Please. Say a few words, please.
PASTOR URRABAZO: Mr. President Trump, I'm Pastor Pasqual from the International Church of Las Vegas. Thank you for having me today. Thank you for everything you're doing for America.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
PASTOR URRABAZO: I would like to share something with you about human trafficking, the crisis we're having. As you know, we're connected to California; Las Vegas, Nevada is next door. Many of the girls that are being brought across the border through the San Diego area end up in Las Vegas. And what happens there is that, you know, they're illegal immigrants, families that are coming in, and we are - we're having the parents coming to the churches and asking us if could help them find their daughters because their daughters have been kidnapped and - you know, human trafficking.
And they said - I had to ask them, "Did you call the police department?" "Yes, we did." So I connect with the police department. (Inaudible) back. we're working together, and we're able to get these young ladies back. But the problem is that we're having it happen more and more and more and more than ever before.
And what happens with the parents, they're afraid to call law enforcement that come and help, so they come to the churches first. They feel they're going to get deported. So we're there as a safe place for them to come, but then we connect them with the police department and do educate the Hispanic communities that the police is not going to arrest them for something that's happening on human trafficking. So, sir, we need your help.
THE PRESIDENT: So you are seeing human trafficking, especially with respect to young women?
PASTOR URRABAZO: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: More now than ever before?
PASTOR URRABAZO: Yes. Young women, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Pretty sad. Pretty sad. Thank you very much, Pastor. Appreciate it. Please.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR JONES: Mr. President, thank you for letting me be here. John Jones, Chief of the Intelligence and Counterterrorism division with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
THE PRESIDENT: Great reputation, John.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR JONES: We've been there for about - I've been in that position for 10 years. And as you well know, with Texas, we've been dealing with this crisis for a very long time. Some of the things we see, and a lot of the discussion you hear is about unaccompanied children, but the thing that bothers me is some of the children in Texas.
For the last seven years, we had over 4,000 people incarcerated that are illegal aliens in Texas jails for sexual assault. The sad thing is, 62 percent of them are sexual assault against children. And those are Texas children. Those are American children. Those are our children.
And for anybody to put a price on any child's life - that's our most precious and cherished national treasure, and we should do everything and anything as public safety servants, as parents, and as leadership to protect those children.
THE PRESIDENT: And closing up that border to the bad people would be a great thing, John.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR JONES: Yes, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Great thing. Please. Thank you.
SHERIFF O'CONNOR: Mr. President, howdy. (Laughter.) I'm T. Michael O'Connor, I'm the sheriff of Victoria County. We're just north of Corpus Christi. We're part of that Harvey territory, which got damaged that you came - and we appreciate you and the Vice President coming to see us and visiting with us and supporting our progress.
You've heard the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say. Basically, we're the rest of the story. In 2003, there was unfortunately a national incident in our county with regards to loss of life. Nineteen people lost their lives in a tractor-trailer incident. I was one of the first responders. I walked around, and what I saw was a pile of deceased individuals with one child, deceased as well, to which he was in the arms of the children - of the father.
I vowed from that point on, to go forward and make a difference, not only for our brethren sheriffs on the border, but also ourselves inland. We have to be multidimensional on this. We deemed it as a "fatal funnel," Mr. President. It's a Rio Grande Valley to Laredo; anything to and from is Houston and beyond. And so even in my jurisdiction, we have apprehended a child trafficking case in that area. We have taken on cases with slavery of the human being.
But it's still all about law and order, Mr. President. I mean, what we're seeing is you have to shore up, you have to pursue the initiative that you have led.
Now I've been in forums like this with other Presidents. And they listen, but you are the very first President, even in your candidacy, to support local, state, and federal agencies. And I admire you for that, and I appreciate you for that. But understand that it's multidimensional. And, yes, it's the border.
And as we told our fellow sheriffs on the border: Look, if we can help you fix your problem, that's going to help us. And every day, my deputies, along with Sheriff Louderback because we're adjacent to each other, are in pursuit dealing with one thing or another with transnational criminal activities.
But I want to comment one more thing, and then I'll move on. I appreciate you taking ONDCP, putting it back on that Cabinet level. I serve on the Houston HIDTA, which takes, you know, Houston and all the way to South Texas. If it weren't for the HIDTAs and ONDCP and funding - and this is your best resource. Now, I'm sure some of the feds may differ, but there is a matrix of state, local, and federal that are part of those HIDTAs across the nation, and they are the subject matter expert and they have helped us with information, intelligence, outreach, et cetera to try to work on this.
But, you know, until we have this means of a barrier wall - call it what you want - you've got to have that before we can solve our problems down the road.
