Speaker 1: A crisis at the border, a crisis within the borders,
Speaker 1: civil unrest all over the country, and we are lucky
Speaker 1: enough to have taken a little bit of time out
Speaker 1: of the day of the man who has to deal
Speaker 1: with all of it, the Acting Secretary of the Department
Speaker 1: of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I am joined
Speaker 1: as always by Senator Ted Cruz and mister Secretary, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for taking the time out. I know
Speaker 1: you're very busy, but certainly a pleasure. Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. So is there anything to talk about? I
Speaker 1: think there are a few things. The world's on fire.
Speaker 1: The world is on fire, and mister Secretary, you've got
Speaker 1: to deal with a lot of it. Let's begin all
Speaker 1: the way on the West Coast in Portland. There has
Speaker 1: been violence, civil unrest and has fallen on you to
Speaker 1: deal with it. Absolutely, what we see in Portland, as
Speaker 1: I've talked about probably over the last several weeks, is
Speaker 1: very different than what we see anywhere else in the country.
Speaker 1: We have a community that has fostered an environment of
Speaker 1: violence in Portland. This goes back to twenty eighteen where
Speaker 1: we had an ice facility, a DHS facility set siege
Speaker 1: to for about twenty eight days, and for twenty eight days,
Speaker 1: the local law enforcement didn't do anything to help our employees.
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a history. If I remember right,
Speaker 1: the mayor Ted wheel Wheeler, who's also the Commissioner Police,
Speaker 1: he announced at the time when when the ice facility
Speaker 1: was was under assault that the police wouldn't protect it.
Speaker 1: Is that's correct? That's correct? And what did that? So
Speaker 1: let's go back to because there's there's a history here
Speaker 1: that sets the stage. So they're attacking the ice facility,
Speaker 1: mayor says, police, forget it, you don't get police protection.
Speaker 1: So what happened then? So it took about twenty eight
Speaker 1: days and we had to send in federal law enforcement officers.
Speaker 1: We had to send in a contingent of DHS officers,
Speaker 1: but we also had some DOJ officers, some marshals and
Speaker 1: others that went in provided egress entry and exit from
Speaker 1: that facility to get our employees back and forth, make
Speaker 1: sure they're that facility was protected. There there were weapons
Speaker 1: in the facility just to make sure it was secure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we had those individuals. Was there violence that
Speaker 1: there wasn'tov cocktail starting out the facility. It was damaged,
Speaker 1: it was vandalized. They did not get inside, luckily, but
Speaker 1: the outside was vandalized all right. So fast forward to
Speaker 1: now what exactly is happening in Portland? I guess there's
Speaker 1: a federal courthouse and a federal building. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Are there two places in particular that where the conflict is? Right?
Speaker 1: So we've got about five federal facilities in Portland. There
Speaker 1: is the Mark Hatfield Federal Courthouse, which is where ninety
Speaker 1: five percent of the violence has taken place, and that's
Speaker 1: a working courthouse, like right now, there are cases going
Speaker 1: on in the courthouse today. There is a grand jury
Speaker 1: in the courthouse today. And we are being told though
Speaker 1: that the violent protests they're actually just peaceful demonstrations that
Speaker 1: are happening at this courthouse. What's the real story, Well,
Speaker 1: there's both. So what we see is we see peaceful protesting.
Speaker 1: So then we got all the gook back to the
Speaker 1: George Floyd death, which is really when all this started
Speaker 1: in Portland. We see very peaceful protest every day. So
Speaker 1: for sixty days we see peaceful protests. They usually occur
Speaker 1: between six and seven o'clock at night, and they run
Speaker 1: to about eleven o'clock at night, and then there's a
Speaker 1: small break and about how many people are we talking?
Speaker 1: Typically we see several hundred, several hundred peaceful protests, their
Speaker 1: speeches being made, a clus out there. There's a variety
Speaker 1: of different groups out there that does not make the
Speaker 1: media that you know. I remember a period during the
Speaker 1: whole Seattle Chazz schud. I couldn't come up with the
Speaker 1: new chop. We've been calling it the Soviet Union, but
Speaker 1: there are other names. But during that whole thing in Seattle,
Speaker 1: I remember, I think I commented on Twitter that that
Speaker 1: Portland was quite peaceful while Seattle was had this autonomous zone.
