Sevan Matossian (00:00):
What’s up. Hi, Jorge. What’s up, dude?
Jorge Ventura (00:01):
What’s up, man? How you doing?
Sevan Matossian (00:03):
Fuck, dude, not as good as you and not as good as Alex Stein, but I’m still fucked.
Mattew Souza (00:08):
<laugh>
Jorge Ventura (00:09):
Dude, that Beard’s looking epic, man. It’s looking
Sevan Matossian (00:12):
Good. Thank you. Thank you. I’m doing the beach life. Um, I had a big old handlebar, one looking like a, some sort of like Hasidic Jew knockoff. Second, second rate Hasidic Jew for a while. And then I, and then I’m at the beach for the last two weeks. So I cut it off.
Jorge Ventura (00:26):
Yeah, dude, I gotta, I gotta hide my girls around you, bro.
Sevan Matossian (00:28):
I got my Sean pen going
Mattew Souza (00:32):
<laugh>
Sevan Matossian (00:33):
I told my wife today that I looked like Eddie Vetter. She’s like a little bit, but, but I think she was lying. <laugh>
Jorge Ventura (00:41):
How you doing Matthew? How you doing man?
Mattew Souza (00:43):
I’m doing great, man. How are you?
Jorge Ventura (00:45):
Good. Good, man.
Sevan Matossian (00:48):
Um, can I show you a clip? Uh, off subject a little bit. Yep. Okay. Uh, this was on Twitter. Uh, couple days ago I saw this, I thought, oh, I gotta run this by Jorge. See what he thinks.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
So are, how is it? Two different things. Somebody unvaccinated comes over on a plane. You say that’s not okay. Somebody walks into Texas or Arizona unvaccinated. They’re allowed to stay. Why?
Speaker 5 (01:14):
But that’s not how it works. Like we actually, no,
Speaker 4 (01:18):
We know that that’s not what you guys want to happen, but that is what, what is happened.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
But that’s not, it’s not like somebody walks over and <laugh>, that’s not, that’s not how
Speaker 4 (01:25):
That’s exactly what’s happening.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
We,
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Thousands of people are walking in a day. Some of them turn themselves over. Some of them are caught tens of thousands a week are not. That is what is happening. So
Sevan Matossian (01:38):
Ladies and gentlemen, we have Jorge Ventura on outside of some guy whose job it is to protect the border or some guy whose job it is to bring illegals over the border. I forget what I think they’re called coyotes. There is no reporter in my humble opinion, who knows more about the border than Jorge Ventura, Jorge who’s right. Peter Ducey from Fox saying, people are walking over the border and they’re not vaccinated and they’re not being tested or her saying, no, that’s not what happens.
Jorge Ventura (02:06):
No, it’s obviously my boy, Pete Ducey, man, let, we gotta let Nova play. We were actually making actually <laugh> actually, I made a joke post about it actually two days ago of like, Hey Nova can’t play. But like all these people could, could, uh, could, uh, come in. It’s kind of ridiculous. The funny thing is, um, Jen sake could bullshit way better than her. Like Jensey, would’ve been out of there and like would’ve flipped it on Ducey and was like, you’re a liar. She, I mean this, this new one, man. She can’t get out of there, dude, that fake laugh. She she’s gotta do better that Jen sake’s running circles around her.
Sevan Matossian (02:37):
So, so people from, from what I’ve seen from the reporting, I’ve seen people by the tens of thousands. Hundreds of, oh
Jorge Ventura (02:44):
Yeah, no, I look, obviously I’m being, I’m being sarcastic, but yeah, no. Um, yeah, by the tens to hundreds of thousands, there was a report we did last year where, um, if you guys remember when those 15,000 Haitians all crashed the bridge at one time, it was in Del R was actually in September. Um, they were actually releasing Haitians to the public and we were actually doing an interview with Haitians saying, Hey, have you been tested with, you know, with, with COVID 19, before being released to the public and they would all say no. Um, we actually put that video out and he actually forced secretary my ORs to have actually have to admit that. So this is very true that also being flown on the same planes and buses that a lot of Americans are being put on. This is that video is not less than a week ago. We, we, we took that in, uh, Eagle pass. This is around nine in the morning, a group of 300, uh, came, um, from Cuba NICAR. And so, but most of them are gonna be Cuban and look how proud they are to BR you know, to, to like they’re throwing. Like I
Mattew Souza (03:34):
Saw his phone,
Jorge Ventura (03:37):
Instagram live already. <laugh> uh, yeah. They’re they’re flexing on us when they come in.
