Speaker 1: Going on, yelling and gen length by Molly. It's going off,
Speaker 1: not going lengthy and elms see im for the sky
Speaker 1: not me im pre Mama says some push free and
Speaker 1: for them say might smile them. No, no, i' must
Speaker 1: do be Gannata canna watch me hey man, grateful man,
Speaker 1: grateful I went not on Manna smile.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Once there is a live God, I'll.
Speaker 1: Want give me everything for some five Yeah, love sack fries,
Speaker 1: pick up to joy car, I got to eat and
Speaker 1: come back. I'm see yeah man, that's it one love Oh.
Speaker 3: On the eleventh of May this year, title forty two
Speaker 3: finally ended. I actually began to write this episode the
Speaker 3: day before, on the tenth of May, but it was
Speaker 3: that day the DHS announced that Title forty two would
Speaker 3: be enforced until eight fifty nine pm Pacific or midnight Eastern.
Speaker 3: They kept Title forty two in place for every single
Speaker 3: minute they could, and that's same day. Five hundred active
Speaker 3: duty troops arrived in El Paso and one thousand more
Speaker 3: set off for the border towns to join the two thousand,
Speaker 3: five hundred troops already deployed to the border. According to
Speaker 3: opress rates from an apartment of Homeland Security.
Speaker 4: CBP, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement are further expanding
Speaker 4: detention capacity, ramping up removal flights, and shifting agents and
Speaker 4: officers to high priority regions along the southwest border. This week,
Speaker 4: CBP opened two new holding facilities, and the Department of
Speaker 4: Health and Human Services is increasing its bed capacity to
Speaker 4: prepare for a potential increase in unaccompanied children. DHS also
Speaker 4: launched targeted enforcement operations and high priority regions along the border,
Speaker 4: including El Paso, to quickly process migrants and place them
Speaker 4: in removal proceedings. DHS last week also announced over two
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty million dollars in additional assistance for communities
Speaker 4: receiving migrants.
Speaker 3: On the ground. This assistant and planning didn't exactly meet
Speaker 3: the task at hand, albeit the specific call out of
Speaker 3: El PASA so does suggest that they saw their task.
Speaker 3: It's not looking bad in the right wing media hits
Speaker 3: some audio recorded after a couple of hours walking around
Speaker 3: talking to people at Sanisedro, where Customs and Border Protection
Speaker 3: had detained around five hundred people in between the two
Speaker 3: thirty foot fences that make up the border between Salisedro
Speaker 3: and Tijuana. I'm just for people familiar with San Diego
Speaker 3: in the Tijuana River Valley park by International Hill, where
Speaker 3: border patrol are holding people in between the two border fences.
Speaker 3: For those who thought we didn't have a border wall
Speaker 3: or weren't having a border wall, we have at least two,
Speaker 3: sometimes three, but right here we have two. People are
Speaker 3: being put in between these fences by border patrol. So
Speaker 3: I just spoke to some young Colombian women who had
Speaker 3: crossed about fifteen miles east of here and then been
Speaker 3: relocated here and there in between these border walls. They
Speaker 3: don't have running water. What food and water they have
Speaker 3: appear to be in supplied by volunteers on the nor
Speaker 3: inside they've just been given space blankets, but a lot
Speaker 3: of people are literally sleeping under bin bags right now, blankets.
Speaker 3: It's pretty breek. There's one portal toilet sort of thing
Speaker 3: that we can see about five hundred people. So I'm
Speaker 3: going to give you an idea of the conditions. Obviously
Speaker 3: those don't live up to the detention conditions that border
Speaker 3: patrol are supposed to up a hole people under, but
Speaker 3: here we are, I guess Border patrol have just said
Speaker 3: that they're calling an ambulance. There have been a number
Speaker 3: of medical emergencies that nearly always are in these situations
Speaker 3: because you're holding people. They're you know, old people, young people,
Speaker 3: sick people, and they're in the sun all day, they're
Speaker 3: in the cold all night. If it rains, they get wet.
Speaker 3: It's hot, they get hot. If it's cold, they get cold.
Speaker 3: Their little children were just asking me for a blanket
Speaker 3: a minute ago, which is always a pretty bleak thing.
Speaker 3: If you've not been here, you'd be forgiven for not
Speaker 3: knowing that. We have a double layer of wall separating
Speaker 3: us from our neighbors in Tijuana, both sections and now
Speaker 3: the Trump period design. But we're standing in a we're
Speaker 3: not so very long ago. Nancy Reagan stood and said
Speaker 3: she hoped that there wouldn't be a fence here for
Speaker 3: very long. Now there are two towering walls, and their
Speaker 3: little children stuck sleeping in the dust between them. Or
Speaker 3: the aid to these people had to go through the wall, too,
Speaker 3: and that meant no hot meals. Because the gaps are
Speaker 3: smaller than a plate. Someone tried to bring tents, but
Speaker 3: they wouldn't fit. Everything from food to clothes to medical
Speaker 3: supplies had to go through the gaps. In the War
Speaker 3: Hamara Usephi, a volunteer from the Partnership for the Advancement
Speaker 3: of New Americans, described to me what she saw that night.
