The importance of political leaders traveling to the border to take the “Breitbart Border Tour,” was the topic Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby discussed when joining Stephen K. Bannon and Alex Marlow on Breitbart News Daily. He said the unannounced, no law enforcement, dangerous tour in the darkness, no physical barrier to the “fricken beheading ISIS-like” Los Zetas Cartel, is designed to let politicians see and feel what Border Patrol agents feel. Darby said the tour was no “Potemkin Village.”
The interview focused on the impact of an open border on the nation as a whole and came during a border tour with Paul Nehlen. Nehlen is from Wisconsin and is challenging House Speaker Paul Ryan in the Republican primary. Nehlen first used the term “Potemkin Village” in connection to political tours of the border. Darby also recently took another congressional candidate on a tour, Lubbock Mayor Glen Robertson, as reported by Breitbart Texas.
Darby said it is critical for our leaders or prospective leaders to talk to the men and women who work day and night to protect this country. He said they also need to do more than just see the fancy dog and pony show conducted by Border Patrol executives for VIPs.
“They get this big fancy tour that is not representative of what the agents usually are dealing with, and how unsecured the border usually is,” Darby said on SiriusXM radio.
He said he was impressed that Nehlen was with him “literally sitting along the river near Carizzo Springs (Texas) in the weeds” and in the middle of snakes. Nehlen and Darby were just three feet from the Rio Grande River with no physical barrier and only 40-50 yards from Nuevo Laredo, the headquarters of the brutal Los Zetas Cartel. You could easily walk or inner tube across the river. Nehlen came to the border unannounced and without law enforcement protection. Darby said they saw tons of evidence of smuggling, including black bags and inner tubes, like when he caught cartel thugs smuggling humans in late April (captured on video).
Breitbart Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon asked Darby why people who don’t live in Texas or Arizona should care about the open border policies of the federal government. Darby delivered a powerful answer:
Well, I’ll tell you what. You go find the mothers and fathers of people who have kids, the mothers and fathers who have children who are suffering from meth addictions right now and they’re watching their kids die – You see if they care, if they give a damn about this open border and the amount of methamphetamine that’s crossing the border from the Gulf Cartel, from the Zetas, and from the Sinaloa Cartel. You go talk to the parents with the heroin epidemic that we’re having across this nation right now, and you ask them if they give a damn about this border.
You go talk to the low-income black workers who no longer can get jobs in hotels because the jobs are all filled with people who are in this country illegally working for less than the American worker will work for, or can work for, and you go see if they care about this issue with this border. They do care about this border.
Darby added:
This is happening across the country and it effects everyone everywhere. People with addiction who are seeing this rampant addiction and increase in addictions because there is a rampant increase in the amount of dope coming across this border. That’s why!
Bannon also asked Darby whether there was any relationship between the sanctuary city near Paul Ryan’s district, Chicago, and the fact that the Chicago Crime Commission has in the last year or so named the head of the cartel living in Mexico as “Public Enemy #1.” Darby answered – “100 percent of a correlation.”
Darby explained, “There are always ‘push-factors,’” i.e., “It sucks to live there.” He said in countries that follow left of center policies, specifically in Central America, there are no jobs.
We create “pull-factors,” he said. Just Google “U.S. Government Asylum Policy” and you will see that the federal government encourages and educates people that if they want asylum, all they have to do is step on U.S. soil. They are also reassured that if caught, they will be released with only a Notice to Appear form.
“They think, the liberals think, that they’re helping people. And when I said ‘liberals,’ I also mean half the Republicans, like Paul Ryan. They think they are helping people by leaving the situation the way it is. They’re not helping people.” The Los Zetas Cartel, and the Gulf Cartel, routinely make more money and are “fueled heavier” from illegal immigration than from narcotics. “This system that we are doing is unfair to Americans, and it is fueling and perpetuating a system of oppression in Mexico. It’s unacceptable.”
“So what’s going on right now is a revolution. We are seeing political leaders from Trump, to the mayor of Lubbock who is running for Congress, and now Mr. Nehlen. We are seeing leaders come down here and not get the official tour like Ted Cruz did, or like Paul Ryan did, but actually come down here and get the agents tour. What the agents see, what they live through, what they feel like. This is a revolution and this border will get secured as soon as people actually know what’s happening.”
Darby said it requires people like Nehlen and Trump to use their position to address these issues.
Darby said there are political leaders who take the open border problem seriously. He relayed that he was impressed and encouraged when he caught Louie Gohmert on the border, “undercover, dressed like a bum, hiding, talking to agents trying to see for himself what was going on.” He added that Lubbock Mayor Glenn Robertson has taken this seriously and actually become a voice for the agents.
Darby said he called Cruz and his staff for 2 1/2 years before Cruz was officially running for president. Border Patrol agents also called Cruz but he did not return their calls. He avoided the topic during the primary, and he likes Ted Cruz, but Cruz does not take the issue seriously. Darby said that the two times Cruz actually came to the border, he went on pre-announced tours with the border patrol agency — individuals who work under the political appointees of Barack Obama.
Trump came on a tour which was highly publicized, but he made sure that the agents had his contact information and knew they had a voice. “Some of the strongest commitments ever made, he made that first step of doing that,” Darby conveyed.
Most of the politicians go to El Paso which is not representative of the rest of the U.S.-Mexican border. They also go to the Rio Grande Valley sector where you can’t even get to the border. They announce their trips ahead of time, go on a helicopter tour and are surrounded by agents on horseback, in helicopters and on ATVs. He said no agents know where he is when he takes political leaders on border tours.
One of the problems that his tours reveal is that Border Patrol agents are not assigned to cover the border thoroughly. “So, when we come out here, and they don’t know we’re here, there are no agents, Darby explained. “They don’t assign agents properly. And, the agents who are out here, are out here alone in a dangerous situation with no physical barrier between them and freaking beheading, ISIS-like actions of the Los Zetas cartel. It’s unacceptable.”
“That is why it is so significant that they are beginning to come and get the Breitbart Border Tour,” he stated. “They are beginning to come and listen to the voices of the Border Patrol agents and feel what it feels like.”
Following the radio show, Darby and Nehlen continued their tour by going out in the border at night. “He is going to be out here with me, in the dark, with no lights, with no law enforcement presence and it’s going to be scary. And you know what, that’s what Border Patrol agents feel like – and he’s going to feel it for himself.”
By feeling that feeling of being alone on the border, Darby hopes that leaders will take that energy back to fight to secure our country’s borders. “If more politicians would come down and feel that feeling, we might have a different situation in this country,” he said.
Lana Shadwick is a writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas and is a member of the original Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.
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