Speaker 1: And it was like, wow, when when Portland thinks you're
Speaker 1: you're doing a bad job in law enforcement, you've really
Speaker 1: taken a bad turn. And it seems after the Chazz
Speaker 1: Chop whatever was disbanded, that's that seems to be about
Speaker 1: the time Portland got a lot worse. Yeah, what we
Speaker 1: saw over the course of June was progressively got getting
Speaker 1: more and more violent. We started sending Federal Protective Service
Speaker 1: officers to that courthouse to provide some additional support. What
Speaker 1: is the Federal Protective Service officer? What does that? So?
Speaker 1: Fps Federal Protective Service is a component of the Department
Speaker 1: of Homewade Security. They secure about nine thousand, almost nine
Speaker 1: thousand federal facilities, mostly owned by GSA. These are federal facilities.
Speaker 1: So these are not all enforcement officers that are protecting
Speaker 1: federal buildings. Yeah, so it's courthouses, but it's also maybe
Speaker 1: you're so security administration is there, it's where federal benefits
Speaker 1: are exercised in any given city state, they are protecting
Speaker 1: those buildings. They'd largely do that with a contract force,
Speaker 1: but they also have federal officers. So in Portland and
Speaker 1: I guess there's there's a long history of violence against
Speaker 1: federal buildings. Obviously, Ted Kazinski blowing up the federal building
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma was horrific, and I mean that this is
Speaker 1: not a new threatening thing. It's not anything at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, under the last administration and Secretary Johnson, DHS
Speaker 1: secretary deployed federal resources to federal facilities because of certain
Speaker 1: demonstrations in Baltimore after Freddy Gray's death. He deployed additional
Speaker 1: resources there because there was violence directed at federal facilities.
Speaker 1: So this is nothing new. We do this all the
Speaker 1: time at the department. It's only now getting certain attention.
Speaker 1: You know. We've been told also, and I think you've
Speaker 1: run a good distinction here between the peaceful protesters and
Speaker 1: then these violent anarchists who show up at night. We've
Speaker 1: been told though, this is a grassroots movement, a sort
Speaker 1: of spontaneous uprising. You think it's organized, Oh, absolutely, it's
Speaker 1: absolutely organized. So again we come back. So, for sixty
Speaker 1: nights in a row, we saw between midnight and five am,
Speaker 1: these are violent individuals, violent criminals, violent opportunists, violent anarchists.
Speaker 1: And how many are we talking anywhere from five hundred
Speaker 1: at the height to about five thousand. Wow, So these
Speaker 1: are five thousand individuals that are outside of a courthouse.
Speaker 1: We had to put up temporary fencing. They took it down,
Speaker 1: they lit it on fire, and they barricaded our folks
Speaker 1: inside the courthouse. Very very dangerous. So we reinforced the fencing.
Speaker 1: It did help, but you have violent individuals approaching that
Speaker 1: fence line every night. They stage in a park, a
Speaker 1: city park, to city parks across the street, they stage there.
Speaker 1: They use city streets to come to that facility and
Speaker 1: then they will stay there for several hours while the
Speaker 1: city police the state police did nothing. Well. This brings
Speaker 1: up an important question too, which is a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who are defending these anarchists are saying that
Speaker 1: the federal government has no right to go and arrest
Speaker 1: them if they leave the federal property and they go
Speaker 1: on to city property. So again, just inaccurate information, they
Speaker 1: just don't know what they're talking about. So forty years,
Speaker 1: I can't believe that no nobody in politics would ever
Speaker 1: say something if they didn't know what they were talking So,
Speaker 1: you know, the US Code coret you know, passed by
Speaker 1: Congress statute gives us the ability not only to protect
Speaker 1: our facilities, but to investigate and arrest individuals that we
Speaker 1: see that are damaging our facilities off property. So this
Speaker 1: idea that you can damage a federal facility and then
Speaker 1: step across the road and say sorry, you can't touch me.
Speaker 1: It's very similar to if someone walked up to the
Speaker 1: United States Capital tried to burn the capital down and
Speaker 1: step across the street and say sorry, you can't touch me.
Speaker 1: It's not how long would work, It would not work. No,
Speaker 1: no ideas anymore yeah, not work. And that's what really
Speaker 1: we were up against for sixty days in Portland. So
Speaker 1: you have to hold individuals accountable. So DHS, along with
Speaker 1: the Marshall Service started making a rest because state and
Speaker 1: local law enforcement refused to. So how much violence are
Speaker 1: we talking about? Is this one guy taking a swing
Speaker 1: at somebody? I mean, I mean, what help people understand one?