Sevan Matossian (03:41):
So, so what am I looking at that’s at? Are, are we in the United States? Is this footage in the United States? Yes.
Jorge Ventura (03:47):
So, so seven. This is, uh, this is around nine in the morning. I, I, uh, this was just last Friday. We, we took this in, uh, Eagle pass and so many migrants came in one time that border patrol couldn’t put ’em in trucks. So that’s where you actually see ’em walking on a ho on a, on the highway and down that highway, there was already a group of 80 and this was at nine in the morning. This is like to get the day started for border patrol. Now
Sevan Matossian (04:08):
These people wanna be caught. Right. But
Jorge Ventura (04:09):
Look at this. Yeah. Not
Sevan Matossian (04:11):
They’re not running right,
Jorge Ventura (04:13):
Dude. Just this off, you saw the dude in the yellow shirt, just Flipp this off.
Mattew Souza (04:18):
It’s like a line to get into a, a music
Sevan Matossian (04:20):
Festival. So they made it, they know these people made it.
Jorge Ventura (04:23):
Oh dude, they’re these people made it. They’re all good to go. That’s why like no other country is doing what we’re doing. And um, you know, every time I met the border, the thing that’s always shocking me is like, this is just in one area that we’re able to be at at night in the morning. I mean, can you only imagine what’s going on? Um, in the rest of rest of the border, this is a little small, uh, app portion, but this is what, what was shocking is like, this is what, you know, border patrol and local law enforcement. This is like them starting off their morning and you know, they’re completely overwhelmed. And basically they’re all Uber drivers for these, for these immigrants now because they’re like picking them up, taking ’em to processing centers. Um, but this is, I mean, this is crazy. This happens on a daily basis. So I mean, we could, we could send the, the white house, this, this video, this was less than a week
Sevan Matossian (05:06):
Ago. So where do these, so where do these people go from here? Do they go straight to a COVID testing center?
Jorge Ventura (05:12):
No, no, no, no. They’ll go to a,
Sevan Matossian (05:13):
That’s my question. Like
Jorge Ventura (05:16):
Come, you know that, uh, no, they’ll go to a processing center, obviously. They’ll, they’ll try to, you know, they’ll run identification, try to get their IDs with, you know, DNA, fingerprints, all, all that type of stuff. Um, then what’s happening right now is they’re so overwhelmed that majority of ’em they’re being dropped off at, at a NGO or like a Catholic charity and then the Catholic charity and that NGO then organiz a travel for those migrants. They’ll
Sevan Matossian (05:39):
In, this is in the United States. This is our government passes. ’em off to some non-governmental organization.
Jorge Ventura (05:45):
Yeah. Now, now very few people will get actually like deported or like title 42. So if you’re like a single male coming out with, without a family, you’re most likely gonna be deported, especially if you’re coming from central America. So if, if you’re like a Salvadorian male, uh NICAR Allen male, watermelon, male, you got like 0% chance. If you’re coming, if you’re coming by yourself right now, there’s a loophole with the Venezuela. That’s why you see a lot of Venezuela men coming because they know they’re being let in and then process in. So a lot of Venezuela, Venezuela men are coming right now with no families. That’s why you’re seeing that.
Sevan Matossian (06:15):
That’s why there were no Mexicans. You’re saying that those weren’t Mexicans.
Jorge Ventura (06:18):
No, no, there’s a, there’s a kind of, um, there’s a kind of a myth about the border that like it’s Mexicans, who are the Mexicans are not involved in this border crisis at all. And they’ve not been involved in a long time. And the reason why Mexicans don’t cross is cuz Mexican and states have a, an agreement where if a Mexican national cross is illegally, they could be criminally charged and then immediately deported. So no Mexican even tries the only Mexican nationals that are crossing illegally are literally like the guys that are called God away. So they’re not trying to be apprehended either because they already have a past criminal record, uh, here in a United States or the’re writing drugs, fed out, you’ll see them in the cam, uh, camouflage clothes. They’ll have like what, what it’s called carpet shoes. So when they’re out there in the deserts or whatever, they don’t leave any footprints.
