040 - From Venezuela to U.S. Borders - Eddy Weiss Talks Tren de Aragua and Gang Threats

Welcome to another compelling episode of the De-Escalation Conversations Podcast. In this episode, host Kerry Mensior sits down with disaster and border crisis expert, Eddy Weiss, for an eye-opening discussion on the security issues facing the U.S. today. Eddy delves into insights from his book "Chaos Across Continents: Venezuela's Impact on America's Front Lines" and discusses the pervasive threat of gangs like Tren de Aragua infiltrating migrant shelters and urban areas across the country. Through this conversation, Eddy Weiss highlights the importance of situational awareness and community vigilance, stressing that these issues, while deeply political, fundamentally affect our families and communities. Stay tuned as we explore current security challenges, the influence of historical contexts, and the crucial need for effective De-Escalation strategies. Don't miss out on this essential discussion providing both knowledge and actionable steps for tackling these pressing concerns.

Kerry Mensior [00:00:08]:
Welcome to the De-Escalation Conversations podcast. Today, I have one of my favorite people in the entire world on with me. And for many years, EG Weiss has been on the front lines of America's disasters, including our crisis at the border. Eddy has been researching and presenting on the effect that our border crisis is having on America and created Eddy shadows. And you can find that attadashadows.com. And it's a project funded through the Life in the Arena Foundation. And he has also now written a book about our country's newest threat, Tren de Aragua. I didn't know much about Tren de Aragua.

Kerry Mensior [00:00:57]:
I mean, I heard a few things. I heard about Aurora, Colorado. Heard and then I heard it was a bunch of BS, and then I heard, no, it's not BS. I didn't know much. And Eddy and I were talking one day, and he opened my eyes. And what I did was this. I put everything else on hold. And I said, Eddy, people have to know more about this.

Kerry Mensior [00:01:22]:
They have to know about it from the expert, you, and you need to be able to take this to our listeners. So, literally, I tore up the entire podcast plan for season 2 and started fresh. And Eddy's episode is the first episode of season 2, specifically because this stuff is so important to your personal safety. I don't care if you're a law enforcement officer, a firefighter, a medic. If you're a k to 12 school teacher, you're in corporate. I don't care. If you are walking this planet in the United States, you need to be aware of this threat. So, Eddy, thanks for being on the show today.

Eddy Weiss [00:02:06]:
Oh, it's a pleasure. This is gonna be great.

Kerry Mensior [00:02:08]:
I agree. Let's take a step back because starting this, TDA Shadows.com, writing a book, you have really well, you as I said a moment ago, you've been on the front lines for decades. But this particular threat that's facing us right now, how did this become important to you?

Eddy Weiss [00:02:38]:
It was an awareness that, it kind of almost washed over me while I was working on a project back in 2021 where I was involved with, a lot of the unaccompanied minors. And you remember that that was all in the news. In 2028, 2021, we had all of these people coming across the border. Of course, they were bringing COVID and but then there's all of the politics. And so, you know, we had children in cages and and all of that. You know, the what happened was the news stories, the the news cycle wore out really quickly on on all of that, and it was because both sides were to blame, and so they didn't like that. You know, they they did the whole pointing the finger, so Foro is pointing back, and both sides did that. So one of the one of the most major things that occurred in 2021 that only hit the news cycle very briefly was the fact that we took thousands of, teenage boys and put them in the Dallas Convention Center.

Eddy Weiss [00:03:44]:
They had all come into the country almost at once over a period of several weeks. There is no sheltering space for them at all. And so the Dallas Convention Center was pinpointed as a location to push them through. There is a new documentary out called Line in the Sand that, talks about some of the failures of our system and how when they brought all of those in, I was placed, overseeing a majority of the operations there. I was watching these boys, and they were fighting age males in the countries that they came from. Here, they were young teenage boys. So humanitarian aid is what we were doing. That was how it was labeled.

Eddy Weiss [00:04:29]:
That's not what I was seeing. I immediately picked up on the fact that they would gather in small groups whispering off in corners. They had their cell phones when they arrived, and they were in constant contact. I noticed, overwhelming similarities. They would literally show up. Give you an example. We would get a young boy that would show up, and he would have a sandwich bag. And this is what he had come across the river with.

