Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd Podcast

Jenn Budd
  • 4.7 (15)
  • Politics
  • Monthly

Former Senior Patrol agent turned immigrant rights activist. Learn the truth about the Border Patrol created a fake invasion & gets away with criminality far worse than those they arrest. jennbudd.substack.com

  1. Oct 9

    Jane Doe Fights Back with Jenn Budd & Lisa Gonzalez

    Thank you LeftieProf, Stuart Cohen, Ms.Yuse, ArleneMach, Judith Evans, and many others for tuning into my live video with Lisa Gonzalez! Join me for my next live video in the app. Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd at jennbudd.substack.com/subscribe

    Jane Doe Fights Back with Jenn Budd & Lisa Gonzalez

  2. Oct 3

    Yes They're REALLY Sending Children to Immigration Court Alone

    Thank you tracey farmer, Melaine, Thomas Day, Shirley Figueroa, MJ Cooke, and many others for tuning into my live video with Lisa Gonzalez! Join me for my next live video in the app. Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd at jennbudd.substack.com/subscribe

    Yes They're REALLY Sending Children to Immigration Court Alone

  3. Aug 23

    The 411 on ICE with Jenn Budd & Lisa Gonzalez

    My apologies for not getting this podcast out sooner. I found it hiding in my drafts. Thank you LC - Silence is Complicity, Laura A. Drury, ArleneMach, Honey Badger, Karma, and many others for tuning into my live video with Lisa Gonzalez! Join me for my next live video in the app. Transcript: Lisa: Hi, friends. How are you? I appreciate it. Yeah, I know. So we weren’t sure how many people were interested in jumping on, but we wanted to get together and kind of do a little bit of an impromptu ICE conversation because Jenn, thankfully, has been all over the place. She has talked to so many different people about a lot of the same things. And my dear friend frequently will say to me, I’ve been talking about the same thing for how many years? Five? Jenn: Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I’ve been doing this work for probably a decade now. But I mean, as far as like the talking points in this mass deportation and what I’ve been warning about, I would say since 2017, 2018. Lisa: Yeah. So, and you’re like, I don’t understand. I’ve been saying this over and over, but I’ve had the good fortune of being able to chat with Jenn Budd offline about a lot of different topics. And we kind of get into some additional topics that she has, I’ve noticed that she has not talked about. So I wanted to kind of pick her brain about that and For those of you that follow her, for those of you that don’t, she’s a rock star. She is the author of Against the Wall and ICE, What everyone needs to know. She is a former senior Border Patrol officer and now immigrants rights advocate, huge immigrants rights advocate, and also has been on the... The Emmy award-winning show, HBO Critical Incident, Death at the Border, in which her work was just an enormous part of being able to uncover what’s going on with some of these, what is the name of the department again, Jenn? Jenn: Critical Incident Teams, the cover-up teams. Lisa: Critical Incident Teams, yes. We’re just going to go ahead and get into it. One of the things I wanted to make sure people are aware of, I live in the state of Ohio. And so, TPS stands for Temporary Protected Status. TPS status has been revoked. Jenn, could you chat a bit about what that is? Tell people what that actually means. Jenn: TPS stands for Temporary Protected Status, and it’s a status that essentially allows the president at any given time. So when there’s an emergency, like the Ukrainian war started and stuff, you know, then they can issue a TPS and say, you know, those people, obviously, they can’t wait. So we’re going to get them in. And so it’s essentially like, They’re a pre-authorization, not necessarily asylum, but just temporary protective status, meaning you come through and they do still do the record checks and the vetting, but because of the situation that’s going on in your country, you don’t have to make a case for that. We understand what’s going on and then we’ll help you get to where you need to go. A lot of times there’s a little bit of refugee resettlement compensation that can help them and they’ll also place them in communities that will help them. Lisa: So to put it in perspective, we, the United States, granted that status to Haitians, however many, how that was four, five, what? Jenn: We’ve taken it off and on throughout the years. I don’t know how many it applied to and as far as the Haitians. Lisa: There were several hundred thousand that came through from my recollection. Well, so there’s an enormous, so