Colombia-Venezuela Border Tensions Amid Maduro's Exit (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: A lot of traffic going both directions between Colombia, where we are, and Venezuela, which is that direction, just over this international bridge. And you can see the folks who are entering here into Colombia. A lot of them do this either daily or weekly. It's pretty common, in fact. They'll go visit family. They'll go run errands. They'll even go to doctor visits and then return back to Venezuela. Now, what's interesting is in the past few days, obviously, the significant changes, the removal of Maduro, has put folks in a different mindset, but no real sense of panic or expectation of immediate change. And some people are even hesitant to speak with us about it. People who are coming from Venezuela, who ultimately have to go back because that's where they live, tend to be a bit more restrained in what they vocalize, perhaps fearing some repercussions once they go back in. Others are more vocal. They'll tell you candidly that they're quite happy that he's gone, but they're also realistic in that they don't think anything's going to be imminent as far as changes to their daily lives. Now, entering into Colombia, there is a massive military presence that is built up. And a lot of this is a signal to Washington, in fact, the defense minister here in Colombia telling us a short time ago that he wants the U.S. to know that Colombia is focused on targeting those who are smuggling drugs and spreading violence through the region. He's really trying to hit that message hard because, obviously, the rhetoric from the Trump administration and from Washington has been, in many ways, accusatory towards the Colombian government for not doing enough as Washington sees it. Now, the troops are certainly spread out. And we've spent a lot of time with military personnel over the past 24 hours as they've been patrolling along the 1,300 miles between Colombia and Venezuela. They're going to reinforce the border. They're going to prevent, as they see it, any further violence from trickling in should any sort of fracturing from within Venezuela cause spillover, especially with armed groups into Colombia. And ultimately, they say their first priority is protecting Colombians.