Speaker 1: Actually you see kind of images online. You see some
Speaker 1: fires and people pulling on fences. But what's what's really
Speaker 1: going on? I say, initially, I would say the most
Speaker 1: I would say lease violent that you would see would
Speaker 1: be bricks being thrown at law enforcement officers. That's the
Speaker 1: least violent. That's the least violent. Bricks you see, frozen
Speaker 1: water bottles, anything that's hard, hard can food you see
Speaker 1: being thrown at law enforcement officers as they come out
Speaker 1: and try to protect the facility. It then starts to
Speaker 1: ratch it up. We've seen molotov tales, officers have taken
Speaker 1: sledgehammers to the head. We see IED's being thrown up there.
Speaker 1: You're saying people are hitting police officers in the head
Speaker 1: with sledgehaders. Correct, How many officers have been injured during
Speaker 1: the core support for DHS. We've had over two hundred
Speaker 1: and forty seven different injuries to law enforcement officers, about
Speaker 1: over one that's just Portland. That's just Portland. Holy crap,
Speaker 1: that's just Portland. Two hundred and forty seven different injuries
Speaker 1: to law enforcement officers. About over a hundred officers have
Speaker 1: individually been injured. And Portland, by the way, is not
Speaker 1: the only site of this violence. We've been seeing it
Speaker 1: in other cities as well. We see a little different
Speaker 1: violence in different cities, you know, whether it's Chicago, Kansas City, Albuquerquet,
Speaker 1: even Seattle. That's more street crime. There is some organized
Speaker 1: violence as well, but Portland is very different than any
Speaker 1: other city we've seen. As I indicated, thousands of folks
Speaker 1: every night for sixty days come to a fence line
Speaker 1: around a federal courthouse and want to burn it down.
Speaker 1: There's their video on that. What are they doing with lasers?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's harmless, right, That's just a pointer
Speaker 1: like putting its No, not at all. They there's some
Speaker 1: pretty powerful lasers they're using. So as the law enforcement
Speaker 1: officers come out of the building to protect it, they
Speaker 1: will shine the green lasers in their eyes and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we have about three officers that are going to have
Speaker 1: some probably permanent damage. When you say permanent damage, they're
Speaker 1: facing partial or total blind We're waiting for medical to
Speaker 1: come back. But that's that's what we're hearing at the moment. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not I mean I can see people thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I play with a pointer at home and
Speaker 1: my cat chases it. That's that's That's not it aiming
Speaker 1: real and powerful lasers at the eyeballs of officers and
Speaker 1: you've got three who are seriously injured. We do so,
Speaker 1: we've taken corrective measures. We've given them some eyewear that
Speaker 1: protects against that. But this is a new tactic from
Speaker 1: these individuals that we have first seen here in Portland.
Speaker 1: And I guess one of the challenges is a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys are dressed in all black. They're wearing goggles,
Speaker 1: are wearing a mask. And so if you have someone
Speaker 1: throw a brick and it hits an officer and he's bleeding,
Speaker 1: you have someone right point a laser and it blinds
Speaker 1: an officer, you can't always tell who did it. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're all dressed the same. I mean, is that part
Speaker 1: of what they're trying to do. Absolutely, it's very difficult,
Speaker 1: and they do that on purpose, and they we see
Speaker 1: tactics that they use that are very similar to law enforcement.
Speaker 1: They try to obscure their movements. They do a number
Speaker 1: of different things that make it difficult for law enforcement
Speaker 1: to engage with them. Now we have our own tactics,
Speaker 1: we are able to identify certain individuals that are lighting
Speaker 1: fires throwing. We've seen barbecues being tossed over the fence.
Speaker 1: They're on fire. A barbecue grill, yeah, like a like
Speaker 1: a Weber grill, yeah, tossed over. Do they at least
Speaker 1: put burgers? And something tells me they're not that courteous.
Speaker 1: We see mortar style, commercial grade tofu. They wouldn't be burgers.
Speaker 1: That really, I gotta say in Texas, those are fighting words.
Speaker 1: If you throw a barbecue with nothing but tofu and
Speaker 1: veggie burgers, it's just route. It's just that's the only
Speaker 1: thing that commercial grade fireworks are being thrown in and
Speaker 1: so as those explode several inches from officers, it can
Speaker 1: become very very dangerous. They get burnt. This is not
Speaker 1: somebody light in a black cat like a mortar style
Speaker 1: firework that gets shot from across the street, inside the
Speaker 1: park into the facility. Mister Secretary, the scene that you
Speaker 1: are describing, and I think the scene that a lot
Speaker 1: of us have seen on television is one that we
Speaker 1: would expect in a foreign country in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: in a war zone. This is not the sort of
Speaker 1: thing we would expect within the borders of the United States. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I've been saying that for almost over a month
Speaker 1: now that the violence that we see in Portland. People
Speaker 1: have to understand it's not a few protesters who are
Speaker 1: getting angry and deciding to bang on offense. These are
Speaker 1: violent individuals that are organized. They have supply lines. This
Speaker 1: is an organized entity here that is doing this. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: despite our request, we have state and local law enforcement
Speaker 1: up until recently, for sixty days, refused to engage these folks.
