Episode 273 Scott Adams Border Expert Brandon Darby About the Caravan
Date: 2018-10-26 | Duration: 47:27
Topics
Various cartels control various sections of the Mexican border areas Passage, legal and illegal activities are all under cartel control Illegal immigration is a significant portion of cartel profits Journalists must pay the cartels for permission to cover the caravan The cartels dictate what topics and things can be reported The caravans are an attempt to protect the participants from the cartels Our catch and release policies are encouraging illegal immigration What percentage of the caravan are legit asylum seekers?
Transcript
Introduction and Simultaneous Sip
Hey Joanne, come on in here. The rest of you, get on in here. It’s a very special Coffee with Scott Adams this morning. I’ll bet you can’t wait. I’m going to be trying something new with the sound, so we’ll see if that works. We’re going to use one microphone for both sources.
In a moment, I’m going to give you an introduction, but before that, it’s time for the simultaneous sip. Grab your cup, your mug, your chalice, your vessel full of beverages—I like coffee—and join me for the simultaneous sip. You’re a little late there.
Introduction to Brandon Darby
I am delighted to introduce Brandon Darby, director of Breitbart’s Border and Cartel projects. In other words, a border expert. Someone who’s going to fill us in, in a way you have not been filled in, on the topic of the caravan and maybe some immigration in general.
I’m going to jump in with some questions. I’ll be watching your comments in case you have any questions. If you’re having trouble seeing this because the comments are scrolling by and covering up either of our faces, turn your device sideways and then those comments and the visuals will be in separate places.
Brandon, give me a little background. Tell the people where you’re located and where you work.
Brandon Darby: My team—we have people in Mexico. Half of our team is actually in Mexico and the rest are all along the border. We spend about 10 days per month traveling the nine sectors of the southwest border, as we have for about five years now.
Cartel Control of the Border
Scott Adams: I’m going to ask you some general questions and then get to some specifics. Are there any big themes that you think the public has not been sufficiently informed about? In other words, is there anything that the people watching this would say, “My god, I didn’t know that about the border or about immigration”? Anything jump out?
Brandon Darby: Let’s hit the top three. First off, when people say the border is secure and others say the border is unsecure, or a border is safe or unsafe—they’re telling the truth in a way that both captures it. Some areas along the border are very safe and some areas are not. This has a lot to do with the nature of the Mexican cartel who controls that portion of our border. They are very different beasts, the different groups from the Gulf Cartel to Los Zetas to the Sinaloa.
Scott Adams: Let me jump in. When I hear that the cartels are controlling the border in the sense of they’re charging the immigrants to give safe passage, is that what you’re talking about? They actually control the border?
Brandon Darby: In some areas, like if we were in the Tucson Sector in Arizona, the Sinaloa groups—they’re the most numerous—and the Salazar have scouts on mountaintops in the U.S. with sophisticated scopes and sophisticated communications gear. They actually help to navigate drug loads through the remote territories out there. They keep track of and monitor where all of our Border Patrol agents are at that time and where all of our law enforcement assets are. I think a lot of people don’t realize that, and that’s not just Breitbart reporting; that’s mainstream outlets that acknowledge that as well.
Scott Adams: But what you described, I wouldn’t call “controlling the border.” It sounds more like they’re smugglers who know where the Border Patrol is. Is there a better explanation?
Brandon Darby: No, because in the Tucson Sector, for instance, we wrote about a case a couple of years ago where a guy tried to go through that territory and they brutalized this person. Is that something that happens a lot? If other people try to utilize that territory for illicit purposes, those people are either murdered or sodomized in some cases. These graphic things happen to people who utilize that territory. In that sense, it is kind of appropriate to say they control the criminal activity. If you were an illegal immigrant, you would have to deal with them or you’re not going to get across safely—you would get murdered.
The Border Ecosystem
Scott Adams: To what extent do U.S. authorities know where the personnel is on the cartel end of things at the border? Do we know where they are, same as they know where we are?
Brandon Darby: In some cases. When we talk about the border, that goes back to your first question. One of the problems is that most people in the U.S. talking about the border really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Even if they live on the border, like someone in El Paso for instance, he knows about his little section of border that he lives on, but he doesn’t understand the border ecosystem as a whole. And that’s a problem that we have.