Eddy Weiss [00:04:58]:
And in that sealed ziplock was a phone, some money usually. And then, every once in a while, you'd see a rosary, but there would be a scrap of paper. Usually no larger than a post it note handwritten with a name and an address. So when they would come into the intake process, they would open that ziplock and they would hand us that paper. Well, that was their aunt. Aunt Consuelo. She lives in New York. Or this was uncle Julio, and he lives in Denver.

Eddy Weiss [00:05:31]:
But there was there was no way to really vet that. And so the system was that we had to reach out to these people whose names are on this piece of paper. Well, now we're talking about 100 that were showing up all the same way. The little ziplock bag, the little written notes. It was like, wow. There it's like a system. Like, there is I think there is people giving away ziplocks at the river or something because it was awfully weird that they were all like this. Well, what would happen is we would reach out to these people and say, are you at Consuelo? Well, of course, she is.

Eddy Weiss [00:06:07]:
So now we were taking literally temps that were that were going through a training and driving or or flying with these children and dropping them off with their relatives. Now whether or not they were all really relatives or not, I have no idea. The vetting system was so poor, but then the directive came that we had to start moving a 1,000 at a time. Get them in. Get them out. Get them in. Get them out. The humanitarian thing stepped in hard on us, and you can't keep these kids locked up because, remember, that was the big deal on the news.

Eddy Weiss [00:06:42]:
Can't keep them locked up. So keep in mind, they were in a convention center that was wide open, and they were all playing soccer in their socks. It was fun. But so they weren't locked up, but they were detained there until we found a home. The problem was that when they started saying you gotta move them a 1,000 at a time, that vetting system went down to literally almost minutes. So two things were happening. We were catching some of them in lies as to even how old they were. And so we get the 18, 19, 20 year olds that were saying they're 14.

Eddy Weiss [00:07:19]:
And then the other thing was we were adding staff as private contractors like crazy that really shouldn't have been vetting anybody. And but that's who is doing that process. So in other words, we became a travel agency and with the United States government money. When I started noticing the little clicks, the conversations, when I started eavesdropping and starting to gather intelligence, I started noticing tattoos, similar tattoos. And the more I asked questions, the more I found out a bunch of these kids, even though they are 14 years old, 12 years old, these were TDA. These were these these were the Tren de Aragua gang members. I am convinced now looking at where we have our hot spots, Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin, Arizona, Denver, New York, even out west. This was a plan, and it was a smart plan.

Eddy Weiss [00:08:21]:
This was I have a background in, in the faith based community, and this is exactly how you plant a church. You send people out to witness in the neighborhood until you get enough of them, then you start a home fellowship. And when that gets big enough, you build another church. This is how church planting works. And Tren de Aragua was very smart because that's what they did. Think about it now. These kids are now all 18, 19, 20 years old. They're all in those locations where we saw the hot spots of where, oddly enough, they all had relatives.

Eddy Weiss [00:08:56]:
And now here they are, out on the streets, and we're only just now hearing about it. When I reported it, I was told it wasn't a big deal. When I reported it, it didn't fit into the humanitarian aid side of things. So I was completely ignored. And I think that was the worst part of it was that that is what completely overwhelmed me was I knew that we are facilitating something that wasn't right.

Kerry Mensior [00:09:23]:
How big is this issue?

Eddy Weiss [00:09:26]:
2 days ago, there was a report that came out. The FBI is going to be adding about 100 of these gang members to their most wanted list, and they're estimating that there are 600 in the United States. However, I have a friend of mine, by the name of Daniel Brunner. He's a a special agent with the FBI, retired. And he was just on television last night, and him and I are in agreement that we are probably looking at numbers more like 4 to 75100. And that would be active, dangerous, older, not playing around.

Kerry Mensior [00:10:07]:
4000 4000. To 7500. Yeah. That's that's a big issue. That that I believe that falls in the definition of big issues.

Eddy Weiss [00:10:17]:
I'm not military, but that's a good sized army. I mean, we we sent less people over to Israel at a time.

Kerry Mensior [00:10:27]:
Yeah. So

Eddy Weiss [00:10:28]:
you so if you think about it, that is that's pretty scary when you send Eddy force of that size that all have the same goal anywhere.

