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Trump Secures Netanyahu's Agreement To Gaza Deal; Prominent Gaza Teacher Missing Following IDF Strikes; Jared Kushner Partners With Saudis To Buy Bay Area-Based Game-Maker Electronic Arts; Study Finds Antisemitism On X Is Rampant, Reaches Millions; Authorities Target Cartel Smuggling Operations In U.S.; Saving The Mediterranean's Marine Life; Bad Bunny To Headline Super Bowl LX Halftime Show. Aired 1-2a ET

Aired September 30, 2025 - 01:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:00:30]

PAULA NEWTON, CNN HOST: Hello and a very warm welcome. I'm Paula Newton, the head right here on CNN Newsroom. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu agree to a new peace plan for Gaza. Netanyahu tells Hamas to accept it or Israel will, quote, finish the job.

Gaming giant EA is going private. And what would be the largest leveraged buyout in what this means for the gaming industry and the economy at large.

And we give you a rare look inside America's drug war, both with law enforcement waging the battle and the cartel leaders they are fighting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from New York. This is CNN Newsroom with Paula Newton.

NEWTON: So U.S. President Donald Trump says he's close to a peace agreement that will end the war in Gaza and secure the release of all the hostages. The Israeli prime minister says he has agreed to the 20- point plan and the clock is already ticking for a sign off from Hamas as the proposal calls for the release of all remaining hostages within 72 hours of Israel accepting the agreement. Benjamin Netanyahu warned of dire consequences if Hamas rejects the plan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr. President, or if they supposedly accept it and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself. This can be done the easy way or it can be done the hard way, but it will be done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEWTON: Meantime, Qatar says Israel apologized for its attack on Doha during a phone call with President Trump. Qatar's prime minister says his country is still willing to continue engaging in efforts to reach an end to the war in Gaza. CNN's Kristen Holmes has more now from the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that he agreed to President Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza. But course, there is one major caveat. Hamas has to still agree.

Now when it comes to Hamas and whether or not they get on board with this deal. We heard from both Netanyahu and President Trump on this. Netanyahu saying if they did not agree that they would finish what they started, saying they could do this the easy way or the hard way.

And President Trump saying that if Hamas did not agree that Israel would have the full backing of the United States, of the president, to do whatever it was that they needed to do. So just a couple of points of what we saw in this 20-point plan that the White House circulated. They would call it end the war in Israel.

It would return all of the hostages within at least 72 hours. The original points that we had seen or the original plan we had seen said 48 hours. This gave more time to Hamas to actually return those hostages. It said that there would immediately be a troop withdrawal. Except there was a little bit of an ambiguous part of that, which was what the timeline on that troop withdrawal would look like, the attacks would stop.

But, President Trump saying essentially that all the sides would have to agree on what the timeline for Israeli withdrawal of troops would actually look like. It also said that Israel would not annex any part of Gaza, that they would not control any part of Gaza. And it certainly felt as though there was some finality in this proposal that we hadn't really seen before.

Of course, we have seen and reported on time and time again, this idea that White House officials saying that they were closer than ever to coming to a deal, a ceasefire deal, and end to the war, only to have the talks fall apart. But this time seemed much more serious. Now, interestingly, the first draft or the first part of the plan that we had seen was a 21-point plan. This is what was circulated among world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly.

And there had been, as we said, 21 points on that. In the plan that was proposed today, that was released publicly by the White House, there were only 20 points. I bring that up for one reason. One of the things that was missing from that 20-point plan was the idea that Israel would not attack Qatar anymore.

It would not launch any attacks into Qatar. Of course, as we've been reporting, the negotiations between Hamas and Israel that were being really mediated by Qatar came to a standstill after Israel launched attacks on Hamas leadership in Qatar.

[01:05:05] Qatar condemning the act. So that was a missing from this document. But the White House announcing right before it released this 20-point plan that there had been a trilateral phone call between the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump, and the prime minister of Qatar in which Netanyahu apologized for what happened and said he would not do it again.

