saw in other cities is at a fundamental level,
Speaker 2: a reactivation of that network of violence, a resort by
Speaker 2: a movement that cannot win through persuasion, cannot win at
Speaker 2: the ballot box, to the fundamental pre political force, which
Speaker 2: is force it self. And that's what we're seeing. In
Speaker 2: the case of LA You've got third party foreign state
Speaker 2: involvement as well.
Speaker 1: Now what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: What I mean is that their underlying motives for the
Speaker 2: violence in Los Angeles, in particular, talking about seeing the
Speaker 2: deployment of Mexican flags and so on, and it's something
Speaker 2: that we have to understand because it's not mere humanitarian impulse. Right,
Speaker 2: it's not sorrow for the migrants, and it's not sorrow
Speaker 2: for those being deported. What ice Wood President Trump is,
Speaker 2: i think correctly striking at and enacting these deportations, and
Speaker 2: specifically in the precipitating events in Los Angeles where they
Speaker 2: were going after apparently a human trafficking hub, is they're
Speaker 2: striking at a profit model that benefits both the cartels
Speaker 2: and their partners the Mexican regime. That's important to understand.
Speaker 2: The business model for the cartel's visa v. Human trafficking,
Speaker 2: which characterizes one hundred percent of a legal migration these
Speaker 2: days and has for some time, can really be thought
Speaker 2: of as sort of an evil subscription service. They extort
Speaker 2: the trafficked people on their way to the border, but
Speaker 2: once the border is crossed, the expectation and it's enforced,
Speaker 2: is that these individuals will go to jobs in the
Speaker 2: United States. Frequently they're already set up, and they will
Speaker 2: continue to fund the cartels and their partners in the
Speaker 2: Mexican state, in particular with remittances that come back. This
Speaker 2: is why, for example, you saw the President of Mexico
Speaker 2: essentially threaten protests and demonstrations in the United States if
Speaker 2: remittances were taxed. This is a big deal for them.
Speaker 2: It's billions of dollars in revenue. It's no wonder that
Speaker 2: violence resulted when that model was attacked, But of course,
Speaker 2: for us, the answer is that we should keep attacking it.
Speaker 1: From your perspective, do you think their effort is designed
Speaker 1: to try to make it so difficult for ICE to
Speaker 1: operate that the whole deportation system eventually just collapses.
Speaker 2: Oh, without question, Without question, they want to raise the
Speaker 2: price tag of deportations. They want to raise the price
Speaker 2: tag of enforcement actions and make it not worthwhile, because,
Speaker 2: of course, the theory of action is that if every
Speaker 2: time you conduct a workplace raid, or you conduct a deportation,
Speaker 2: or it's a surprise apprehension that a mob's going to gather,
Speaker 2: then the operational calculus changes, and frankly, it will if
Speaker 2: taken to its logical extreme. It's an environment in which
Speaker 2: two things happen. One is that deportations can't occur, but
Speaker 2: that's not the real goal. The real goal is that
Speaker 2: it becomes an environment in which law ordered governance can't occur,
Speaker 2: and that's the ultimate end state of the other side.
Speaker 1: The Democratic leader in the House made a comment the
Speaker 1: other day that ICE agents should not wear a mask
Speaker 1: because eventually you're going to figure out who you are.
Speaker 1: And I thought, thinking back, for example, to the Italian
Speaker 1: tradition trying to deal with the mafia, in fact, you
Speaker 1: put their wives and their families and their children at
Speaker 1: risk if they become known. And I think people don't
Speaker 1: realize how elaborate and how intense the opposition can become.
Speaker 2: I think you're completely right, and I guess two observations
Speaker 2: on that. One is the exactly to your point. This
Speaker 2: is something that characterizes law enforcement in places that are
Speaker 2: stricken with organized crime, Italy being one example, Mexico being another. Actually,
Speaker 2: there's a reason that when you see anti cartel operations,
Speaker 2: really anti cartel operations, the agents the military law enforcement
Speaker 2: are masked, and it's because people do go after families.
