“Americans across the country have to know,” Captain Jaeson Jones declared in the new docu-series Border Battle, “that the failure of the United States government to adjust to these cartels is what has driven the worst overdose death crisis in American history.” The retired Texas DPS intelligence and counter-terrorism official warns, “This will get worse before it gets better, but this issue is absolutely fixable.”

To fix the issue and end the crisis, however, Americans have to understand the scope of it. Border Battle, from Turning Point USA, is now airing on the Salem Now platform. (Full disclosure: Salem Now is a subsidiary of Salem Media Group, which also owns Townhall Media and Hot Air.) The six-part series brings us closer to the border than ever, and relies on experts in law enforcement, intelligence, victims’ families, and more to reveal the dangers of the militarized cartels and their poisonous reach into America through human trafficking and fentanyl trafficking in particular.

To delve more deeply into both the series and the crisis, I spoke with Bryce Eddy in the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast, one of the experts featured in Border Battle as well as the host of Salem Podcast Network’s Liberty Station. As part of the effort, Bryce and his team spent considerable time on the border working with US agents and seeing the problem up close. And the biggest problem, Bryce tells me, is that the agencies that could help fix the issue are “being held back by our current administration.”

“These guys want to do the work,” Bryce says, but the lack of support has created a situation where we have lost control of the border. “Those cartels run things down there,” Bryce tells me, and that’s a real threat to national security. “They are a military organization. It’s phenomenal to see,” Bryce adds, in all the wrong ways.

In fact, the cartels operate tactically on both sides of the border, Bryce reveals. “The cartels have forward operating bases on our side of the border, on US soil,” he says. “We’re talking guys with rifles,” he explains, “AK-47s, AR-15s, fully kitted out with body armor and everything that a military operation would need.”

That’s not the worst of it on either side of the border, either. In the first episode, Bryce describes rape trees, related to the cartel’s massive human trafficking. “There are stations along the route,” Bryce explains, “where they will shackle women who are unwilling against trees, and they hang their underwear as trophies in the trees. “I don’t want to be too graphic,” he adds, “but condoms and and little girls’  underwear and everything littered at the base of these trees.”

“It’s sickening. It makes you want to throw up,” I replied, “and it makes you realize that there needs to be such a sense of urgency with this issue right now.” That’s the message of Border Battle as well.

Bryce and I discuss much more about the docu-series, the border crisis, and his own podcast, so be sure to watch it all. Today’s show also features my morning run-down of the news, plus more! And finally, I also have the trailer for Border Battle embedded below. Some images are NSFW and disturbing for some viewers.

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!