Qatar also putting out a statement reiterating that Netanyahu had essentially promised that he would not launch strikes into Qatar again. So while it was not in that document, clearly they're making a paper trail of promises that they are saying Qatar and the United States are saying that Netanyahu made again. Nothing is a done deal until Hamas signs off. Kristen Holmes, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: Joining us from Jerusalem is Yaakov Katz. He is senior columnist at the Jerusalem Post and author of "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power." Glad to have you here. So we can try and go through some key points of this proposed deal.

I do have a pointed question for you though. Do you believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to this deal because he knows Hamas never will?

YAAKOV KATZ, SENIOR COLUMNIST, THE JERUSALEM POST: Well, I think that's probably, Paula, one of his gambles here. And there's a lot of gambles when you're a leader like Netanyahu who's embattled not just on the battlefield in Gaza where the war continues and trying to get back the hostages, but also politically embattled back home where his coalition is already starting to make noises as if it's about to fall apart.

And Israel will head now to an early election if this deal, the 20 or 21-point plan put forward by Donald Trump actually is implemented.

So, it's definitely something that he probably is considering. And he made those noises last night. I mean, he basically said, look, let's see what Hamas does. And if Hamas doesn't, he said to President Trump Israel will continue its war and will do what needs to be done.

So I think it's definitely a calculation and for that reason, the celebrations might be slightly premature that the war is over. Although I do want to hope, and this is what everyone seems to estimate, that Donald Trump would not have made these types of declarations as he did yesterday. Conflicts for thousands of years are suddenly over if he didn't have some sort of guarantee and reassurance from the Qataris and the Egyptians that they could bring Hamas into this deal and get it to agree to end the war.

NEWTON: And yet, as you know, more than most, that would be extraordinary if they could achieve that. I do want to get to something you pointed domestic Israeli politics will feature here. Specifically though, to focus on the families of the hostages who once again have to put up with the fact that the Hamas terrorists are the ones here that will determine what happens next.

KATZ: 100 percent, Paula. I mean, this is one of the great tragedies of this war. No matter how powerful Israel's military is, no matter how many countries around the world, the United States, Arab nations are supporting this deal to end the war, it's going to be up to a few murderous Hamas leaders, some of them in Gaza, some of them in Qatar, who are going to have to decide are they accepting this and is the war in fact going to come to an end.

It keeps an entire region almost hostage beyond the 48 Israelis who are still being held inside the Gaza Strip. So these people will determine what happens next.

Does Israel continue with its offensive inside the Gaza Strip to try to keep up that pressure on Hamas, or are we able to move towards an end of this conflict that has dragged on already for two years, almost way too long, and be able to start the reconstruction, the healing inside Israel and the reconstruction that's needed inside Gaza?

But Netanyahu will have those political issues to deal with. His coalition is not happy, particularly with the fact that he has accepted, according to the Trump plan, a role for the Palestinian Authority inside the post-war Gaza governing entity, as well as what Trump himself said. He said, look, I understand Netanyahu, you don't support a Palestinian state, but I do want to see us essentially get on a path towards that one day. That's not something his coalition likes at all.

NEWTON: But in fact, it is in the 20-point plan. It is there in black and white. The fact that there is this aspiration on the part of the people in Gaza for that Palestinian state, not just in Gaza, but elsewhere.

I do want to bring to the fore here who actually can have any kind of influence on Hamas. Right? Who do you believe at this hour in terms of Muslim and Arab leaders, has any leverage with Hamas to actually get them to accept this deal? And we add as well that there is this offer, however vague, of amnesty for Hamas.

[01:10:02]

KATZ: I think there's no question that the three countries that have the most pressure or leverage over Hamas are the Qataris, the Egyptians and Turkey. Those are the countries that have in the past supported Hamas in different ways, have given them refuge inside their country. They have open lines of communication with Hamas.