I live in this stupid state where they were talking about, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs. That was my, yeah, that was my state. Nobody was eating cats and dogs, friends. Nobody was eating cats and dogs. They were lying. I’ve actually been to Springfield. One of my dear friends had a child that was going to a college in Springfield. And because they were such jerks about the way that they put that out there, they actually had to shut down school for over a week while the students went home because there was so much media that descended upon there so that they could see all the cats and dogs that people were not eating. So, there were roughly 15,000 Haitian immigrants that ended up in Springfield. And my understanding from some of the organizations that I’ve been in touch with in Ohio is also that kind of compounds the issue. There are 1,200 children over the last five years or so since they have this enormous population in Springfield that have been born in the United States. So they are American citizens. Can you, first of all, well, first let me say this. So I want everyone to know what’s happening. What’s happening is all of those people are now receiving letters from the government that says report to the ICE office in Cincinnati. So we don’t have the enormous, like we don’t have Camp East Montana in Ohio. But they said they want them to report to the ICE place, I believe in Cincinnati. Jenn: It’s probably the regional office. Lisa: Yeah. OK. And if they could be detained or they will be given ankle monitors like criminals and be monitored in that way. These are people who came here legally, came here the right way, were granted status. And they have the people of Springfield will tell you there’s all kinds of information out there about how they have contributed to the community. And it was kind of like on the downward spiral, but they have like infused the community with, you know, all kinds of commerce and they are working and doing great things there. And now they’re all going to be rolling around with ankle monitors. So, and 1200 children that are American citizens whose parents are apparently expected to just go back to Haiti. I have a friend who recently actually became an American citizen who is actually from Haiti and shared with me still just how absolutely incredibly dangerous it is over there and in Port-au-Prince because everything’s been overtaken by gangs and how dangerous, how terribly dangerous it is. Jenn, can you walk us through what, what is that? So what happens when you had, when you were an ICE officer for, or I’m sorry, it’s different. You were Border Patrol. Jenn: I was a Border Patrol agent. You were Border Patrol. I never met a Haitian as an agent. Lisa: Correct. Okay. You only dealt with predominantly Latin Americans. Jenn: Right. People crossing the border, down on the southern border. Lisa: Okay. So, however, either way, when you have a child that is born in the United States and the parent is allegedly no longer welcome here for whatever reason, have you ever dealt with TPS? When somebody’s status has been revoked and their child was here but they were expected to go back? Has that ever happened to you? Jenn: Well, I’ve dealt with people who were here and were undocumented, and maybe I apprehended them at a checkpoint - the interstate 8 checkpoint and their children were United States citizens. I talked about this in my book, because I would have told you that I never separated families. But then I remembered that one woman I took off a bus, and she begged me to not return her. And she said, you know, “I have a thirteen year old child. She was born here. She’s a United States citizen.” And I still send her back. And so the issue with TPS and if you have a United States citizen child, in the past when I was an agent in the 90s and early 2000s, they typically tried to work with the person and maintain their status because you could not legally deport a United States citizen. Right? Lisa: Okay. Talk about that. So if they had a child here, they tried to work with them back in the past. That was your experience. Jenn: That was my experience. I’m not saying that it was for everybody, certainly. If you were somebody who, if the parent had committed a very serious, egregious crime, they would be separated from their child anyhow and be put in prison for a certain amount of time. And then that child would end up in the custody of other relatives and so forth. So that sort of took care of it. Then if they got out of jail, then... and they were deported, likely the child stayed with… Get full access to Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd at jennbudd.substack.com/subscribe