Jorge Ventura (07:00):
So those are the Mexican nationals coming in. So Mexicans are not causing it. Also in that video, I wanna point out for the audience, cause they’ll probably find this pretty interesting is you’ll see a lot of Cubans, right? So the question I always get is why, uh, or, oh, how many, so, uh, how many Cub, why, why are so many Cubans getting to Mexico? How are, you know, they’re in an island? So when I interview these Cubans, the story that I keep getting from Yuma to, to Texas is they say, well, H what we do is we actually buy a ticket to Nicaragua and fly into Nicaragua. So Cubans can’t fly into Mexico because Mexico requires a travel visa for those Cubans. So the Cubans don’t do that route. Um, Nicaragua has a very leftist, uh, you could call him a president. You could call him a dictator, whatever president, Daniel Ortega.
Jorge Ventura (07:41):
So him and Cuba have a very, very friendly relationship. They always had for years. So Cubans can fly into Nicaragua. Nicaraguas can fly into Cuban without any tribal visas that’s not required. So what Cubans tell me is the Cubans that you are seeing fly in are mostly in the middle class. So a lot of doctors are coming in because the tickets to fly to Nicaragua, um, from what I’m hearing cost between 2000 bucks to 6,000, right? So basically the Cuban officials know that any Cuban buying a flight to Nicaragua is obviously not coming back. Like no Cuban is flying to Nicaragua right now for, for a fucking vacation. They know they’re flying into Nicaragua to obviously get into Mexico. If for Mexico, make that journey to the us
Sevan Matossian (08:19):
And, and the whole thing’s making a mockery over all the COVID stuff. Uh, if you were to guess, how many people do you think have come across the border without a COVID test? A thousand, a hundred thousand.
Jorge Ventura (08:29):
Oh, that’s a half million that’s that’s baby numbers. I would say like over 2.5 million, just to play conservative three, 3 million just to play conservative. Oh,
Sevan Matossian (08:38):
Wow. So the whole COVID, thing’s just a mockery. It it’s a complete joke. We’re just letting people in over the border.
Jorge Ventura (08:43):
I mean, even, like I said, even, even last September, last year, September when I was interviewing those Haitians, they were, they weren’t even testing the Haitians. So they, I mean, that’s the whole testing. The, the S before being, let out have, have a, you know, that’s already been done, dude. That’s that’s been done. I would say, I don’t know, man, probably more, more than a year and a half ago. Now.
Sevan Matossian (09:00):
I, I wonder, I wonder what the vaccination rate is of people who cross the border.
Jorge Ventura (09:04):
That’s a good question. We actually, I’m actually, I’m in new Arizona now I’m at the border. So I’m actually gonna go out tonight. We were probably gonna do some interviews with migrants if they’ve been tested, um, or not. And then kind of just see what’s up. But I, I guarantee you that 70, 60% have not been tested, probably even more
Sevan Matossian (09:20):
Fucking nuts. And meanwhile, the greatest tennis player who ever lived, can’t just come hit a ball around in New York city,
Jorge Ventura (09:26):
Dude. Crazy. No, that can’t catch a break in Australia or the us it’s fucking bull. It’s BSed.
Sevan Matossian (09:32):
It’s embarrassing. Yeah. It, Hey, do you have an opinion on the myocarditis thing? All the people dropping? Is it, is it, is it just a right, right wing nut job conspiracy? Or is
Jorge Ventura (09:43):
It I’m, I’m gonna be honest, bro. I, I haven’t even looked into it. I’ve been, so, um, the I’ve been so border focused, man ever since may ever since, may the enemy of title 42 and in you all day and the border has this, so we’ve been, I’ve been so like just, this is the grind dude. I’ve been, I kind of tuned out at a lot of stuff and um, but Hey, that’s just, that’s just part of the job at this point.