If, for example, the Emir of Qatar, President Erdogan in Turkey, President el-Sisi in Egypt, all make it very clear to all the Hamas leaders, that's it. We're done with you. You have nowhere that you will be able to reside. You will no longer have sanctuary in any of our territories. And we will make sure that Israel will have a carte blanche to continue its offensive in Gaza. That will have an impact.

But again, we're talking about 48 hostages that are still being held in Gaza that Hamas will have to give up and give back to Israel. That is the condition for this war to end, essentially. And that's a big number. That's something that Hamas would have wanted to hold onto as something of an insurance policy.

So, I hope and pray that this is coming to an end. But to think that we're over because of a celebration in the White House yesterday, it's far from being that yet. Paula.

NEWTON: Absolutely no one knows that better than the people of Gaza and the people of Israel. I do want to ask you what the reaction has been on the ground. I mean, it's 8:10 a.m. right there where you are this morning. But I'm. I mean, they've had a chance to sleep on it. What has been the reaction?

KATZ: I think people are hopeful. Look, the hostage families are really the ones who, I think in Israel have been suffering the most, not knowing what is the fate of their loved ones. We were told that 28 of the 48 are already deceased. But even out of the 20 who are believed to be alive, what exactly is their condition and how many might have passed away or been killed in the weeks since this offensive began in Gaza.

There's great trepidation and uncertainty. The families of soldiers who continue to fight in Gaza and want to see their loved ones come home and an end to this war and a healing to begin.

So there's hope, but there's still also a reality check, and that Israel has been fighting for the last two years against a brutal, cynical, terrorist organization that doesn't really care at the end of the day what's decided at the White House, it will care more about how it views its future and whether it can somehow outlive and survive this war. And whatever deal is coming, we'll have to wait to see what Hamas tells us.

Which is why it's so important to understand, as you say, what Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, perhaps other countries as well, can bring to the table here to actually pressure Hamas. Yaakov Katz, grateful to you this morning for your analysis. Appreciate it.

Now, meantime, the situation on the ground in Gaza remains grim. More Palestinians are trying to flee Gaza City as Israel pushes ahead with its military offensive. Medical staff at one hospital say the facility was targeted on Sunday by Israeli strikes. And we're now learning about one prominent teacher who is missing after her home was hit. CNN's Paula Hancocks has our details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ghada, this is Civil Defense. Ghada Rabah, we have come for you.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Gazan rescue workers search for a well-known and much loved teacher in Gaza City, Ghada Rabah. She may have been under this rubble for days, having evacuated with her family. She returned with her brother Hussam to their home in Tel al-Hawa in the southern part of the city to pick up belongings.

When she arrived, she sent photos and voice notes to a WhatsApp group of fellow teachers celebrating the lack of Israeli tanks.

GHADA RABAH, PROMINENT GAZA TEACHER: Thank G od, it's quiet, and I pray that it stays quiet so I can get our belongings out, I brought them to the staircase. Oh God, how beautiful homes is, how beautiful and safe, it's amazing. May God keep us safe.

HANCOCKS (voice-over): Minutes later, she sent this desperate note to her siblings saying Israeli drones targeted the area, hitting her brother. Hussam.

RABAH: My siblings, the car that came to pick us up was struck, the driver and the car were smashed, our belongings destroyed. Hussam tried to help with four others, and they were all hit by shelling. I don't know what happened to my brother.

HANCOCKS (voice-over): Palestine Red Crescent workers retrieved the bodies of Rabah's brother and others in the street, but Rabah was nowhere to be found. A friend said Rabah called her. She heard her say hello, but then the line went dead.

Israeli strikes destroyed her home, her family and countless students she has helped over the years fear the worst. The IDF did not respond to CNN for comment.

[01:15:00]

An outpouring of grief for a woman who secured scholarships outside Gaza for her students. A tireless advocate for education.

SAHAR AL BASHA, GHADA'S FELLOW TEACHER: She was loved by all teachers and students. All here students are turning social media upside down for her.