    The 411 on ICE with Jenn Budd & Lisa Gonzalez

  4. Aug 20

    Live with Humane Borders

    Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, PJ Schuster, Dr. Susan Mayne, Donna Everett, Patricia Scott, and many others for tuning into my live video with Laurie Cantillo! Join me for my next live video in the app. Laurie Cantillo stops by to talk about Humane Borders mission and to give us an update on the border. Contrary to what the media and administration are telling us, the border is not closed nor sealed as they claim. Pima County, Arizona reports 19 deceased migrants found in July 2026 alone. Transcript: Jenn: So, we’re getting started here. Today I wanted to, you know, usually I do a lecture, but the last two times I’ve had people I wanted to talk to, and - my dog’s playing on the ground if you hear hacking and stuff. She’s rolling around deciding now’s the time to play. But you sent me a message, and they said, well, I’ve got to have you on then, on a live. We have to talk about this. Once again, on Borderland Talk, we have a live guest, and this is Laurie Cantillo of Humane Borders. And I have supported, gosh, I don’t know how long I’ve been supporting you all. I know I’ve done a couple of trips down there to the Tucson border area where you’re mostly situated. And we’ll talk about your organization and stuff and give everybody an idea of what it is that you do. And then we’ll talk about the message that you sent me and why that’s so important. How does that sound to you? Laurie: All right, perfect. Thank you, Jenn. I’m happy to be here. Jenn: All right. Well, and thank you for being here. So like I said, I’ve supported Humane Borders for a while now. They’re a nonpartisan organization and they’re mostly supported by private donations and volunteers. I’ve been fortunate to be able to go out on a couple of trips with them in the Sonoran Desert. Which if you have not been to the Sonoran Desert, it is beautiful, but it is god-awful hot. And sometimes it has downpours during the monsoon season. I think y’all are in monsoon season right now, aren’t you? Laurie: Oh, absolutely. We’re getting some big storms and erosion and mud to deal with on top of everything else with this god-awful heat and humidity. Jenn: Yeah, it’s a little humid over here in San Diego, but obviously not as much. I can tell it’s raining out where I used to work in the mountains just by the clouds, but it’s not been too bad here in the city. And you all operate a bunch of water stations, big old barrels along the southern border in different areas. But you also maintain maps on your website at humaneborders.org. and that identifies thousands of migrant bodies that have been found over the years. These deaths are the result of the U.S. policy called deterrence that was enacted by democrats under the Clinton administration in 1994. It is estimated that this policy has intentionally sent at least 80,000 people to their deaths. Untimely deaths. And it has been a complete failure because as we know, deterrence does not work and has not stopped anybody from crossing illegally. So let’s first, let’s talk about the water barrels and what all it is that you all do and how that helps people out there, first. Laurie: You bet. Again, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you and your viewers and your support of Humane Borders all these years and going on water runs with us, which we welcome. Anyone who’s interested in going out with us, please reach out at info at humaneborders.org. So we were founded in the year 2000, which is when we really started to see an increase in migrant deaths in Arizona. And it was a group of faith leaders who got together and said, not in our backyard. So they decided to start working on a system using 55-gallon blue barrels and blue flags, with blue being the universal symbol of water, and they’re all permitted. We work with both government officials as well as private property owners who don’t want to see people dying on their ranches to put these stations out. And we locate them based on a couple things: where people have recently died as well as our ID hikes that we take regularly in the desert and we’re looking for not only people in distress, but migrant remains or migrant belongings, things like camouflage backpacks or what they call carpet shoes to hide footprints in the desert. So, that informs where we put our water stations. We’ve been doing it, as I said, 26 years now. The founders thought when this originated that this will be a few years and then we’ll get on the other side of this. Surely the government’s going to see that prevention through deterrence policies are causing people to die by the hundreds in the deserts. But actually, those deaths were somewhat intended consequences of prevention through deterrence, which essentially says, no, you can’t come in through safe ports of entry. But this creates a funnel effect, which forces people into increasingly remote and dangerous areas right in the center of Arizona. And the reason I reached out to you recently is that I was disturbed when I looked at the July data that we cooperate with the Pima County Medical Examiner and saw there had been 19 new records for just the month of July. And that is the highest month that we have seen in two years. Certainly, there have been other occasions where deaths have been high, but this is the highest in recent memory. And so we’re trending to be well over 100 deaths again in 2026. And I’m offended by that because it’s right in my backyard. Jenn: Well, Laurie, are you sure about this? Because I’m pretty - I’m being sarcastic - because I’m pretty sure that the Trump administration has said that the border is closed and sealed right now and nobody is crossing. Laurie, are you telling me that they are lying? Laurie: (laughs) Um, I think they’re playing a little fast and loose with rhetoric there by saying the border is, quote, closed. They’re trying to send a message, of course, to migrants who might want to take the risk. But I actually monitor the CBP’s own apprehension data, and in the last couple of months, we’ve noticed it averages around 10,000 a month across the entire southern border. It’s been upticking to 12,000, 13,000. So what we’re seeing is more people chancing it and therefore more people dying in the desert, especially in these triple digit temperatures that we have. Jenn: You know, there was an interview with one of the L.A. Taco guys, I think the main guy that everybody knows, and I can’t remember his name off the top of my head, and he had said, you know, they already know people that were picked up by ICE in L.A. in the beginning of the ICE raids, and they are already back within months. And when this all started, I was like, they’re absolutely lying to you all. At least here in San Diego, we were seeing checkpoints that were actually kind of intermittently shut down. And that’s because they’re sending all their agents into the cities. When you close your checkpoints down, then you have no idea how many gotaways you have. All of a sudden, as soon as Trump was sworn in, they were like, oh, there’s no gotaways. Nobody’s crossing. It’s just absolute b******t. It’s just absolute b******t. And the one thing that we know in the Border Patrol and in CBP is that if you do not give people legal avenues with which to cross, they will cross illegally every single time. That’s what MPP and Title 42, when they shut down the asylum system. And so as soon as they started this, it’s like you can take people out of the cities and a lot of them will - and deport them or expel them - and some of those people will stay away. But especially the people who’ve been living here for 20, 30, 40 years, they’re going to come back. They have nowhere else to go. And so it’s - but what I find interesting is is that. I haven’t seen, now are they talking about it locally in the news over there in the Tucson area? Are they reporting Border Patrol has found any of these deaths or are they just not talking about it at all? Laurie: Locally, people who are in communities along the border are well aware of this challenge. I would say the rest of the country has no idea. In o… Get full access to Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd at jennbudd.substack.com/subscribe

