National Police Association Podcast with Guest, Randy Clark, Author at Breitbart, Border Patrol Retiree
Hi. This is sergeant Betsy Brantner Smith with the National Police Association, and this is the National Police Association podcast. I have a guest today that that I follow religiously. I want to read everything that this guy writes. I wanna see what he's investigating.
Betsy Smith:He works for probably my very favorite news organization, and that is Breitbart News. But before he got involved in journalism and investigative reporting, of course, he he was a police officer, so we're gonna talk about that too. Randy Clark, welcome to the show.
Randy Clark:Thank you for having me.
Betsy Smith:So I gotta ask this because I ask everybody, why'd you become a cop?
Randy Clark:Well, you know, I, I grew up in a border town here in Eagle Pass, Texas. I'm still here, you know, almost sixty years later. And, I grew up within a hundred yards of a border patrol station. And on the border, that's something you see quite a bit of. And so when you see those folks coming in and out and doing their job and and seemingly enjoying it, it kinda directed me in that in that fashion.
Randy Clark:And I was a a a security police officer with the Air Force Reserve also. At the same time, I was trying to join the border patrol. So my father was customs, and it kinda ran in the family, and it was just, you know, something I wanted to do. I wanted to help, wanted to serve.
Betsy Smith:So you have seen an extraordinary evolution of the border patrol. Talk about that for a couple minutes.
Randy Clark:Well, it it's funny, you you know, you asked that question because we've seen an evolution of the border itself and of the agency. So when I came in the border patrol at the end of the Reagan administration in 1988, the border patrol was a very small agency under the immigration nationalization service, and it was only, like, 2,500 border patrol agents to cover the entire northern and southern border. We were very poorly funded. We were overrun at the time because of the the recent amnesty law in 1986. So our agents were vastly outnumbered, and we were catching, you know, over a million people coming across the Southern border every year.
Randy Clark:So fast forward through, you know, the post nine eleven days, and we immediately started growing and and became, you know, looked at as a national security agency. And now the agency boasts somewhere between nineteen and twenty thousand border patrol agents. So it's it's it's, you know, grown in size 10 times over from when I came in.
Betsy Smith:Yeah. When in the nineteen eighties, I remember as a young police officer, you guys were kind of the, if I may say, the bastard stepchildren, of federal law enforcement. And now we look at the United States border patrol and the and the the professionalism that that the agency has and the reverence that most Americans have for the border patrol. And and, you know, and you literally lived that that whole, evolution. Now in retirement, you're with the the Breitbart organization.
Betsy Smith:How did that come to be?
Randy Clark:Well, so at different points in my career, you know, from about the first, you know, right after the first ten years, I started working with, with our sector headquarters in El Centro as a public affairs officer, and that was a collateral function. That wasn't something I did, you know, full time. I would I would have to read up on the on the latest happenings that were going on in the boardroom, do news interviews before and after work, during work. And so that kinda prepared me for getting messaging out right on behalf of the border patrol. And when I retired and I saw what we were going to be facing, I I kind of had this impression that this is not gonna be good.
Randy Clark:And and I I sorely misunderestimated how bad it would get, but I had worked with Breitbart on some news stories before. And I contacted them and said, hey. I'm on the border. If you need a hand, let me know. And it was, a match made in heaven, so to speak.
Randy Clark:I started immediately, and, and I've enjoyed every day since, and that was four years ago.
Betsy Smith:Nobody covers the border quite like Breitbart does, and that's one of the things that that, we at the National Police Association appreciate it because they, they really get, into what's happening, explain to people what's happening, and, really from a very pro law enforcement, pro America point of view. What do you now you're in Eagle Pass, Texas. What are you seeing when it comes to, our boots on the ground border patrol agents, since president Trump has, has taken office?
Randy Clark:Certainly, a lot more smiles, a lot more levity. I've seen nothing but unhappiness and kind of pretty much just misery over the last four years because quite frankly, what's happened over the last four years doesn't mirror or match anything I saw in the thirty two years previous. I I often have people because I travel along the border, routinely from San Diego all the way to Brownsville, Texas. Everywhere there is a surge or there's an explosion of illegal entries, I'll go down there and I'll stay for a week or two. I'll report on it there and go to where the next surge is, and I've done that over the last four years.