Speaker 1: So are the cops behaving differently now? Are they politicians?
Speaker 1: Let them actually do their job? They have so at
Speaker 1: the middle of July, I want to say, I place
Speaker 1: phone calls to the Mayor of Portland as well to
Speaker 1: the government of Oregan and I basically put any any
Speaker 1: resource at the department at their hands, you know, for
Speaker 1: them as they addressed the violence, they had the full
Speaker 1: resources of the department. Their response was no, thank you,
Speaker 1: and please leave Portland, which of course we didn't do.
Speaker 1: And if you'd left Portland, what would have happened that
Speaker 1: the facility would have burned, the courthouse would have burned.
Speaker 1: But you're saying what the mayor and governor were saying
Speaker 1: is just abandoned the Federal court absolutely and let the
Speaker 1: mob burn the courthouse to the ground. That's that was
Speaker 1: their request of me. Well, you know, this ties into
Speaker 1: the same strategy we've heard from the same people on
Speaker 1: the international front, which is, don't enforce our border with Mexico,
Speaker 1: allow the border to be totally open, allow people to
Speaker 1: come in. And DHS has been a particular object of
Speaker 1: those criticisms. What is DHS. It's a pretty new new agency.
Speaker 1: What all falls within the umbrellas. So we have about
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty thousand employees across the enterprise. Are
Speaker 1: y'all the biggest civilian agency so other than DoD, I
Speaker 1: leave the Veterans Administrations a little bit bigger. Interesting just
Speaker 1: from a pure side standpoint. So within the department, we
Speaker 1: do everything from aviation security, so the commercial checkpoint security
Speaker 1: that you see as you get on commercial aircraft, we
Speaker 1: do that TSA. TSA, so TSA reports to you TSA
Speaker 1: Customs and Border Protection, so we talk about border security.
Speaker 1: They're certainly along that border. You know, when they do
Speaker 1: the groping at the stands, it'd be really good if
Speaker 1: they could like just do the lower back a little
Speaker 1: more an official request. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, look,
Speaker 1: if you're got to get it, I got to sore
Speaker 1: muscle down there. Well, they got to. They have to
Speaker 1: continue to do their job. I say thank you to
Speaker 1: them every time. I'm a diplomatic. As long as we
Speaker 1: don't have any incidents in the skies, I'm happy. Customs
Speaker 1: and Order Protection ICE Immigration Customs enforcement is also inside
Speaker 1: the department USCIS. Which so what's the difference between Customs
Speaker 1: and Border Protection and ICE. Sure, CBP A customers and
Speaker 1: mainly protecting our border southwest border, northern border, m border.
Speaker 1: So those are the guys in green, they're they're not
Speaker 1: they're in the Rio grand They're absolutely they're not only
Speaker 1: the men and women in green, but they're also in blue.
Speaker 1: So as you come to a port of entry and
Speaker 1: you're legally coming to the US, you're going to have
Speaker 1: to go through several officers and go through a process,
Speaker 1: so they do not only legal but illegal entry into
Speaker 1: the US. Okay, So that's CBP and then ICE is
Speaker 1: what ICE is, Immigrations and Customs Enforcements. So these are
Speaker 1: the individuals. We have both ICE E r O, which
Speaker 1: is our removal operations, So these are individuals that will
Speaker 1: go into communities, identify criminals, identify other individuals that have
Speaker 1: no legal right to be in the US, and remove them.
Speaker 1: We also have homemade security MS thirteen absolute gang members. Yes,
Speaker 1: you've got ICE officers going in arresting them, and some
Speaker 1: of these guys can be pretty violent, very very dangerous,
Speaker 1: very dangerous. The large majority of I would say targets
Speaker 1: that we get are actually from individual jails and courthouses,
Speaker 1: so it's in visuals that have probably have gotten picked
Speaker 1: up on another criminal charge, come to find out very
Speaker 1: illegally here in the US. We would then go in,
Speaker 1: you know, ascertain them, and then start removing. There were
Speaker 1: now widespread calls among one political party to abolish that
Speaker 1: entire enforcement agency. So it's not just the removal operations.