Speaker 5: I see about five hundred beautiful, smiling faces of people
Speaker 5: who are desperately trying to get to safety, and they're confused.
Speaker 5: They don't know what's going on. They don't know how
Speaker 5: long it will take them. You know, they many of
Speaker 5: them are aware that something is happening today. Many of
Speaker 5: them are asking does this mean that I'll be turned back?
Speaker 5: What is going on? I see, you know, people who
Speaker 5: don't even have many kids, don't have shoes, they don't
Speaker 5: have I talked to individuals who lost everything on them.
Speaker 5: They don't have jackets. They're trying to cover themselves with
Speaker 5: any kind of covering that they have, some of them
Speaker 5: using trash bags, others using scarves and other types of
Speaker 5: things to cover themselves from the sun. We are in
Speaker 5: San Diego, so it's quite sunny here.
Speaker 3: The first thing I noticed on arrival was dozens of
Speaker 3: hands sticking through the wall holding phones and charges. That's
Speaker 3: because people need to use the CBP one app to
Speaker 3: interact with border enforcement, but they've been detained by the
Speaker 3: same border enforcement in between two walls in an open
Speaker 3: field where there obviously isn't any electricity. They also need
Speaker 3: their phones to stay in touch with their families, to
Speaker 3: let them know they survived a difficult and dangerous journey
Speaker 3: and that they're now technically inside the USA. Is the
Speaker 3: advet a CBP broadcast in Spanish to encourage asylum seekers
Speaker 3: to download the app before they put them in a
Speaker 3: place they couldn't charge their phones.
Speaker 6: Attencion migrante.
Speaker 4: Attention migrants in Mexico City or further north in the country.
Speaker 4: Why do you need to download CBP one. It's a
Speaker 4: free and legal way to get an appointment guaranteed at
Speaker 4: a port of entry. It's a clear way to solicit asylum,
Speaker 4: and you have the possibility to work while your case
Speaker 4: is being processed. If you present without an appointment, you
Speaker 4: can be prohibited from entering the US for five years.
Speaker 4: You will be subject to expedite a deportation unless you
Speaker 4: comply with the strict requirements of the asylum process. In
Speaker 4: the majority of cases, it is assumed that migrants do
Speaker 4: not comply with the requirements for asylum, and you won't
Speaker 4: have the right to work unless you comply with the
Speaker 4: strict requirements. Again, if you are now in Mexico City
Speaker 4: or further north, download CBP one.
Speaker 3: As we heard yesterday, CBP one has been an a
Speaker 3: mitigated disaster. I'd shown a very clear bias towards certain
Speaker 3: types of wealthy and white asylum seekers, despite that it
Speaker 3: seemed to have been the only plan in place the
Speaker 3: end of Title forty two. The hundreds of people detained
Speaker 3: in between defenses wheably didn't have appointments, and with no
Speaker 3: way to charge their phones, they couldn't make them. It's
Speaker 3: not clear of making them would have helped, as it
Speaker 3: seems that they were already being detained, and thus they
Speaker 3: would have to file defensive asylum claims, effectively stopping the
Speaker 3: repatriation process by claiming that they couldn't safely be sent
Speaker 3: back to their country of origin. This is opposed to
Speaker 3: making an affirmative asylum claim that people should have been
Speaker 3: able to make at the border. With a CBP one appointment,
Speaker 3: these would not have to be argued with the threat
Speaker 3: of repatriation hanging over the person making the claim. Volunteers,
Speaker 3: local people, a mosque group, and a church group all
Speaker 3: showed up soon after CBP began dumping more people in
Speaker 3: between the fences. An hour after my own arrival, I'd
Speaker 3: given away all the charge cables that I had in
Speaker 3: my truck, which is a lot more charge cables than
Speaker 3: I thought I had in my truck, and all my
Speaker 3: charge bricks accrude over six years of getting free shed
Speaker 3: at the consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas later, I
Speaker 3: came back with a massive solar generator that I'd like
Speaker 3: to use when I'm living off grid. But I still
Speaker 3: need to write stuff. Even all my home electronics ephemera
Speaker 3: and the combined efforts of nonprofits, religious and mutual aid
Speaker 3: groups couldn't really make much difference to the five hundred
Speaker 3: people from around the world, mostly families with children being
Speaker 3: held between the two fences. When it got hot, they
Speaker 3: got hot. When it got cold, they got cold. When
Speaker 3: the wind blew, they got dust in their eyes, and
Speaker 3: everything was constantly dirty. The only hot food volunteers could
Speaker 3: get to them was pizza. Some of the detained people
Speaker 3: have cash, and they were able to order door dash
Speaker 3: on the Tijuana side, but again the meals had to
Speaker 3: fit through a hole barely wider than my arm. The
Speaker 3: only way to get clean was with wet wipes. And
Speaker 3: there was only one bathroom. There was no shade or
Speaker 3: shelter either, and the only way people could construct shelters
Speaker 3: were through tying tops to the border wall itself. I
Speaker 3: like Kaba, one of the volunteers who came to help,
Speaker 3: describe what they saw when participating in Mutilated a couple
Speaker 3: of days after, but.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 6: Definitely was. I don't think it really struck me until,
Speaker 6: you know, after, after everything, and you know, after I left.