Randy Clark:And, you know, a lot of people ask me, well, you know, you retired from this outfit. You did it for thirty two years. What's your advice to these young men and women that are, you know, coping with this? And, basically, I tell them I I can't offer anything constructive except keep your head up because I didn't deal with it. We didn't deal with the level of overcrowding.
Randy Clark:We didn't deal with the massive humanitarian, aid that was required for them to give and the releases and everything that comes along with that, like health crises, things like that. We saw the Haitian migrant crisis in Del Rio in in 02/2022. We had never seen that before. Nothing like that ever happened. No one ever made landfall to the tune of 30,000 people in a small Texas city and camped out under the bridge, basically, serving as their own prison guards and their own, you know, economy that unfolded with traveling back and forth to Mexico to bring food and sell it.
Randy Clark:And, there was just all kinds of madness going on at that time.
Betsy Smith:And when you for example, the Del Rio situation, National Police Association, we got involved in that when we saw our our mounted border patrol agents get accused of, you know, whipping the migrants, all of those ridiculous things. I was I was actually in the green room of a of a national television show, the electronic green room, when Joe Biden came out and said people are gonna be punished, heads are gonna roll, all of that. And and these agents were wrongly accused of of doing things at a time where, and this is something I'm sure you've seen throughout your career. Border patrol agents do far more saving of lives than they do taking people into custody, don't they?
Randy Clark:Well, they they absolutely do. And and really what the travesty of this particular instance is is, you know, you know with law enforcement, you're gonna get a complaint. If you're out there doing your job, somebody's gonna be unhappy with it. And it's usually going to be the criminal. And so that comes with the territory.
Randy Clark:You've gotta be tough, and you've gotta you've just gotta take that in a law enforcement environment. It's not always, and it has not always been the past, where everything is gathered on camera and the evidence is immediately available for the public and for investigators to look and see what actually happened. And the sad thing about that, and I know all of these, you know, agents that are working on a horse patrol down there at the time. They're doing their job. Even the cameraman that captured this video and these pictures said, I they were never whipping anybody.
Randy Clark:They they never was any contact. It looked like they were trying to stop the migrants from going back into the water and coming out of the river with whatever they were carrying and maybe conduct an enforcement operation or or an inspection, but never did they ever see anybody whipping that. And from the president on down to Alejandro Mayorkas, they knew that. They were they saw those images, and they knew. But this was a a great opportunity to switch the narrative away from we have let the border just go to hell in a handbasket, and we've got 30,000 people that we say surprised us.
Randy Clark:There was no great surprise. I was at that bridge for three weeks. And if you go back to to Breitbart and you search Haitian migrant crisis, what you're gonna find is a series of about 12 to 15 stories that says 500 people are living under a bridge because the border tolls run out of space. And then the next story was seven fifty and then a thousand and then 3,000 and then 5,000. And it wasn't until we reported over 15,000 that Majorca showed up.
Randy Clark:You know? And really, the only other news outlet that ever bothers to come is Fox News. They came as well. And then, of course, the whole fiasco came where the rest of the world is forced to come in and have a look at what's going on. So this crucifying these agents wrongfully and knowingly, was the opportunity administration was waiting for to just shift the narrative, and let's talk about strapping migrants and strapping people and holding people accountable.
Randy Clark:Well, they knew the evidence is out there. Take a look. This wasn't, you know, a verbal complaint with no evidence. It was pretty much clear from the get go.
Betsy Smith:You know, these past four years, we have seen such a different atmosphere at the border where, people from, what is it, a 20 different countries are coming coming into this country largely unfettered. And I I I live in the Tucson sector in Arizona. And when I fly out of the Tucson International Airport, I am always in line next to the line where people either have the CBP app or they have a Manila envelope. And, and I have to show my ID, and they don't. Now that has since stopped.
Betsy Smith:But talk about what four years of that has done to the interior of The United States.
Randy Clark:Well, so we know from the unfortunate souls that have perished, it's cost some people their lives. You know, we know the the young, lady in Houston, Twelve year old Jocelyn Nungare. She she was killed at the hands of two Venezuelan illegal aliens. We know there have been others, and that's the immediate. That's what we know has happened.
Randy Clark:And then you can look at the Trende Aragua gang that we've seen in Aurora and operating other places. Their masters at leaving Venezuela and taking carnage with them. Their masters at taking over all devices. They'll go into Chicago, and they'll get into drug sales and theft and purse snatchings. And wherever there's money to be made, they'll they'll take over that little racket niche wherever they go.