    Live with Humane Borders

  5. Aug 13

    Mo Goldman on ICE targeting DACA

    Thank you Ali Hart • عَلي هارت, "Sushi"(Jen) of MIND HAVEN, Rarelightmare, PJ Schuster, Stephanie Munoz, and many others for tuning into my live video with Mo Goldman! Join me for my next live video in the app. Immigration attorney Mo Goldman drops by for an update on DACA. Transcript: Jenn: Well, welcome, everybody. This is…Hi, Anna Maria. This is Borderland Talk, and we are with Mo Goldman. He is an immigration attorney from Tucson, Arizona. He is my buddy. (laughs) We hang out together when I’m in Tucson, when he’s in San Diego. Mo also ran for Congress, but the Democrats didn’t choose him because they’re losers.(laughs) Yeah. Yeah, they made a bad choice, but, you know, we’ll support their candidate. Mo: We all make bad choices in life. Jenn: Yeah, we all make bad choices, but you would have been a great congressman, Mo. Mo: I mean, I made the choice of being an immigration attorney. (laughs) Jenn: There you go. Mo: In retrospect, that was an insane life decision. (laughs) Jenn: Well, I mean, the other thing about Mo that’s important to know is that he’s the grandson of Holocaust survivors. And he has written a book. Please give the name of the book, Mo. Mo: It’s “The Last Survivor, Lessons from the Past and the Dying Dream of Freedom.” Jenn: And in that… I always make him say it because it’s such a long title. And sometimes he forgets it as well. But it documents what his grandmother and grandfather went through. And then I also believe, too, when your grandfather passed away, she remarried, correct? Mo: Yes. Jenn: And that man was a survivor as well. Mo: He was also a survivor, yeah. Jenn: Yeah. Mo: We had a litany of survivors in my family. Jenn: Yeah, but it’s especially interesting because then your mother became an immigration attorney, you and your sister are immigration attorneys. And then to be going through this, and I think what the book does is, through Mo’s eyes as an immigration attorney and knowing his history, his Jewish history, the Holocaust history that directly affected his family. I mean, he wouldn’t have been here if his grandparents hadn’t survived. And then seeing what we’re going through today, I recommend picking that up. And you can order that online. But today, Mo, I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to invite you on and talk about what’s going on over there in Tucson. You have several, a handful, maybe less than a handful of clients who are DACA clients. And that’s, what is that, Deferred Action? Mo: for Childhood Arrivals. Jenn: For Childhood Arrivals. And so DACA is for children who were brought here, very young, through no choice of their own. And it was something that the Obama administration did. It’s kind of a temporary immigration status, I would say, right? It doesn’t give them full protection as we’re finding out now. And what we’ve seen because ICE is lazy and they’re not really going after the worst of the worst and they’re going after children and they’re going after people who are here legally. And DACA is one of those groups. Last week, I believe it was last week, the Tucson Sentinel, or within the last two weeks, came out with a report about you guys had a press conference, and three of your clients that you’re going to talk about, Carla Toledo, Roberto Navarro Bocanegra and Myndy Valencia Sanchez. And at that press conference, which I was very impressed by, you had Tucson Mayor Regina Romero. So it’s good to know that your mayor supports you all. City Council Member Lane Santa Cruz and then also Congressional Representative Adelita Grijalva. And what she stated I thought was pretty interesting, she said that she feels these attacks - because obviously ICE is claiming that they’re going after the worst of the worst, but they’re not - they’re going after people who are trying to do it the legal way and using you and paying you to file immigration documents with USCIS, which is the legal way to do it - she stated that she feels that ICE is trying to sow anxiety among immigrants so that they do not apply or they just give up and self-deport and