Kerry Mensior [00:10:39]:
Why are we only now just barely seeing this in the news?

Eddy Weiss [00:10:44]:
I think one of the reasons why is because if we're gonna really look at this, we're gonna have to we're gonna have to take some responsibility as to how they got here. We we allowed them in and, you know, if you've it's Halloween, so everybody's watching those movies, you know, and especially the bad ones. If you're not, you should. Go back to all the movies from the 19 eighties when horror movies changed. If there's a vampire running around in the mansion, somebody let him in. And you can complain all you want about being killed, but at some point, the person being killed is probably the person that let him in. And that's what's happened. I think that now the responsibility of who let him who who let them in, we're already starting to see this a little bit.

Eddy Weiss [00:11:31]:
It's like, there was a problem. There was a home invasion up in up in Chicago. Immediately, the other channel says, well, you wanna know Weiss? Well, that Trump Trump did that. And then all of a sudden the next day, they take over an apartment complex, and there's Donald Trump going, oh, you wanna know how they got into that? Kamala Harris let him in. And it's like so we're immediately doing it again. And so I think there's some journalists out there that are really trying, but I think I don't think you were really hearing about it. Like, I mean, you almost have to rephrase your question. You Eddy, why are we suddenly hearing about it? I think it's just report overflow.

Eddy Weiss [00:12:12]:
I think don't I think what you're hearing right now is only what cannot be hidden. You you cannot hide an entire apartment complex being overwhelmed. You know, you've got, like, governor Abbott steps up and says, this is a this is an international terrorist organization, and he deemed them such in September. But that that never hit mainstream media. And if it does, I mean, god help governor Abbott because it's just the you know, it's gonna be, oh my god. He's a racist. That's an election campaign. He just doesn't like Venezuelans.

Eddy Weiss [00:12:48]:
That's what we're doing with all of these issues. And, you know, we did the same thing, I think, with COVID. And I think that one of my burdens that I'm feeling right now with the knowledge that I have is I remember when COVID started, as somebody that had worked on infectious disease control so much, it was really weird because CDC immediately said, okay. Here's COVID. Here's what we should do. But they didn't say that to everybody. They said that to the states. The states then said it to the counties.

Eddy Weiss [00:13:24]:
And the way it just trickles down, and I know you know this about law enforcement too, it works this way. If all of a sudden you find out that the 1911 handgun no longer works at the federal level, they tell the handgun division the handgun division tells the state, the state tells the county, the county tells your chief, and your chief is so damn busy, you might find out about it, but probably not if you're on night shift. Well, that's what happened with COVID. EMTs didn't even know what to do with COVID until 6 months in because of the trickle down of information. The FBI and Homeland Security has known about this. They've known about this since I reported it. But they're only now starting to do things, And unfortunately, I think that that's even political too. I I think that people don't realize how bad this really is and where.

Eddy Weiss [00:14:18]:
Because Eddy enough, all the news stories are San Antonio, Chicago, Denver, Aurora, Colorado. Chicago has got major issues right now. These boys, if that's what we're gonna call them, that came here and are coming here now, they're all from small towns where they come from. And I'm seeing them gravitating towards what makes them comfortable. So I live in a town of less than 800 people, but that looks like home to these guys. And I'm right in between Dallas and San Antonio. So I think that one of the reasons why I'm pushing so hard to provide education is because I think every community in the United States is at risk on this one.

Kerry Mensior [00:15:08]:
Yeah. Makes sense. He not that Eddy of political organization. In fact, we're we're actually prohibited from being involved in any kind of politics. So I I I asked this question for responsibility level. Is this a Biden thing? Is it a Trump thing? I'm not saying because of politics. I'm saying, for 2 different groups of people who are approaching dealing with this problem or not dealing with it. How how does that fall in?

Eddy Weiss [00:15:40]:
It's so weird that we blame, like, those people that are way at the top as if they make every decision.

Kerry Mensior [00:15:48]:
Yeah. When they don't. We know that.

Eddy Weiss [00:15:51]:
And they absolutely do not. When when you have the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is not you don't vote for them. So I I'll take the politics out of your organization right here. The Office of Refugee Resettlement is they're not elected. That is the Department of the United States. They set the system up that let us in. Homeland Security has been managed for years by politicians, not experts. So I think that there's departments and divisions that are responsible for this.