Speaker 1: We have homemade security investigations, which a transnational criminal organizations
Speaker 1: drug trafficking. They do a variety of national security missions
Speaker 1: that are part of ICE. So part of what they
Speaker 1: want to ambolish our criminal investigators protecting communities from a
Speaker 1: varide variety of threats. So I think it's an interesting
Speaker 1: arc of development because a couple of years ago, the
Speaker 1: Democrats seized upon abolish ICE. I mean it started with AOC,
Speaker 1: It started off with a few kind of fringe characters,
Speaker 1: and then it expanded and some of what you guys
Speaker 1: faced in Portland with Ted Wheeler refusing to protect the
Speaker 1: ICE facilities was a manifestation back then that they were
Speaker 1: saying get rid of ICE. That's now transmogrified into abolish
Speaker 1: all police that that that that it's not just ICE that,
Speaker 1: but it's it's anyone with a badge and a gun
Speaker 1: is apparently now the bad guy. Um what so Nancy
Speaker 1: Pelosi has called your officers stormtroopers. Yes, it's what do
Speaker 1: you what do you make of that? Well, she's not
Speaker 1: only called them stormtroopers. I heard him be referred to
Speaker 1: as the Gestapo or thugs as well. Uh, completely irresponsible comments.
Speaker 1: I've called on each of those members of Congress that
Speaker 1: have said those terms to apologize to the men and
Speaker 1: women of DHS, these are civil law enforcement officers, get
Speaker 1: up every day, put on a badge, put on a uniform,
Speaker 1: protect their communities. So these are cops. They're federal cops,
Speaker 1: but they're they're law enforcement officers protecting us. Absolutely, they do.
Speaker 1: They go to training, they establish, they have procedures that
Speaker 1: they follow, they have authorities that they follow, and to
Speaker 1: call them stormtroopers, to invoke that kind of imagery is
Speaker 1: just shameful. And for the recording, is an arrest kidnapping
Speaker 1: because that's the language they're saying is apparently you're now kidnappers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's again, I think it's individuals that don't understand
Speaker 1: what our mission is. So they're in Portland because you
Speaker 1: did not have state or you didn't have local law
Speaker 1: enforcement making arrest. So night after night after night, hundreds
Speaker 1: of individuals are committing criminal acts with no consequence. And
Speaker 1: DHS said, well, we can't have that. That's not how
Speaker 1: law enforcement works. So we have the ability to go
Speaker 1: out and arrest individuals, and we started doing that within
Speaker 1: a two to three block radius of the courthouse. And
Speaker 1: then that's when you know a number of individuals said, well,
Speaker 1: how can you do that, how can you arrest individuals, Well,
Speaker 1: they are committing criminal acts, that's how you arrest individuals.
Speaker 1: You're making this point about Nancy Pelosi and a lot
Speaker 1: of other Democrats in the House. It's an election year.
Speaker 1: They're heightening up the rhetoric. They're going after abolish iz
Speaker 1: abolish law enforcement. But there's another very hot political issue
Speaker 1: that they're also talking about, which is immigration. Illegal immigration
Speaker 1: that the border. This was a central plank when President
Speaker 1: Trump was running for office. What's the situation down there
Speaker 1: on the border wall, on enforcement, on making sure our
Speaker 1: country security. Is there a wall? Absolutely? Absolutely. We just
Speaker 1: eclipsed about two hundred and sixty five miles of the
Speaker 1: new border wall system under President Trump. So so there
Speaker 1: was a wall to begin with. We had we had
Speaker 1: several hundred walls, several hundred miles a wall initially, and
Speaker 1: we built about two hundred more, I would say initially
Speaker 1: as we came in. We had different forms of fencing,
Speaker 1: some of it about six feet tall, some of it
Speaker 1: maybe up to eight feet tall. Maybe easily scalable, easily defeated,
Speaker 1: no impedance and denial there any type of barrier. What
Speaker 1: you want for our border patrol, the men and women
Speaker 1: in green on the border. They want something that's going
Speaker 1: to stop an individual or at least to slow them down.
Speaker 1: So that's the impedance and denial aspect of coming into
Speaker 1: the country illegally. The bigger the barrier, the more effective
Speaker 1: the barrier, the easier it is for them to do
Speaker 1: their job. What we saw with six foot high wall,
Speaker 1: you could scale it, you could be over disappear, very
Speaker 1: difficult for border patrol to do their job. The new
Speaker 1: border wall system that we're building in many cases is
Speaker 1: thirty feet high. It has ground sensors, says lighting, it
Speaker 1: has radar, It has a number of things that if
Speaker 1: you can, if you can defeat it, very difficult too.
