KFI AM 640. You're listening to the John Cobel podcast on the IHeart Radio app.

We begin this hour with the border. Todd Benzman is with the Center for Immigration Studies,

a senior fellow. Todd's been on our show a number of times before he does great reporting on

what's really going on at the U.S.-Mexico border,

particularly at Ground Zero, which is the state of Texas, as a tremendously large border with the country of Mexico.

Todd is in Austin now, but of course he has been monitoring the border and doing stories about what's going on,

particularly with the smuggling

operations of the cartels. Todd, welcome back to the John and Ken show. Good to be here. Thanks.

Yeah, so tell us your latest investigations, apparently have something to do with the sophisticated

infrastructure that the cartels have to collect payments from families.

And one thing I just wanted to ask you, this is still big business, smuggling operations,

because the more we hear about people coming in, quote, that apply for asylum and they use

an app and they get permission to be in the U.S., and there's still a lot of smuggling operations.

Well, just a few years ago, ICE intelligence was testifying before Congress

that maybe they were earning about a half a billion dollars, $500 billion in 2018,

2017, 2019 in that era.

A lot of money actually, you know, $500 million a year in human smuggling.

Their big business was dope.

But now, or like as of 2021, by the end of 2021, they were at about $13 billion.

So a big booming industry, the human smuggling business with the border crisis that started up on inauguration day and has never quit.

It's only escalated continuously, and there's a lot of money there.

I came back from the border on Friday.

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