Eddy Weiss [00:16:27]:
This is I don't believe that this is a Democrat thing. I don't believe this is a Republican thing. I think that this is a this is a security issue, and there are a lot of people in charge of that that are not elected. But I think that they're being coerced into being afraid to take a greater stance. And I think what's happened to our Homeland Security is the same thing that's happened to law enforcement, you know, which I know that you talk about a lot. It's like, we want you to be strong. We want our community to be safe. Wait.

Eddy Weiss [00:16:57]:
Please tiptoe, if you would, and try to Weiss. And wear all black and only go out at night, and that way people won't notice you're there. Yeah.

Kerry Mensior [00:17:08]:
Yeah. So you've written a new book.

Eddy Weiss [00:17:12]:
Mhmm.

Kerry Mensior [00:17:13]:
Chaos Across Continents, Venezuela's Impact on America's Front Lines. Mhmm. Why that title?

Eddy Weiss [00:17:25]:
When I run into people in my life, I try to understand them, and I know that's a big part of de escalation is understanding where someone's coming from. And I can sit here and say that they're involved in human trafficking and drugs and all of these things and all the violence, but to totally understand where they're coming from and how they're able to recruit like they are in middle schools right here in Texas. We're catching them doing it. We need I think that we need to and I've always said this in my books and and from in speaking. Let's go historically back and find out where this started. How did they become like they are? You know, de escalation doesn't start right there on the street with the guy that's angry. If it's gonna be effective, you gotta understand the guy's wife left him yesterday and he was fired on Tuesday. That's gonna help you a whole lot.

Eddy Weiss [00:18:19]:
And so that's what I do with the book. I kind of I kind of took lead from from what you teach and train on, and I Eddy, let's go back and find out why they're in a bad mood. Let's go find out why they're violent. Let's go find out why why they have this hunger for these things that they're after. And so the book actually goes back all the way to the beginnings of Venezuela. The upheaval and uproar that's that's been in that country since its very birth. This is what these people were raised in. So they are a a definite product of a horrible environment.

Eddy Weiss [00:18:55]:
And so what they've done is they've they've, kind of adopted a lifestyle that they believe is the only survival technique. That's how they began. In 2014, this whole thing began in the toquerom prisons. And so they already had that mindset that, oh, if we're already guilty, then let's just keep being guilty. It's much easier. So I think understanding that is gonna help us stop a lot of the recruitment and things that we're seeing now in the United States. Because now I'm more I'm I'm almost equally as worried about who they're recruiting as to how many are coming in. Because those numbers could start to match very soon, which means for every 1,000 that comes in, we have 2.

Kerry Mensior [00:19:38]:
Yeah. You know, it's funny how you mentioned that going back to the roots. I still distinctly remember. I know I'm probably gonna get some hate from the Boston folks. But I distinctly remember there was there was, Diane and I and 2 of our friends who were also law enforcement officers. We we traveled to Boston, and and we took a 3 day cruise to the Bahamas and came back to Boston. We spent several days in Boston. Now if you think about how Boston began during the American Revolution, the Boston Tea Party.

Kerry Mensior [00:20:15]:
There was all sorts of stuff during the American revolution that was all conflict. And it was funny because everybody that we're in, and I say everybody, not every single person, but the vast majority of people. It just had Weiss confrontational feel to the town.

Eddy Weiss [00:20:35]:
Oh, yes.

Kerry Mensior [00:20:37]:
And Diane and I were we were walking around. We were, I was doing this little tour thing, and they're talking about on this square, this protest happened. And over here, this happened, and this sparked this aspect of the revolutionary war. And and we at one point, we looked at each other and went, got it. They have been arguing since Boston was born. They've been in confrontation since Boston was born. Really unique feel to that town. And what was hilarious is we were in the store, and we met this really nice person.

Kerry Mensior [00:21:12]:
And I said to her, I said, Eddy know, I gotta tell you. You're like the nicest person I've ever met in Boston. Have you noticed it? And she goes, yeah. When I moved here, I noticed it right away.

Eddy Weiss [00:21:24]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Mensior [00:21:26]:
And and she was from the Midwest. And I'm like, okay. Well, now I understand why you're so nice. Okay.