Speaker 1: If you can defeat it, you have border patrol waiting
Speaker 1: on you as you get to the other side of
Speaker 1: that of that border wall system. All right, So I
Speaker 1: gotta tell a story, Michael. I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time with CBP in Texas and they're incredible men and women.
Speaker 1: And several years ago I joined them down in Real
Speaker 1: Grand Valley for their midnight muster and then went out
Speaker 1: on midnight patrol with which is very cool. And so
Speaker 1: we're going out and they arrested a number of people,
Speaker 1: and so they go into this one stash house that's oh,
Speaker 1: probably two hundred yards in from the river, and they
Speaker 1: go in and kick the door down, and there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of bunch of people there that they're apprehending,
Speaker 1: and there's some pretty rough look at characters coming out
Speaker 1: of the stash house, including one guy I remember who
Speaker 1: was big. He was probably two sixty two eighty pounds,
Speaker 1: was wearing sort of a raggedy undershirt covered with tats,
Speaker 1: I mean tats everywhere, and the agents kept saying Senator, senator, Hey,
Speaker 1: come over here, senator, come look at the Senator. I'll
Speaker 1: be back here. Thanks now. And I'm like, xnay on
Speaker 1: the editors stay, just just call me Bob. Guys like
Speaker 1: that is, you know, I think that's probably typical. Though.
Speaker 1: We're dealing with, to use the President's term, tough embres
Speaker 1: down here, and I don't know, to hear the rhetoric
Speaker 1: coming from the left right now, it's as though these
Speaker 1: are the most wonderful people in the world and the
Speaker 1: villains are the law enforcement officers who are trying to arrest.
Speaker 1: It's it's disgraceful. Really. Again, we have. DHS is the
Speaker 1: largest law enforcement agency in the country. We have over
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand law enforcement officers in the department doing
Speaker 1: their job every day on the border. Every day they're
Speaker 1: building that wall, they're stopping individuals from crossing into the
Speaker 1: country illegally, and I would say, in a pandemic environment,
Speaker 1: stopping individuals crossing into the country illegally takes on a
Speaker 1: more important mission, of course, not just stopping immigration by
Speaker 1: a laters. We're stopping individuals that perhaps could have COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: could be coming into the US and infecting Americans. We're
Speaker 1: told that we're not allowed to leave our homes in
Speaker 1: many cases, but it's perfectly fine to have foreign nationals
Speaker 1: who obviously are not being tested across that border illegally.
Speaker 1: But actually, Center, you raised this question for me because
Speaker 1: your job is to make the laws there are. Your
Speaker 1: job is to enforce the laws, and there are regulations
Speaker 1: that you all and my job is entirely to make
Speaker 1: fun of the list. But it occurs to me if
Speaker 1: we're now four years into an administration, we were told,
Speaker 1: big beautiful wall. We know that people want to build
Speaker 1: the wall, and yet I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: listening will say, only two hundred or two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty miles of wall, what's the hold up in It
Speaker 1: strikes me there are other people who make the laws
Speaker 1: as well, outside of our perhaps constitutional system. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we are not only stymied by congressional inaction. You know,
Speaker 1: the President has been very clear about a border wall system.
Speaker 1: We've had to find that funding internally to the administration
Speaker 1: over the last several years is Congress. Certain members of Congress,
Speaker 1: I would say, are not supportive of that. But we
Speaker 1: also have courts and we have lawsuits that we have
Speaker 1: to deal with. But again, as far as building the
Speaker 1: border wall system, we're going to reach three hundred miles
Speaker 1: by the end of August. We'll be We're here in
Speaker 1: early August. They built two hundred miles of wall. We've
Speaker 1: got another hundred miles coming into August month or so, right,
Speaker 1: and I think is the goal by the end of
Speaker 1: the year, four hundred and fifty fifty to five hundred right, right.