HANCOCKS (voice-over): She drew this picture just three weeks ago with a poem that reads, we're spinning in circles, searching for safety.

Her brother Ismail believes she was hiding in her home when an Israeli strike destroyed the building.

ISMAIL RABAH, GHADA'S BROTHER: I cannot say that I have lost my sister, because I have hope I will find her. I cannot say I have lost her, I don't know what happened to her.

HANCOCKS (voice-over): It is a perpetual reality of the past two years. Officials in Gaza believe thousands of civilians are still trapped under the rubble across the Gaza Strip. There is no closure without confirmation and no time to grieve while still under fire. Paula Hancocks, CNN, Abu Dhabi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: Saudi government is teaming up with Jared Kushner to buy Electronic Arts. Record setting price they're paying for video games like "Battlefield," "The Sims" and "Madden NFL."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [01:20:45]

NEWTON: President Trump's son in law is teaming up with Saudi Arabia to buy the video game maker Electronic Arts. A group including Jared Kushner's investment firm and the Saudi Public Investment Fund has reached a $55 billion deal to take EA private. CNN's Clare Duffy has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Electronic Arts is the video game maker famous for hits like "Madden NFL," "The Sims" and "Battlefield." It was founded in 1982 and when it went public back in 1989, the company's shares were priced around 50 cents.

This group includes Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, the private equity firm Silver Lake and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners. And it values EA at $55 billion. That's $5 billion more than the company's current market cap after shares surged around four and a half percent today on this news.

So just a massive deal, but it does come at a time when EA, like other video game makers, has struggled with growth and actually had to cut headcount in recent years because consumer habits have changed. Post- COVID people are not spending as much time at home playing video games as perhaps they were during 2020.

So this take private deal could potentially allow the company to make changes, make improvements without needing be accountable to shareholders as a public company. The deal is expected to close next year pending regulatory approval. Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BEWTON: Joining us now is Brendan Ballou is former special counsel for the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division and author of the book "Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America." It is great to have you with us as you have been obviously involved in this in terms of private equity, studying it. And that book certainly got my attention.

I do want to do a deeper dive on all of that, but I do want to start with this deal right now. So this would be if it goes through the largest leveraged buyout in history, 55 billion leverage, just meaning. Look, there is a lot of money that is borrowed on the line here and this might involve the gaming business, but make no Mistake. This is no game. What do you think of this deal and how it's come together?

BRENDAN BALLOU, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL, U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ANTITRUST DIVISION: Well, I'm concerned about it. You know, these sorts of leverage buyouts have three basic problems. Problems that hurt consumers, problems that hurt customers and employees.

You know, the problem that we've got is that when you have a leverage buyout, the people that are doing the investments generally stick around with the company for only a few years. So they have a very short term perspective on the business.

The other problem, and it's implicit in what you just said, is that the companies use a lot of debt to buy up the business debt that the purchase business, not the investors, are responsible for paying back. And most importantly, the investors tend to be insulated from the legal consequences of their action with the businesses that they buy. And at least the public reporting suggests that this might be happening at EA as well.

You know, this deal is going to be financed with $20 billion in debt, debt that EA, not the investors, are going to have to pay back. And that's going to make it really hard for this company to invest in the future.

NEWTON: And at times, that is the way private equity operates. Right. In fact, that is the way that they intend to take these companies over in a lot of the cases. This specific deal, though, again involves essentially the government of Saudi Arabia and also President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. What do you believe that means for scrutiny of this deal?

BALLOU: I imagine it means that this deal isn't going to get much scrutiny at all. You know, ordinarily a deal like this would get reviewed probably by the Federal Trade Commission. But President Trump's chosen appointee for the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, really hasn't shown any real interest in challenging mergers or acquisitions like these.

Instead, he's going after President Trump's political opponents. He's pursuing anti trans agenda, really stuff that doesn't have any relevance whatsoever to the core mission of the FTC of protecting consumers from bad deals.