Speaker 7: Several hours later. But the kind of I mean, I
Speaker 7: am right about the situation at the border, but the
Speaker 7: kind of a matter of fatness of there's just several
Speaker 7: hundred people, including children.
Speaker 6: Just kind of between this fence and they're just.
Speaker 7: Stuck there with nothing, and the sort of a matter
Speaker 7: of fatness of the all was I think, I think
Speaker 7: the part that struck me the most. And it's been
Speaker 7: a much challenge in the process.
Speaker 3: In the days before the end of Title forty two,
Speaker 3: confusion had rained at the border. A lot of people
Speaker 3: I talked to you mentioned that they thought they had
Speaker 3: to cross before the end of Title forty two or
Speaker 3: they would be ejected and not able to apply for
Speaker 3: five years at the title eight. This misunderstanding might in
Speaker 3: part be due to some of the misleading rhetoric put
Speaker 3: out by Majorcas and others, which focused on the harsh
Speaker 3: penalties for crossing between ports of entry and an attempt
Speaker 3: to appear strong on the border. To their colleagues in DC.
Speaker 3: They didn't place as much emphasis on the right to
Speaker 3: present and claim asylum at a port of entry. But
Speaker 3: as we saw yesterday, it's virtually impossible to actually do that,
Speaker 3: and Tijuando is already full of thousands of people trying
Speaker 3: to do that exact thing. Given a set of circumstances,
Speaker 3: it makes sense that many people took the days before
Speaker 3: the end of Title forty two. At the final chance
Speaker 3: to cross before Title forty two ended, I spoke to
Speaker 3: Diana Rodriguez from Colombia about her understanding of what was
Speaker 3: going to happen.
Speaker 8: Later that night, Diana Rodriguez the Columbia.
Speaker 3: Diana was with two friends, all of them wearing little
Speaker 3: daisies in their hair and sharing a tarp shelter they'd
Speaker 3: made by tying a blue tarp against the wall so
Speaker 3: they could get some shade and privacy. I asked her
Speaker 3: where the flowers had come from. You hear the rec
Speaker 3: into your voice by Scherine.
Speaker 9: Oh the flowers, the flowers. H Well, there are these
Speaker 9: little flowers, flowers that are growing here like in a garden.
Speaker 9: So when we went and took a walk over there
Speaker 9: and we found them, we put them on and they're pretty.
Speaker 9: We call these the little yellow flowers of hope, and
Speaker 9: they match the color of our bracelets. We picked them
Speaker 9: on the day we arrived, and we knew that we
Speaker 9: needed a little bit of encouragement. We got the yellow bracelets.
Speaker 9: Because we arrived on Tuesday, everyone got the same bracelet.
Speaker 3: I asked, Diana, which you'd heard about Title forty two,
Speaker 3: which is ending a few hours after we talked.
Speaker 9: Yes, it's the end of Title forty two. Title forty
Speaker 9: two is the one that endorses mass deportations. Yes, and well,
Speaker 9: it's a question of you not just getting deported, but
Speaker 9: being repatriated. In other words, after this they do a
Speaker 9: full repatriation. But right now you are not registered in
Speaker 9: the system. But what they do is that they only
Speaker 9: return you. They don't register you. But let's say, on
Speaker 9: the basis of Article eight, is that a few at
Speaker 9: least we are invading American territory, then we are in
Speaker 9: effect breaking a law, and what Article eight does is
Speaker 9: that they deport you and they put you in the
Speaker 9: registered database saying that you broke the law, and they
Speaker 9: punish you for five years and you lose the right
Speaker 9: to request your asylum through legal channels.
Speaker 3: People at another camp in u Cumba heard the same
Speaker 3: thing from Colombians, and it seems like there are even
Speaker 3: news pieces run on domestic television explaining that US plan
Speaker 3: to return many Colombians in the coming months and this
Speaker 3: might be the last best chance to cross the border
Speaker 3: without permanent consequences if you got caught in a Cumba.
Speaker 3: Volunteers estimated that two thirds of the people corraled and
Speaker 3: the deasert son from Colombia. Of course, in recent years
Speaker 3: there has been instability and violence there, which also drives migration.
Speaker 3: One of my sources also mentioned a lot of Lumbian
Speaker 3: people had seen misleading information about immigration law on TikTok.
Speaker 3: Two days had passed since Janna arrived. She came with
Speaker 3: one of the girls she was now sharing a top with.
Speaker 3: I met another when they were all dumped in the
Speaker 3: camp together. In the days before they were detained here.
Speaker 3: They crossed three countries on their way to what they
Speaker 3: hope was a better life for young women like them.
Speaker 3: I asked them to describe that journey for me.
