Speaker 1: From sports Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am
Speaker 1: in a ralli at Madison Square gard in New York.
Speaker 1: Just over a week from the election, Donald Trump took
Speaker 1: to the stage with a vision for the first day
Speaker 1: of his presidency.
Speaker 2: On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program
Speaker 2: in American history.
Speaker 3: But he got the criminals out.
Speaker 1: Trump is promising to deport more than eleven million people
Speaker 1: if he wins the election.
Speaker 2: But the day I take the oath of office, the
Speaker 2: migrant invasion of our country ends and the restoration of
Speaker 2: our country begins.
Speaker 1: Immigration has been one of the most pressing and divisive
Speaker 1: issues of the race, with fears of bordered chaos and
Speaker 1: misinformation about immigrants eating pets dominating. But the facts about
Speaker 1: immigration tell a different story. Today, investigative reporter for Pro
Speaker 1: Republica Marca Rosenberg on the Real Waves immigrations affecting America.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, October thirty. Your investigation starts in a town
Speaker 1: called Whitewater, Wisconsin. Can you tell me about the town
Speaker 1: and what happened there?
Speaker 4: So this is a story that actually my colleagues at
Speaker 4: Pro Publica poured out for months. They went to Whitewater, Wisconsin,
Speaker 4: and found that there had been a big increase in
Speaker 4: the number of Nicaraguan migrants arriving in the town in
Speaker 4: the past couple of years. And this is a relatively
Speaker 4: small town, sort of a college town, but a lot
Speaker 4: of the Nicaraguans were coming to work in factories there.
Speaker 5: Since twenty twenty two, around eight hundred to one thousand
Speaker 5: migrants from Central and South America have come to Whitewater, Wisconsin.
Speaker 4: The local police chief was really getting bogged down because
Speaker 4: a lot of the new immigrants were driving without licenses,
Speaker 4: and the small police department was overwhelmed with more traffic
Speaker 4: stops and lack of Spanish speaking staff. And so in
Speaker 4: late twenty twenty three, he actually wrote to President Biden
Speaker 4: asking for some federal funds to help hire more people.
Speaker 4: But the letter came to the attention of former President
Speaker 4: Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Not far from where we are today, in a small,
Speaker 2: very beautiful town of fifteen thousand, Whitewater, do you know, Whitewater.
Speaker 6: Kamala has flooded the town with an estimated two thousand
Speaker 6: migrants from Venezuela and Niko. Robert diseases are spreading like wildfire.
Speaker 6: The police say they cannot handle the surgeon crime. The
Speaker 6: town's in big trouble.
Speaker 4: And he promised voters that he would conduct the largest
Speaker 4: deportation operation in American history. We have not.
Speaker 2: I have no choice, but I have no choice.
Speaker 4: It was not the intention of the chief to sort
Speaker 4: of become the center of this national talking point, and
Speaker 4: he really had just wanted to get a little more
Speaker 4: more help to deal with the problems that he was
Speaker 4: seeing on the ground.
Speaker 1: Are the stories lot that every way across small town America?
Speaker 1: Or is that just an outlaw?
Speaker 4: There have been cases, other cases like Whitewater. Another one
Speaker 4: that spilled into the news was in Springfield, Ohio, was
Speaker 4: a place where many Haitian migrants were arriving, and you
Speaker 4: know they were working in factories there. But you know,
Speaker 4: Trump also seized on that place in Springfield.
Speaker 2: They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're
Speaker 2: eating the cats.
Speaker 4: So you know, that's what we were hoping to do with
Speaker 4: this reporting, is to look into many of these different places,
Speaker 4: you know, not just Whitewater, but we have stories from Denver, Colorado,
Speaker 4: which is another place that has been a flashpoint about migrants.
Speaker 5: Less than twenty four hours, sixteen buses packed with migrants
Speaker 5: arrived in Denver.
