Joe Rogan | What Trumps Border Wall Means for Drug Cartels w/Ioan Grillo

What is the attitude in Mexico, especially amongst people who are studying the narco wars, with all this build that wall stuff, all this what's going on in America, there's this very strange right versus left polarization over here about whether or not there should be a wall between the United States and Mexico? Sure. I mean, well, I mean, the thing where Mexicans are obviously very anti-Trump in Mexico is, you know, Trump, Trump is very unpopular from the very beginning, you know, when he said, you know, they are rapists. And murders. Yeah. Someone's doing the raping. Yeah. I mean, he's kind of, you know, if you look at surveys, the level's very low. Does anybody like Trump in Mexico? They're like, I've never- He's always contrarian somewhere. Yeah. I mean, I've seen numbers like, you know, people say like, I don't know, 80% or something, I think he's terrible. So it means there must be a 20% somewhere who don't. I haven't met a Mexican who's been like pro-Trump. I know I never have. I met Salvadoran who was pro-Trump one time and he had a guy being deported and he was like, I know you're going to, you know, this guy Trump's going to turn out to be a great president. So, so I see that. But, you know, Mexico is very, very anti-Trump. In terms of the wall, I mean, there's, you know, there's in terms of what, in terms of the smugglers, my mom was talking to a smuggler in Nogales about this and he was describing, he was from Nogales, from a neighborhood called Buenos Aires, which is right on the border with the United States. You know, it's Nogales Sonora, Nogales Arizona. So Nogales Sonora, again, Nogales Arizona. And he was from the neighborhood right on the border there. And he described that he first took people over the border with the United States back in the 1980s when he was at school, he was at high school. And the reason was that time it was just an old fence and there was a hole in the fence that used to go through into the United States and go back into Mexico, just an old wire fence. And the first time he took people through, people would arrive from southern Mexico and say, you know, how do we get into the US? And he'd say, oh, you know, this way. And they'd give him a tip. He said the first time he got the equivalent of about 50 cents was what he made to take people into the United States, 50 cents. Nowadays, the cost of going into the US is $5,000. That's what you paid to go illegally to the United States, 5,000 bucks. So he's saying, wow, look at that increase. Every time that the US puts more security, it means it's more expensive. When it's more expensive, that means more money going to criminals, which means there's no one industry doing it. So now the cartels make a big percentage of that money of human smuggling into the US. But like in terms of the wall, I mean, when Trump first came in, he had the line that Mexico is going to pay for it. And then there was this kind of line right at the beginning. He threatened the Mexican president saying, if you don't agree to pay for the wall, then why are you going to come and meet me? And then it was like, wow, he's really going to try and shake down Mexico for like billions of dollars. He's really going to try and do that. And that was kind of scary moment then, I think, from the point of view of Mexico. When he first got to power, it was like he's going to do that, and then he's going to deport 3 million, and he's going to kill NAFTA. Actually those things haven't really come to pass. Actually if you look over the last couple of years of Trump, he hasn't really hit Mexico very hard. So the concern was that he was going to take money that should be allocated to other ways it's going to help Mexico, and he was going to try to take that and use it to build the wall? I mean, no one really knew when he first came in, he was like, Mexico is going to pay for this wall. Right, the wall just got 10 foot higher, remember that? Yeah, and it was like, how are you going to do that? You're going to start threatening Mexico militarily and say, give us money? I mean, is it a shakedown? Is it a shakedown? It was kind of a crazy diplomatic thing when he first got in. So that was kind of scary for a moment from the point of view of Mexico. But I think after you look at the last couple of years, he hasn't really hit Mexico with that. He's hit the wall. Now, obviously, there's the big fuss in terms of the spending here. But if he wants to build it or extend it, there is wall in sections of the border already. If he wants to extend it, it won't stop a lot of the hard drugs. I mean, if you look at heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, high value drugs, they normally go through the ports of entry. Right. So shipping. Yeah, I mean, they go through the ports of entry through like, I mean, you have the through in cars, cars, trucks. I mean, you go through if you look at the Laredos, Laredo Nuevo Laredo, one of the reasons that was a big fight and the war started there in Mexico is because that's a very valuable territory. There's something like 8,000 trucks go over that border every day. Now, if you have 8,000 trucks, how many of those can you search in a day? And also the way they can hide this stuff in trucks, they can hide drugs in like a metal they can put them in some kind of metal container, seal it up, solder it up, put a bunch of stuff so it doesn't smell. So somebody has to say, I'm going to open that with a blowtorch. I'm not just searching. I have to rip that vehicle apart to find the drugs. They were putting them inside wheels. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's like inside tires. Tires, yeah. That's like one of the older tricks from like the 70s. There's a song, it was one of the first narco Corridos, the drug ballads. It was called contraband and treason from the 1970s. And that was about hiding marijuana back in tires back then. But yeah, I mean, now the trap cars now are like super sophisticated. They have some weird trap cars where you have to do like a bunch of stuff, like open the door, move some stuff to actually open and find the drugs. So there's like some trick sort of door that has to be active. Yeah, I would imagine if there's a will, there's a way. And there's that much, I mean, I remember hearing that from, I mean, it's not a reliable source, but from the Sopranos. They were talking about only 20% of all the shipping containers that get brought into America get searched. Yeah. Well, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the hard drugs are going a lot of time through the ports of entry. And they have another classic trick they have is you get, they allow some to get busted. So you allow one guy to get busted. They set somebody up. So they're taking some drugs through, they get busted. All the energy is on them. And then meanwhile, more drugs are going through. And is this the United States border that's test, that's catching this guy? Yeah. So they're not getting tested in Mexico as they cross over, right? It's only in the United States border. Yeah. So sometimes they might catch them in Mexico sometimes, but the majority is going to be the United States. Are the United States border patrol guys, are they ever caught being corrupt? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There's been cases of US border patrol and customs entry, people who have been caught taking a bunch of money, taking bribes, allowing certain cars through. Of course. So vehicles through. So yeah.