Randy Clark:And they're extremely violent. So we we know that is happening right now. What we don't know, Betsy, is what's gonna happen in five years, in ten years. What's gonna happen with those folks that came unvetted from Afghanistan on those planes? There were over 60,000 of those folks that just jumped on planes.
Randy Clark:And once they were here, I I know an interpreter that that is, an Afghan himself. He's an ally. He said most of those people were not allies. They were not interpreters that had worked. Those were people that had nothing better to do that day except follow the crowd and jump on a plane that was taken off.
Randy Clark:So we don't know about those folks. We also don't know about those folks that really alarm me the most. And that's what I saw in the Tucson sector was near Ajo. There was just a daily influx of those people you say come from a 30 or a 40 or a 50 countries at a time, and very few were Spanish speakers that I saw. If you go look at the Tucson sector stories that I've done, you'll see that it's everybody from across the globe.
Randy Clark:Nobody from Mexico hardly in that area around Ajo and the Oregon Pipe National Monument. It's Mauritania, a place where slavery was still legalized. It was it was legal in 02/2007. You know, that that's and are they bringing that mentality? We don't know.
Randy Clark:Are they running from it? It's hard to say because guess what? There's such a language barrier, and they are unvetted. We just know they didn't have a criminal record here. We let them go.
Randy Clark:We don't know where.
Betsy Smith:And so many of them are illiterate in their own language. So, you know, when they're here and there's this inability to communicate, a lot of them come from socialist countries, so they they're expecting to get, supported by the government, which they do for quite some time. And, it it it's all very frustrating to those of us in The United States who don't feel that we should have to pay for, all of these people to come and live off of our system. But there is still this narrative out there that, these are all asylum seekers. You hear that term a lot.
Betsy Smith:We hear that term here in Arizona. These are asylum seekers, and you're you're, you're kind of screwing with their ability to get away from their terrible life and and this and that. How many true asylum seeking people with true asylum claims are have been coming over in the last four years, do you think?
Randy Clark:So that's that's what we do know is the vast majority are not asylum seekers. They're they're running for economic purposes. Right? If you listen to the the liberal media, they'll tell you it's climate change. Well, the only climate is the climate of Joe Biden that called him to come.
Randy Clark:We know he did that during the debates. And the climate of president Trump that says, you're not gonna get refuge here. You're not gonna get across the border. If you do, we're gonna prosecute. If you if you get away, we're gonna find you.
Randy Clark:That the difference in those two messages has been night and day. We've seen the lowest numbers in the last month that we have seen in in more than a decade. We see migrants. I just did a story yesterday in Panama that are taking boats back to Colombia. They're they're they're leaving Mexico, and they are heading back before they ever reach The United States.
Randy Clark:So to to accept the narrative that all those millions of people that came in the last, you know, four years are asylum seekers, you have to also believe that The United States is the only inhabitable region on the entire planet. Right? Because everything is so bad in the rest of the world that everyone has to come live in The United States. Well, we know that is not true. Right?
Randy Clark:People move around all kinds of different countries, and they like it there. We know they're fleeing the poverty, and there's a social network here that doesn't exist in almost any other country, especially countries that will take migration in an unfettered amount. So we know that's what people are coming for here, but we're fed a false narrative, and it's pushed even though the people pushing it understand it not to be true.
Betsy Smith:You know, we talk a lot about, child trafficking. And and I have been pooh poohed by liberal reporters on this that that we're are we exaggerating the situation of the child sex trafficking and the children being passed back and forth multiple times, even being sold by their own parents? Can you talk to the audience about the realities of what it's like and what you have seen over the years even before the Biden administration, of child sex trafficking and child abuse when it comes to the Southern border?
Randy Clark:So what we do know is is the difference in the numbers. Right? And that's when I when I tell you that, well, I never saw anything like this. In 02/2020, there were 30,000 unaccompanied alien children that were apprehended Southern border wide. That's everywhere for a whole year.
Randy Clark:When we had any doubts about who those children were, we had time to investigate, time to look and see who relatives and parents were. A lot of times these children were sent in advance because the parents realized they would get sent back home to their home country. They realized that if the child shows up first, we have to find a suitable location that has certified teachers, child psychologists, you know, adequate nutrition, full medical services. And that could be in Pennsylvania, Florida. It could be in your neck of the woods because Tucson has some near or I'm sorry.