Speaker 7: The city of Denver confirms nine bus loads arrived last night.
Speaker 4: And from Del Rio, Texas, which is on the.
Speaker 5: Border, and the number of migrants waiting under the bridge
Speaker 5: there continues to rise. Del Real Mayor Bruto Lozato says
Speaker 5: the tally stands at ten thy five hundred and three migrants,
Speaker 5: many of them Haitian.
Speaker 1: You think from Trump's rhetoric that America is in the
Speaker 1: midst of an unprecedented immigration crossis so how does the
Speaker 1: rhetoric match up to the data.
Speaker 4: What we found is that there's definitely been, you know,
Speaker 4: clearly a big spike in the number of people that
Speaker 4: are coming to the US border in recent years, but
Speaker 4: it's not exactly unprecedented, in part because in the past
Speaker 4: there was a much larger number of people who were
Speaker 4: sort of uncounted, unapprehended, and the majority of them were
Speaker 4: coming from Mexico. But something that is distinct about what
Speaker 4: is happening now is that with more Central Americans coming
Speaker 4: and more recently people from South America and from either
Speaker 4: even further afield, you know, sometimes as far away as China, India,
Speaker 4: West Africa coming to the border, many of them don't
Speaker 4: try to escape. People now are turning themselves in and
Speaker 4: asking for asylum. And you know that, in combination with
Speaker 4: a change in the demographics of people that are coming
Speaker 4: from new countries that hadn't come before, has created a
Speaker 4: really different dynamic around the country.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, Why more people than ever
Speaker 1: are turning themselves in at the US border and the
Speaker 1: political maelstream that's followed Marcott, you said that America is
Speaker 1: not in the midst of an unprecedented immigration crisis. It's
Speaker 1: just that more people are turning themselves into authorities rather
Speaker 1: than trying to escape from them. Why is that so?
Speaker 4: Starting as far back as in the Obama administration, there
Speaker 4: was a trend of more children who were coming by
Speaker 4: themselves or families. And under US law and international law,
Speaker 4: there are certain protections that asylum seekers and children and
Speaker 4: families can seek protection, and there's legal restrictions on how
Speaker 4: long they can be detained, and you know how they
Speaker 4: can't be returned to some place where they could face
Speaker 4: persecution or danger. And so, you know, many of those people,
Speaker 4: because there wasn't kind of space or appetite to you know,
Speaker 4: detain children and families, ended up being released into the
Speaker 4: United States, and so over time word got out that
Speaker 4: you know, if you turn yourself you might be able
Speaker 4: to be released into the United States.
Speaker 8: The girls, like everyone here, are now just waiting to
Speaker 8: turn themselves into border patrol. Virtually all will seek asylum
Speaker 8: in the US, a legal protection that takes years to
Speaker 8: formally determine.
Speaker 4: And that process can get you into, you know, a
Speaker 4: very backlogged court system where you can live in the
Speaker 4: country while you're waiting for your case to be decided,
Speaker 4: and in some cases you can you know, apply for
Speaker 4: work permits, apply you know, for some benefits, and so
Speaker 4: that you know, that's a phenomenon that has sort of
Speaker 4: grown over the years. But you know that is something
Speaker 4: that Trump has latched onto.
Speaker 3: The United States will not be a migrants camp and
Speaker 3: it will not be a refugee holding facility. Won't be
Speaker 3: you look at what's happening in Europe, you look at
Speaker 3: what's happening in other places. We can't allow that to
Speaker 3: happen to the United States. Not on my watch.
Speaker 4: When he took office after Obama, he said that this
Speaker 4: asylum process, you know, they viewed it as a loophole,
Speaker 4: you know, as migrants sort of taking advantage of the
Speaker 4: system and did a lot to kind of crack down
Speaker 4: on the process, which was you know, a lot of
Speaker 4: immigration advocates said that there were people who were facing
Speaker 4: legitimate harm, you know, who suffered because of them.