Speaker 9: Yes, eight days, eight days more or less walking from
Speaker 9: Colombia from El Salvador to Guatemala, the New Mexico. To
Speaker 9: hear all that time walking and taking the bus. There's
Speaker 9: a part fifteen or twenty minutes from here where the
Speaker 9: wall ends, and we crossed there there was a Mexican
Speaker 9: patrol and when they changed shifts, we ran and here
Speaker 9: we are on American soil. We arrived on foot and
Speaker 9: the police brought us here. They opened the gate and
Speaker 9: dropped us.
Speaker 3: Here along the way. She said, they've run into a
Speaker 3: lot of people, and my good journey north is such
Speaker 3: a common trick that people living along the way have
Speaker 3: found a way to make a buck, but also a
Speaker 3: way to make a difference. It's not uncommon for migrant
Speaker 3: to be extorted, robbed, or threatened. It's also not uncommon
Speaker 3: for them to be fed by strangers, perhaps handing off
Speaker 3: bags with food in them to passing trains or buses,
Speaker 3: or perhaps given a place to sleep for the night
Speaker 3: by someone they might never see again.
Speaker 9: There were parts where we were extorted they took all
Speaker 9: the money we brought, They robbed us, they stole our passports,
Speaker 9: they still our documents. So it's always quite dangerous. Let's
Speaker 9: say that it's dangerous to take this journey. Yes, just
Speaker 9: as we have met some bad people along the way,
Speaker 9: we have also met some very good people, people who
Speaker 9: have given us a hand, people who have helped us,
Speaker 9: people who have collaborated with us in ways you least expect.
Speaker 3: I asked Diana what she hoped for now she was
Speaker 3: technically inside the USA.
Speaker 9: Yes, let's say the hope is that they will listen
Speaker 9: to our case, listen to our case, and let us
Speaker 9: fight the case inside. Yes, because we want to be
Speaker 9: able to explain the conditions we are in and the
Speaker 9: reasons that those of us who are here came here,
Speaker 9: things like extortion, kidnapping, and because our lives are in
Speaker 9: danger in Colombia. So we wish that they at least
Speaker 9: listen to our case and let us plead our cause.
Speaker 3: Before we started recording, Deanna asked what network I was with.
Speaker 3: I thought that was an astute question. Networks like Fox
Speaker 3: show up at the WAD, although I didn't see any
Speaker 3: Fox National reporters on my trip. Certainly local news channel
Speaker 3: k us I was there, but they're reporting on the
Speaker 3: ground differed from their xenophobic and outright incorrect online coverage.
Speaker 3: I asked Diana, what you'd want to say to folks
Speaker 3: who might have had their perspective influence by the constant
Speaker 3: demonization of migrants by right wing media.
Speaker 9: If there are many people who, let's say, are in
Speaker 9: a mindset of not wanting migrants and they view them
Speaker 9: with contempt, because where xenophobia exists, it's hard for us
Speaker 9: because we suffer along the way. We would like you
Speaker 9: to change your way of seeing things and your way
Speaker 9: of thinking so that you don't look at us with contempt.
Speaker 9: We have a saying in Columbia that says that he
Speaker 9: who was born in a golden cradle never suffers or
Speaker 9: never sees what he does not know. So it's hard
Speaker 9: when you're born in a golden cradle and you don't
Speaker 9: see beyond what you have. So there are people that
Speaker 9: in our case, in my case, I lived a very
Speaker 9: hard life where you see the war between armed groups.
Speaker 9: They exist outside the law and they can control an area,
Speaker 9: and you see the kidnapping, you see the rape of girls,
Speaker 9: recruitment extortion, death. Yes, so it's hard when we experience
Speaker 9: that and people say things like these migrants are coming
Speaker 9: to invade our country, we also ask them to treat
Speaker 9: us as people, because if we are here, it is
Speaker 9: not because we want to invade a territory. It is
Speaker 9: because we want to come to fight for a better
Speaker 9: future for our children without stepping on anyone. Nobody wants this.
Speaker 9: But where we come from, we receive travelers with open arms.
Speaker 9: And it's hard when one is a migrant, when one
Speaker 9: lives the experience of being a migrant, it is a
Speaker 9: very hard thing to be a migrant, having to endure cold, hunger, rain, sun,
Speaker 9: that is, all these things, and then arriving here and
Speaker 9: seeing faces of contempt. It's hard. It is very hard.
Speaker 9: So yes, the important thing is that people must know
Speaker 9: that being an immigrant is not easy. Being an immigrant
Speaker 9: is not easy.
Speaker 3: One of her friends who she was sharing a top with,
Speaker 3: leaned over to give an example.
Speaker 9: Everyone despairs because everyone wants to leave, so everyone sees
Speaker 9: each other as enemies. So let's say, for example, right now,
Speaker 9: when they are sending cars to collect people to process,
Speaker 9: so everyone there thinks, I hope they take me. Then
Speaker 9: when they don't. It gets to a point where, yes,
Speaker 9: were you despair? I mean it's desperate, but well everyone,
Speaker 9: everyone is in the fight together, all in the fight.
