Codie Sanchez

Why isn't this thing driving?

I don't know if you know this, if I've told you this before, but I went down to the border to report for the Associated Press a million years ago.

And I know you're like me.

You're like a hard charger.

So I was a hard charging college student.

But I had never been a real journalist.

Like my Spanish wasn't that great.

I didn't have a fixer to write these intense stories.

I had like a notebook.

I might've had a recorder because I don't even know if there are iPhones back then.

And I had a tip on a story everyone around me said was a terrible idea to do.

And I went anyway.

I stood at the border, I remember, to cross over the Rio Grande where there was barbed wire everywhere, barking dogs, a bunch of border patrol agents.

And I remember thinking, if I turn around right now,

No one will ever know I almost did this.

And then I walked across.

And actually kind of wild story.

The first thing I saw was a man getting stabbed right next to me.

So that was actually incredibly traumatizing, but I kept going.

And that day I found one of the most incredible stories ever in my career about how the number of bodies getting counted in the desert wasn't right.