leave. I agree with her. I think that’s correct. And the three clients that you’re going to talk about today kind of demonstrate that. Mo: Exactly. Jenn: Before we went live, we were talking because I said in the article when I was congratulating you about Karla Toledo that you won and you said, well, not really. (laughs) I didn’t catch that in the article or it wasn’t in the article. So you did manage to get her DACA renewed. So that’s good. So she has her legal documents. But now please tell us what is going on with Ms. Karla. Mo: So Karla Toledo, just to give a little bit of background, she has DACA. She came to the United States when she was one year old. She’s now 31 years of age. So she’s been in the United States for 30 years. She graduated high school. She went to post-secondary and she’s been just a great, great community member. ICE showed up at her house on May 18th of this year. They didn’t have a judicial warrant. They, it appears showed up thinking they were going after somebody else who did not live in that home. She was living there with her husband. And then when she resisted and said, I want to see a judicial warrant. They wouldn’t leave and eventually coerced her out and she ended up getting arrested and detained by the ICE agents. There were five of them. Thankfully, there was surveillance camera footage that caught a lot of what occurred. Through some public pressure and media attention, we were able to get her released from Eloy Detention Center a few days later. And then ICE put her case in front of the immigration court. They charged her as being deportable despite the fact that she has DACA protection. They also lied in that - I know this is a big shock to everyone. Their spokesperson lied about her, accusing her of being a criminal, accusing her of entering the country illegally, even though the last time she entered with a permit called advance parole. Just to try and, of course, smear her name in the public eye and to continue to spread the propaganda that all these immigrants are horrible, vile criminals. So this is where it gets really weird. In early June, I think it was around June 3rd, ICE agreed to dismiss her deportation case. And then a day later, after the judge ordered dismissal, they reinstated, they recharged her with a new deportation proceeding with her husband. And their reasoning behind it was, we’d rather you guys both be deported as a couple, as a family unit. Jenn: Well, how kind of you. (laughs) Mo: Yeah, very generous. Jenn: B******t. (laughs) Mo: And so, thankfully, Karla is... she epitomizes courage. She has been very outspoken in spite of the fact that she’s in this perilous position. She’s done media appearances. She goes out... she supports a community. She has become a rock and a pillar to a lot of the other people who are facing removal who have very similar backgrounds. So I am so grateful in a weird way that I got to meet her through this situation. Jenn: Yeah. Mo: You know, the weird kind of juxtaposition that you and I were talking about is that while her deportation case, which is still ongoing in the immigration court, is going on, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, USCIS, approved her DACA extension for another two years. Jenn: Well, what’s the basis of the deportation? Don’t they have to have a, this is the cause for us to bring a charge? Mo: Yeah. The Department of Homeland Security does not – so when Obama introduced DACA, the idea behind DACA was that the government would use their prosecutorial discretion in a much broader way than just on case – I mean, every case is evaluated separately, but it gave a large swath of individuals if they met certain requirements including being here since June 15, 2007, had to be present in the U.S. on the date that the program was announced, which was June 15, 2012, they have to undergo a vetting process. They put it all out there. Jenn: They jump through a lot of hurdles to even get that DACA, right? Mo: Yeah, and they’re exposing their undocumented status. So there … Get full access to Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd at jennbudd.substack.com/subscribe