You know, another avenue by which the government might scrutinize a deal like this would be through something called CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

[01:25:00]

But again, given that Mr. Kushner, and given that the Saudi government has such a chummy relationship with this administration, I think it would be really surprising if the deal got much scrutiny there either.

NEWTON: Yes. Which leads to a whole host of questions on my part and leading back to your book and what you've been doing research on, you've been working in for so many years, do you believe private equity should be playing this kind of a role in the global economy in terms of what it might mean going forward for so many industries? Right. Not just this industry. Industry, which is the gaming industry.

BALLOU: Yes. You know, there's always a role for the private markets to play. As long as people are trying to build businesses, start factories, hire new people, there needs to be somebody to put up the money to do that. The problem we have right now is the private equity industry as it currently exists is created not by business people, but by lawyers and lobbyists. And those lawyers and lobbyists have created a fabulous system for

private equity firms where they get the financial benefit when their investments go well, but everybody else has to pay when things go poorly.

NEWTON: Yes. And I'd imagine you believe that's a concern going forward for many industries. Right. Again, this is not just an America problem. It will have implications around the globe.

BALLOU: You name an industry, private equity is involved in it right now. So, yes, this is absolutely beyond just this deal.

NEWTOIN: OK, Brendan Ballou, we'll leave it there. Really appreciate your input.

Now, a new study says that Elon Musk's X has become the go-to platform for antisemitism. Researchers found hateful content is spreading widely and the company's own tools are failing to stop it. Some accounts are even profiting from antisemitic posts. CNN's Hadas Gold has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: This was a year-long study conducted by the center for Countering Digital Hate and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. And what they found is that not only is antisemitism really flourishing on X, but the crowd sourced community notes that are supposed to help sort of moderate and fact check things are barely making a dent. And that certain accounts, certain influencers are even known to make antisemitic posts. And in some cases they're able to even profit off of it thanks to X's subscription features.

Now, according to the study, they identified more than 679,000 that they said were viewed more than 190 million times. Now, of these posts, they said 53 percent of them had to do with Jewish conspiracy theories such as that Jews control the government. Another 41 percent of them had to do with antisemitic abuse sometimes even calls for violence. And at least 6 percent of them had to do with Holocaust distortion or Holocaust denial.

Now, when it came to community notes, this is something that X's owner, Elon Musk has pushed as a way to actually specifically deal with antisemitism on the platform and things like Holocaust denial. He said, well, if somebody posts something about Holocaust denial, readers can answer, put a correction in a reply, and they can apply a community note.

Well, the researchers found that in the top 300 antisemitic posts, only 1 percent of them had a community note applied for them. They also found that they are sort of these influencers that post antisemitic content. And they found that a third of the likes for the top antisemitic posts over this year that they studied were all related to these 10 specific accounts.

Some of them have millions of followers on them. And in some of the cases, these accounts are verified, meaning that they pay for a verification badge. But that means that their content gets boosted to other X users. And in some cases not all of them, but a few of them, they even are able to have subscriptions on their accounts, meaning users can pay to get special content from these accounts that this study says push out sometimes antisemitic content.

Now, X did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but X has tangled with one of these groups that did the study, the center for Countering Digital Hate. In the past, they once sued the group for previous research, saying that it cost them millions of dollars. A judge threw out that lawsuit. X is appealing that.

But the center for Countering Digital Hate is standing by its research, noting that Elon Musk's X company never sued them for defamation. They say they simply sued them for doing research. And there must be a reason why they didn't want that research to be out there. Hadas Gold, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: Still to come for us, CNN goes inside the world of cartel smuggling, how criminal groups are using social media to recruit young people, even teenagers, to break the law for an easy pay.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:34:51]

NEWTON: And welcome back. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Paula Newton.

A CNN investigation has found young Americans are being recruited by cartels to smuggle drugs, weapons and even people into the United States using social media. The cartels are offering large amounts of cash to new recruits, but authorities are hot on their trail.

CNN's David Culver spoke with law enforcement and even a cartel boss about these dangerous operations.

