Evening Edition: ICE Morale Surges After Trump Win
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Friday, November 15th, 2024. I'm Eben Brown. President-elect Trump is ready to resume his tough stance on border protection, and already the word is getting out to those who try to illegally enter from Mexico. The bad guys are also talking about it. Criminal illegal aliens are talking about it, and they are going to try to use this vulnerability in the next two months to gain access into our country. This is the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition.

I'm Ben Domenech, Fox News contributor, editor-at-large of The Spectator, and editor of the Transom.com daily newsletter. I'm inviting you to join in-depth conversations every week on the Ben Domenech Podcast. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com.

President Biden is still in office. President Trump doesn't resume authority until January 20th. The two presidents have very different border protection policies, and yet the federal agencies tasked with controlling migration and keeping the border with Mexico secure are openly preparing to ramp up their activities once the change comes on Inauguration Day. They're giddy is the word that I've been using recently.

They just are really craving the opportunity to go back and do their jobs, which is kind of if you think of a kind of ironic that they are just asking for them to go back to do the scope of their duties and follow the law and law and order and protecting our homeland, which is something that they're looking forward to.

Victor Avila spent a career protecting the U.S. border. He's a retired supervisory special agent with ICE, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They find themselves in a very peculiar situation right now because they want to do it now, but they quite cannot because the Biden administration, even though some of the sectors around the country and the southern border have started kind of trying to detain some of these illegal aliens that they encounter, they

Nevertheless, the Biden administration policies of catch and release into the country still exist and they are still having to process them, put them on a bus and put them on an airplane as we speak, even though the numbers obviously did dwindle. But let me tell you the morale.

Boy, and I know Fox News reported on it, and I second that because I spoke to them. A lot of them, that morale has skyrocketed compared to where it was just one day before the election. That's the tremendous impact that it has. And I think this this morale booster is going across not just.

federal law enforcement agencies like Border Patrol and ICE and others. But I think it's going to actually be a positive ripple effect to our police departments and to our military as well. Yeah, there's already, I think, been some action from Immigration and Customs Enforcement where they're already beginning to talk to local police departments and state police departments to kind of get back into the idea of communicating once again, where the Biden administration policy either dissuaded that or even in some cases, I think, prevented that.

But this has to do with technology, with the with, you know, interworking technology, ankle monitors and all of this stuff. I I'm curious. You alluded to it just now. But the these agencies, ICE or Border Patrol, they still need to follow the orders of the Biden administration. They can't.

Break those orders. They can't not follow them. They can't run counter to them. And President Biden is still president for, you know, another couple of months here at the very least. So how do you how do they navigate that? It has to be very delicate from a government perspective, a bureaucratic perspective.

Very, very delicate, very sensitive. But I'll tell you what, the Biden administration is under a tremendous amount of pressure, knowing how different the new policies are going to be under President Trump. So what's kind of happening here is that nothing is happening. So they might not do anything, the Biden administration. And believe it or not, that's a positive thing. They might just say, OK,

don't do anything it'll be like kind of like a lame duck law enforcement session if you will but it does it is very vulnerable it's a very vulnerable time these next two months because uh just like you and i are talking about it the bad guys are also talking about it criminal illegal aliens are talking about it and they are going to try to use this vulnerability in the next two months to gain access into our country so you're right it is a it is a very uh

unique situation that they find themselves in. But let me tell you, nevertheless, they are pumped and they're ready to defend the communities, which is what they were there to do there in the first place.

There has already been talk that some of these migrant caravans that traverse their way through Mexico towards the United States have already begun to dwindle. Or there are people who have been involved with them who are already saying, forget it, we're done. But there are still some that are trying to make the trek in hopes to get to the U.S. southern border before January 20th.

At what point does the message fully get out that this border is tightening up? And do these caravans stop? Because that's certainly part of the, you know, the messaging as well, you know, that has to come from Border Patrol and from ICE to kind of get that message out outside the border saying, look, you're not going to have an easy time once you get up here going forward.

So two things. One, you mentioned that the communication that ICE and other law enforcement agencies are having with the state and locals, where there's none of the communication that's starting to gear up, and that's the communication with Mexico and their role in all this. We can't ignore that. And President Trump is going to make sure that we have their cooperation. Having said that,

That's a very good point that you bring up because it's so important here that not only the communication, right, and we all want to be on the same page and we all want to know, the federal government wants everybody to understand where you're at, but the

But the messaging is going to come from the illegal alien themselves. It's the phone call, that last phone call that they have been making for the last almost four years where they said, I made it to Indiana. I made it to New York. I made it to to Florida. Well,

That phone call is going to be the decisive phone call that's going to change. It doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter what actually what President Trump says or Tom Holman. And we're all going to we're going to try to communicate it. We're going to put it out there. And but.

It's when they themselves start making that last phone call and say, actually, I didn't make it. And actually, I'm calling you from a federal detention facility is where I'm calling you from. And I'm going to get deported. So don't waste your money. Don't give it to the cartels. And more especially, save your life and save yourself from being sexually assaulted or drowning in the river or cooking in the sun in the desert and

And people forget about the death surrounding the border. 4,000 illegals have died in the last four years trying to come in here. And so when they themselves start calling their friends and family around the world, forget Mexico and Central America, I think we all get caught up that for some reason they're coming from there. We're talking about China. We're talking about all parts of Asia. The Middle East. And Africa. And when they make that call and say, don't do it, it's not worth it because you're going to be sent back.