Speaker 2: But there's something else that's even more portentous for us
Speaker 2: as Americans buried in that, and it's that this Democratic
Speaker 2: comment indicates a fracturing of what used to be sort
Speaker 2: of a criminal code. I don't want to ascribe honor
Speaker 2: to thieves. But it is the reality that rewinding back
Speaker 2: to the nineteen forties is a very famous incident in
Speaker 2: which there was a member of one of the Five
Speaker 2: Families in New York and the New York City mafia
Speaker 2: wanted to kill Thomas and you probably know about this,
Speaker 2: so he proposed it, and in response, the other mafioso
Speaker 2: has killed him because that was a line that wasn't crossed.
Speaker 2: You didn't go after law enforcement, certainly not their families.
Speaker 2: If that's changed in modern day America, then it's a
Speaker 2: very very dark passage for us, and it's one to
Speaker 2: which we should spare no effort to reverse.
Speaker 1: To what extent are we seeing behaviors that have been
Speaker 1: relatively normal in Mexico as the cartels fight to take
Speaker 1: control of the country. To what extent have we seen
Speaker 1: them starting to come across the border and also begin
Speaker 1: to be part of the operating reality we have to
Speaker 1: deal with in the US.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. Those of us who followed the
Speaker 2: cartels and the breakdown of Mexican civics and the Mexican
Speaker 2: state partnership with the cartels over many years have known
Speaker 2: for some time that a lot of the features of
Speaker 2: Mexican cartel violence have been present in the United States
Speaker 2: for a while. I was in Laredo, Texas, my father's
Speaker 2: hometown actually about a year ago, and we talked with
Speaker 2: some security personnel, and there's kidnap houses in Laredo where
Speaker 2: people or kidnapp they're tied up. The only thing that
Speaker 2: doesn't happen in the United States is the murder. They're
Speaker 2: taken across the river and then killed these victims. But
Speaker 2: you go to a place like Phoenix and they do
Speaker 2: have operational sites where people are killed. The personnel, the methodologies,
Speaker 2: the expertise is all present in the United States. The
Speaker 2: only thing that we have yet to see is mass
Speaker 2: attacks on law enforcement. I would say, prior to two
Speaker 2: weeks ago, mass attacks on law enforcement, actual seizure of territory.
Speaker 2: Those would be the two phenomenon in Mexico that we
Speaker 2: haven't seen in the US yet. But again, going back
Speaker 2: to la you can argue that both of these are
Speaker 2: increasingly in evidence. I think the seal is broken and
Speaker 2: we need to look for more of this. Unfortunately, as
Speaker 2: one goes on, because that expertise is not here in
Speaker 2: the United States. Just to enjoy the weather, it's here
Speaker 2: for a purpose to what he said.
Speaker 1: With us almost inevitably draw us into fighting the cartels
Speaker 1: in Mexico itself.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. It depends on which section of
Speaker 2: the executive apparatus you talk to. There is I think
Speaker 2: it's fair to say, and most of it's occurring in public,
Speaker 2: some of it's behind the scenes. But there's a debate
Speaker 2: underway within the Trump administration as to how much to do.
Speaker 2: I'll be circumspect in naming who, but there is a
Speaker 2: cohort that genuinely believes that the path forward is as
Speaker 2: much cooperation as we can get with the regime, with
Speaker 2: this cartel affiliated regime. I happen to disagree with that,
Speaker 2: but it's a real position, and it's one that is
Speaker 2: going to point toward and what they see is the
Speaker 2: superseding interest in trade between Mexico and the United States.
Speaker 2: And there's another cohort from public reporting you can characterize
Speaker 2: as based more around the Defense and National Security apparatus
Speaker 2: that really does believe that American hard power needs to
Speaker 2: be brought to bear and that we need to be
Speaker 2: willing to do things that the Mexican state itself will
Speaker 2: not No surprise. That's where I'm aligned. I think that
Speaker 2: happens to be a correct analysis of the nature of
Speaker 2: the Mexican state. But the debate is unfolding, and I'll
Speaker 2: tell you, Speaker Gingrich, that we're going to see who wins.