Speaker 1: And that's a new wall, this is or replacing previous
Speaker 1: So it's a great you know, this is what the
Speaker 1: other side, you know, our opponents usually say, is you're
Speaker 1: not actually building any new wall. So in many cases
Speaker 1: we are tearing down a five to six foot fence
Speaker 1: and putting up a thirty foot wall, and in any
Speaker 1: case that is a new wall. It's very much like
Speaker 1: if you were to tell you another story of this,
Speaker 1: just on on the five to six foot fence. Back
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen presidential race. We're down in Arizona on
Speaker 1: the border and and you know, I've got a whole
Speaker 1: bevy of reporters following me, and we're doing we're doing
Speaker 1: something right on the border wall. And it's got this
Speaker 1: this little sort of vehicle barrier, the Normandy barriers, the
Speaker 1: Normandy bearrier. Yeah, that's exactly. It looks like the sort
Speaker 1: of criss cross yes, metal planks. Yeah. Um. And and
Speaker 1: the reporters are there, and we've got a bunch of
Speaker 1: sheriffs and folks who are down there with us, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of the reporters. They want to get a
Speaker 1: better camera shot, so they climb over the barrier to
Speaker 1: shoot north. And I'm like, okay, so you just crossed
Speaker 1: in the Mexico illegally. Uh. And that's how much little
Speaker 1: of the barrier is. Did you just hop over the
Speaker 1: damn thing? Okay? I got a better shot here. Maybe
Speaker 1: we need something more substantial, given that you're, like I think,
Speaker 1: currently an illegal immigrant in the country of Mexico. They unwittingly.
Speaker 1: I think of your point on the border, and it's
Speaker 1: the point we're all making. And yet you're being stymied
Speaker 1: left and right on building that wall. But again, we
Speaker 1: have found ways to do that. We have enough funding,
Speaker 1: We're in a good place, We're in a good glide pass.
Speaker 1: So again, as the senator mentioned, about four and fifty
Speaker 1: to five hundred miles by the end of this calendar year.
Speaker 1: And that's what the operators want. They want that effective
Speaker 1: border wall system. It's not everywhere on the border. We
Speaker 1: can't put it everywhere, but we can put it in
Speaker 1: the places that need it most so that control, so
Speaker 1: officers can control other hard hit areas well, even even
Speaker 1: be on the operators. I think it's what the American
Speaker 1: people wanted. A made that point time and again. Let
Speaker 1: me make a point also, that's that's interesting and would
Speaker 1: surprise you. The guys working for Chad, the CBP guys
Speaker 1: on the border, they need a lot more technology. Yes,
Speaker 1: so so I've been I've been out with them on
Speaker 1: their boats on the river. I've been up in their helicopters,
Speaker 1: which are old. Some of the helicopters are old Hughey's
Speaker 1: like like you know, out of out of like watching
Speaker 1: you know, mash growing up, which by the way, they
Speaker 1: keep the doors open on the side, and you know,
Speaker 1: they strap you in, And I think the helicopter pilots
Speaker 1: enjoy doing turns where you're going forward and you're looking
Speaker 1: at this one little round disk that that is holding
Speaker 1: your body and if it comes loose, you're following two
Speaker 1: hundred feet down into the ground. And you're trying to like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this doesn't bother me at all. I am urinating my
Speaker 1: pants right now, but no, I'm not not. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: do enjoy. I would say they do that with the
Speaker 1: acting secretary as well. I have no doubt. But what's interesting,
Speaker 1: So Texas DPS Department of Public Safety, I've been up
Speaker 1: Texas has, for example, it's an eight million dollar plane.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing plane that I've been up in, and
Speaker 1: it flies along the border and it has heat imagery
Speaker 1: where they can look like a mile or two away
Speaker 1: on the other side of the border and you'll see
Speaker 1: and we'd look at the screen and be like they'd
Speaker 1: be like, all right, there's the coyote there. You can
Speaker 1: see him hiding in the brush and you can see
Speaker 1: four or five people that he's getting ready to send across.
Speaker 1: And what Texas SPS will do is call CBP and say,
Speaker 1: all right, there are five guys right here. They're preparing
Speaker 1: to cross, and you can see the CBP vans like
Speaker 1: pulling up on the other side, waiting to apprehend them
Speaker 1: when they come. The amazing thing, though, is the state
Speaker 1: has better technology than the FETSI, which is messed up.
Speaker 1: Y'all should have adequate technology, and it's not your fault,
Speaker 1: it's Congress's fault. We haven't given it, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of startling. You don't expect the state equipment to be
Speaker 1: better than the federal equipment. Well, some of our best
Speaker 1: partners are obviously Texas DPS as well as in Arizona
Speaker 1: in other places, so we rely on our partners to
Speaker 1: do our job. But as you indicated, we do not
Speaker 1: have an unlimited budget, so there are certain we have
Speaker 1: a number of air assets as well that we send
Speaker 1: up along that border to patrol that but we can
Speaker 1: always use new and better equipment. Mister Secretory we want
Speaker 1: to be respectful of your time. But before we go,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of Americans looking around don't feel
Speaker 1: great about how things are going. You know, they see
Speaker 1: holdings on fire, they see this unrest, especially in Portland,
Speaker 1: they see problems at the border. What's the outlook? Give
Speaker 1: it to us straight, you know, we don't want false hope.