Eddy Weiss [00:21:31]:
She's not from Boston.

Kerry Mensior [00:21:32]:
She goes, I've been here, like, 2 months or I'm Kerry. 2 years. And, it's

Eddy Weiss [00:21:37]:
Well, you think think about Canadians, what they say about Canadians, how kind they are all the time. Everybody's like, Canadians are just they're always kind. They're always kind. Well, everything well, yeah, the whole environment. But New Orleans is one of my favorite places in the whole wide world. And every time I drag a close friend to New Orleans for a week, they on the second day, they're like, this is stupid. These people are crazy. And I'm like, no.

Eddy Weiss [00:22:04]:
No. No. No. No. They're not crazy. They understand that life is short. Yeah. It it's a party all the time because they're about to get 40 feet of water in here again.

Eddy Weiss [00:22:15]:
That so

Kerry Mensior [00:22:19]:
Yeah. It's so interesting how how a town, a city, an area, in this case, a country, Venezuela, can be born or raised in turmoil and how it defines it, because Canada doesn't have that turmoil. Haven't has never had that level of turmoil. They Canada in the last 5 years has had more turmoil than in the history of the country.

Eddy Weiss [00:22:49]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Mensior [00:22:50]:
Yeah. And and and and and what are you seeing? You're seeing truckers shut down the routes of commerce in protest. That's not a Canadian thing.

Eddy Weiss [00:23:03]:
Mhmm.

Kerry Mensior [00:23:04]:
But they're they're they're being faced with all this conflict that is raising that up. So okay. I don't wanna get too far off track.

Eddy Weiss [00:23:13]:
No. But I think that that influence is important though, you know, when you think about who the who their leadership is. When we went after MS 13, which I think y'all did a great job on, you know, as law enforcement, you MS thirteen's out there, but they're not out there like they were. You know, we went after the mob. We did pretty well with the mob. And, well, we say calm down, moved. But, maybe they relocated. But we always went after the head.

Eddy Weiss [00:23:41]:
Right? I mean, when we take down take down Capone, there's no more Capone group. And that's how we did that. We're we can't do that with this because what they call cranes, the the word that they use is cranes, the the all of their leadership's in prison. Well, we we can't cut the head off the snake on this one because the head is already cut off, and it's still alive. Yeah. It's and we so we can't even get to it. So all of that leadership is coming out of Tokeron Prison still to this day. So we can't cut the head off the snake, which means we've gotta start doing this from street level up.

Eddy Weiss [00:24:24]:
And that's why I think the training and the education has to be where it needs to be in in the health care system, clinics, schools, law enforcement, EMS. How do you recognize them? How because by the way, you can't just walk up and go, Kerry. Are you TDA? Because they that's not how they play. So you've gotta learn how to recognize them. Recognize the signs. You know, learn about what that graffiti looks like. You're driven by that stop sign 6 times in the last 2 months. You know what that means? They're here.

Eddy Weiss [00:24:56]:
They're in your town.

Kerry Mensior [00:24:59]:
So TDA, Tren de Aragua.

Eddy Weiss [00:25:01]:
Yep.

Kerry Mensior [00:25:01]:
Tell me just a kind of a brief overview. We know it's a Venezuelan gang. Mhmm. You drew a parallel to MS 13. Tell us a little bit more so we understand okay. So they're gang members. What's the big deal? We have lots of gangs. We have Bloods.

Kerry Mensior [00:25:21]:
We have Crips. We have Lincoln Park. We have, Logan Redstepps. We have all sorts of gangs. This one you're saying is different. Tell us a little bit about this gang and and and why we need to be concerned about it.

Eddy Weiss [00:25:38]:
It's interesting that, when you look at how this gang operates, their roots, their very name, that whole trend Eddy, aragua is they're from the aragua region, and that trend train is because they were actually from an area that was a transportation hub in Venezuela. So all these guys that are in prison right now were born and raised in a transportation hub. So you go to Pittsburgh, you got all the steel workers. Right? You go to Kentucky, you got all the mining people. Their children and their children's children have never been in a mine, but they can all they can all sing coal miner's daughter. They all know it. Well, that's exactly how this works. And so these guys are were transportation experts.