Here's his investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll do another drive by westbound.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Copy. I'm moving in. And then we'll do kind of, like, a felony stop.

DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right now, we're with several Cochise County deputies in several different units as they're moving in on their targets.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You guys just hunker down where you're at.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ok, we're staying.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hands up. Move.

CULVER: Some of them you'll notice, are undercover. You won't see their faces. You won't hear their names.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And is there anyone else in the car with you?

CULVER: And they're fanned out here, just north of the U.S. southern border to dismantle a smuggling network one arrest at a time. An investigation, mind you, that's been going on for 18 months.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not just your everyday criminal. It's definitely taking the bigger fish off the streets.

CULVER: The suspect just handed over his phone, revealing what investigators say are key details about a migrant smuggling operation that's happening right now.

To coordinate a pickup. That's all playing out in real time. And there's several more that you're trying to arrest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 18 in total.

CULVER: 18 in total.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

Right now, still in the car.

CULVER: Are these Americans we're talking about?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the exception of one, all are U.S. citizens.

CULVER: Wow. They're tied to a faction of the cartel. They are a tight knit crew all working together for the betterment of a larger organization.

Cochise County spans 83 miles of border. south of this line, an underground network tied to the fractured but powerful Sinaloa cartel. Plaza bosses control each corridor, deciding who and what gets through with lookouts posted on nearby hills constantly watching for U.S. patrols.

To keep undetected, migrants and their cartel-backed guides, often dressed in camouflage, moving through the rocky desert terrain. They follow a pin drop, often to a road a few miles from the border. Drivers race in for the pickup and cash payout. Many are young Americans recruited online

For six months, we tracked hundreds of cartel recruitment posts on social media, some aimed at luring teens. Coded language, emojis and cash offers offering thousands per pickup.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not saying they're cheap in the parking lot here.

CULVER: Deputies are going after the drivers. In the past six months, the Justice Department reports 431 people charged with smuggling in Arizona alone. Many recruited online. Attorneys say most of their clients are between 18 and 25.

After the pickup, drivers head to stash houses on the U.S. side, run by cartel syndicates.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're looking for a bright orange trailer.

So they're up to something.

CULVER: Inside, deputies say they hold people drugs and weapons. Guns sourced in the U.S. head south into Mexico. Migrants and narcotics move north to Tucson, Phoenix and beyond. Every step closely coordinated.

To understand the impact this cartel crackdown is having, we spend weeks trying to get a senior cartel leader to speak with us. He finally agrees, meeting us in a Phoenix parking lot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're with Sinaloa.

CULVER: The Sinaloa cartel.

From killing to coordinating smuggling operations, he says he's done it all.

Do you help in bringing people, drugs, weapons?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. People and drugs.

CULVER: Are you a citizen here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, sir.

CULVER: No. And so you're able to still come in and out?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

CULVER: Among those helping with transportation, U.S. citizens.

You all are using social media to get to young people, young teens, and recruiting them to be part of it. Some of them -- many of them are American citizens too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like.

CULVER: That's life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: it's like that, you know.

CULVER: So even though they may get caught and spend many years in prison, that's their fault as you see.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

CULVER: When you see, for example, the impact of violence and everything that is caused from the cartel movements from essentially your employer, do you feel like you're part of this problem?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. You know, because I got a kid, I got, you know, family. And when they want to kill you, you want, you defend.

[01:39:51]

CULVER: So you see it as defending yourself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. That's what I say. Yes. I don't -- I don't like it. You have something wrong to me. I do something bad to you.

CULVER: A not-so-subtle threat. And yet he seems to regret some of his own life choices.

What is your motivation for wanting to talk?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why I come to here.

CULVER: Exactly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Want people listen. And I tell them it's not a life. It's not a good, you know, it's not good. It's not.

CULVER: Have you had to kill people?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, yes. You've had them.

CULVER: And does that not weigh on you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because I'm not bad. I'm not bad person.

CULVER: You don't think you're a bad person?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not a bad person. But I do what I have to do, you know?