Victor Avila is our guest. He is a retired supervisory special agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We're talking about the changes already underway with regard to border law enforcement in anticipation of the new policy from incoming President Trump. On the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition, please like and subscribe. We'll have more straight ahead.

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You mentioned the cartels, and I can't think it's or I think it can't be understated how involved they are on the on the underbelly of all of this. At some point, do the cartels say this isn't worth it, that we're not being successful here in this plot to to bring people to the United States, get them past the border line? Do they do they get dissuaded or do they?

ramp up their activity? Do they try new ways to challenge? Well, you guys and, and law enforcement and, and find another way in with, uh, with their, uh, um, their cargo, if you will, because that's how they consider these people. They consider these people. I love the way, I love the way you phrased that question because dissuaded. No, uh,

The cartels used to be the drug cartels, and that was their main source of income and money. But then they moved into the business. They realized how much the human beings, not just the smuggling, but the sexual exploitation and forced labor, the trafficking of that individual, how much money that brought in. And they moved in to take care of that as well. That

obviously will slow down tremendously. It's not going to keep them from stopping. But President Trump has said, and I and others of my colleagues have been pushing this for many, many years to designate these cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. And I think President Trump is finally going to do it. So when you have the Sinaloa cartel and the Cartel Jalisco New Generation designated just like ISIS, then

Then we get to the federal government. The U.S. government has additional resources, DOD resources and other authorities that we didn't have before to take them out. And I'm talking about hitting them where it hurts the most. And that's financially seizing all their assets and properties and bank accounts and everything they have, not just in the U.S., but around the world, because we know that they function based on that money. And that is what gives them the power. That

designation is going to be a game changer and i know mexico is going to go kicking and screaming about it but but it's going to be at the point now that we really have to look out for the u.s

and protect our sovereignty because Mexico will say that we're violating theirs. But I'm tired of the rest of the world violating our sovereignty for the last several years and ignoring it completely. Plus Mexico allowing all these people to come through their country to gain access into ours. So we're going to do things very differently here. Even when I was a narcotics agent and investigating these cartel members,

And it took me 18 months to take down a crew. Those investigative techniques, I think, are stale and old. We are going to move forward with new technology, new efforts and new techniques that at this point, I think, are merited to take care of these cartels and take them out once and for all. You mentioned the DOD resources. I mean, DOD, that's the Department of Defense. They fight wars. Do we transition from a law enforcement perspective?

to a defense mentality, a national defense mentality with these cartels. I mean, they're armed like any other army sometimes. I mean, we've seen the type of firepower they have.

Yeah, they're tremendously armed and they have firepower, but they're no match for the U.S. government. Now, when I say the DOD resources and that designation as foreign terrorist organizations, it doesn't automatically mean that that's the first thing we do. But what it does do, it gives us the ability to put that

next tool on the table. And yes, I'm talking about military type of intervention, whether it's on our border or maybe even doing some kind of intervention in Mexico by taking out 100 of their super labs where they're making the methamphetamine and the super pill mills, the poison, a fentanyl that they bring into our country.

Absolutely, that's on the table. It's not going to be the first thing that we do, but it's definitely going to be there as a resource and kind of depending on what Mexico and Central America wants to do and react because there's going to be an opportunity for them to wake up and say, listen, they have the ability to do it as well. And this could be a team effort. By the way, everything that I'm saying is going to benefit everyone. It's going to benefit Mexico. It's going to benefit both countries. It's going to have a huge impact.

positive economic impact. I think it's kind of mind boggling that some people, even in our own country, governors and mayors are opposing public safety when we're saying that we're going to go get these bad criminal illegal aliens from your from your state and your city. And they're saying no. And they're protecting them. It makes absolutely no sense to me. But the American people have spoken and we're going to do right by them to go get these people out of there.

Mexico could be an incredible partner here. And President Trump got a lot of cooperation the last time. There's a new president in Mexico, however. She may have a different attitude. But, you know, how do we, for instance, how do we get back to remain in Mexico? Because remain in Mexico, the policy requires Mexico's cooperation. They have to do their job in this as well. President Trump was able to get that the last time. Could he could he do it again? Yeah, he.

Yeah, he'll get it again. And of course, it's the tariffs that matter. But I think now this is even way different than 2018, 2019 when we when we did this. It's going to have to be more than remain in Mexico. And it's going to be more than just the tariffs that President Trump will have to, I think, at this point, actually implement rather than just threaten Mexico.

because the new president of Mexico is a full-blown communist, and they have a very different ideology. I mean, their own country is at war. And just yesterday, in one of her morning presses, they were telling her, listen, there's this huge war down in the Sonora, Sinaloa,

cartels are killing innocent people. They're killing each other. And she says, yeah, we're going to take a look at it. These are the type of responses that she's been giving, along with kind of with AMLO and Lopez Obrador, the president, the previous president. They ignored this huge criminal organizations that have taken over Mexico. I mean, just the border alone, Evan, they control and store every single truck that

and business that comes across that border, you have to pay $350 to get your tractor trailer across. They visit the factories and extort them. These businesses are sick and tired of this. So...

Mexico is going to have no choice but to come on board and help each other. It's going to be one of those help me help you situations where I think they're going to be forced to do it. I think that the Mexican people are going to demand it as well of their government. And hopefully together we'll fix this. Victor Avila, you are a retired supervisory special agent with the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Thank you so much for being with us on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. Thank you for having me.

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