Sevan Matossian (10:04):
Right? Okay. Uh, um, Jorge is not, uh, telling the truth there. He has been doing other things <laugh> and I’m gonna show you, I’m gonna show you what else he’s been doing also, uh, run the trailer. Mr. Suza, please. Uh, we’re taking a minute and 37 second break. Enjoy this trailer of, uh, Jorge adventurous, new documentary. You’ll
Jorge Ventura (10:23):
Gotcha.
Speaker 7 (10:26):
You have to understand our frustration that we have been going through this for years. Did you know that one of our citizens got attacked on her property, walked in her dog by one of the pot growers dogs. So when a straight bullet comes in and gets one of my children or me, I swear to God on the stack of Bibles, I will go out and I will.
Speaker 8 (10:50):
Yeah, you can take marijuana. You can take water regulation. Let’s go down the line. We have no allies in the state government.
Speaker 9 (10:57):
Is there a rough estimate of how many cartel members are here right now? Conservative estimate, 10,000, 10,000 people. Yeah. I’d say conservative estimate, just California, just in California. These are organized crime groups, highly structured, well funded, very aggressive, well armed in our forest all over California. They interviewed
Speaker 10 (11:16):
One of our sheriff deputies, head rats. And he just said, we don’t have enough resources to stop ’em if they ever come here and then bam, they were here.
Speaker 11 (11:29):
All of a sudden, you had a thousand people show up who wanted to vote, who all came from out of the area who all just happened to be growing illegal marijuana. It’s kind of like, well,
Speaker 9 (11:40):
And it blew up as
Speaker 12 (11:41):
The enforcement started to dwindle, they rapidly increased.
Speaker 13 (11:46):
I want some sort of acknowledgement that it’s a problem I have yet to even hear that.
Jorge Ventura (11:52):
Well,
Speaker 9 (11:52):
They,
Speaker 14 (11:53):
They are racist.
Jorge Ventura (11:54):
Who are the condom?
Sevan Matossian (12:02):
I it’s, uh, the whole racist twisted. That was fucking cracking me up. It was cracking
Jorge Ventura (12:07):
Me up. Yeah, just put that. That was a, that was a
Sevan Matossian (12:13):
Everyone’s screaming. It. Now you have two tons of marijuana in the back of your truck illegally grown stop being. You’re just cuz you’re racist. Like
Jorge Ventura (12:20):
Yeah, yeah. That, that was uh, that was the Mon some Mon growers up in, uh, Siski county up in, up in Norco man gets, gets wilded up there
Sevan Matossian (12:29):
10,000. Do you think that that’s actually so, so there’s 115,000 institutional prisoners in California that the, the United, the California has 115,000 approximately people, inmates. Are you telling me that there’s 10,000. Do you think that could be actually accurate cartel members?
Jorge Ventura (12:47):
Yeah. Yeah. So the guy
Sevan Matossian (12:49):
In California, I mean that’s a fucking army. Yeah.
Jorge Ventura (12:52):
So the guy who said that his name is literally, he’s absolutely fascinating. You, I gotta actually connect you guys with him, man. You gotta, you gotta have him on his. So his name is John Norris. He is a, uh, retired, uh, game warden Sergeant, um, with the, with the game wardens of California. So what’s fascinating about John is, um, he developed their very first marijuana enforcement team. So like basically getting these game wars to raid Mexican grows and he developed the first Delta team, which is basically a sniper team that helps out, um, these game wars, basically you raid these, uh, cartel grow. So basically John’s John just like his, his, his quick story is he was a regular game war in California, you know, is a guy who loved the wildlife. Um, you know, grew up loving it. His father raised him on that. And um, one day around 2005, 2006, he was out in Northern California and he found a Creek that he saw that the water was being diverted.
Jorge Ventura (13:47):
So he was like, okay, well let me follow the Creek. And what he was expecting is I’m gonna run into a rancher or farmer, whatever that was just diverting, the, the water for, for their cattle, whatever, probably ride him a ticket. That’s like the basic stuff. So he follows this Creek and then he follow it. And he basically discovers this like 7,000 marijuana, uh, operation. This is on the California national park. So these are, these are our public property, um, on, so basically finds this 7,000 marijuana field and notices. The guys that are work in this field basically are heavily armed, long guns, camouflage, Mexican nationals. Um, he basically alerted the, uh, local officials. They were able to raid that grow. I believe a year later, he stumbles on another marijuana operation with the, with another game warden this time. Unfortunately they were shot up on his game.