CULVER: Why do you say you do what you have to do? Couldn't you stop doing this?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, no.

CULVER: You can't.

Once you get in, you can't get out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

CULVER: Do you think what President Trump has been doing has been making your job tougher?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes.

CULVER: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

CULVER: But it's becoming more difficult, you think?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

CULVER: For now, the cartels are still at it.

Where we're at right now, it's a very remote area.

And so too are the Cochise County deputies jumping in to help border patrol.

Camera lost visual shortly after he watched them cross the border.

They're tracking four people who crossed illegally, either by scaling or cutting open a section of the border wall, or by walking through open floodgates like these.

This is all being coordinated, and they're being guided by the cartel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's about a mile that way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It sounded like somebody had eyes because they called them running.

CULVER: After a nearly two-hour pursuit, agents catch up with the migrants and their suspected cartel-backed guide.

I think what stands out to us is going back to late last year, when we were last here, you would have never seen this many border patrol focused on four individuals. Most of that was because they simply didn't have the bandwidth.

With fewer migrants crossing, agents say they can finally focus on enforcement. As for local deputies, they press ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got some pending charges, right, dude?

CULVER: Not so much targeting the migrants, but rather those who they're paying to cross illegally.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're going to be charged with criminal syndicate.

CULVER: A criminal enterprise that they warn is growing increasingly desperate.

David Culver, CNN -- Cochise County, Arizona.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: Ok. What is lurking in the Adriatic Sea after the sun sets?

Just ahead. How one scientist is braving the dark, rough seas to uncover a world of rare and endangered sharks and save them before it's too late.

[01:42:44] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NEWTON: The Adriatic Sea, once teeming with marine life like sharks and rays, is losing them at an alarming pace. Today on "Call to Earth", we dive into dark waters with a European scientist working tirelessly to protect their future.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAIN ASHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's pitch black and choppy beneath the Adriatic Sea at night, with only the moon above and a flashlight below to guide the way.

But these are ideal diving conditions for Bosnian marine biologist Andrej Gajic, who searches for sharks who come to life after dark.

ANDREJ GAJIC, MARINE BIOLOGIST, SHARKLAB ADRIA: I think the biggest misconception is these are some kind of menacing, bloodthirsty machines. The majority of the species grow less than a meter, they are small. They are terrified of humans.

The more time I spend diving, I actually realize how fragile they are. Not how frightening they are.

ASHER: The Adriatic Sea is the long, narrow arm of the Mediterranean, home to a diverse range of sharks and rays.

It's also one of the most dangerous seas in the world for them, where overfishing, pollution and habitat loss have left nearly 70 percent at risk and some on the edge of extinction.

GAJIC: My team and I decided to come here to conduct systematic research about the number of individuals, diversity of the species and their key habitats in this area before it's too late.

ASHER: Andrej runs Sharklab Adria, a research group in Albania working to protect some of the Mediterranean's most vulnerable marine life from documenting rare sharks to investigating causes of disease and death.

GAJIC: The majority of my career are dedicated studying the deep sea and the angular roughshark that is particularly important for me.

Diving with the roughsharks it's like I meet some dinosaur from Jurassic or whatever. It's a critically endangered species we try to protect like for the past ten years, as well as the spiny butterfly rays.

Our team has rediscovered the population after no records in this century in the region.

ASHER: His team spends about 160 days in the field each year assessing marine animal health, behavior, environmental exposure and more.

GAJIC: We are now trying to understand the population better, the threats and what we can do to mitigate. The fisheries is definitely one of the worst.

[01:49:50]

GAJIC: There's also pollution, there's habitat loss. Climate change is a terrible issue.

ASHER: After his night dive concludes at 2:00 a.m., Andrej is swapping his scuba gear for his lab scrubs. He will work through the night with his team, analyzing bycatch donated by a local fishery just hours earlier.

GAJIC: This is the small, juvenile.