The border region is not only the U.S. side of the border, but it’s also the Mexican side of the border. That whole region is the border region. Some portions of that region, like the south side, are absolutely controlled by cartels.
If we were to go to Gulf Cartel territory south of Texas, all of the politicians either work with the cartels or they get murdered. The journalists, even in the mainstream outlets, they’re not able to write what they want to write without getting murdered. Every news outlet has a person working there called a “link,” and that link tells people what they can and can’t write. That link answers to the cartel, the regional cartel. So they really do control a significant portion of that border. They control what legal commerce goes through, and they take a piece, or a tax, on all of the legal commerce that goes through the ports of entry.
Corruption in the Mexican Government
Scott Adams: Is there a functioning government in Mexico, or are they just making sure the garbage gets picked up but otherwise the cartels are running it? Is it the federal government, or is it more of a border situation that the cartels control?
Brandon Darby: There are thirty-one states and the federal district, which is like Mexico City. Mexico City has a very functioning government, like our D.C. But several regions, probably about 16 Mexican states, are actually under the physical control of transnational criminal organizations.
If we look at the state of Tamaulipas, which is immediately south of Texas and the Rio Grande Valley sector, the last two governors of Tamaulipas are fugitives of U.S. justice. One is in prison right now, and one is about to get extradited to the U.S. because they worked for Mexican cartels. They were part of the criminal network.
In another state south of Texas, Coahuila, the governor two terms ago was a Zetas governor; he was working for the cartel. The current President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, on his way out—he was put into power, and a lot of the money that was used was running from shell corporations that were supplied by Mexican cartels.
Scott Adams: What about the new guy, the new president?
Brandon Darby: I don’t have any specific information derogatory on him yet. But in Mexico, there’s nothing specific yet; it’ll take time for us to see and for people to go through money and funds and try to track it back. But the chances are very unlikely in Mexico that someone isn’t, because of the way they work there—they call it “silver or lead.” They say, “Can we pay you a bunch of money to do what we want, or do you want to die? Do you want us to shoot you?” That’s what they do. Most of Mexico is under the control of transnational paramilitary criminal organizations.
The Circle of Organized Crime
Scott Adams: In theory—and I’m just sort of spitballing here—could the U.S. government bribe the cartels to stop immigration?
Brandon Darby: Yes. See, this is where it’s tricky, Scott, and this is where people just don’t comprehend it because it takes a little bit of looking at it outside of the box. The cartels really aren’t the problems; the problem is an organized criminal circle. The cartel boss is just one little part of that circle—that’s the drug part. But there’s all of these other people in the circle: politicians, accountants, lawyers, money makers, financiers, bankers. They’re all part of this organized criminal circle.
We only go after the cartel part of that circle, and the rest of that circle is all too happy to let us think that El Chapo is the mastermind. But that entire circle keeps operating, and they just put another El Chapo in there.
Several parts of our government realize that, like the Treasury Department. They put the rest of this circle on the blacklist. But the other parts of our government don’t go after those people because many of them are politicians, and they’re the very diplomats that we rely on for diplomacy with Mexico. All of what the U.S. government can do in Mexico is dependent upon the State Department’s approval. The U.S. State Department requires that U.S. law enforcement agencies balance their law enforcement priorities with the State Department’s diplomatic concerns.
It’s complex and messed up. We could in theory utilize that same corrupt system that bad guys use for good and to get our bidding, but we don’t.
Scott Adams: So we’d have to start killing politicians. I’m just kidding about that; that’s not real.
Brandon Darby: We could push extradition for what they do to our country. There’s a lot of paperwork that has to get done with people to get charged and to get the paperwork to be extradited. We could push that and utilize resources in creative ways to get those people in U.S. custody.
Profiting from Illegal Immigration
Brandon Darby: The other thing people don’t know is that several groups, like the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, routinely make as much or more from illegal immigration than they do from narcotics. They’re actually illegal immigration cartels.
