In an hour-long primetime special Thursday night called Crisis on the Border, NewsNation did something the liberal media — and TV news in general — needed to emulate, which was a more accurate, consistent, and raw depiction of the Biden border crisis from the side of law enforcement and the dangers unfettered illegal immigration posed to the public.
Hosted by Dan Abrams, it featured three different reporters live in the field, new reporting, facts about the border, and interviews with four police chiefs on how open-border policies have harmed their communities.
Abrams opened by declaring this won’t be “about politics.” Instead, NewsNation’s goal was to inform viewers “about what is actually happening at our southern border and maybe — maybe — even spur some change.”
From there, the special took on the feeling of an episode of his other show, Reelz’s On Patrol: Live (and its predecessor in spirit, A&E’s Live PD) as Abrams immediately tossed to indefatigable correspondents Ali Bradley and Brian Entin (click “expand”):
ABRAMS: But we have some — some breaking news because just, as we’ve been preparing for the show, Ali Bradley NewsNation’s border correspondent on the front lines has been there when they just found three migrants trying to hide there and they’ve been arrested in Hidalgo County, Texas. Ali, what just happened?
BRADLEY: Yeah, hey, Dan. So we’re out here, we’re actually embedded with an elite brush team with Texas DPS. They are working in conjunction with Border Patrol, so we’ve got state and federal partners working together and we have the chopper in the air. Let me show you what we just witnessed. So, we pulled three people out of this, look at how hard it is down here. This is what they’re up against, so they had to get down in there. That’s basically a canal, a drainage ditch of sorts, pulled these three individuals out, one young man from Honduras, telling us that he was on the hook with the cartel to pay $16,000 to get to Virginia. And guess what Dan? They’re actually working another two people that are in the canal further up. So, we’re gonna go up there, I’m going to send it back to you here. We’re going to keep our feet on the ground. And we’re gonna go after these other two people that are in the water up there.”
ABRAMS: Alright, so remember. This is just happening live down there. And we’re going to be staying with Ali Bradley. We’re going go back to her in — in a moment. Ali, thank you for that reporting. You know what? Let’s go now to Pinal County in Arizona. Our senior national correspondent Brian Entin is live patrolling there, what they call smugglers highway Brian, what are you seeing?
ENTIN: Yeah, it’s I-10 the nickname — Smugglers Highway. Just a minute ago, we pulled over a semi with Sheriff Lamb here — a semi that’s been reported stolen. I’m not sure exactly — he’s been talking to the driver. Figure out what’s going on. Sheriff Lamb, have you — is this immigrant involved? What have you been able to figure out?
PINAL COUNTY, ARIZONA SHERIFF MARK LAMB: We’re going check the back right now. It’s a stolen — it’s stolen trailer. So, we’re going to check the back. We’ve seen ‘em in — in trailers before.
(….)
ABRAMS: I mean, look, you can just tell based on what we just showing you, right? We have two correspondents at the border who, in the last 10 minutes, have seen major activity related to migrants and the border. That’s why it’s important to be there and to be there live. You don’t get that sense without actually watching the stuff as it happening? All right. So we were just with Ali Bradley. Alright? And she said — she is — she’s going to be going back out to that scene following that story that we were just watching, but she’s the one who got this exclusive interview with this current border agent. And again, that is the video — oh, actually that video is just coming in, ok? So that is the video now of up to of the three migrants who were just arrested there hiding in that area and, literally in the last 10 minutes that came in. The reason we weren’t able to show that to you a moment ago is because we just got the video into us. It happened moments before we went on the air. And you heard that Ali Bradley had actually talked to — talked to one of them as they were as they were there. And again, you know, this is a quite common occurrence at the border.
Bradley also taped a bombshell interview with an anonymous border agent, who told her what Americans don’t realize was “we do not control the border, the cartel controls the border” and “[e]verything that we do is a reaction to things that they have planned” with those apprehended merely “pawns while the kings and queens are doing whatever they want.”
They added “[n]o one” from the government will be able “to protect you” since “[e]ven at the local law enforcement level, we’re seeing them be defunded and overwhelmed to where your life has to be threatened for them to make you a priority.”
