Excerpt from the April 22, 2021 interview on the Texas border:
Host: You just can’t make this up. It almost defies logic that even for political reasons, the crisis, that it would be allowed to persist like this. What do you think is really driving this deal?
Bensman: I think the Biden administration is very beholden to the left wing of its party, its progressive left wing. It has considerable influence and sway with the administration. It’s really the only thing that really makes any sense because on this trajectory we’re looking at a really historic American event for the country, something on the order of a population transfer in the millions. Over the border, of all places. So, I really don’t know. I get asked that question all the time and I never have a really good answer that makes any sense. So um… I dunno.
Host: Is the situation still getting worse in real time?
Bensman: Yeah. I think we’ll see the new numbers (for April) in a couple of weeks. They should be well over 200,000 – just apprehended. I’m talking to you right now from the Big Bend sector of the border in a town called Lajitas. It’s very rugged country out here and it really doesn’t get much publicity or any attention at all. I decided to come out here because this sector, normally because it’s so rugged, gets very little traffic. But what it’s experiencing now is 400 percent just in apprehensions. But the Border Patrol agents who work this area tell me they miss about 75 percent of the traffic. That’s 15,000 in this sector just through the month of March. And if they’re missing 75 percent then, you know, do the math. It’s tens of thousands crossing through here illegally and making their way to highways to get picked up. You mentioned earlier that the cartels were recruiting youngsters to pick them up. That’s what’s going on in this sector. They’re picking them up on the highways, which are largely unpatrolled. There might be four Border Patrol agents for a 60-miles stretch of rugged border, so you can see why they’re choosing the Big Bend Sector to come through now.
Host: You talk about the human tragedy, the untold story in terms of the people who never make it to the border, the people we find out after the fact were victims of circumstance, how pervasive are the victims that we don’t hear about and we never hear about?
Bensman: Well, they find body remains out here on a fairly regular basis. In Big Bend, this kind of smuggling entails five- and six-day backpack trips through very rugged terrain with no water. Yesterday on the Mexican side, I interviewed nine Guatemalans who had just been returned. They’d gotten caught and returned back into Mexico. They described how their guide, who they paid $11,000 to a piece, abandoned them after three days out there. They just had to sort of figure out their own way. I mean, people die out there fairly regularly. You can see exactly why here.
Host: And this is all a direct result of President Biden’s border policies…
Bensman: Well, I would say that there’s always been human smuggling and illegal immigration all along the border. But what everybody’s telling me, here in this sector and also in other sectors, is that the numbers are really sky-high. And the numbers are high because Biden promised a welcome wagon of amnesty or you could come and live here for the duration of your asylum petition which takes four or five years, there’d be no deportations, and we’re all welcoming and human here. So you’ll have people who are incentivized by that. The cartels are absolutely cashing in the most on this, becoming even more powerful and having to expand their operations by recruiting drivers and transportation people and taking over stash houses to put migrants in. I mean, it’s a booming business. Something is definitely happening on a scale that people have not seen in this sector or in others in many, many years. Like in 20-30 years.