Speaker 2: The debate is in the conversations on reauthorizing USMCA, which
Speaker 2: are opening this fall and need to be completed by
Speaker 2: July first, twenty twenty six. If you see US asking
Speaker 2: for security concessions from the Mexican's real ones, then you'll
Speaker 2: know that the security side one. But if you see
Speaker 2: it just tracked on the trade and commerce lines, you'll
Speaker 2: know that something else has happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's reported that Stephen Miller issued it directed
Speaker 1: from the White House, that I should make a minimum
Speaker 1: of three thousand arrests a day. Is that kind of
Speaker 1: mathematically oriented model a sustainable approach to deportation.
Speaker 2: It's impossible to evaluate on my end because I don't
Speaker 2: know the rationale behind it, and I also don't know
Speaker 2: the timeframe behind what's been reported on the three thousand
Speaker 2: a day. How I interpret the number which I can't
Speaker 2: read Stephen Miller's mind, And I think this is probably
Speaker 2: correct given his public record, I interpret the number is
Speaker 2: really sort of along the lines of build the wall,
Speaker 2: which is not going to be a physical wall in
Speaker 2: every single spot on the border, but it's demand for
Speaker 2: meaningful action, and I think that's right. So if the
Speaker 2: numbers three thousand, if it's five thousand, if it's two thousands,
Speaker 2: what he's asking for is more, and he's asking for
Speaker 2: a meaningful dent in the illegal population, which again I'm
Speaker 2: of the school that it's in the tens of millions
Speaker 2: and not in the single digit millions, and so the
Speaker 2: need for haste is evident. And I think that accentuates
Speaker 2: if you think I'm not saying Stephen Miller thinks this,
Speaker 2: because he probably doesn't, But if you think that the
Speaker 2: midterms next year will go poorly for the Republicans, when.
Speaker 1: You think about deportation, in your mind, what scale is
Speaker 1: sustainable and necessary.
Speaker 2: Part of this is a prudential question as to what
Speaker 2: the apparatus at hand is. I don't think there's much
Speaker 2: more important in American governance right now than mass deportation.
Speaker 2: That's not a position I would have held a decade
Speaker 2: ago in full candor on the South Tech and we're
Speaker 2: accustomed to cross border movement. But as conservatives, we follow
Speaker 2: prudence in reality, and one of the realities is that
Speaker 2: the nature of crossing has changed. It's trafficking, it's cartels,
Speaker 2: it's got state backing. So rooting that out is almost
Speaker 2: existentially important at this point. I'll say this too. In
Speaker 2: the past six to eight weeks, we have seen not
Speaker 2: one but two incredible examples of strategic blows landed at
Speaker 2: both the Russians and then the Iranians by what all
Speaker 2: describe archly is alien populations within. And that's not a
Speaker 2: complaint about American diversity. I'm Mexican American. My sons are Chinese,
Speaker 2: so we're beneficiaries this catholicity of American identity that we have.
Speaker 2: But we also have a duty to secure ourselves and
Speaker 2: to secure our homeland and our way of life. And
Speaker 2: an illegal population in the tens of millions is by
Speaker 2: its nature a threat, because it takes a sliver of
Speaker 2: one percent of that population to be antagonistic toward us
Speaker 2: to constitute a true strategic threat to the United States.
Speaker 1: Numbers seventeen million. How would you go about finding and
Speaker 1: deporting seventeen million people?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I can give guidelines to it, which I'm
Speaker 2: sure has already been thought of by mister Miller and
Speaker 2: the folks at DHS. You know that they cluster in
Speaker 2: particular sectors. You know that they cluster in particular communities.
Speaker 2: You know that they cluster in particular geographies. This is
Speaker 2: where in the United States it gets a bit complicated, because,
Speaker 2: of course we have nothing like a national ID card.
Speaker 2: The closest we have to it is kind of an
Speaker 2: ad mixture of Social Security numbers and driver's licenses, neither
Speaker 2: of which are totally secure. But you've got to have
Speaker 2: an apparatus that's capable of discerning and adjudicating at that scale.
Speaker 2: It's not clear to me that we have everything that
Speaker 2: we need. I think our friends at DHS would agree
Speaker 2: that they could do with more resources, So we ought
Speaker 2: to properly resource it to that end.