Speaker 1: But but how are things looking as we now move
Speaker 1: toward the end of the year. Well, I would say
Speaker 1: what we've seen over the past month, and we've talked
Speaker 1: a bit a little bit about here when we talk
Speaker 1: about defund the police or you start attacking law enforcement,
Speaker 1: I think what we are seeing around the country is
Speaker 1: the result of that. What you have are criminals at
Speaker 1: their very heart. They are violent opportunists, and they see
Speaker 1: an opportunity to exploit their street, their corner of the
Speaker 1: world because they know the police are under a microscope.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's very dangerous. What the President,
Speaker 1: what the administration has been very upfront about is we're
Speaker 1: not going to let this continue. So whether it's through
Speaker 1: Operation Legend, which is surging federal resources in to deal
Speaker 1: with some of this violent crime, We're going to continue
Speaker 1: to searge federal resources in We're going to continue to
Speaker 1: protect federal property. We see it almost you know, we
Speaker 1: get threat and intelligence every weekend. Certain federal properties around
Speaker 1: the country are being targeted by these groups. We searge
Speaker 1: resources into those communities to make sure that those properties
Speaker 1: are protected tybally. When we talk about a courthouse, a
Speaker 1: seat of justice in a city has to be protected.
Speaker 1: That's what those country is about. And DHS is going
Speaker 1: to be on the front lines protecting those all Right.
Speaker 1: A totally different question to wrap up, how do you
Speaker 1: get to be Secretary of Homeland Security? Like you're a
Speaker 1: cabinet member, You're one of the top cops in the country.
Speaker 1: Like what you know when you were when you were
Speaker 1: a kid, is this what you dreamed of doing? How
Speaker 1: how did you get here? Yeah, it's a little different.
Speaker 1: Actually dreamed of joining the military, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: it didn't happen. To grow up in Texas, went to
Speaker 1: school in Dallas, had the opportunity to come to DC
Speaker 1: and and shortly after nine to eleven joined DHS. Nine
Speaker 1: to eleven for me, I was on Capitol Hill, rushed
Speaker 1: out of the buildings. It was a significant factor in
Speaker 1: my life. Basically right when DHS was four. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is back in two thousand and one, two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: So it was a formidable event in my life and
Speaker 1: really changed my outlook. So I jumped in, started serving
Speaker 1: at DAHS, took a break during the Obama administration, and
Speaker 1: then came back in and held a variety of different
Speaker 1: positions here in the department. I think the thing that
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of us here in the part
Speaker 1: we believe in this mission. We believe in what the
Speaker 1: department does and how it was created after nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: It's counter terrorism mission, but it has a number of
Speaker 1: other missions, some of which we talked about that I
Speaker 1: think the vast majority of Americans just don't know about
Speaker 1: Federal Protective Service, a lot of our immigration enforcement, and
Speaker 1: a lot of other things that we are doing here.
Speaker 1: So it's a big department, one hundred two hundred forty
Speaker 1: thousand folks, twenty two different agencies that came in. So
Speaker 1: what do you do for fun? Like when when I work,
Speaker 1: but you know, when I can, I try to run
Speaker 1: a little bit and bike a little bit. Well those
Speaker 1: hobbies notwithstanding, I think you're probably working a lot more
Speaker 1: of these days. Well, and I do need to clarify
Speaker 1: it and just say, Chad, thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: So as we are here, yeah, your base basement is flooding.
Speaker 1: It is so there's a tropical storm. It's raining like crazy.
Speaker 1: You're in DC, You're base. Smith's flooding and your wife
Speaker 1: is calledge. You're saying, Hey, our basement's flooding, and you
Speaker 1: said I gotta do a podcast right now. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say I'm sorry. I know you're sleeping on the
Speaker 1: couch tonight. It's my fault, blame it on me. But
Speaker 1: but you're a great American and please get home quickly
Speaker 1: and help your wife or or it won't be the couch,
Speaker 1: it'll be the doghouse. We need to get you back
Speaker 1: to the basement and more importantly, to the mission. Mister Secretary,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. Senator, I'll see
Speaker 1: you next time. This is Verdict with Ted Cruize. This
Speaker 1: episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to
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Speaker 1: the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security
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Speaker 1: and help the Republican Party across the nation. Chef