Jorge Ventura (14:37):
Morden was shot between the legs. So John had to like carry his game Morden out of there. And then because they’re in this rural parts of California, I mean very rural, you know, basically no cell phone service, they waited like three hours for a helicopter to come save him. So basically I discovered John, uh, John’s story on, uh, the Joe Rogan podcast. I was, this was back in 2019. I was in, I was in community college. So I was a student journalist. I heard this when I was working for working in Uber. And when I heard about cartel and illegal marijuana operations in California, thought to me, this is one of the more fascinating subjects ever. Um, but at that time, since I was a college student, you know, I couldn’t do much about it. I didn’t know much about journalism obviously. Um, last year, as you guys know, I was on your guys’ podcast, we dropped the very first, uh, documentary that, that I’ve done on this subject cartel bill.
Jorge Ventura (15:22):
It was on this subject, but it was in a Southern California desert, which is a completely new thing. So in the Southern California deserts, this is a new problem. And it’s not just so I could just say the context for the audience again, for those who didn’t listen to least of the last episode. Thank you. This is not the Chi and ch like hippies, like growing pot. This is not also like, for instance, like I know there’s, there’s parts of California where like the legal, uh, camp, the, you know, uh, plant clown could be like 99 plants and some can have like 150. We’re not worried about those people. These are, we’re worried about the people who are legitimately are like legit, uh, cartel crime. So Mexican nationals. Hm, Chinese. We’re seeing a lot of Russians and we’re seeing the Armenians involved in these huge, illegal marijuana.
Sevan Matossian (16:03):
I thought we talked about that in the last show. I thought we talked about that on the last show,
Jorge Ventura (16:09):
The thing is they’re involved in, obviously you need, you know, uh, water to grow the we and the water’s being stolen. So the huge issue here is, is the water theft. So if you don’t live in California, you might not understand, but our state is in the biggest drought ever, his historic drought. So, um, these cartel people are basically stealing all the water, growing the weed for free. A lot of the, the people that are even working on these grows are basically migrants are being forced, um, to work on these girls. We, we interviewed those people. Um, couple of those folks that were witnesses in the first documented Carville we interviewed a firefighter who didn’t make it in the documentary, but he was a firefighter from Shaa county. He actually saved three migrants that were being forced to work on the girl. Um, basically there was a wildfire out there in the Northern California, which happens basically all the time.
Jorge Ventura (16:51):
And these migrants were so scared to leave the girl that they actually were burning up and almost died until this firefighter saved them. And then the firefighter said, Hey, how did you guys end up in this business? They said, we were actually in a, in a home Depot, like three hours away from here. We got picked up thinking that we were gonna work a regular, like labor job, like construction. All of a sudden we’re in the middle of nowhere in the freaking mountains. And, and we’re being told that we have to grow this pot. So, um, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy. So basically seven, just to give you a quick breakdown. After we put out our first documentary cartel bill, I got called by a former guy that used to be in law enforcement for years, uh, up in Northern California. He gives me a ring.
Jorge Ventura (17:28):
He said, Jorge, I saw your documentary. I loved it. He said, um, but in your, in where you live, so where I live is LA county. We have about over 500 illegal grow. I think that number’s probably over 600 now. Like I said, it’s a new thing. We live in the SoCal deserts, the county next door, which is San Bernardino. They’re about at 1200 illegal grow. So it’s a, it’s a pretty big deal now for us, but in, just in one county, just SCU county, they have they’re estimated between 7,000 to 10,000 illegal growth. So I mean, they, they’re seeing this, this problem at a scale times a hundred. And, uh, basically our documentary goes into telling the stories of what these communities very, very poor, very rural communities. I’m talking about ranchers and farmers. We were in a town called Doris California, which I never heard of until I went there.