Speaker 3: I have to get another dusting down from a CBP
Speaker 3: agent who really liked to rise his squad bike passing
Speaker 3: utulaid tables. Speak to a man from Angola. I'll leave
Speaker 3: his name out, as he preferred for me not to
Speaker 3: share it. He'd beat into Juana for three days, he said.
Speaker 3: I was waiting his chant to plead his case for asylum.
Speaker 4: No, it's just me and my sister. We suffered a lot.
Speaker 4: There were bandits. We came here to be safe. It's
Speaker 4: no way to live. People broke into our house to
Speaker 4: violate women, to look for people, and I was injured.
Speaker 4: Then yeah, why did I leave to come here? Over there,
Speaker 4: they're not they're not the means to live.
Speaker 3: We didn't get it ants to talk for long, and
Speaker 3: some of the recording I got wasn't very good. He
Speaker 3: was waiting in line for food, and to be quite honest,
Speaker 3: I don't like prodding people to share their trauma, but
Speaker 3: with so many journalists crowding the border asking them to
Speaker 3: do just that, it tends to be what people offer.
Speaker 3: Lots of African migrants can be quite cautious of the
Speaker 3: media because talking to the media at home could get
Speaker 3: them in trouble. I spoke to a friend of mine
Speaker 3: himself a migrant from Africa. He said that if migrants
Speaker 3: don't speak English or Spanish, it can be very hard
Speaker 3: for them to get information, and there aren't as many
Speaker 3: nonprofits set up to serve them as there are for
Speaker 3: Spanish speaking people, for example. They can often end up
Speaker 3: isolated and alone. I did get a better chance to
Speaker 3: talk to a Jamaican man called Joseph. It's his singing
Speaker 3: you've heard at the start of this episode. Mostly we
Speaker 3: talked about things in America, about how he lost his
Speaker 3: phone on his journey, we got him another one at Walmart,
Speaker 3: and about things like football and music. I didn't record
Speaker 3: all of that because sometimes it's nice to just talk
Speaker 3: to people. Hopefully it makes their dair a bit brighter
Speaker 3: and gives them some information. Maybe they could help let
Speaker 3: me record a bit of an interview and some of
Speaker 3: him singing. He was pretty guarded on the recording, but
Speaker 3: as you can hear in this clip, we had a
Speaker 3: good time when we weren't recording I am.
Speaker 2: The best one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gott amps up.
Speaker 2: He's gotta get up there we go and get my
Speaker 2: man's up.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know it's leg John is going on yelling
Speaker 1: gen but Molly, it's going off, not going likely and
Speaker 1: lem see ian for the sky hunted me. I'm pre
Speaker 1: and Mama said something push free and glow and red
Speaker 1: for them, say might smile them. No, no, I'm just
Speaker 1: doing red, beIN gonna talk. Canna watch me hey man,
Speaker 1: grateful man, grateful I went not and go on manna smile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: once there is life. God all want give me everything
Speaker 1: for some fune. Yeah, love suck, great fries, big up
Speaker 1: to job, I got to eat come back. So yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that's it one. Look Oh that beautiful. Yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph.
Speaker 3: I asked him about some of the stuff we spoke
Speaker 3: about before, but he didn't want to share it.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the whole testimony to me and you and God
Speaker 1: have to go into church for that.
Speaker 2: But I'm gonna give you that the next time.
Speaker 3: Okay, buddy, just experienced a lot of personal harm from
Speaker 3: conflict back home in Jamaica. I had a difficult journey
Speaker 3: here with his five year old son.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's rough. It's rough out there, man, you know
Speaker 2: it's rough.
Speaker 3: How did you come like you come? I asked him
Speaker 3: how his young son a dealt with the journey. It's
Speaker 3: not a safe or easy one for an adult, let
Speaker 3: alone for a little child.
Speaker 2: It's like he's just kind of scary one. He pulled you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's good. You have my energy inside. That's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, are you how's he finding it here in the camp?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, that camp. I don't know why. That guy
Speaker 2: is just like me. We just don't make anything better us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what it's working here because you guys give it
Speaker 1: a strength and supported in us.
Speaker 3: You know, Joseph wanted me to know that he wasn't
Speaker 3: giving up his home. He loves Jamaica, but he also
Speaker 3: wants a better life for his son.
Speaker 2: Is that it's not that?
Speaker 1: Isn't that like I'm giving away my home? My home
Speaker 1: is a good place. Yeah, yeah, it's a good island,
Speaker 1: nice place to be.
Speaker 3: Of course, his perspective is very common, and it's one
Speaker 3: that often gets left out of reporting. Coming to the
Speaker 3: USA is a very hopeful act. It's not abandoning your
Speaker 3: family or your home. It's trying to make their lives better.