Randy Clark:Phoenix has some near Florence. So it could be anywhere. When the parents show up in two weeks, we gotta release those parents so that they can now go be with a child. We don't send the child for removal to the border. In past, we sent the parents to where the child is, and they all get a a reprieve, basically.
Randy Clark:There were thirty thousand of those cases in 02/2020. Since the Biden administration came in, there's been nearly half a million of those cases. So in in one year, the first year was over a 20,000 unaccompanied children just sent here by themselves. So the question I would wanna ask the former DHS secretary or president Biden or vice president Harris who is the borders are, you tell me where these children are. You tell me what happened to them because I know that we have no federal child protective services.
Randy Clark:We hired a bunch of contractors to get rid of these children and put them in the hands of somebody as fast as we could to the tune of $700 per day in detention expenses. And in most of the Biden administration days, there were at least 18,000 in custody for the first two years. So do the math. 18,000 times 700, you're not gonna do it in your head. It is a ton of money, and we basically shot it down the tubes every single day to just give these children away to the first person that we could get that passed a background check.
Randy Clark:And by a background check, I mean, what you might have done on a traffic stop thirty years ago where you just call in and any wants or warrants? No? Any prior criminal? Okay. Give them the child.
Randy Clark:That's the level of vetting those people go through.
Betsy Smith:It's just unthinkable that we would treat children from any country in that way. And we still have we still have thousands of children. We don't know where they are. Right?
Randy Clark:Well, and many might not have been children because we we've apprehended people who are 22 that are saying they're 16 and 17. They wanna get let loose. They don't wanna go into adult detention. Well, when you have thirty thirty thousand in a year spread across the entire Southwest Border, guess what that gives me as a manager? The time to investigate.
Randy Clark:So we would drive people from Eagle Pass all the way to San Antonio and sit that person in front of a forensic dentist and say, alright. You tell me. Under 18 or over 18? And the dentist, they can't tell you, you know, 22 years old in one day, but they can say, that one's definitely between 22 and 30 or 25 and 30. So you get an idea that it's it's a it's a yes or a no.
Randy Clark:That wasn't being done under this administration. DNA testing was not being done. We had that capability the last year of the Trump administration and in 02/2018 to say, hey. This man and this unaccompanied baby just don't look right. There's something off here.
Randy Clark:We in fifteen minutes, Homeland Security Investigations who was on-site with the testing equipment could test and tell you they are both relatives or they are not. And that was a godsend. That went out the window because you just don't have the money or the time to support an operation that looks that closely into ten, twelve, up to 14,000 people crossing illegally in one given day.
Betsy Smith:What do you think the end game was for the Biden administration to just literally throw open our southern borders? What what what what's the end game? What was the end game?
Randy Clark:I've heard a lot of people associate this with voting. Right? And that's that would be a long term solution, and and that would that would mean you need a massive amnesty that legalizes these folks. They gotta be in a legal permanent resident status for five years, then they gotta wanna naturalize before they ever cast a vote. But what people fail to realize is that you you you vote you and I vote with our feet.
Randy Clark:Right? And so do these people. You don't need, any kind of legitimacy to get counted on a census. Right? So where you have places like mostly sanctuary cities, the Los Angeles, the San Franciscos, the New York, you see their tax paying citizens fleeing those places.
Randy Clark:And they move to places like Florida and Texas and in between. And, well, that means they lose congressional representatives in those states when the population dwindles. Unless you import close to 11 or 12,000,000 in the last four years that are gonna go where? To those sanctuary cities. So I think come the 2030 census, if we don't do something about winning as far as not counting the illegal population, what you're gonna find is those places that lost population due to bad policies are now gonna get representation and not lose it instead of losing it to where the the citizenry and the taxpayers went.
Betsy Smith:What do you think declaring some of these Mexican drug cartels, declaring them that, you know, transnational, criminal organizations, declaring them terrorist organizations, what is that going to do for, federal and, state and local law enforcement?
Randy Clark:So So I think that's gonna do several things. As far as messaging, messaging is everything. Right? When you if if you're serious about something, you gotta come out and say it, and then you gotta follow it up with actions. And so by declaring them a foreign terrorist organization, it tells everybody that's doing business with them, I don't want my money mixed up with theirs.