Speaker 1: Don't you all only need some kind of administrative procedure
Speaker 1: that somehow identifies and checks each person.
Speaker 2: Probably, yeah, you probably do. And there's attempts at that
Speaker 2: HE verify being one, normal employment verification, whether it's a
Speaker 2: ten ninety nine or a W two being another, and
Speaker 2: so that just needs to be enforced. Probably too, there
Speaker 2: needs to be I'll venture into a little bit of
Speaker 2: an area of ignorance for myself which will make me
Speaker 2: like every other public commentator on all topics, which is
Speaker 2: that there probably needs to be more employer's side enforcement
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: In your mind, is that done with the active cooperation
Speaker 1: of the employers or is it done by operating raids.
Speaker 2: It's got to be both. You can't assume a single
Speaker 2: prong approach for this kind of thing. I guess, no,
Speaker 2: it's more than a guess. I think the truth is
Speaker 2: that most American employers will want to cooperate. There will
Speaker 2: be a subset who don't. Those are the ones that
Speaker 2: you maintain the capacity and practice of raids.
Speaker 1: For One of the groups have been called dreamers, and
Speaker 1: they've been identified several different times by Obama and by Trump.
Speaker 1: Do you carve them out or just deport them?
Speaker 2: The category of dreamers, it's unfortunate because it's such a
Speaker 2: tough one from a perceptual stand point, But we have
Speaker 2: to understand why these categories exist. The category of the
Speaker 2: dreamer was specifically created to make from a communicative perspective,
Speaker 2: a cohort of what i'll put in quotes acceptable illegal
Speaker 2: aliens in the United States, the conservatives and also rule
Speaker 2: of law oriented liberals and Democrats, of whom there are
Speaker 2: many would find it politically impossible to deport, and then
Speaker 2: having established that precedent, then you could move outward because then,
Speaker 2: of course the point is conceded that you can't deport everybody.
Speaker 2: It's tough, but you have to have the law of
Speaker 2: the law, not in a mindless fashion, but in a
Speaker 2: fashion that displays the prudential wisdom of understanding why it
Speaker 2: is that the other side created this category to start with.
Speaker 2: So no, I wouldn't create a carp for dreamers. I
Speaker 2: would establish the same standard for each Here's the thing, though,
Speaker 2: that you know, for those wanting a prudential individual level
Speaker 2: applications of the law and justice and individual cases, you
Speaker 2: can actually do that once you've cleared out the tens
Speaker 2: of millions who've come in. You can actually do that
Speaker 2: once you've solved the major problem. Tactical solutions become possible
Speaker 2: only when the strategic challenge has been met, And we
Speaker 2: still have to meet the strategic challenge.
Speaker 1: How many million do you think you have to be
Speaker 1: deported to have met the strategic challenge?
Speaker 2: That depends upon your theory of how many are here,
Speaker 2: which nobody really knows. I am of the school of
Speaker 2: thought that it's between twenty and thirty million, which is
Speaker 2: a titanic number. I've heard Obviously, either are those who
Speaker 2: go much lower than that the high end that I've heard.
Speaker 2: I don't adhere to this, but I have heard of
Speaker 2: incredible peoples that it's in the thirty to fifty million range.
Speaker 2: I find that strange mycadriulity, but it could be the case.
Speaker 2: You have to deport enough. We can't get into macnamara solutions.
Speaker 2: There's not a body count of the day that's going
Speaker 2: to be adequate. We have to look to change behaviors.
Speaker 2: We should deport enough to break the business model that
Speaker 2: facilitated the deportations period full stop. That could be five million,
Speaker 2: that could be two guys. We don't know, and it's
Speaker 2: the unknowability that militates toward us having to apply all
Speaker 2: efforts to get to it. I think we'll know when
Speaker 2: we see, and until then we keep it going full speed.
Speaker 1: One of the side problems here is the White House
Speaker 1: on February first, issued a fact she that says, quote,
Speaker 1: the Mexican drug trafficking organizations have an intolerable alliance with
Speaker 1: the government of Mexico, and the Mexican President, Claudia Scheinbaum,
Speaker 1: strongly opposed designating the cartels as foreign terrorists. Has she
Speaker 1: largely been not helpful?