One thing we could do if we really wanted to do something about the cartels is we could change U.S. policies and not allow those cartels to be successful. We could take out at least a third of their resources just simply by stopping illegal immigration pull factors.
Targeting Cartel Leadership
Scott Adams: Do we know where the leaders and the headquarters are of these cartels? In other words, do you think that our deepest spooks could tell you exactly where the cartel leaders are?
Brandon Darby: I mean, we identify where most of them are, the ones that are significant. And I say “we,” I mean our Breitbart team. We routinely print that information. Sometimes we share it with different governmental agencies, which is kind of controversial.
We had a situation recently where about a year ago, the Mexican military was sent into a state called Michoacán to find this cartel boss, and they never could find him. Then we got a hold of pictures showing the military commander fraternizing with the cartel boss on several occasions, smoking cigarettes and drinking. We published these stories in English and Spanish, and a week later, Mexico got embarrassed and they had to go in and arrest the cartel boss. So we are able to find out where they are, and the U.S. government is too.
Scott Adams: Now, could you tell me with any authority that we’re not droning these cartel guys? Are we definitely not droning anybody?
Brandon Darby: Definitely not droning them. That’s correct.
Scott Adams: And why not?
Brandon Darby: The problem with a lot of these folks is that the vast majority of their armies, the vast majority of the people they rely upon, are underage—they’re minors from very poor backgrounds. They are people who probably would have chosen another life had they had an opportunity. They really are in a bad spot in a lot of these areas, especially along the border.
I’m not trying to sound like a raging liberal or something here, but it really is a bad spot that a lot of these communities are in, and it makes it very easy for these cartels to prey upon them. A lot of times what you see when somebody is really heinous is they get detained or arrested in Mexico, and then they get put into a jail or prison controlled by a rival group and those people get murdered. That happens pretty routinely.
Some of the groups, like the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, there are factions that really cross that line into terror groups, but we don’t designate them in that sense because of diplomatic reasons.
The Caravan and Media Coverage
Scott Adams: Let’s talk about the caravan. Where are the pictures of all the trucks that are carrying these people? Because they’re not walking that distance.
Brandon Darby: Part of the issue there is that it’s very difficult to do actual journalism on the caravan. In our case, it would be difficult for us to go down there and make that known because of what we do.
Most U.S. media outlets, when they go into Mexico, they actually pay the cartel for permission to do reporting. They pay a local guide or a “fixer,” and that fixer actually works with the cartel. They get permission from the cartel, and the cartel tells them what they can and can’t publish, what they can and can’t cover, and they abide by that. Most people don’t realize that when National Geographic goes into Mexico, they always pay a fixer, and that fixer gives the money to the cartel. The cartel says, “Okay, you have 48 hours here. Don’t talk about drugs and don’t talk about this, don’t show this, don’t show that.” And people abide by that.
It makes it very difficult to get actual journalism on something like this. It’s easier if you go in sometimes—like we’ll go into Mexico in the trunk of a car, sometimes we’ll go in on foot—and we have all these different ways to get in and get out to get our stories. But if you’re going somewhere and staying for multiple days or a long period of time, it becomes very risky.
Scott Adams: So basically, the reporting we’re getting out of Mexico is only what the cartel approves. Essentially?
Brandon Darby: Pretty much, yeah.
Mapping Cartel Territories
Scott Adams: If you were to draw a border map and fill in the places along the border on the Mexican side that are cartel controlled, what percentage of the entire border would look like it’s cartel controlled?
Brandon Darby: Let’s walk through this a little bit. If you started in California, you would have the Tijuana cartel and they are ruthless; they control that territory. Immediately after Tijuana, somewhere halfway between Tijuana and El Centro in California, it becomes the Sinaloa Federation. They control all of the territory—various groups who owe allegiance to the Sinaloa cartel—all the way until you get to Juárez, Mexico. Juárez is controlled by La Línea and the Juárez cartel.
Then when you get about 40 miles outside of El Paso going east, it becomes the Sinaloa cartel again until you get to Coahuila, which is south of Del Rio, Texas. Then it becomes Los Zetas. They control all the way into Nuevo Laredo and Zapata, Texas. After that, it becomes the Gulf Cartel.