Thank you, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Sheriff. You know, when you talk about the big trailers coming in and loaded up with people, and the doors are locked in the back, and sometimes they're left abandoned and they all die a hell of a death, they're suffocated - they come from the other side of the border. They don't go through a checkpoint. You can't go through a checkpoint because they open up the back door and say, "Take a look." So you go and they go out onto the different areas, depending on where you're going, what checkpoints. They go in between the checkpoints.
Most of the problem - we get a lot - we get a lot of drugs, a lot of things at the checkpoints, but they're usually hidden in hubcaps, in engines, and under the floor. But the big stuff comes in in between the checkpoints. And the trailers come in loaded up with people, with the doors locked in the back. They don't even give them a chance. The doors are locked. And sometimes you have the drivers running away. It's a disgrace.
These - all of this comes in between the checkpoints where there is no wall. Because you'll have some wall - a little wall - left and right of a checkpoint, generally speaking. But in between checkpoints, you might have 50 miles, 60 miles, even 100 miles. And that's where tremendous problems occur. And even yesterday, I read where, fairly close to where I was, like 26 people were killed.
SHERIFF O'CONNOR: Yes, (inaudible).
THE PRESIDENT: Gang members and drug dealers, they were killed like a few days ago, right next to where I spent quite a bit of time with great people from Border Patrol. You know about that. You heard about that.
SHERIFF LOUDERBACK: (Inaudible.)
THE PRESIDENT: This was like - you know, it's amazing because I get - it got no publicity. I didn't see it. You don't read about this stuff. They're not telling you the truth about - really, you're doing this country a tremendous disservice. You're not telling the truth about the criminal activity and the crime. Twenty-six people or thereabouts. What was the number? Twenty-six?
SHERIFF O'CONNOR: Yes, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Twenty-six people were killed over the last couple of days. Nobody even talks about it. I haven't heard about this young person that was killed yesterday - 16 years old. Brutally murdered. I haven't heard anything about it.
The media is not telling the American public how - how bad it is, how dangerous it is. I mean, I read a little story about the 26. I said, "How could that be a small story?" But what's going on - the crime, and the drugs, and the smuggling, and the - of everything, including children. We're talking women, yes. But probably the biggest victim of everything we're talking about today are children.
And children are used. They're dropped on the border, and they're used to get people across because they have an advantage - because of the stupidity of what we've got and laws that we've inherited, they have an advantage if they have a child. So they grab children at the border. They walk across. They get across easier if you have children. So they're just using the children. Then they tell them to get out of here.
The worst victims are the children and the women. And you don't write about it. You know, you write about nonsense. You write about Nancy Pelosi saying it's immoral to have a wall. It's immoral to have all these people killed. These people are being killed, and you don't report it because you're fake news. You don't report it, many of you. Twenty-six people killed, and I didn't even hear about it.
I mean, nobody even knows about it. And that's - how close it that to where I was yesterday? It was right alongside, I think. Right? How far was that away?
SHERIFF O'CONNOR: Miles. Miles away. Not far at all.
THE PRESIDENT: Miles away. You don't even hear about it because you don't want to tell the story of what's going on at the border. You don't want to tell the story about how dangerous it is. So you have people get up and say walls are immoral. What's immoral is what's going on. It's - there's never been anything like it. And we can stop it so easy.
And the Border Patrol and ICE - they're doing a fantastic job. But we're not giving them the equipment when we're not giving them the walls or the steel barriers or whatever you want to call it. We're not giving them the equipment.
Remember El Paso? Remember what I said about El Paso? From one of the worst to one of the best.
Yes, ma'am. Please go ahead.
MS. GASPAR: I'm San Diego County Supervisor Kristin Gaspar. We're the fifth-largest county in the nation. We actually have the busiest land crossing in the entire world. And we do rely on our border to maintain that strong, binational economy. But at the same time, we rely on our border to keep us safe.
The last time, I had the opportunity to share the tragic loss of Alexander Mazin, a young person in San Diego who was brutally murdered while his killer slipped freely across the border into Mexico.
Today, I'd like to share with you an alarming trend about what's really happening with the insecurity of our border when it comes to the exploitation of our children. There is an alarming trend in San Diego that our young teens in San Diego schools are being actively recruited by violent drug cartels. They're being pack mules for these drug cartels - smuggling heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl across the border.
It's become such an alarming trend that they're being recruited over social media. They're being recruited over gaming consoles. They're being recruited in traditional safe spaces, like our schools and our libraries and our parks.
Last year, 527 San Diegans lost their lives. They overdosed because of these drugs that are pouring across our border. In addition, San Diego is America's finest city. But America's finest city is now home to the second-largest human trafficking industry in the country.
Our children are being sexually exploited because of the insecurity at our border. San Diego - this evil industry raked in close to a billion dollars last year. There are 12,000 human trafficking victims and survivors in San Diego County alone - the average age, sixteen years old. Sixteen years old.
A third of this trafficked population are the very immigrants who have come to the United States to make for a better life.