    Mo Goldman on ICE targeting DACA

  6. Aug 6

    CBP and Epstein

    Thank you A. Eevie Bateman, Laura A. Drury, PJ Schuster, Ali Hart • عَلي هارت, Jolie, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. There have been several articles in large and small media outlets that have addressed the connections between CBP and Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking network. I do not want to take up too much time rehashing all these pieces. You can search for them and easily find them yourselves. What I hope to do in this piece, is give you a better understanding of how CBP facilitated the sex trafficking of children for over a decade, and address why CBP and even Congress seems to not even care to investigate these failures. This is a lot of information that I am going to try and boil down to an understandable synopsis. How CBP agents helped Epstein traffic children. It’s important to point out that any relationship with criminals, especially someone known for sex crimes against children is expressly forbidden in CBP. Giving favors such as light inspections, signing off on documents or even giving the impression of favorable treatment is a violation and grounds for dismissal at the very least. CBP officers asking wealthy travelers for money, loans, business advice and crossing the line from professional into personal relations is corruption. U.S. Customs and Border Protection states on their website that all their officers are highly trained to recognize human trafficking. They are the sex trafficking experts, or so they claim. Yet not a single officer reported Epstein and his plane loads of little girls. All the officers stated they believed the girls were women, and that they seemed “happy.” In the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell for her part of this trafficking organization, FBI agents interviewed several CBP officers working in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Epstein’s pilot, Larry Visoski stated in his FBI interview that Epstein routinely tried to create relationships with CBP officers to ease the customs and immigration inspections. He even tried to buy the CBP office in the Virgin Islands computers and turkeys which a supervisor turned down saying that such gifts would be unethical and against policy. And just to be clear, CBP officers are trained to be leery of people trying to gain favors in this manner. At first, Visoski claimed he was not aware of any gifts or preferential treatment given to Epstein by CBP officers but then later admitted in his interview that he had in fact given “one or two” helicopter rides to officers, that one CBP officer had a private lunch with Epstein on his island and that another officer played the steel drums at a party at his mansion. Epstein’s pilot further claimed that he and other staff were ordered to keep the phone numbers of these chosen CBP officers so that they could help facilitate their inspections upon arrival and departure. The inspections discussed in the FBI interviews all occurred after Epstein’s guilty plea, and the officers interviewed admitted they knew of his criminal record. At the same time, Visoski stated he was not aware of CBP’s involvement with helping Epstein traffic children. But the definition of helping someone traffic children is never explained by the FBI. It seems they are saying that CBP did not actively help him traffic or hide that he was trafficking children, and do not consider the favors given, the free helicopter rides and meals nor financial advice or lax inspections as aiding and abetting Epstein in his sex trafficking. That the officers knew Epstein was a child sex trafficker was shown in an email exchange involving the FBI New York Office’s Criminal Division where they stated that CBP officers routinely called Epstein’s plane the “school bus” and referred to his private island as “pedophile island.” (EFTA00165468) Yet, not a single officer ever seemed to report , investigate or question the plane loads of girls, and the FBI seems to think none of this is criminal or even problematic. CBP Officer Timothy Routch is an example of how Epstein maintained relationships with inspectors he considered friendly. Routch was interviewed by the FBI in the Maxwell case. He stated that he inspected Epstein’s plane several times a month for years. In the beginning of the interview, he claimed he never received any benefits or gifts from Epstein nor did he give the predator any favors. But just like Visoski, he contradicted himself the more he talked. He admitted to hanging around Epstein’s office and asked him if he could get him a better deal on a loan for some property he wished to purchase in the Virgin Islands. He eventually told FBI investigators that he became friends with Epstein’s pilot and boat captain by drinking at a bar with him and even visited the private island at least twice. He then stated he was taken to the island by the boat captain while not on duty to give Epstein an inspection of coconut trees, which is a favor. There he was treated to a free lunch with wine with Epstein and they then traveled back on his boat, which means he did accept gifts. He stated he noticed “beautiful women” playing in the ocean during lunch, but that they all seemed “happy.” When investigators asked Routch what he thought of Epstein and his sex crimes, the CBP officer stated he believed it was a set up and claimed that he was “a good guy.” Even though the officer knew of his criminal record, knew what it was for, inspected plane loads of girls coming to the island, stated that he knew many were of “eastern European” decent, he still thought Epstein was a “good guy” and never bothered to question anything. Routch even had an ex-girlfriend file a complaint with the FBI claiming that he had bragged to her about being close with Epstein and facilitating the trafficking. When questioned by his supervisor, Routch stated the complainant had a history of mental illness and a prior suicide attempt, and therefore her testimony could not be trusted. The supervisor admonished him verbally and warned him to be careful who he had relations with while noting that Officer Routch had a history of “international travel” for “personal rendezvous excursions.” (EFTA01249742 and EFTA0031495) Routch admitted to traveling extensively through Central America. It is important to note that Central America is a hot spot for sex tourism/prostitution (aka personal rendezvous excursions) within CBP and Border Patrol culture as is evidenced by the most recent Chief of the Border Patrol Michael Banks being forced to retire for said activities and by the murders of CBP agents Mathel Wasson and Jaime Eduardo Cisneros who were on separate “personal rendezvous excursions” in Colombia when they were killed. Routch would have never met Epstein had he not been inspecting his plane in his official capacity as a CBP officer. That’s what makes this corruption. The line from inspecting CBP officer to a personal relationship with benefits was clear, yet the FBI and CBP did not seem interested in investigating this possible corruption and instead suggested Routch was exaggerating his ties to Epstein. Routch has since claimed that all these statements from his supervisor and the FBI investigation are lies. Among all the CBP officers with close ties to Epstein and his sex trafficking organization discussed in the files, one seems to stand out: CBP Officer Carol Montgomery. In January 2010, Officer Montgomery sent Epstein and his pilot a New Years Eve card wishing them both well and signed off as, “a friend always, Carol.” This suggests that she was associating with Epstein on a personal level within a few years after his plea to solicitating prostitution from a minor in 2008. (EFTA02432318) In January 2011, in her official capacity as a CBP officer, Epstein’s staff was told to bring “the passports and boat documents” they wanted registered and she would take care of it. Officer Montgomery even gave directions and added, “he can call me if he get(s) lost.” (EFTA02389908) In February 2011, she asked if Epstein would help her invest $10,000. (EFTA01836903) In … Get full access to Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd at jennbudd.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Jul 30

