TODD BENSMAN: Biden Harris human smuggling superhighway in Panama’s Darién Gap

but first of all the Daran gap for those who don't know it uh is a very notorious migrant passage that uh goes through the ismos of Panama connects South America to North America it's roadless so the way the only way to get through it is on foot and whereas it used to be that maybe 10,000 or less a year would go through there last year we had 550,000 go through there and the year before that 350,000 and the year before that 250,000 so it's a very major artery to our border crisis feeding our Mass migration crisis uh what's what's unique and different now is that the panamanians just voted into office a new president whose Central policy promise was I'm going to close the Darian Gap uh this has enormous uh repercussions and consequences for the United States obviously our border uh but also that's where the majority of the people on the FBI's terrorism watch list that we caught at our border came through 380 uh very historic numbers and and lots of people uh from all over the world 170 different countries uh whose criminal histories we have no way of checking so there's a very strong Public Safety in National Security interest here and so I went down there to see how's it going uh with the closure down there had you been there before because I know that you authored the book overrun how Joe Biden unleashed the greatest border crisis in history as in Border crisis in US history I should say um so so you've been concentrating on the border for quite a while has the has the Daran Gap changed in that time yes I mean it's not my first time be to uh Darian province in Panama uh but I was there the last time I was there was in December of 2018 which was when it was normal uh you know less than 10,000 a year were coming through uh little did I know that within a a couple of years so many hundreds of thousands would be coming through uh the Darian so uh I went down there to and and the and the panamanians have just had it up to here they're done they they just cannot take that many people coming through it's expensive it's trampling all over their native uh tribes up there theah uh ruining the uh the de the uh the jungle and the rivers and everything else and they're just done with it so um the the issue here is that the panamanians have asked for help with repatriation flights which is the key to the kingdom there that's how you shut it down as you you repatriate people you expel the people that are coming through and then pretty soon they don't want to come anymore um and they secured a us uh agreement to pay for it uh because of course why not uh why would we not we have this golden opportunity to shut down a major national security threat uh and Public Safety threat to the country and we agreed to do it lo and behold but two months later we didn't give them anything we welched uh so now the panamanians are out there all on their own they've done all the prep work they've done all this work they've got all these preparations in place and then we left them hanging so the sorry when was that that we agreed that we agreed to help out and to repatriate the people who were trespassing uh when did this happen on July 1 we signed an agreement Alejandro mayorcas attended uh the new president his name is Raul Jose mulina attended his inauguration and before Myas left they signed a deal uh we're going to help you with air repatriation that was the deal uh it never happened uh the panamanians did all this uh groundwork and prep work and you know built the foundations for it and then there's no American money and no repatriation flights nor will there be uh because now we we found all these loopholes and things and reasons why we're not going to really do it and you know and why would they do it because for the last two years plus the Biden Administration has worked very hard to uh transform the dariing Gap into a roaring superhighway with 20 lanes uh to make it shorter faster safer uh theyve put all kinds of investment into uh Nos and un agencies down there to open it to keep it open to widen it to to allow the most people possible to get through there uh that that they could possibly uh orchestrate and uh all of a sudden you had a government down there saying hey we want to close it all down and tear up everything that you've spent the last two years doing so of course the answer is going to be no on that under this particular Administration and that's what it is they're not deporting anybody but Comm says that the border is now a problem and that we should lock down the border and keep people out so what do you make of that I hope she's had a change of heart I think that's in the American interest uh to not have the greatest mass migration crisis in human history uh with 10 million people in three years uh pouring over somebody's border that's never happened before and maybe she's seen the light of day the polls are are bad on this are terrible uh for the Democrats uh for all these Northern cities are uh driven to the edge of uh bankruptcy you know uh New York and Chicago and Denver and all the crime and everything that's going on it's can't be good and everybody knows who did it maybe but you know just a few years ago Camala Harris is immigration platform when she was running for the primary in the primaries the Democratic primaries would put her in the most extreme possible radical open borders position that there is that there're ever has been and you know that was like three or four years ago wasn't that long ago that she was taking those positions so I'm skeptical that all of a sudden uh she's like a gone trumpian or something she's gotten a dose Trump she's adopted all of his policies but her values have not changed she assures us her values have not changed so I don't believe any that she says now because that doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever uh I am a little bit challenged geographically but it does seem that anybody coming from Venezuela would have to pass through the Darian Gap and we've got some big problems with Venezuela prison gangs here in the United States both in Colorado and Chicago probably elsewhere I don't know if it's been reported elsewhere yet but probably elsewhere as well what do you what do you make of that well I mean you know the majority of of the people moving through the Darian Gap are Venezuelans uh because Venezuelans you know 7 million Venezuelans left their country years ago 10 years ago and have been living in 15 other countries but they couldn't really move forward because Donald Trump had the Border locked down uh you couldn't get through under Trump you'd end up stuck in Mexico or somewhere else and so they they stayed in place uh and then all of a sudden on Inauguration Day 2021 for Biden uh he opened the border to him all Venezuelans got in everybody got in right away immediately you were in any any City you wanted to so most of them did pass through the Darian Gap um we did very little vetting you can't check criminal databases with Venezuela on on the people uh who claim Venezuelan nationality uh or even in their adopted host countries they they're not going to have uh a criminal database to check either for the most part so it was a walk right through for these criminal gangs for TDA and all those and probably way worse than them uh coming through and once they got to our border we we would do Catch and Release and you know we'd run their fingerprints but if they had never been in our country then of course it would be a negative and that's how they all got in that's why they're all here we let them in hey uh I my understanding is that the Darian Gap is actually basically a crime Zone it's uh it's it's completely Lawless um it's a lot of uh Co coyote type people who are abusive and usurious um what what is your take on it it was like that that's the old Darian Gap that's the way it was before my orcus and Anthony blinken went down there over and over and over again to improve the trails to put Security on the trails to to um uh make the prior Panamanian government to pressure him into shortening the routes and making sea routes and River routes available so that people wouldn't be uh murdered and slaughtered as much and more of them would want to come uh they they created what they call Safe orderly and Humane Passage through the Daran Gap and that's what's in place now it's not like uh the Daran gap of lore uh is the one that we all think of now because it's a it used to be a seven or a 10day horrible hike and through you know uh paramilitary infested rapist infested J jungle Wilderness but now it's like a two-day uh camping trip a couple days and you're you're through you're in so that's what you meant when you said they turned it into more of a superhighway like basically clean and Order come right in pass right through and then make your way up the up the coast or whatever to to get to the United States yeah all the ones that I met all the immigrants I interviewed I was a week on the Colombian side and I was a week on the Panamanian side and I interviewed hundreds of immigrants uh that's they were like how long were you in out there and they were like uh about two days wow it's crazy all right well I want to thank you so much for coming on the program the name of the book is uh whoopsie overrun there it is overrun