Arizona AG Given Free Rein To Spy On Financial Records

A possibly illegal database of financial transactions has been kept for years by the Arizona state government. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

Check out our merch by visiting our store

Subscribe to our podcast

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A possibly illegal database of financial transactions have been kept for years by the Arizona State government. Wow. Go ahead, go ahead with this story.

Yeah. This is one of those things that we always talk about, about with the slippery slope of things. And this is exactly what we've got here. You've got the Arizona secretary of State basically, or Attorney General, excuse me. And years and years ago, all the way back to the Bush administration, they said, listen, we got a lot of crime.

Mm-hmm.

So what we need to do, Department of Homeland Security, is we need to be able to monitor these financial transactions going through, you know, Western Union and MoneyGram. That's how the criminals are moving the money. And we can get that and we can take care of it. Give us the authority to do it. So Homeland Security says, yeah, go ahead and do it. Well, it only took a couple years before the state of Arizona thought, you know what? We don't just have to, we've been given a blank check, we don't have to just look at the criminals. We can analyze any money transfer.

Mm-hmm.

And so what.

Over five, $500.

Yeah, over $500. So what they started doing was without warrants of any kind, they would issue what's been described as fake subpoenas to these money organizations getting all the records from these individuals that were not under investigation.

Well, it's part of the way to deal with immigrants to say, well, we can follow what you're doing.

Yeah.

You, you wrote an interesting, you, you sent this story to me, top of the story. This is your, my take on the following story is that they continue to go after the migrant, migrants working in America, not the companies that are illegally employing them. And so this is kind of one of the things you're talking about here.

It is.

This is how let's go target that migrant worker who might be sending $500 back home so the family can live back in Mexico or El Salvador, wherever it is. Correct?

Right. And, and they're getting paid under the table. You know, the boss of whatever it is, whatever, you know, small factory or, or, you know, yard maintenance service is huge. They'll pay 'em in cash.

Right.

They take that cash to a Western Union, say, I need to get this $500 to Mexico, because that's where they were looking at the transfers going. And so then when immigration comes to crack down on these people, they're not going to the employer.

Right.

They're going to the individual.

The chicken farms.

Exactly.

The, the, the big massive cattle, you know, it, it's, it's nobody else will take these jobs is their position right now.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what Davos, Davos, Switzerland, that was kind of their talking point. We have to bring 'em in because Americans just don't wanna work. That was really what they said out there because, so we have to let 'em out over the border. Now your point being is we let 'em over the border, they take the job that we expect 'em to take, and then organizations like this go target them for sending $500 back home because they know where they live now.

Yeah.

You know.

And, and so then they take that migrant, the immigrant ship 'em back. Then the employer just says, okay, they'll be another one tomorrow. So I'm fine. I can keep doing this.

And, and I can pay 'em substandard wages. If they break their arm, I send them back to Mexico. If the, if they're, if they're killed on the job, I send 'em in a body bag back to Mexico. I don't have any responsibility after that. That's what this is all about. And that's what kind of Davos, that's what they were talking about in Davos, Switzerland. That's, this is great. This is great. US Chamber of Commerce loves this.

They do.

They're behind this. But the US Chamber of Commerce won't say, hey, wait just a second.