Interviewer Cindy Drukier: You reported this week that federal agents at the border are effectively operating under arrest stand-down conditions. Can you explain what that means and what you’re hearing from them?
Bensman: It’s really like nothing I’ve ever seen at the border. I’ve spent a lot of time at the border over the years, and Border Patrol agents play cat and mouse with smugglers; that’s the way it works. They’re trained to bust, arrest, interdict, block, deter, deport. That’s what they do. That’s their foundational training. But all of that is suspended now in the Rio Grande Valley sector, which is the epicenter of the mass migration crisis. That is the place where tens upon tens of thousands of family units are allowed to cross with the open permission of the U.S. federal government. And with the open permission of the federal government to come through and be delivered by the cartel smugglers right into the hands of national guard, or … whoever happens to be there, you can’t really go against that. If you were to bust and arrest and interdict the smugglers, that would halt that train. And so what you see when you go there is everyone working in tandem, collaboratively, the cartel smugglers right in front of the Border Patrol agents and the national guard, chit-chatting and bantering across the river. All of the natural instinct between predator and prey is suspended now. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Drukier: Wow.
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