The entirety of the U.S.-Mexico border on the Mexico side is owned by transnational criminal organizations. Something a lot of people don’t realize is that the United States territories are divvied up into cartel territories as well. Washington state is Sinaloa cartel; California is Tijuana and the Sinaloa cartel. If you were to go to Alabama, that’s the territory of a Guatemalan transnational criminal group. The entirety of the U.S. is divvied up into territories for Mexican cartels, and they try to respect that so they don’t have war.
The Wall: Politics vs. Strategy
Scott Adams: When we’re talking about building a wall to reduce immigration, after hearing this conversation, it seems like that’s completely the wrong way to frame this. We should be building the wall between the United States and the cartels. Mexico isn’t really a player in this, is it?
Brandon Darby: So here’s the thing. I am a supporter of building physical barriers, whether that be a wall or fencing in areas where it’s needed. That said, saying “build the wall” is really a political ploy designed to give supporters hope that there’s something they can do—something strong and singular to fix a set of problems. But it doesn’t really resolve the problems.
Let me explain. Most of the problems that we’re having with illegal immigration right now, it’s actually not even illegal immigration; it’s people coming here and utilizing key components of our existing laws. All they have to do is set foot on U.S. territory and say “I want asylum,” and then we have to process them. All they have to do is set foot on U.S. territory and give birth, and then that’s a U.S. citizen, and then we can’t deport the only caregiver for a U.S. citizen infant or minor.
In most of the places where we have a physical wall, if you look at Texas, the physical barrier is actually 40 to 100 yards into the United States territory. None of that is going to get stopped; none of this problem is going to get solved by a barrier that isn’t in the middle of the Rio Grande.
When you look at opiates, for instance, and we keep saying this opiate crisis is out of control and we need to build the wall—well, if you look at the most recent DEA National Drug Threat Assessment, 89 percent of the heroin that comes into the U.S. comes through ports of entry. That means they come in vehicles through legitimate gates. That has nothing to do with “in between” the ports of entry where the border wall would be.
Scott Adams: I think most people understand that a wall isn’t going to do much to stop drugs because there are too many workarounds. But you said you started that conversation by saying you favor the wall, and then you gave reasons not to favor it.
Targeted Barriers and Resource Management
Brandon Darby: Let me explain. Trump says about half of the U.S. border needs portions of a wall or fence or some other type of barrier. Let’s just call it a wall. If you were in Laredo, Texas, where there’s no physical barrier between bad neighborhoods in Mexico and bad neighborhoods in the United States—there’s just the river, which is shallow and only 40 yards across—you would say we need some type of physical barrier to stop the type of behaviors that are crossing the border in these areas.
That would be a good candidate for a physical barrier. Areas like the Big Bend sector, where you have hundreds of miles before you get to human populations, that’s not a good candidate for a physical barrier because we have other mechanisms that we could use to get drug mules—technology and more human resources.
Scott Adams: But even in the areas that you say would be good candidates for a wall, we still have the problem that people just have to stand on U.S. soil and then the legal system kicks in. They just have to walk up and hold onto the wall and they’re in America.
Brandon Darby: Along most of the U.S.-Mexico border, you don’t see a lot of illegal immigration. You see some, but not a lot. The reason is that the Sinaloa cartel, who controls most of our border, is more like the old-school mafia. They want to make money today, but they’re looking at long-term profit sustainability. They want to make money tomorrow and next year. They’re very professional.
If you go to the Gulf Cartel or Los Zetas, it’s a lot of younger guys in their early 20s. They’re more like glorified gang bangers and they don’t care about tomorrow; all they want to do is make money today. That’s why the crisis in 2014 was all centered in Texas, in territories controlled by the two cartels who don’t care about tomorrow. They knew bringing thousands of children to our border would result in more law enforcement presence tomorrow, but they just wanted their money today. Other cartels along the border said, “Wait a minute, we don’t want these people coming here because it’s going to bring more Border Patrol agents and we’re not going to get our drug loads through.” It depends on the nature of the criminal organization.
The Real Purpose of the Caravan
Scott Adams: Now let’s talk about the caravan. Do you have any visibility on what percentage of the caravan, if any, are criminals and cartel members or MS-13?