In part two, Bradley asked if they’re “scared to do your job.” The agent said while they are from “a more earthly” perspective with “policies changed” that endanger agents and place “illegals…before us,” they’re a Christian who knows God “has my back”.
Bradley’s last question about whether they’re more scared of the government or the cartels drew a surprising answer:
Look at the way you have me presented to do an interview when I’m off-duty. I’m terrified to talk to the media because I’m sacred of what, you know, the government could do, which obviously, would be losing my job, right, which I don’t think is fair.
At three different points, Abrams brought out charts about apprehensions, gotaways, and key border sectors to show “what our border patrol agents are up against” with the first showing “2.5 million encounters for the whole of last year,” “up from 1.7, just two years before” and 1.3 million already this year.
Bradley came back near the bottom of the hour with a fascinating segment about a so-called “cartel kit” and how, in many places, the cartels controlled the desert:
It wasn’t just Bradley and Entin with Abrams as the NewsNation host also spoke with Border Report correspondent Salvador Rivera, who provided two liveshots from San Diego (where an allegedly Peruvian family gave themselves up to Border Patrol), the four police chiefs, and interviewed Texas DPS Lieutenant Chris Olivarez on the state role.
The hour concluded with a tense chase as Bradley and Olivarez raced to catch up and assist Border Patrol with five people who’ve breached the border wall in hopes of apprehending them before they can reach a cartel/smuggler’s getaway car and thus prevent “a high-speed chase.”
They arrived to find only two of the five captured, but then were dispatched to join in another pursuit seconds later (click “expand” to see a transcript from some of the key moments):
BRADLEY: [W]e just pulled over here. We’re tracking that group that we were telling you about. So there’s a couple individuals here. Some single adults here that were just picked up by border patrol. I — we just arrived on scene. Lieutenant Olivarez, let’s talk a little bit about kind of what’s unfolding here. We literally just arrived, so we have not talked to Border Patrol, so we don’t know much about these individuals.
OLIVAREZ: Actually, we got to go. We’ve got some more. We’ve got to go. You’ve got to go get some more guys. All right. Let’s go!
(….)
BRADLEY: You actually see a Border Patrol motorcycle dirt bike over here to our left. So, we’ve got activity out here. We’re following a Border Patrol car. A lot activity here right now down, Dan. So again, out here, you have ATVs, you have horseback, you’ve got helicopters, we have different lights over here. We’ve got another law enforcement vehicle that’s searching in this area, so it looks like they kind of believe that somebody might be on foot in this area that we are — we are that we are traveling along. And we’ve got our windows down, we’re looking out we’re trying to find if there’s anybody out here, this is what we’re up against. So, like, Lieutenant Olivarez says, these individuals are reaching this wall so quickly, a matter of seconds, and it is basically off to the races for these individuals and they’re hiding in this very thick brush. And look at this, this industrial — there are buildings everywhere. There are so many places to hide before these individuals are really picked up by these load vehicles, so that’s what they’re contending with down here like Lieutenant Olivarez says, it’s a very dynamic situation. So, again, we have multiple agencies on the ground right no. We are embedded with this elite brush team that, as you can see, they have to pivot and go in the vehicles and go after individuals that are getting into these smuggling vehicles before it can become a pursuit and a bigger problem for law enforcement and also for the community. It’s very dangerous when these pursuits go through these communities.
(….)
BRADLEY: [This] is what they’re doing every single night down here. This is what we did last night as well. But right now, we are looking for people that are we are on foot that just breached the border wall and we’re trying to get them before they get into a loaded vehicle — a smuggling vehicle and then end up basically going north toward San Antonio and then north from there into whatever stash house or whatever other area they kind of disappear into in the interior of our country.
With time having run out on the hour, Abrams summarized this as just “happen[ing] to be a Thursday”: “That’s about all that makes today special and we just decided it’s important to see what’s happening at the border on a typical day. And we’ve got a little taste of it. That’s all. That’s all we saw. Just a little bit.”
By giving viewers a raw, live sense of what a day on the border looked like (as opposed to a sanitized, pro-illegal-alien perspective), it was an absolute home run by NewsNation.
To see the relevant transcript from the May 9 special, click here.