    ICE's War on Children and Elon Musk's Crusade Against Immigrants

    Thank you Laura A. Drury, PJ Schuster, Stuart Cohen, Lori Modafferi, Jill B., and many others for tuning into my live video with THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali! Join me for my next live video in the app. Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd at jennbudd.substack.com/subscribe

    ICE's War on Children and Elon Musk's Crusade Against Immigrants

  8. Jul 30

    ICE’s war on children.

    Thank you A. Eevie Bateman, LeftieProf, Lisa Gonzalez, PJ Schuster, Stuart Cohen, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Donald Trump is fighting a war against immigrants that he claims are the worst of the worst. You know, unaccompanied children who come across our borders seeking safety. Chances are you’ve heard these stories. Chances are even better that you have forgotten them or not been able to see the war through the battles. The firehose of ICE stories from the last two weeks have left my brain with a cloudy coating of malaise. When this happens, I often find narrowing the focus of ICE’s criminal activity helpful. So, I’d like to focus on unaccompanied children this week. To hear ICE talk about unaccompanied children is to expose yourself to some of the most performatively empathic b******t you will ever hear. This was demonstrated most recently by Border Czar Tom Homan when he recounted how he forced a child to recount her rape and how hearing it traumatized him. They are completely unwilling to accept that it is their own closed asylum policies who put these children in cartel hands, instead insisting that they are the white knights riding in to save them. The truth is that the federal government has a long history of putting unaccompanied children into shelters that always seem to be crawling with predators. And when it comes to placing them with family or sponsors, there have been some terrible reports of forced labor and sexual violencethat extend back to the Obama era in 2015. Here is the link to various reports by the Office of Inspector General over the years covering presidents from both sides. And let us not forget that the first Trump Administration’s policy of taking asylum seeking children from their parents and labeling them as “unaccompanied” that led to at least six Indigenous children dying within their facilities: · Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez · Jakelin Caal Maquin · Felipe Gomez Alonzo · Wilmer Josué Ramírez Vásquez · Juan de Leon Gutierrez · Darlyn Valle Currently, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche are claiming that the Biden Administration placed nearly half a million unaccompanied children with sex and labor traffickers. All this hoopla over how the Biden Administration placed unaccompanied children is not unwarranted but is also not a new phenomenon created by the Biden Administration as the current Trump Administration would like you to think. While most unaccompanied children have been well placed with family and sponsors, administration after administration have consistently failed to properly screen all caregivers. Add to that failure the large increase in unaccompanied children seen by Trump’s shuttering of the legal asylum system that was continued erroneously by the Biden Administration, and it’s a not unreasonable to believe that there were failures that led to children being trafficked. This consistence in failing unaccompanied children goes deeper than whomever is president at any given time and begins with the culture of the immigration enforcement agencies and how they teach and train their agents to think of unaccompanied children. As you can imagine, it’s not good. Immigration agents are trained in the academies and in the field that immigrant children are simply just small criminals; criminals like their parents. I was told in the Border Patrol academy in 1995 that migrant children are “not like our children. They grow up faster. They are just baby criminals.” They literally say this to agents and anyone who claims this is not true is lying to you. To back up my claim, here is former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott in June of 2018 when he was the chief of San Diego Sector during the Trump child separation policy that led to the deaths of children in custody saying that training out loud to the press: “I would like to remind people too, what we look at as a child in the United States and