Speaker 9: A new directive by the Trump administration, zero tolerance, is
Speaker 9: to prosecute all such migrants criminally, which means by law,
Speaker 9: parents and children must be separated.
Speaker 7: Tearing children from the arms of their mother and their
Speaker 7: father is not the right decision.
Speaker 9: It has got to stop.
Speaker 7: La Some call the place Ursula after its street address.
Speaker 7: Others label it in Spanish la pereira the dog kennel.
Speaker 4: And he's now just ratcheting up some of that rhetoric
Speaker 4: but calling out some of these you know, different communities.
Speaker 1: Trump has excited in making this an election a vandim
Speaker 1: mcgration above almost anything else. So how has Harris responded
Speaker 1: to that?
Speaker 4: Well, I think one really surprising thing about this election
Speaker 4: is how, you know, the Harris campaign has taken a
Speaker 4: much harder stance on border security. Earlier this year they
Speaker 4: put a more restrictive ban on seeking asylum at the
Speaker 4: border and made it more difficult, and they said as
Speaker 4: a result of that you know, illegal crossings have dropped,
Speaker 4: and you know, more people are being processed and quicker
Speaker 4: through the system, and more people are being deported. The
Speaker 4: Trump campaign has really tried to paint her, you know,
Speaker 4: with this label of borders are, which she and the
Speaker 4: Biden administration says is a role she never actually had.
Speaker 4: She was given a mandate to address the root causes
Speaker 4: of migration from you know, a very specific reason in
Speaker 4: Central America, and obviously that's a very difficult and long
Speaker 4: term task and it's hard to see results from something
Speaker 4: like that in a short term. And so it was
Speaker 4: something that her allies say that she made progress on,
Speaker 4: but you know, it was kind of a difficult political
Speaker 4: situation for her to be and so I think, you know,
Speaker 4: from those early days she somewhat distanced herself from the issue,
Speaker 4: and now on the campaign trail as she's running for president,
Speaker 4: she's really focused on the border enforcement side of things,
Speaker 4: as well as really trying to pin the blame on
Speaker 4: Trump for not backing a bipartisan border deal that would
Speaker 4: have addressed some of these issues. There's a lot more
Speaker 4: nuanced and complexity in historical context around these issues that
Speaker 4: don't really lend themselves to sound bites or campaign ads,
Speaker 4: and that's kind of lest people who are in the
Speaker 4: middle of these debates out of the conversation. And there's
Speaker 4: a gap now between the rhetoric on the campaign trail
Speaker 4: and how people are feeling about the issue, and then
Speaker 4: you know the sort of real facts are on the ground.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for bringing data and new ones to
Speaker 1: this discussion, micro and thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Also in the US, Australia is calling on Israel to
Speaker 1: abandon two bills that restrict operations of the UN Relief
Speaker 1: Workers Agency for Palestine Refugees. Foreign Minister Penny Wong stated
Speaker 1: the UNRWA does life safe and work and called on
Speaker 1: Israel to comply with the ICJ order to provide humanitarian
Speaker 1: assistance to Gaza. The new laws take effect in ninety days,
Speaker 1: with the body's Commission General saying these bills were only
Speaker 1: deep in the ciphering of Palestinians and the Prime Minister
Speaker 1: has dismissed questions about his relationship with former Quantus boss
Speaker 1: Alan Joyce. A new book about the exclusive Quantus Chairman's
Speaker 1: Lounge claims that while he was Transport Minister, Albaneze had
Speaker 1: a direct line to Joyce which he used to score
Speaker 1: flight upgrades. It alleges he received more than twenty upgrades
Speaker 1: declared on his Register of interests, and upgrades for his
Speaker 1: former wife that were not declared. In response, the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister said he has been completely transparent and the claim
Speaker 1: was attempt to quote sell a book. I'm Daniel James.
Speaker 1: This is seven am. We'll be back tomorrow