Speaker 3: In your life, livapoo. Joseph was quite guided with his story,
Speaker 3: and that's fine. It's his to share as much as
Speaker 3: little as he wants. I came to the USA without
Speaker 3: having to get persecuted or hurt, and people who don't
Speaker 3: look like me should have that same right as well. Sadly,
Speaker 3: coming to the USA is also scary and confusing, even
Speaker 3: for me with three university degrees and all the intersectional
Speaker 3: privilege I have and fifteen years living here, and I've
Speaker 3: recently minted US passport. Now, I worried for years that
Speaker 3: maybe I'd made a mistake on a form or missed
Speaker 3: some kind of deadline. Speaking of deadlines, what none of
Speaker 3: the migrants could tell us, what they all wanted to
Speaker 3: ask about was exactly what was happening to them as
Speaker 3: Title forty two expired. A Congolese lady asked me if
Speaker 3: her passport would be confiscated. A lady from Senegal asked
Speaker 3: if she needed to pay a bribe like the one
Speaker 3: she'd paid in Mexico. It wasn't really clear at first
Speaker 3: if these people were being detained and under what process
Speaker 3: they were being received. Would they be sent back to
Speaker 3: Mexico and a Title forty two, repatriated under Biden's interpretation
Speaker 3: of Title eight or given the right to plead their
Speaker 3: case as international and US law suggests should be able to.
Speaker 3: CBP made people sit in lines all day with no
Speaker 3: indication of when they would be taken to the porta
Speaker 3: Entry for processing. Sometimes I heard people saying if everyone
Speaker 3: didn't sit down, there'll be nobody processed that day. But
Speaker 3: the only food, water, and medical attention available to the
Speaker 3: migrants with ZAK which could be passed through the wall,
Speaker 3: and they had to get out of their lines to
Speaker 3: receive this aye. I'll let Kaber describe what this looked like.
Speaker 7: They had people waiting in lines the whole like you're
Speaker 7: to sit in a line in a specific assigned spot.
Speaker 7: But it wasn't always clear if those how those lines
Speaker 7: actually worked.
Speaker 6: Because they would kind of take people from lots of places.
Speaker 7: I think they might have been prioritizing family with children,
Speaker 7: or people with some kind of medical.
Speaker 6: Needs or something like that.
Speaker 7: But we would you would never know when they were
Speaker 7: going to come, and we didn't seem to know also
Speaker 7: that who they were going to choose to take.
Speaker 6: We assume we didn't know exactly.
Speaker 7: Where we were taking them, but we assume they were
Speaker 7: taking the Port of Venture in Sannes ce Tour, which
Speaker 7: is about a mile away. And so what would always
Speaker 7: happen when they come and get a group is like
Speaker 7: three or four people from that group would sprint over
Speaker 7: to the world because we still had their phones and
Speaker 7: cdpeople wasn't going to wait for us to get the phones.
Speaker 3: One thing a lot of people we talked to shared
Speaker 3: was that there was another camp, which we later found
Speaker 3: how is as many as eight hundred single men. It's
Speaker 3: fairly usual to keep single men apart from family, but
Speaker 3: keeping them in an inaccessible place without adequate food or
Speaker 3: water is not usual. The camp was further west, and
Speaker 3: despite repeated requests from myself and others, including those delivering aid,
Speaker 3: we were not allowed to access it. One pair of
Speaker 3: Jamaican twins, both young men, told me they had walked
Speaker 3: up there and that things were very bad. People were
Speaker 3: only given one small water bottom the granola bar every day,
Speaker 3: they said. One person told me they'd heard people eating grass.
Speaker 3: I asked CBP's press office for information on this, but
Speaker 3: they didn't respond. Here's one clip of a man trying
Speaker 3: to explain how bad things were there. It's hard to
Speaker 3: communicate across language barriers, and with a war between you
Speaker 3: is even harder. But I could tell he was very
Speaker 3: concerned for the folks that we couldn't get to, despite
Speaker 3: myself and others trying and me addressing this issue directly
Speaker 3: and emails to CBP, and never got any response on
Speaker 3: why people were not allowed to help the single men
Speaker 3: in the other camp.
Speaker 2: Just not helping. What little water?
Speaker 3: Nothing else, no food, no water, blankets, blows nothing.
Speaker 2: I'll go try and go up there.
Speaker 3: Even with these camps being pretty desperate places, folks look
Speaker 3: after one another. We spoke a lot with one lady
Speaker 3: who spoke English. She was there with her own family,
Speaker 3: but she was also looking after two Tagi children who'd
Speaker 3: come alone. Their mother spoke a little English, so she
Speaker 3: relayed news to the children by calling their mother and
Speaker 3: having her translated for her children. Other folks took it
Speaker 3: upon themselves to try and walk to the camp for
Speaker 3: single men with water, and people constantly helped us find
Speaker 3: the owners of phone Boy, wandering through the rows of
Speaker 3: people sheltering under taps and space blankets to look for
Speaker 3: people who had left us their devices to charge in Nukumber,
Speaker 3: a town an hour or so east of San die,
Speaker 3: things were worse. Cumber's home to a cute hotel, a
Speaker 3: lovely lake, a hot spring, and an awful lot of
Speaker 3: big rugs. When the border wall was being built in
Speaker 3: Earnest before the twenty twenty election, they skipped some of
Speaker 3: the harder areas. Perhaps they figured it would be too
Speaker 3: hard to cross there, it's not Perhaps they wanted to
Speaker 3: maximize the mileage before election day. Well, it didn't help much,
Speaker 3: but either way, for some reason, the wall just takes
Speaker 3: a little break in Hucumber, and this makes crossing marginally
Speaker 3: easier there. However, the boulder fields, scorching hot days and
Speaker 3: cold nights make it anything but easy. On Thursday night,
Speaker 3: the eleventh of May, locals in a Cumber became aware
Speaker 3: that CBP were holding people on a dirt road in
Speaker 3: the open desert, just a few miles east of town
Speaker 3: and a few hundred feet from the wall. The people
Speaker 3: held they didn't have access to toilets, running water, or shelter.