Eddy Weiss [00:26:27]:
That was the environment at which they were raised. So we've already talked about that tumult that all that tension, but now they had all of this transportation that was a specialty. So when they took all of that that anger and the violence and the need to constantly be fighting and the transportation, and they put those two things together, they literally became traffickers, the ultimate traffickers. So what they did was they reached out and initially, 2 other gangs in South America, and they said, hey. You wanna play? We're looking to franchise. And the gangs that said, not interested. We like our identity. They slaughtered them.

Eddy Weiss [00:27:08]:
And the other ones, the smart ones, said, yeah. We can see this partnership working. So what they did was they rose up through those gangs into the cartels like Sinaloa. Now to let you know how organized this is, we just intercepted a memo. So we're talking about a street gang here. We intercepted a written memo. That's a corporate structure that gave permission to TDA members to start shooting border patrol on-site down at the border.

Kerry Mensior [00:27:41]:
Holy crap.

Eddy Weiss [00:27:44]:
So these are businessmen. These are incredibly shrewd businessmen.

Kerry Mensior [00:27:51]:
Why give the green light on that?

Eddy Weiss [00:27:55]:
Fear. I think they're starting to see that their name is getting out there a little bit more in America, and I think fear. I they're they use it well. It's been used in Venezuela since day 1 to control people. And so I think, with what's happening in the United States and what they know is happening, they know we're distracted. The world knows that we're distracted. So if they can create that kind of fear at an upper level in our own homeland security system, then they're just gonna keep coming right across. Because they know that here in the United States, we'll spend the next 3 years doing research and studies and arguing and making and making it a political issue to decide what to do about this.

Eddy Weiss [00:28:42]:
Like, do we shoot back? Yep. One of the eye one side of the aisle says, yep. The other side says, no. Let they know how we operate here. Nothing's stopping them. This is a corporate structure that doesn't have to follow any corporate rules.

Kerry Mensior [00:28:59]:
Well, the decision making there's there's no lag time there.

Eddy Weiss [00:29:03]:
Mhmm.

Kerry Mensior [00:29:04]:
Alright. Oh,

Eddy Weiss [00:29:04]:
no. They're they're much more flexible than we are.

Kerry Mensior [00:29:09]:
So besides that memo, what can you tell us about other recent events that should have us on edge in wanting to know more?

Eddy Weiss [00:29:20]:
One lodging is one of the issues. When you're gonna move that many troops somewhere, even if it's over the course of 3, 4 years, you have to build army bases. And so there's only 2 ways that you're gonna do that. You're either gonna borrow property or you're just gonna take over property. That's how every military works. So like I said, these guys are smart. So when we see what happened in Aurora, when we saw what hap what's happening in Chicago right now with the apartment complexes, we are gonna keep seeing more and more for all the really old people that are listening to your to your podcast. We're gonna see Caprini Greens again.

Eddy Weiss [00:29:57]:
We're gonna see entire complexes that are taken over like this because that's how they do it in Venezuela. They're gonna take it over. They're gonna stake their ground. They're gonna say this is our property, and we're gonna have a repeat of what we saw with Caprini Green in Chicago, what, 4 decades ago. And so because you have to house your people, and you wanna keep them all together because you wanna train them, you wanna feed them, you wanna finance them, you wanna have meetings with them. So, I mean, every army throughout history build a fortress. Right? The other thing is we are accommodating them. You asked about more recent things.

Eddy Weiss [00:30:32]:
Obviously, we're seeing home invasions and human trafficking and drugs. But the big concern should be, 1, taking over housing projects and and areas. Their fight Bloods and Crips are backing off in Southern Chicago right now because TDA has moved in on them and is going to war. But here's the other thing. We're accommodating them. We said, you guys come on, and we'll give you a place to stay, and we'll finance you. So when you start looking at the numbers, the staggering numbers in the 100 of 1,000 that we're giving apartments to that are in shelters, We now have we just had it happen in New York, I think, 3 days ago, and you can see that on my website. I wrote about it on there.

Eddy Weiss [00:31:19]:
I think it was 3 days ago where they discovered that there's a whole group of TDA that was manipulating everybody in the shelter. They, they injured a couple of people. I think they murdered somebody outside of the shelter. They're they're controlling a migrant shelter in New York City. So, you know, it's like it it's come on. We'll put the tent up. You come on. We'll give you an apartment.