Brandon Darby: I would tell you that the majority of people—let’s talk about why caravans exist for a second. The last caravan, most of the people who came to the U.S. didn’t come to Texas. They went all the way to California or Arizona. Why did they do that? They did that because of the nature of the cartels in Mexico.
When women, for instance, leave Central America to come to the U.S., there is the expectation of multiple sexual assaults along the way. That’s not just Breitbart reporting; that’s Amnesty International, the United Nations Office of Refugee Resettlement. They say that up to 80% of Central American females are sexually assaulted on their journey into the United States.
Scott Adams: Given that most of the people in the caravan are male, if this were a United States caravan, the amount of physical assault would be zero because there would be enough men who would stop it. What’s different about the caravan?
Brandon Darby: The reason that people join the caravan and humanitarian organizers organize these is because they’re saying, “In this normal system where most women are raped and everyone who crosses has to keep paying the cartel for ten years, we’re going to not let that happen here.” They organize to get media attention for protection as they go across Mexico. The entire existence of a caravan—the point of the caravan—is actually to disempower the cartel and keep people safe from the behavior of the cartels.
When you see groups like Judicial Watch saying there’s ISIS fighters in the caravan, that’s like saying maybe there’s aliens in Antarctica. I can’t prove there’s not, but there’s absolutely no reason to suggest that there are. People join caravans for protection from the cartels on the route to the U.S. border.
Scott Adams: So the way the U.S. media is reporting the caravan is sort of like it’s a challenge on Trump—which on some level it is—but that’s not really the intention. The intention is not politics; it’s physical security for something they wanted to do anyway.
The Dispersion of the Caravan
Scott Adams: Did the last caravan ever show up at our border?
Brandon Darby: No, what happened is they get to Mexico City and then they disperse. They go in smaller groups, work out things with different Catholic churches or aid groups, and then they come in smaller groups to the border. You start to see some show up here and there, but it’s not a lot.
Scott Adams: But that argues against the caravan protecting them because they would have trouble once they leave.
Brandon Darby: The area in Chiapas that they all have to go through when they cross from Guatemala is cartel controlled—it’s heavily influenced by Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. Once they get to Mexico City, then they can go along the western coast through Sinaloa territory. The Sinaloa cartel doesn’t really care because they don’t make much money off of illegal immigration. They’re focused on narcotics and legitimate businesses.
Historically, once they get to Mexico City, there’s political pressure from Mexico on the organizers, and they work out different ways. You still have groups of people showing up that aren’t paying the Gulf Cartel or Zetas to smuggle them in, but it’s not thousands of people in one big bulk coming to the border. It may happen this time, but it hasn’t happened historically.
There’s a lot of fake news about this. The Left is saying they’re doing it to challenge Trump—and I’m sure there’s some organizer in a Che hat who thinks that. The Right has people claiming they’re ISIS fighters. Neither is really how it works. If terrorists want to come here, they have to sneak in through cartels that don’t care about tomorrow. They aren’t going where all the cameras are.
The De Facto Strategy
Scott Adams: It’s starting to sound like the best play for the United States is to back the Sinaloa cartel, because if they take over the other cartels, they’re easier to deal with.
Brandon Darby: In a weird de facto way, that’s what we did. The U.S. gives money to the Mérida Initiative, which manifests as the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement effort. That’s our State Department’s effort to fight cartels. If you look at the way the U.S. pressures Mexico to go after cartels, almost 90% of all of the efforts are against the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, and they leave the Sinaloa cartel alone.
Scott Adams: And what is keeping the cartels from fighting each other? Do they have an agreement, or are they fighting?
Brandon Darby: They’re killing each other. That’s why there’s been over 125,000 people dead in the last decade in Mexico in this cartel war. There are over 56,000 people missing. 125,000 murdered in the drug war—which is also an illegal immigration war. Over 100 journalists have been murdered in the last decade. We’ve had 17 journalists murdered in Mexico just this year, 2018. That’s more journalists than anywhere else in the world.
Policy as the Primary Factor
Scott Adams: What would you suggest the U.S. does about the caravan?