Jorge Ventura (18:15):
Doris is like this town near Oregon. So we’re like in the border border, Stateline, near Oregon with like barely like a thousand people. And you’re seeing this town with like barely a thousand people with like one or two sheriffs deal with a cartel problem. It’s absolutely fascinating. And to me, it’s, it’s even more fascinating that it’s not even like a nano issue yet. Um, this, this issue after spending a lot of time in Northern California has not just become Northern California issue there. A lot of Southern Oregon. So a lot of Southern Oregon is seeing, uh, Mexican national cartel being involved in their illegal growth. So a lot of these guys are going, uh, back and forth between Southern Oregon and Northern California and bringing supplies, men, you know, water, whatever they need.
Sevan Matossian (18:54):
Um, how SU how many people live in Siski county? I think I saw, I think in the documentary, they said it was 44,000. Could that be right? It’s that small?
Jorge Ventura (19:04):
Yeah. 40. And, and the thing is, this is, um, um, Siski county is a massive county. When we talk about landmass, we’re talking about like state, it kind of like similar states of like Rhode Island, Delaware. Like it’s huge. Okay. Um, so you’ll, you’ll find little pockets in town with like people barely like a thousand people, 5,000 people. Um, it’s very rural. So let me just put it in perspective. So these, these communities are mostly, um, white working class, ranchers and farmers you’ll have a, a, a big population of also Hispanic, uh, ranchers out there, workers out there working in the fields around 20 13, 20 16 ish. They started to see a huge wave of HMK come into these very poor
Sevan Matossian (19:44):
What’s a monk pull up a monk for me. Uh,
Jorge Ventura (19:46):
Yeah. Monk is like, um, God, how do you wanna get this wrong? But
Sevan Matossian (19:50):
They, the Chinese do.
Jorge Ventura (19:51):
It’s like, it’s like a Vietnamese island, like Islanders, what I heard, but, um, here, bring it up. Cause I don’t wanna get this. I don’t wanna get canceled for
Sevan Matossian (19:59):
Mon M U N
Mattew Souza (20:00):
<laugh> H H M O U N.
Jorge Ventura (20:04):
Yeah, there it is.
Sevan Matossian (20:06):
Uh, Mong are the ethnic group of people with specific language and culture. Okay. Thank you. Uh, they originally came from China over 4,000 years of history. Some Mon left China to Vietnam and Laos, Thailand Burma, beginning in the early 18 hundreds as a result of Lang. Okay. When you, lot of the guys you interviewed from, from my eye, look, they don’t look Vietnamese. They look Chinese.
Jorge Ventura (20:26):
Well, they, they were, um, those guys were monk. So basically just, just to give you guys perspective, um, a lot of the HMG community helped of the Americans back in the Vietnam war. They fought side by side and a lot of those HMG, they then moved to the state of Minnesota over the years. So basically what happened is around 2013 to 2016, the communities in SICU and also Shasta county up there, um, started to notice a huge influx of these Hm, people, this Hm, community right. Coming into their, into their communities. And they also noticed that the license plates all, all over the cars, mostly all came from Minnesota. So around, around this time, we’re seeing the, the, the kind of Hm, migration from Minnesota down to these communities. And if you interview the Hm, people, they say, well, we started coming around this time because land was very, very cheap. And this land kind of similar to our land back in the Homeland. So they started moving into these communities around this time in 2016,
Sevan Matossian (21:27):
Are you calling horse shit on that? You call horse shit on that. Can you buy that?
Jorge Ventura (21:31):
Yes and no. Yes and no, I’m not, I’m not, I’m, I’m saying for some of them, there are very good people that are literally there just to farm.
Sevan Matossian (21:38):
Do you think they really move there because of a similar geographic conditions and weather conditions to their Homeland and because land was cheap or do you think that they’re being seduced there for work? Okay. Okay. Okay.