Eddy Weiss [00:31:46]:
We'll give you the finances that you need. And I don't want people to think that, you know, I'm all about, like, building a wall with no gates. You know? I I I've never I've never been that way. I was a part of the evacuation out of Afghanistan, and that changed my world forever. And and there are people that I love dearly that I helped come into this country from Afghanistan. I don't I don't think we need to just shut everything off and and and go, you know, 8 months crazy and disclose the border. But we've gotta find some kind of balance between humanitarian aid and homeland security. And I don't think we found that balance yet, and I don't even I don't think it's about administration because it seems to change every day.

Eddy Weiss [00:32:35]:
We keep toggling back and forth between homeland security and humanitarian aid. And and I think that's what's causing a lot of the problems. We've since we became a travel agency 4 years ago with these guys.

Kerry Mensior [00:32:54]:
Well, alright. So you said you're living in Texas. Is this a bigger problem for you than, say, someone in New Jersey or Utah?

Eddy Weiss [00:33:05]:
Two sides to that Mensior, yes. Because, because they're coming through here. We there was just, down just north of Juarez, there's a little town, called Tortilla. I'm a I'm a I'm I'm not able to do the whole rolling the, the consonants. So I'll say tortilla. Company. Someone will write me an email.

Kerry Mensior [00:33:29]:
You're talking tortilla?

Eddy Weiss [00:33:31]:
I'd say what? Yeah. It's just yeah. It's like that. Okay. Alright. Gotcha. There's this I know that there's this little town that's just north of Juarez. I know this didn't make it to the news cycle.

Eddy Weiss [00:33:43]:
There was just a gunfight with National Guard on that highway

Kerry Mensior [00:33:47]:
Oh, wow.

Eddy Weiss [00:33:48]:
In Texas. So, yeah, it's an issue to us here, because of proximity to the heaviest entry, which would be El Paso right now through these guys. But what I saw working the migrant shelters and the transportation of migrants, now this is this is still as big a problem in New Jersey as it is here because I know where we sent them. I know how much we spent and how much time and how much effort was spent to make sure that they got to where they said they wanted to go

Kerry Mensior [00:34:30]:
or or where US

Eddy Weiss [00:34:31]:
where they're sent.

Kerry Mensior [00:34:33]:
Yeah. US government, largest Uber driver organization there is. Unbelievable. Wow. Okay. So Eddy shadows.com. Mhmm. You your book, Chaos Cross Continence, Venezuela's Impact on Americans America's Front Lines is available at tdashadows.com.

Eddy Weiss [00:34:57]:
Yep.

Kerry Mensior [00:34:58]:
And you're trying to educate different organizations and and agencies that are impacted. Can you shed some light on who those groups are and why this is important?

Eddy Weiss [00:35:11]:
Yeah. Right now, I'm targeting, hospitals, clinics. These people are part of our communities now, so they're using those services. So they're gonna walk into the door of an emergency room. They're not gonna walk in and shoot the place up. That that that's not what this is about. What this is about is they come into an emergency room. Do you have a basic situational awareness to recognize tattoos and contact law enforcement to say, hey.

Eddy Weiss [00:35:40]:
We're starting to see this in our community. Because law enforcement could be missing that. Clinics are the same. Schools I mean, like I said, they're recruiting in middle schools right now. That's 12 year old kids. Wow. So, you know, our teachers do teachers know what to look for? Do they know it's not profiling. There's very blatant things that you can see that I teach on, like tattoos and writing and things like that.

Eddy Weiss [00:36:07]:
But, you know, with bloods and crypts, it was easy. It was up, all the red, all the blue. With this, little more complicated, but still not that hard. You know, this isn't like 8 days of training. Community centers, organizations, faith based organizations, and then obviously, law enforcement and EMS. I think that I think that there's not an entity that doesn't need to have some kind of awareness so that we you know, a lot of people think that maybe the slogan changed or we got rid of this. They we used to say say no to drugs, and people are like, oh, yeah. That was Nancy Reagan.