Speaker 3: With every hour that went past, the number of people grew.
Speaker 3: The biggest camp soon held over a thousand people desperately
Speaker 3: trying to scratch out a little shade in the desert.
Speaker 3: All accounts popped up. One was apparently in someone's yard,
Speaker 3: and the people of this tiny desert town so about
Speaker 3: helping as best they could. Soon they were joined by
Speaker 3: volunteers from all over the county. Katie was one of
Speaker 3: those volunteers. She doesn't live in a Cumber, but her
Speaker 3: friends do and her family sometimes spends time there. Once
Speaker 3: she heard about what was happening, she knew she had
Speaker 3: to help. I let her describe her feelings after she
Speaker 3: saw the post online, and then drove out to Cumber
Speaker 3: to see what she could do to help.
Speaker 8: At first, I was just super touched by the activation
Speaker 8: and the carrying, and my son was asleep, comfortable in
Speaker 8: his car seat, you know, in our Mercedes van. And
Speaker 8: my husband is still trying to get citizenship after being
Speaker 8: here since he was two years old. So and we're
Speaker 8: married and he pays taxes. And when I saw our
Speaker 8: friends activating, I just told him tomorrow's Mother's Day and
Speaker 8: I need to come back here, and it's not safe
Speaker 8: for you here. So when I first arrived, I thought
Speaker 8: it was kind of odd that everything was organized around
Speaker 8: a random road that has a gate, and there were five,
Speaker 8: only five border patrol at the time, and about that
Speaker 8: was a larger camp, so I want to say at
Speaker 8: least eight hundred people, maybe a thousand. I didn't see
Speaker 8: them all because many of them would received their donations
Speaker 8: and the assistance and went back to their shelters.
Speaker 3: A few days after the migrants arrived, I camped out
Speaker 3: in Hucumber. I was cold in my sleeping bag at
Speaker 3: night and dizzy in the sun in the day. It's
Speaker 3: not a place where you'd want to be stuck outside
Speaker 3: the long but it's a place where fifteen hundred or
Speaker 3: so people were held for days little more than the shelters.
Speaker 3: They are built out of creosota and mesquite to protect
Speaker 3: their families from the elements. They slept on the dirt
Speaker 3: or in cardboard boxes left over from the food volunteers
Speaker 3: fed them and under whatever folks and tiny desert count
Speaker 3: could find to give them. By the time I arrived,
Speaker 3: the migrants were gone and volunteers were cleaning up. The
Speaker 3: landscape was dotted with impressively constructed brush shelters. Volunteers from
Speaker 3: her Cumber set up tables to distribute food, blankets, water,
Speaker 3: and clothing. Other volunteers stayed away from the camp itself
Speaker 3: and spent time packing things into individual sizes, perhaps combining
Speaker 3: hats and socks and maybe a toy for a child
Speaker 3: in one bag, or breaking down costco packages of snacks
Speaker 3: into individual portions. It's not necessarily the most rewarding task,
Speaker 3: but it's an important one. I asked Marissa, another volunteer
Speaker 3: who had previously worked in San Diego for the Forest Service,
Speaker 3: what she felt when we were cleaning out some of
Speaker 3: those shelters together a couple of days later.
Speaker 10: I don't know the best way to say this, but
Speaker 10: what hit me deeper was when this might seem strange,
Speaker 10: but when I saw women's sanitary napkins or the diapers
Speaker 10: or the babies, like it was kind of like a
Speaker 10: fabric padded crib basinet type thing that suddenly hit me
Speaker 10: on a deeper level. It would make me emotional because
Speaker 10: it's like then you start to realize, like, wow, what
Speaker 10: if that was me and my child or I'm not
Speaker 10: a mother, but I can only imagine what that must
Speaker 10: be like for them to be going through these things.
Speaker 10: As a as a woman, being on your period and
Speaker 10: being out and not having anything, you know, going to
Speaker 10: the bathroom out there. What do you use when you
Speaker 10: don't have those supplies?
Speaker 3: So yeah, it just.