Jorge Ventura (21:46):
Yeah. Yeah. So I’m talking about very, um, extremely cheap out there in Siski county, but you did start, you started to have some players. One guy’s name is moon Lee. So moon Lee migrates from Minnesota to, to this part and buys massive, uh, uh, parts of land and buys what these things are called. Like these little parcels on these land. Now these parcels are only supposed to have like one property owner, like one or two people basically living on there. And what he does is he starts bringing in his family from Minnesota and then other, Hm. People start to do the same thing where they basically buy pieces of land, bring in, um, many family members. So the, so this, the community starts growing and it’s obviously in these rural community, it’s, it’s, it’s quick to, to, to pick it up around 2016,
Sevan Matossian (22:33):
Typical migrant move. Right. I’m sure your families did that when they came from El Salvador. I know my, my family did that when they come from Lebanon Beirut, you bring one brother comes over and he brings over eight, eight more and all live in the same apartment. Mm-hmm <affirmative>
Jorge Ventura (22:44):
Right. Yeah. So, so that’s what we start to see here. But the thing is, is you notice it quicker when it’s a very, very poor rural community. And you’re like, wait a minute, you know, sums up around 2016. And this I’m just sum this up real, real quick. I don’t wanna give the whole story, but like around 2016, there was a county clerk for SIS U county. She starts to, she starts to notice that, um, for further, uh, registered voters, they got over 500 new registered voters. And she’s like, hold on. This is huge for small community looks up those registered voters, all of those registered voters have Asian names starts to look up the names and starts to see that those names are also registered in other counties. Oh, so she calls the sheriffs, they call the state California. They starts to investigate. We interview a sheriff.
Jorge Ventura (23:27):
What he told me is they, they start to interview these, these Hm, property owners. They said one parcel that it was a huge red flag. One parcel had 55 registered voters. And around this time is they’re seeing the huge influx of the legal marijuana grows and what those sheriffs told me said, he’s like, even he’s like Jorge, even to do those interviews with those property owners, we had to go in there Strapp because at this time the HMG people are already strapped. They’re already starting to grow marijuana illegally, and they’re starting to get getting into this black market business. So basically our documentary goes into the story of the, Hm, this illegal marijuana kind of black business operations and telling the story of that and kind of the, the new twist to the tell. Because right now we know about the cartels of the Mexican nationals, Russians, all of that.
Jorge Ventura (24:12):
Um, obviously we have John Norris in there. John Norris brings in the stories of, of the days where he fought basically Mexican nationals in California, national parks that still happening to this day. Um, but we wanted to show people what was going on with these monkeys because, um, I find it fascinating that they were registering the vote. They’re looking to play a role in local politics. Um, and the people up there are very, very worried of what’s going on. And like I said, these are P poor, poor rural communities. Cause obviously see it in a trailer. The, the woman was like worried about her kids saying, Hey, if, if something happens to my kids, a bullet comes in, I’m gonna raise hell, whatever. Um, that was actually a town hall in do California. You, one of those ranchers actually presses the da and says, Hey, if I shoot one of these cartel guys, am I gonna get charged with homicide? Like for defending myself, like these guys are on my property, long guns AKs. Uh, and these, these are real stories going on, um, in Northern California that, that a lot of people just have no idea, but people in Northern California kind of know, but they’re, they, they want this stuff more of a, you know, with a national spotlight,
Sevan Matossian (25:09):
The, the Chinese who were in, um, cartel land in your first documentary, they weren’t, um, bosses. Right. They were working off, uh, deals that they had for getting immigration into the country. Right. But now we’re seeing Chinese monks who are actual bosses. We’re seeing some bosses.
Jorge Ventura (25:26):
No. Yeah. They’re still Chinese bosses is just that the day that we went embedded with the San Bernardino county sheriffs. And when they raid these girls, yeah. They, when they raid these girls, it was just the workers that got caught that day. Like those guys didn’t even speak English, like straight Chinese nationals didn’t even speak English. And that’s what you’re seeing most of these on like most of the girls, it’s always gonna be like the low level guys. You, you you’ll even see it on this documentary. When, when, when we were embedded with syou county, they raid grows. Um, most of the people caught are literally just workers. Like they’re not, they’re not the, the, the powerful people are never like on the growths because they know the chances of getting caught the chances of, of getting raided. And they don’t want to obviously, you know, get arrested or anything. They interesting to think, uh, too, is we interview those, those, those people, those people were a married couple from the, from Minnesota who were there for a whole month who haven’t even been paid yet. We asked ’em like, you’ve even been paid. Haven’t even been, haven’t been paid
Sevan Matossian (26:16):
The good looking Chinese couple that you kind of had blurred out those people. Yeah. Those, they hadn’t been paid in a month. They
Jorge Ventura (26:22):
Haven’t, they’ve been working 30, 30, 30 days. They’re, they’re new to the whole, the whole game and they haven’t been paid and
Sevan Matossian (26:26):
They’re calling the cops race. Yeah. That’s crazy.
