Video transcript
For more on this, I'm joined by Paul Perez, National Border Patrol Council President. Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. We're going to keep going on this to ask you, how does cutting federal funding to these sanctuary cities, which is happening very soon, help the president's immigration crackdown? And what do you think that will solve? Well, look, when they cut federal funding, that sends a message to these politicians that President Trump is serious about what he said he was going to do, which is to remove those people that should not be here in the country legally. He campaigned on that. He won on that. He's got a mandate he's going to follow through. You know, President Trump also says that federal agents will no longer engage with protesters. Yeah, we're going to see how that goes. Here's the president on Air Force One last night. Let's listen. If they want help, they have to ask for it. Because if we go in, all they do is complain. But if they want help, they can ask for it. And they're going to need help. Los Angeles, as an example, we went in, we solved it. The chief law enforcement officer at Los Angeles said they couldn't have done it without the federal government. A week later, he said they didn't need the federal government. You know, so we don't want that. If they want help, they'll ask, but they have to say please. All right. So I've got to ask you your response to that because, of course, it's a top talker for us today. Hearing what he said last night on Air Force One, how do you think it changes things for federal officers on the ground, number one? And do you think this tactic of asking Dems to say please is going to work? Look, President Trump is the ultimate master when it comes to going after those that have TDS. And so by forcing their hand to say please, it actually makes them want to resolve the issue without getting the federal government involved. And that's actually beneficial to us because we could get back to what we should be doing instead of dealing with these unruly protesters. You know, when we talk about the body cameras, this is such an interesting topic because we're all trying to understand who wears what. The president was asked about how he feels about federal officers wearing body cameras. I'm curious of your take, but I also want to listen to what he said. Do you think it's good having lots of cameras on these kinds of incidents between law enforcement and the people? I think it would help law enforcement, but I'd have to talk to them. I'm going to be talking to them tomorrow. Actually, I think it would help law enforcement. You know, that works both ways, but I think overall, I think it's 80 percent in favor of law enforcement. So I want to take a look at some stats because according to June data from the House Homeland Security Committee, 4400 ICE officers wear body cameras in a force of about 22,000 and nearly 13,000 border patrol agents wear cameras in a force of nearly 45,000. So we've got this huge bright spotlight on these immigration officers. Right. So as we're watching this all play out, many people say, hey, let's see it all. We want to see the videos that are being taken from the streets and we want to see the videos that's being worn. But do you think it's important for all ICE officers and border patrol agents to wear these body cameras because it does seem like it would make it a lot easier to investigate any incidents of violence, accusations of violence towards or involving officers? How do you see it? So most of our border patrol agents, like you said, have been wearing body cams. It doesn't change the fact that we're still going to have these aggressive protesters coming after us. All it's going to do is show exactly the perception or the view of the agent involved. But it doesn't change anything about who we're dealing with or how we're dealing with them. Listen, it's important, I think, for all of us to understand who's wearing them, how long they wear them. And it just kind of reminds me, if you even think about the cameras that we have in our cars, it's so important if you get in a traffic accident to have that footage, because it can be a, he said, he said, situation very easily. Paul Perez, National Border Patrol Council President. We want to thank you very much for your time and weighing in on this important topic. Thank you. Thank you.
Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.