Randy Clark:First of all, because I'm gonna lose all our money, whether it's government of Mexico officials. We've prosecuted some of their governors. So it gives tools for for financial crimes, and it also, kind of enhances the level of intelligence we're gonna gather over there. Right? The extra mile.
Randy Clark:It gives prosecutors in The United States another tool. Because now instead of just possession of narcotics or possession of of, a controlled substance with intent to distribute, you're gonna be able to tack on the federal charge of of supplying material support to a foreign terrorist organization. That carries from five to twenty years and more if if it involves a death. So I think you're gonna see folks that are gun running get charged with that. Folks who are peddling fentanyl in Oklahoma, and we can trace that back to a cartel.
Randy Clark:That gives us federal prosecutors one more charge to stack up and say, okay. You know what? We're we're serious. We're gonna apply this statute. So I think there's a lot there, and, and we haven't seen obviously the military might.
Randy Clark:But there was a development today. 29 drug cartel members, leaders were sent to The United States. They were extradited to go to prison by Mexico, and that included Caro Quintero who was involved in the Iki Camarena assassination. It also included some of the high level CETA members, the Trevino brothers. That sends a message also that, hey.
Randy Clark:Look. You're not gonna be able to operate the cartel out of a Mexican jail. You're not gonna hope for, you know, some kind of fabulous treatment and maybe the chance to escape later on. You're gonna go to a US maximum security prison, and you're gonna sit there and, and your days are over. It sends a message to the rest of the cartel that Mexico is not gonna stand up for you.
Randy Clark:If the and that's that's just these last couple of months. We haven't seen any strength or power in the last four years pressuring Mexico to do a whole lot. We have seen just in the you know, since January, Mexico make a turnaround. The language doesn't match. What you hear their president saying doesn't match, but the actions do.
Randy Clark:She's not stopping those spy planes from flying over. She certainly didn't stop from sending those 29 cartel members to us. So I think she's she may be, in my estimation, saying the things she's saying to keep from getting assassinated in one of the most murderous countries in the world and underhandedly saying, okay. You gotta you gotta throw me a bone. I'm gonna have to speak this way, but actions are gonna go this way.
Randy Clark:So I'm I'm a little bit optimistic.
Betsy Smith:Do you think she's going to help us stop the Chinese from, you know, bringing in the fentanyl components into Mexico and and all of that? You you know? And do you think we can stop the Chinese from doing that?
Randy Clark:You know, I I think we can, and I think, president Trump is playing that out right now. He he just his latest message on the tariffs is they go forward. No one has done enough. They go forward. On the same day, the 29 cartel members came.
Randy Clark:I think when the federal government puts its might to it and we wanna do it, I think we're gonna be able to do it. And and, really, money is the key. The Chinese understand money. They know this fentanyl's leaving, and they just absolutely don't care. Because if this country remains in chaos, that's a benefit for them.
Randy Clark:We know what they've been doing to us. They have been sending Chinese illegal aliens here for the last four years at levels never experienced before. You know, we we've we've been seeing six, eight, 10 thousand each and every month, and their exit controls capabilities are excellent. Nothing moves out of there without the Chinese Communist Party understanding that. So every time this immigration of Chinese nationals came and and and doubled, there was some incident going on.
Randy Clark:A Chinese spy balloon was shot down. Now we went from 3,000 Chinese a month to more than five or 6,000. So there's something behind that. We know police departments in in California have encountered the the illegal Chinese aliens running around with gift cards doing those scams where they steal the cards, then they reprogram, put them back on the store shelves. And when you try and charge up the card for a hundred dollars at one of the sporting goods stores, it goes right into a Chinese bank account.
Randy Clark:So we don't know all they're tied up with, but it isn't good in many
Betsy Smith:Absolutely. Absolutely. Randy, where can people find you on social media? Where can they read your articles and, and learn more about what you're doing?
Randy Clark:On exit, you can find me at at randy clark b b t x. They can also go to the Breitbart webpage, the main webpage. Look under cartel chronicles, the world page. They'll find me there, and they can and on the main page of Breitbart news.
Betsy Smith:And everybody download the Breitbart app. It's the first news app I open every single morning when I get up. Randy Clark, thank you so much for,
Betsy Smith:spending your valuable time with us. We so appreciate it.
Randy Clark:Anytime.
Betsy Smith:And if you'd like more information about the National Police Association, you can visit us at nationalpolice.org.
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