Jorge Ventura (26:30):
Other, the other key here is because these are poor rural communities. You’re actually watching this, you know, there’s another story. Um, we actually might dive deeper later, but of these, what these sheriffs have to go through, you know, these guys are some of the lowest funded people in the state. So like we were in SIS sister county, their county sheriff is the youngest sheriff in the whole state of California. So you have this 37 year old, fresh guy with a lot of energy. He’s a good guy, Jeremiah, um, who Jeremiah Laro, who has a cartel problem yet has no funding to take on the issue. Um, I talked to some of their sheriff deputies in SSU county. I said, you know, what do you guys get paid? Or, or, or, you know, how come you guys can’t attract people was like, dude, no one wants to battle cartels or, or be writing illegal girls for like 20 bucks an hour. That’s what they, right. That’s what they start off on in. Right.
Sevan Matossian (27:15):
They don’t wanna get killed. They don’t wanna get killed. That’s crazy.
Jorge Ventura (27:18):
And even really quick, even those like little tractors that you guys saw in the trailer, you know, like they’re like, you know, rating the grows or like picking up the stuff. Those are actually loan by like a local rancher. So if I give a rancher, didn’t give the Sheriff’s department. Those like tractors, the sheriffs couldn’t even afford to even have their own tractors and stuff like that. So that’s how poor these communities are. And it makes a perfect, um, target for the Hm, community Chinese nationals and the Mexicans for illegal man marijuana operations, because everything is on their side. They know that these are poor rural communities. So they don’t have the resources to take ’em on the state of California, essentially with 2016, when they made marijuana legal, then they made the, uh, illegal cultivation, which used to be a felony down to a MIS misdemeanor.
Jorge Ventura (28:00):
It kind of gave these guys more rights. So when I talked to John Norris, the, the game war, when he told me, he said, Hey, J back in the day, when these Mexican nationals were on the California national parks, it was easier to take ’em on because you didn’t really need the search warrant. Cause they’re already on public land. Now they own these properties and you need a search warrant. Wow. They couldn’t know how to, it’s kind of a loophole. So they’re kind of using when he said, according to their awards is you have, these guys have used the constitution almost against us. And they’re being so far running the playbook to, you know, successfully,
Sevan Matossian (28:32):
Uh, this is kind of an interesting comment, uh, here. Um, what is colonization of another nation called if it’s legalized, encouraged, and then voted for it’s. It is interesting to think, like you look back in 200 years and you could be like, oh yeah, the United States was colonized by, uh, uh, Latins and Chinese. I mean, the story could be so easily <laugh> it could be so easily spun that it was just a, a colonization of the country. Um, another interesting thing was, is they they’ll have spotters. The cops will roll in and 50 people will leave and they can’t even stop any of them. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because they have no proof. They have no proof. Right. All of a sudden they’re coming down a road to do a raid and they see 50 cars drive by then, what can they do? Yeah.
Jorge Ventura (29:11):
From a, from a reporter perspective, it was really cool to see that because we didn’t see that in our, like with the Mexicans in the deserts, they don’t do that shit. And like, they just, that’s just not their game because it’s, it’s a completely different game in the deserts. But out there since the, among a little bit more tightly close together, the among communities, they have lookouts. So when the cops even go in for the raids, they’re on the phones and you’ll see like 50 cars, like just getting out of there. And by the time, you know, the cops show up, there’s like few people. I mean, it was even lucky that they even got people that day. And you know, it was great. Cause we got ’em on camera and we gotta interview ’em. Um, but it’s, it’s fascinating stuff out there and it’s, it’s a completely different world just to put a perspective. There was, um, we were out there also, there was another county called LA, uh, Lassen, um, Lassen county, Lassen county is as big as the state of Rhode Island.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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