Absolute chaos' as migrants storm Texas border

Jenny Thayer witnessed the whole thing. She is a Texas reporter for the New York Post. I'm so glad to have you with me. Just want to play for everybody again what you saw and then have you talk about it. Listen here. Ah, get the fuck back! Get the fuck back! Jenny, the video is very dramatic, just in the watching of it. What was it like to see it firsthand? You know, it all happened so fast. You had a group of 600 migrants that were all seemingly very calm for, you know, 30 minutes that we were there maybe an hour. And then all of a sudden, the Texas National Guard began to take the separated groups. So there were 300 single adults. There were 300 families and children and women. On the other side, those people were going to be taken for processing by Border Patrol. That was their priority. The single adults were being taken off into small groups back to Mexico. They realized that was their fate. And it just, within a matter of seconds, became absolute chaos, as you showed in that clip. They took over the National Guard there. They totally dominated all of their resources, which were very little. There were only a few guardsmen down there. And they were running past the razor wire. They breached that. They breached the National Guard physical, you know, bodily boundary they had created. And then, of course, they made their way up to the wall, where they were pleading to get into the country. That's what they were hoping to get. And I think the promise of that, and realizing that they weren't going to get that because of what Texas had done there, that was very upsetting to them. And so they decided to just cause chaos. Jenny, do you know if any of them did make it into the interior of the United States? Yes, many of these people did get processed by Border Patrol under Title VIII, which is what is typically used for what we know as catch and release. These are people that are mainly released into the country. So this sends the message to people around the world that even if you act like this, you can probably get into the country. And I think they continue to push these boundaries and to see what they can get away with. And here they got away with some really, really scary stuff and, you know, assaulting, appeared to be assaulting some of the National Guardsmen. It was totally out of control. Have you ever, have you had a chance to talk to any of those National Guardsmen and what they're thinking? You know, I do talk to members of the Texas National Guard in the area. And they said they're just trying to be really supportive of each other right now because they feel totally overwhelmed, just as other authorities dealing with this are. Border Patrol, the state DPS, this is the situation they're in. And when it's the federal authorities especially, they feel like the people in Washington that are in charge of their agencies don't have their backs in this situation. A lot of the Border Patrol agents I talked to took me back to the September 2021 horse patrol unit where they were accused of whipping migrants. We know that totally, that narrative totally blew up in the media's face. That wasn't the case at all. They were not whipping migrants and their own agency came out and said that after an investigation. We have here- Everyone was against them in that moment and that's how these people feel. We have here the border encounter numbers in the El Paso sector. So over the, you can just see over the past three years, it really went up. It is down a little bit year to date and for 2024 at 96,000. Do you think, is that number likely to go up or down based on this legal wrangling between Texas and the Biden administration? I think we're starting to see that spring surge as the weather gets better and as these migrants realize that the Texas law SB4 to allow state and local authorities to make arrests for illegal entry isn't going into play right now. And then it's still in legal limbo. They know these things. The cartels are very smart. So they're seeing that they can get away with these things. They can get into the country. We saw, you know, just a few months ago, Jose Ibarra, the alleged killer of Lakin Riley came through this area, got processed by Border Patrol, got released. He wasn't a got away. This is one person. We also have a few days ago, a person who said they were a Hezbollah terrorist. We confirmed that they were on the terror watch list, but that didn't happen until six days after this person said they were on the watch list. So it's possible they could have been released into the country as well, had they not told authorities that they were a terrorist. So this is what we're dealing with at this point. A lot more criminal elements coming through and a spring surge. Quickly, Jenny, just tell me about the people there who live in El Paso. It's a thriving American city. They've got a lot of businesses down there. Are they worried about the state of things right there at the border? Absolutely. I talked to Dolores Chacon yesterday. She lives right along the border and she sees breaches of her fence every day. I mean, she sees people crossing on her property. She's had people under her car when she's taking her granddaughter out into the town. The Walgreens here, just like San Francisco, has things locked up because migrants are stealing things. There are criminal elements also on the streets. There are members of what appears to be Trinidad and Tobago, the gang, that, of course, Jose Ibarra was affiliated with. This is a very violent prison gang from Venezuela. This is the reality for people on the ground here. They feel completely unsafe. Jenny and Tara, I hope we can stay in touch with you. Thank you for your reporting and for being with us this morning. Thank you.