Speaker 2: Oh, that depends on who you ask. The State Department
Speaker 2: will tell you that she's been the most helpful person
Speaker 2: of all time.
Speaker 1: Of course, that could be a very limited description.
Speaker 2: Indeed, it could. Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. No,
Speaker 2: but unfortunately they really are cooperating and selling her and
Speaker 2: her regime as a genuine partner, which they're not. First
Speaker 2: of all, the Mexican state is in partnership with its cartels.
Speaker 2: There is a Mexican state cartel alliance. It has existed
Speaker 2: for years. And what changed in twenty eighteen the arrival
Speaker 2: of the current Mexican regime under the Morena Party, is
Speaker 2: that it rose from becoming sort of an opportunistic partnership
Speaker 2: to one that really was essential to the advancement of
Speaker 2: this leftist Venezuela's style ideology that Morena is using to
Speaker 2: transform Mexican society. So it is an existential partnership for them.
Speaker 2: They need it and they require it for the maintenance
Speaker 2: of their rule. What President Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico has
Speaker 2: done very smartly, I think. I mean, she's a very
Speaker 2: intelligent and cunning person, not like her predecessor at all,
Speaker 2: who was much more of a blunt instrument. She understands
Speaker 2: that so long as she can provide what I'll call
Speaker 2: the tactical window dressing to the Americans, sending over individual narcos,
Speaker 2: sending over criminals, sending over cartel bosses, that most of
Speaker 2: our governing apparatus is going to interpret that as sufficient cooperation.
Speaker 2: It's not. And this is something that we've said at
Speaker 2: the America First Policy Institute and also at the Texas
Speaker 2: Public Policy Foundation for some time now, which is that
Speaker 2: real change comes not when the handover cartel members, but
Speaker 2: when the handover politicians. When you see political actors, officeholders, governors,
Speaker 2: cabinet secretaries, senators, congressmen, and even the former president of
Speaker 2: Mexico himself under indictment and handed over to the Americans,
Speaker 2: then we'll know that they're serious about breaking the cartel alliance.
Speaker 2: But we haven't seen that yet, and I don't think
Speaker 2: we're going to and until that happens to a meaningful
Speaker 2: degree from within their own party. It is a signal
Speaker 2: to us that they are going to maintain that partnership
Speaker 2: with their cartels.
Speaker 1: And in March twenty twenty five, Fox News up ed
Speaker 1: you wrote that the Mexican state quote establishes Marina Party,
Speaker 1: sells throughout the United States, and activates someone desired. What
Speaker 1: does that mean?
Speaker 2: We have to understand that the Mexicans, even prior to
Speaker 2: Morena's arrival at national power, has always regarded its nationals
Speaker 2: abroad and it's illegal migrants abroad as its own. Now,
Speaker 2: in a sense, that's not unusual. I mean, we regard
Speaker 2: Americans abroad as our own as well. But what's different
Speaker 2: about the Mexican regime's attitude toward Mexicans in the United
Speaker 2: States is that they're essentially active participants in the corpus
Speaker 2: of Mexican civics. So, for example, if you are a
Speaker 2: Mexican national in the US, whether you're here illegally or
Speaker 2: not is irrelevant to them. In fact, they think it's
Speaker 2: virtuous if you're here illegally in some way. Some of
Speaker 2: the ideologues will say that. But if you're a Mexican
Speaker 2: resident in say California or Texas, or Nebraska or Iowa.
Speaker 2: You actually have a congressman representing you in the Mexican Congress.
Speaker 2: You actually have a liputado who you can vote for
Speaker 2: the Mexican Consulate. You actually have allocated votes for Mexicans
Speaker 2: abroad in the presidential races. It's very different than what
Speaker 2: you see in the United States. I mean, it's unthinkable
Speaker 2: that Americans in France would have electoral votes for themselves,
Speaker 2: so but the Mexicans do that. And it's because this
Speaker 2: this ideological belief that wherever the Mexican population is, there
Speaker 2: too is Mexico. And that goes double for essentially the
Speaker 2: southwestern quadrant of the United States, everything from California all
Speaker 2: the way over to Texas, which in official Mexican discourse
Speaker 2: you see this over and over and over, is still
Speaker 2: regarded as fundamentally Mexican land. I'm personally offended by this.