say ‘oh that 14 year-old young man,’ that’s an adult in a lot of other countries, that kid’s been working for years, may or may not have been associated with the gangs. People get the picture in their head that it’s the kid who lives next door to you and it’s not. Some of these kids are hardened adults.” It is important to note that the man who made this statement, former Chief Rodeny Scott, is now the commissioner of CBP and running the mass deportation. Publicly, these officials will shed a tear. They will vilify anyone who calls out their performative concerns about the children dying in their custody, for those lost within their own systems, for the ones their systems give to predators and labor traffickers. They will blame the last president in office and never, ever accept any responsibility themselves. And they will use their failures of the very systems they designed and controlled to continue playing politics with people’s lives and with national security. So, let’s look at the politics under this second Trump Administration that now purports to be rescuing and saving unaccompanied children brutalized by the Biden Administration. What is the system they have created during the last eighteen months? Wellness checks. From the outset, the second Trump Administration and immigration officials declared that they would find all the unaccompanied children from the previous administration and conduct wellness checks because they were so worried for their safety. In May of 2025, the L.A. Times reported that ICE agents were going to homes and schools. Advocates, parents and sponsors believed these checks were not about children’s safety but a guise to find people to deport because the agents were dressed for drug or terrorist raids and not child wellness checks. Some of those checks did in fact lead to deportations. A year later in April of 2026, Russell Payne of Salon reported that ICE was looking to hire cops to do their wellness checks for them. Local sheriffs were encouraged to use 287(g) ICE program authorities meant to locate the worst of the worst to identify where unaccompanied children were living and to identify what schools they were attending. This information was then passed onto ICE. According to Payne, “Local officers are given ‘prioritized case lists’ that lay out likely targets for deportation and are tasked with ensuring the ‘smooth facilitation of transfers when ICE determines that [an unaccompanied minor], sponsor or other aliens encountered should be placed into ICE custody for the next steps in their case.’” Note that none of those statements address the wellbeing of the child. Two months later, Andrew Thrasher discovered and wrote about how ICE is hiding the contracts and payment schedules for local bounties on unaccompanied children deep within layers of 287(g) contracts. The program is called UAC (Unaccompanied Alien Child) Safety Verification Initiatives and in Thrasher’s words offers a “bounty-style rewards package.” Confirm a child’s address, and a deputy can collect a cool $500. Visit the house to conduct an inspection and an officer can collect another $2,000 once a report to ICE is filled out. For $15,000, your local cops are required to “verify the child’s safety and living conditions and ensure no signs of abuse, abandonment, neglect” exist. More taxpayer money is paid if they verify their schools, addresses and submit another report to ICE, for a total bounty of $22,500 per unaccompanied immigrant child. That is the bounty system that your local police and sheriffs can claim for spying on unaccompanied children. So, what happens to these children if they are taken by ICE for failing wellness checks? Is ICE providing these children with medical and psychological care and a safe place to live? We do not know. While ICE has claimed they have rescued children from horrible situations and can point to a handful of cases, the percentage of those cases is minuscule compared to the number of children they are deporting every month; a whopping 10,000 … Get full access to Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd at jennbudd.substack.com/subscribe

    ICE’s war on children.
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Former Senior Patrol agent turned immigrant rights activist. Learn the truth about the Border Patrol created a fake invasion & gets away with criminality far worse than those they arrest. jennbudd.substack.com

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