Wednesday night’s broadcast of Border Live couldn’t have been any more timely in light of the recent news involving President Donald Trump verbally sparring with House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer while VP Mike Pence seemed in a trance.
News about the US-Mexico border continues to dominate headlines as award-winning news journalist Bill Weir, host of Discovery’s Border Live, and investigative journalist Lilia Luciano (immersed in the field) track stories as they unfold live.
The network and production company Lucky 8 have secured filming with the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the Transportation Security Administration and Customs and Border Protection.
Read our interview with Lilia Luciano here!
Wednesday night’s broadcast featured an interview with Sheriff Mark J. Dannels of Cochise County, Arizona, and a 34-year veteran of law enforcement. But what really impressed was the big burn of intercepted drugs, cocaine, meth, and pot that reporter Lilia Luciano showed us as the toxic packages were sorted and burned, overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Luciano explains what is going on in the clip: “This is where the drugs come to die. Right now, this is a bundle of about 30 pounds of marijuana [and] every minute another 30-pound bundle goes through there, averaging about 1,800 pounds that they have to burn every hour.
“There’s a total of about 7,500 pounds that they brought from the vault and it’s being pushed into this incinerator that’s burning at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit… and it burns about twice a month, 30 pounds every minute, to a total of about 1,800 pounds an hour.”
She adds: “The reason why it’s not burning at a faster rate is because the EPA is regulating this because every one of these bundles has plastic and the more plastic you have the higher the emissions. If there’s too much going in, there are too many emissions and then they violate EPA standards.”
The influx of illegal drugs and migrants are the two biggest red flags that POTUS raises when discussing the border security issues along the Mexican and USA border.
According to a 2018 Congressional Research Service report, about 150,000 intentional homicides [at the Mexican border] since 2006 were organized crime-related. CNN reports that “Mexican drug cartels take in between $19 billion and $29 billion annually from drug sales in the US”.
In the series, crews are embedded out in the field with officers and special agents at key border sites from Nogales, Ariz., in the west to the Rio Grande Valley and points east.
Discovery is in Texas including the City of San Juan Police Department and Cameron County Sheriff’s Office as well as in Arizona with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office.
The series employs experts to provide context and insight. They include Lenny DePaul, a retired Chief Inspector with the U.S. Marshal Service, and Dr. Victor M. Manjarrez, Jr., a retired Chief Patrol Agent who served in both Tucson and El Paso Sectors.
Discovery broadcast the second episode of its multiplatform series Border Live on Wednesday, December, 12 from 9-11 pm ET/PT.