Brandon Darby: We have to remember that focusing on the caravan is hot stuff for the news, but the reality is that in 2018, we’ve had 400,000 human beings come across that border illegally or irregularly. The caravan will be four to seven thousand people, but that represents a small portion of the people who have come across this year alone. There is basically a much larger caravan of people crossing our border every month. Focusing on the caravan is a little bit silly.
Scott Adams: The counter-argument would be that if you didn’t treat it like a big problem, it would become one. The problem is not the size today; it’s what it will turn into if we don’t deal with it.
Brandon Darby: This is the result of our policies. Why the caravan exists—not only for safety—is because of “push factors” (it sucks to live where they are) and “pull factors” (we have policies that encourage them to come here).
The biggest thing we can do is about our policies. It’s easy to say “those people are the enemy,” but the enemy is the lawmakers who leave laws on the books that encourage those people to come. Republicans have control and they could change this; Democrats had control in 2009 and 2010 and they didn’t change it. If we had a policy that said, “It doesn’t matter who you are or why you’re here, if you come here illegally, you are going home,” none of this would be happening.
Asylum Laws and Catch-and-Release
Scott Adams: Does that include people who legally apply for asylum?
Brandon Darby: That’s the catch. We have to change that. No one wants to change the asylum laws because of how they came about as a result of things that happened in World War II. Several ships of Jewish kids came during World War II, and the U.S. turned them back because we couldn’t process their claims.
The reason we have asylum laws is because some people are legitimate asylum seekers, and that’s the country we want to be. But the cost of turning everybody back would mean legitimate seekers wouldn’t have an outlet.
If we have a policy where all you have to do is set foot on U.S. soil, claim asylum, and then you get released into the U.S. while we “sort it out,” we’re going to continue to have 400,000 or more people crossing our border every year. We’re going to have to make some hard decisions. Either we change those laws and make it where people can’t do that, or make it where they have to do it in a foreign country in camps, or we’re going to have this problem.
The Complexity of the Crisis
Scott Adams: What percentage of all the refugees do you think are legitimate asylum seekers? Meaning, if we knew their real story, the U.S. would say, “Oh yeah, we want to help you.” Is it five percent? Forty percent?
Brandon Darby: This is where it’s tricky. I listen to talk radio and people have these resolute opinions, but really it’s a lot of gray area. Anecdotally, probably ninety-something percent of the people I meet, I think, “You know what, they’re a good person and I wish they could stay here.”
But you have to understand, these people come from areas physically controlled by paramilitary transnational criminal groups. When people in Mexico are taken and killed, it’s actually often the military or the cops who kill them for the cartel. That is what we’re dealing with. I think we could make the argument that every one of them should get asylum somewhere, but then we also have to balance that with the reality that we have financial responsibilities to take care of our own communities. How to balance that, I’m not really sure.
Nuance and Closing Thoughts
Scott Adams: This by far is the most useful discussion I’ve ever seen on this topic. Brandon, is there anything extra you want to add for context?
Brandon Darby: I just think we have to acknowledge there are some hard truths here. Our laws encourage people in dangerous situations to come here. They are in dangerous situations, but if we’re going to be a country that takes everyone in the world who’s in danger, we’re going to go broke. If we have a system of entitlements, we’re going to go broke.
What do we do with that? I don’t know. Multiple things can be true at once. The Center for Immigration Studies talks about the negative costs of illegal immigration and they’re telling the truth. Liberal groups talk about the benefits and they can both be true. Some groups benefit, some are hurt.
I see two polar sides and both are a little bit full of it. One side claims everyone coming here is a terrorist; the other side claims everyone is a loving human being just wanting to take care of children. Neither is true; they’re partially true. Let’s encourage everybody to remember we’re talking about human beings, remember that we can’t afford to take on the whole world’s problems, and let’s have an honest discussion.
Scott Adams: That was a perfect summary. Thank you so much. We’ve been talking to Brandon Darby, director of Breitbart’s Border and Cartel projects. You should check out his writing and follow him on Twitter at @BrandonDarby. I’m going to sign off of this. I might do another periscope after this on a different topic. That’s it for now.