Speaker 2: As a descendant of them. Thank God for Zachary Taylor's army.
Speaker 2: It's the best thing that happened to my lineage. That's
Speaker 2: something that they operationalize. And so to your question about
Speaker 2: the Morena party, cells Morena has followed this to the
Speaker 2: logical degree, and they do have party sales in the
Speaker 2: United States, and these party cells, we've seen them activate
Speaker 2: from time to time. I have personally seen Morena posters,
Speaker 2: not even election related, but just posters affirming loyalty to
Speaker 2: the leader on their s manuel in Laredo, Texas, an
Speaker 2: American town, when the New York Times reported accurately on
Speaker 2: the Mexican president's ties to the sin Lower cartels and
Speaker 2: the fact that he's likely been taking money from them
Speaker 2: since two thousand and six, the Morena party sell in
Speaker 2: New York City organized a quote unquote spontaneous protest to
Speaker 2: pick at the New York Times. Same thing when they
Speaker 2: wanted to welcome undrestmen will to Washington, d C. When
Speaker 2: he traveled there. I have had conversations in Mexico itself
Speaker 2: with senior Mexican officials, advisors to the current president, who
Speaker 2: have told me directly. I was astonished to hear this
Speaker 2: said that if need be, they will activate the Mexicans
Speaker 2: in the United States to defend their country because, in
Speaker 2: their words, there's thirty million of them. Look, I'm one
Speaker 2: of them, and I'm sure not going to defend the
Speaker 2: Mexican regime. But this is sort of a very dangerous
Speaker 2: hubris that they have, and I think it is absolutely
Speaker 2: unthinkable that that phenomenon is not at play somehow in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, given the rhetoric, and given the interest at
Speaker 2: play emanating from Mexico City, and if we had certainly
Speaker 2: local and state law enforcement, which you don't in California,
Speaker 2: with any responsibility, this would already be investigated.
Speaker 1: From your perspective, are we almost inevitably going to have
Speaker 1: some kind of collision with the Mexican government.
Speaker 2: It's going to come sooner or later. And I say
Speaker 2: that with tremendous regret as somebody who is fundamentally from Mexico.
Speaker 2: The Mexican regime people don't think that of me, but
Speaker 2: I actually am. I want Mexico to prosper and flourish
Speaker 2: and be the best place it can possibly be. But
Speaker 2: right now we have a choice as Americans. We have
Speaker 2: a choice from a strategic perspective. We can accept the
Speaker 2: confrontation now and demand real cooperation and real partnership that
Speaker 2: frankly they owe us. There's no other way to put it,
Speaker 2: or we can wait a decade until Mexico is fully
Speaker 2: Venezuela ezed and has Venezuelan Cuban Russian Chinese personnel swarming
Speaker 2: over it, which is a process that's already begun. Then
Speaker 2: we can deal at it from that position, which is
Speaker 2: going to be far more fraught and dangerous than before.
Speaker 2: I'd rather do it now, and I'd rather do it well.
Speaker 2: It can still be handled in the realm of diplomacy,
Speaker 2: because the alternative is much worse.
Speaker 1: As you look at this, would you say that Trump
Speaker 1: has turned the corner on this.
Speaker 2: Issue on Mexico itself? Yes, he's done something very important.
Speaker 2: What President Trump has done is introduced reality into it.
