משבר ההגירה בספרד | דעה

Joining us now with more, Nate Freedman, an independent journalist and host of The Nate Freedman Show. Nate, thank you so much for joining us. Always great to see you. Now, you were actually just in Spain asking the locals and immigrants about this very issue. Were you surprised by what you saw happen to Ceuta in the last 24 hours? Well, yes and no. I mean, I was there, so I was there two months ago. I was in Barcelona two months ago. And the videos, the initial videos are shocking, but I'm not that surprised by it because people voted for this. One of the conversations I had with someone was that it's the tourists that are destroying the city, not the illegal immigrants. And one thing that people might not know is that in Barcelona, 80% of the crime is committed by migrants. They're not just there to work. And when you were there, you actually interviewed some 200 illegal immigrants. What were they telling you? Well, so I interviewed 200 illegal immigrants total in my career, so maybe you're citing from that video. But anyway, yeah, I spoke to a couple. So one was a man from Morocco who very proudly admitted that he came illegally. He's getting cash. And I told him that a lot of the migrants here are committing crimes. And he says, the reason we do that is because we don't have papers. So if I see someone's phone on the beach, I'll go ahead and take that phone. So yeah, and I asked him, can I come to Morocco illegally? And he said, no, you couldn't do that. So that's amazing, isn't it? Right. And to one of your earlier points, how are Spanish policies and politics playing into this issue? Well, as far as the intricacies of Spanish politics, I'm not an expert, but I can say just from what people are voting for, the wokeness is escalated in Europe more so than it is in the United States. Another thing that I heard was that from a woman who said, you can expect illegal immigrants to come here because they make our clothing. It's only, of course, they come here. So this is sort of the mentality that a lot of folks have there. And digging into that, were the Spanish locals concerned with something like this happening? Well, I had some off the record conversations with people that are very concerned, but you have to understand that in Europe, freedom of speech is not what it is here. People are very, very afraid to talk negatively of their government, which is very, very sad. And are we seeing anything that would prevent that kind of mass surge from happening again? What are Spanish authorities doing about this? No, I mean, I've been following along as you have. It seems like it's kind of unclear about, I mean, I'm hearing like the embassy, I was following on X, like the embassy in the UK to Spain is saying that everyone's being deported, but then Sanchez is saying that we are keeping the minors. I don't know what minors means. Does minors mean 17, 18? I don't know. So I guess we'll just have to wait and see. And this rush happened in just 24 hours. What sort of coordination do you think was involved in something like this? Gosh, I can't imagine, but obviously something significant. I mean, I've been following this like everybody else and the population of, how do you pronounce it, Sunta? I want to get it right, but I haven't heard actually anyone say it yet. But anyway, it's 80,000 and up to 100,000 people have come over. So it's a takeover in a day. Now, President Trump said today that this is going to become a midterms talking point. Let's actually play part of that clip. I saw Spain yesterday and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It looks like an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people. And that same thing's gonna happen to us if the Republicans don't get elected, except worse, much bigger, much easier to get into. Despite the fact that we have built thousands of miles of wall, which I said we were going to do. If we're not in office, our country will be invaded at levels that made Spain look small time. And what that is, is weak law, bad management, but very liberal law. They passed a couple of laws and people read. People are smart, they read from other countries. And they swam that three mile swim or however they got in. Now the border situation has been entirely different between this and the last administration. But how quickly could that change and what are you watching for as we approach the midterms? It could change like this. I mean, the hundreds of illegal immigrants that I interviewed in my career were in the United States. Just go ahead and look at the footage of the peak of the border crisis 2021, 2022. And you play that footage side by side of what you're seeing in Spain. And it looks identical. This was happening in our country. A couple more years of that and you would lose the country. So the president's absolutely right. And every illegal immigrant that I spoke to in the United States, except for one, said that they would be voting for Democrats in perpetuity. So if anyone can come up with a rational argument that this isn't about voting, feel free. But it seems like that's what it's about. Well, Nate Riedman, as always, thank you so much for joining us.