Eddy Weiss [00:36:41]:
You know? So we'll just start legalizing everything. But here's something that hasn't changed. Homeland Security's slogan is still see something, say something. Hasn't changed, folks. But if you don't know what you're if you don't know what you're looking for, you're never gonna see it.

Kerry Mensior [00:37:01]:
Yeah. You don't know to be aware of it. It just blends in with the with all the other noise that's going on in people's lives. Okay. So people can get the book by going to tda shadows, t d a, Tom David Adam, or trindayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguayaraguay. Eddy shadows.com. They can order the book. They can, are they able to find out about training and how they can learn these things that they

Eddy Weiss [00:37:29]:
Absolutely.

Kerry Mensior [00:37:29]:
Absolutely must know?

Eddy Weiss [00:37:31]:
Yep. Yep. They can contact me right there. They can read about how the training, how the training works. It's very customizable. Like I said, this isn't hours and hours and hours of stuff. I am I am literally adjusting for everybody that reaches out to me so that I can fit it in to their world. And then you can also find out the updates.

Eddy Weiss [00:37:52]:
It's it's kinda scary. It's hard to stay up on it all the time. But usually, every day, there's something new there about TDA and what's happening or or who's doing what or or what agency is reporting what. And, and I'm throwing bits of the book and history in there as well. So, you know, you can go back. I think there's I think there's 8 pages of of kind of blog posts, if you would, in there.

Kerry Mensior [00:38:20]:
That's terrific. Because reality is our law enforcements, they're being caught off guard. And the dangers and the risk to law enforcement, it's it's growing. And I certainly don't wanna see gun battles on the on the street and unnecessary bloodshed. And law enforcement's gonna have to have every tool available. Yeah. Because if they haven't encountered TDA already, they're about to encounter them in their communities.

Eddy Weiss [00:38:50]:
Right. Yes. My my firefighting background, believe it or not, overlays with law enforcement a little, and that is that it's very rare when a firefighter reports a fire. It's the public. And that system has that system has worked for a long time, and it's worked pretty good. And our law enforcement right now is so inundated, so beat, so tired, so weary, so shorthanded. That's why the the training is important because we need the American public now to start calling in smoke before there's a fire.

Kerry Mensior [00:39:38]:
Yeah. For sure. For sure. Eddy, thanks for being with us today. As as we start to wrap things up, is there is there anything that that we haven't covered that you wanna make sure that people know about?

Eddy Weiss [00:39:52]:
I think I want everybody to know that, again, it's election time, so everybody's looking for that political statement. What did he say? How can I pick it apart? And, I think I would just ask that everybody understands this isn't a political issue. This is a this is an issue about your family. This is your 12 year old son who's being recruited. This is your 12 year old daughter who could be laying in an alley tomorrow because of this. So this is a personal thing. You know, I know I believe that what what we need to do is to start embracing our mistakes and moving forward. I had this conversation with my wife yesterday.

Eddy Weiss [00:40:37]:
I said, we need to start embracing our mistakes, and she hugged me. So that's how my day went.

Kerry Mensior [00:40:48]:
That's awesome. Well, hug from your wife is always a good hug. So, Eddy, thanks for being here. I appreciate it, folks. Check out t Eddy a shadows dot com for information about this threat that is it's not at our borders. It's throughout our country. And you need to make sure you know what to look for. And when you do look for it, when you do see something and recognize, hey.

Kerry Mensior [00:41:18]:
This is an issue. Don't be shy. Pick up the phone, see something, say something. Eddy, thanks again for being on the show. I look forward to

Eddy Weiss [00:41:25]:
Kerry welcome.

Kerry Mensior [00:41:26]:
Having you on because you are a an expert in so many different areas. You when we talk about SMEs, subject matter experts, you check the box in a lot of different subjects. So look forward to having you on future podcast episodes, and, thanks for taking your time. Definitely honored to have you here today.

Eddy Weiss [00:41:45]:
Thank you. Thank you.

Kerry Mensior [00:41:47]:
You are welcome. Thank you. Folks, make sure you check out the Eddy dot world. Make sure you check out tda shadows.com. And if you need deescalation training, come see us. You definitely need to be need to be checking out tda shadows.com so you can be aware of that. Take advantage of Eddy's training. And until next time, as always, stay safe.

Kerry Mensior [00:42:12]:
Bye for now.