Speaker 2: The fact that there was a day one executive order
Speaker 2: designating the cartels as foreign terror organizations, which, as you
Speaker 2: noted before, Mission Speaker, the Mexican President opposed, and the
Speaker 2: reason she opposed it is because it can sweep up
Speaker 2: the political partners of the cartels as well. The fact
Speaker 2: that he did that, the fact that he explicitly reoriented
Speaker 2: the national security apparatus the defense of the southern border,
Speaker 2: the fact that he talked about an Article one, section
Speaker 2: ten constitutional invasion in its proper sense. All of that
Speaker 2: is transformative. And so you know, one of the things
Speaker 2: that I said to a variety of colleagues the day
Speaker 2: after inauguration day was that God forbid, if his presidency
Speaker 2: had ended after twenty four hours, he still would have
Speaker 2: done more good to this relationship than any president of
Speaker 2: the preceding fifty sixty years. And I still think that's true.
Speaker 2: As in all things, you know, with governments setting the predicates,
Speaker 2: only part of the battle. Execution is the next and
Speaker 2: what remains is to execute according to the precedence he set.
Speaker 2: I think the jury is still out on that, and
Speaker 2: that's not because of the president. It's because of the biocracy,
Speaker 2: which is the eternal foe of the American interest, and
Speaker 2: we've got to make sure that that bureaucracy carries out
Speaker 2: the president's wishes.
Speaker 1: In this respect, I was frankly startled by the speed
Speaker 1: with which they closed down the border and the decisiveness.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's sustainable?
Speaker 2: We have to understand that there's two reasons the border
Speaker 2: is closed down. One is superior enforcement on the American side,
Speaker 2: which the President deserves full credit for, as does the
Speaker 2: DHS apparatus for at large, as does the DoD And
Speaker 2: that is sustainable. I mean, that's a permanent mission for
Speaker 2: American governance. But there's another reason that the border was
Speaker 2: shut down, and I think that's one that gets missed
Speaker 2: is that the Mexicans chose to shut it down. The
Speaker 2: Mexican state cartel partnership chose to pause trafficking. And I
Speaker 2: want to emphasize pause because it is not permanently solved.
Speaker 2: The Mexicans are waiting for two things. They're waiting for
Speaker 2: USMCA reauthorization, which, as I mentioned, is due no later
Speaker 2: than July first, twenty twenty six. They need that to
Speaker 2: sustain their economy. And then the second thing that they're
Speaker 2: waiting for is the midterm elections in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: If USMCA reauthorization is implemented without security concessions, and if
Speaker 2: the Democrats take control of the Congress after the midterms
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty six, then those long attention spans can
Speaker 2: come back in twenty twenty seven. I believe, and we've
Speaker 2: said this to many people, that twenty twenty seven will
Speaker 2: see a resumption of human trafficking from the Mexican side
Speaker 2: in full. So we're not out of the woods yet.
Speaker 2: We're at a pause right now. They're trying to wait.
Speaker 1: Us out, and in Mexico itself are the cartels gaining
Speaker 1: or losing ground vis a vis the Mexican State.
Speaker 2: I guess it depends on the metric that one's interested in.
Speaker 2: There are some cartels that are on the wayne. There's
Speaker 2: been a civil war in the Sala cartel for the
Speaker 2: past several months. I think in sinal Low in particular,
Speaker 2: which has been an epicenter. There's a temporary increase in
Speaker 2: all described as army control, not state control. But we
Speaker 2: have to understand that the army itself is a trafficking
Speaker 2: organization in Mexico, and so to say that there's a
Speaker 2: dichotomy between state control and cartel controls is to subscribe
Speaker 2: to a false premise about the situation. I think what
Speaker 2: I would say is that the state is exerting more
Speaker 2: control over its cartel partners and more control over the
Speaker 2: cartels that are not in partnership with it than it
Speaker 2: has previously. But we've seen this cycle before this too.
Speaker 2: We're not out of the woods.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for joining me. This is
Speaker 1: clearly going to be an evolving issue, and I hope
Speaker 1: that you will come back again as it evolves. Our
Speaker 1: listeners can follow the work you're doing at America First
Speaker 1: Policy Institute. By visiting your website at America First Policy
Speaker 1: dot com, which we will have on our show page.
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate you spending time with us.
Speaker 2: It's always a pleasure. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1: Thank you to my guest Joshua Travino. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about America First Policy Institute on our show page
Speaker 1: at newsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by Game of
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Speaker 1: Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show
Speaker 1: was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team
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Speaker 2: This is Newtsworld.