We process a large amount of samples, unfortunately, that are always retrieved dead by the trawlers. Without their support, we won't be able to actually do this scientific research.

ASHER: Sharklab Adria also runs an on-site rehabilitation program where marine life are cared for and monitored before being released back into the wild.

GAJIC: We have a lot of sharks, skates and rays coming to rehabilitation after being landed or retrieved alive, and most commonly, we work with severe traumatic fractures caused by the poor handling and the hooking.

ASHER: Alongside his research, Andrej works aboard commercial trawlers collecting data on bycatch and teaching fishermen how to safely return live animals to the sea.

GAJIC: Being on the trawlers is very eye-opening moment. You see the reality and this is why I tend to call our work being at the front line of conservation.

Thankfully, after one year of intense work at the port, many of these fishermen are collaborating with us at this point. They are trained to the proper handling protocols and rapid release protocols.

With over 70 trainings per year that we organized for them every shark, every ray that I received on my phone each day from fishermen that is released back in the sea is the utmost success that I can see in my field.

I think over the past few decades, we somehow split from the nature. And I think this is the right time to take the responsibility for what we are doing to our home.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: Let us know what you're doing to answer the call with the hashtag "Call to Earth".

There's much more ahead. Stay with CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) NEWTON: Donald Trump has announced that he intends to impose a 100 percent tariff on foreign-made movies again. The president made the same threat back in May, and like before, he hasn't specified how the policy could be applied to what is primarily a service, and one often produced with a mixture of international inputs.

The Super Bowl halftime show is no stranger to headline-making performers, and the NFL's latest pick, no exception. Bad Bunny will take the stage, that big stage in February.

A move that signals the NFL isn't shying away from cultural flashpoints.

CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Bad Bunny has been announced as the Super Bowl halftime performer for next year. And not only is the global Latin superstar one of the biggest names in the music industry, but he's also anything but a safe choice.

Bad Bunny recently wrapped up a residency in Puerto Rico, where he is proudly from and that residency brought hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy in Puerto Rico.

He is set to embark on a world tour this fall, but he said that he will not be making any tour stops in the U.S. because he is concerned that ICE agents could be waiting outside of his concert venues to take his fans.

[01:54:47]

WAGMEISTER: Now, this is not the first time that Bad Bunny has spoken out against the Trump administration. Last year, at the tail end of the election, when comedian Tony Hinchcliffe spoke at a Trump rally calling Puerto Rico, quote, "a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean", Bad Bunny then took to his social media to loudly endorse Trump's opponent, Kamala Harris.

He said that he was angered by Hinchcliffe's Comments, and he has been a fierce and proud supporter of Puerto Rico. Bad Bunny actually alluded to that in his announcement that he would be performing at the Super Bowl saying, quote, "What I'm feeling goes beyond myself. It's for those who came before me and around countless yards so I could come in and score a touchdown. This is for my people, my culture, and our history."

Now, it remains to be seen if Bad Bunny will make a political statement when he is on the world's biggest stage. The Super Bowl is, of course, the biggest televised event of the year in America. But it seems hard to imagine that he won't want to send a message during the Super Bowl.

And if he does, this wouldn't be the first time that the Super Bowl halftime show has gotten political. When Latina superstars Shakira and Jennifer Lopez did the halftime performance, Jennifer Lopez wore a cape that on one side was the American flag, and on the other side was a Puerto Rican flag.

They had children join them on stage in what appeared to be glowing cages. And at the time, that symbolism was widely understood to be a reference to the Trump administration's handling of migrant children at the time.

And of course, last year you had halftime performer Kendrick Lamar, who had many political undertones during his performance, alluding to inequality and racism in America.

Now, President Trump was in attendance at the Super Bowl when Kendrick Lamar performed. He was the first sitting U.S. President to ever be in attendance at a Super Bowl. We will see if he will be in attendance next year.

Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: I want to thank you for joining us. I'm Paula Newton.

CNN NEWSROOM continues with Ivan Watson. That will be after a short break.

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