Speaker 10: That was when it hit me deeper, and I knew
Speaker 10: I was doing the right thing by being out there
Speaker 10: and helping in whatever way I could, because I don't
Speaker 10: I don't when it comes to the politics side of it,
Speaker 10: when it comes to like legality and just different aspects
Speaker 10: of it. In that way, I don't have necessarily an
Speaker 10: opinion one way or another. I'm not educated enough to
Speaker 10: feel like I can. I can argue one way or another,
Speaker 10: or defend one position or another. I went out there
Speaker 10: purely for my love of humanity, and I think being
Speaker 10: able to support in whatever way I can that was
Speaker 10: the way that I felt like I could serve and
Speaker 10: bo support.
Speaker 3: Katie hadn't expected to meet migrants at the camp when
Speaker 3: she first showed up. She knew it was important not
Speaker 3: to flog the camp with volunteers, and their help was
Speaker 3: needed packaging and preparing aid drops, which she was happy
Speaker 3: to do. But in the end, she traveled up to
Speaker 3: the camp with a friend who spoke Portuguese so they
Speaker 3: could help translate and distribute supplies. I asked her what
Speaker 3: it was like to see the supplies she'd purchased a
Speaker 3: few hours before end up in the hands of people
Speaker 3: who desperately needed them.
Speaker 8: They don't even have a grocery store in her cumber
Speaker 8: They have one mini mart with nothing in it, and
Speaker 8: that was sold out the first day. So these people
Speaker 8: who we would look at without a lot of resources,
Speaker 8: passing the abundance of what they actually have, well, I
Speaker 8: saw a lot of families. I could tell that there
Speaker 8: were leaders within the group because they were helping organize
Speaker 8: as much as the volunteers were. And unfortunately there was
Speaker 8: language barriers, you know, and so those that could speak
Speaker 8: multiple languages, whether they were border crossers or volunteers, were
Speaker 8: together in it. And that was part of that organization
Speaker 8: that I'm talking about, you know. And it was actually
Speaker 8: a very calm scene when we first came up. I
Speaker 8: saw my son's hat that I donated and a little
Speaker 8: boy hugging this jaguar stuffed animal, and the jaguar was
Speaker 8: really significant to my friend and I when we found it.
Speaker 8: So it was really touching just to like see the
Speaker 8: things that we were bringing being literally being distributed like
Speaker 8: sometimes when you think you're helping. I worked for a
Speaker 8: door to door campaign when I was in my teens
Speaker 8: and I got fifty percent of what I raised, and
Speaker 8: it was like disheartening, and you're like, oh, this is
Speaker 8: how it works. And in this case, money that I
Speaker 8: directly spent on resources that were needed was going directly
Speaker 8: to the people.
Speaker 3: In all likelihood, people crossed in a specific spot because
Speaker 3: someone dropped them there telling them it would be easy.
Speaker 3: In fact, it was anything but people die crossing around here.
Speaker 3: In the dirt around Cucumber, I found discarded fly to
Speaker 3: itineries and documents from Turkey, Nicaragua, Columbia, Mexico. There were
Speaker 3: also little children's toys, shoes, and hundreds of empty water bottles,
Speaker 3: which we diligently picked up. But none of the more
Speaker 3: than one thousand people who the Board Patrol held in
Speaker 3: this camp have planned for what got, which was several
Speaker 3: days being detained in the desert by CBP with inefficient water,
Speaker 3: no shelter, and very little food and no information on
Speaker 3: what was happening or how long they could expect to
Speaker 3: be there. Sadly didn't get there in time to speak
Speaker 3: to any of them. I was in Arizona looking for
Speaker 3: border vigilantes and wondering what CBP had been doing to
Speaker 3: migrants there where they have the full support of local
Speaker 3: law enforcement and a large percentage of the aging population.
Speaker 3: To my surprise, I didn't find much. It seems like
Speaker 3: most people had crossed in the San Diego County area.
Speaker 3: Many had flown or walked to Tijuana. Of course, migrants,
Speaker 3: just like us, have accessed the news and to weather
Speaker 3: forecast and maps. Crossing in Arizona, a place known for
Speaker 3: cruelty and very hot weather doesn't make any sense when
Speaker 3: California offers a better political and weather climate, and with
Speaker 3: the mixed messages coming down about immigration law, these folks
Speaker 3: may not have been intending to evade border patrol, but
Speaker 3: to come to the USA and to take their legal
Speaker 3: right to claim asylum. I spoke to Sam, a volunteer
Speaker 3: with extensive on the ground experience humanitarian crises, about what
Speaker 3: he'd seen at the camp.
Speaker 11: Oh my name is Sam Schultz.
Speaker 3: He said, many of the people who found themselves in
Speaker 3: a cumber had likely been told by people smokelers, but
Speaker 3: this was an easy way into the US. In the end,
Speaker 3: it was anything but they I.
Speaker 11: Mean, I know they didn't expect that they were just
Speaker 11: waltz across the border. At a normal check station, but
Speaker 11: they thought it was going to be they were sold
Speaker 11: in pill of goods.
Speaker 10: Let's put it back walking.
Speaker 11: Yes, that's it, And so I mean, I feel sorry
Speaker 11: for anybody who's taken advantage of all like that. But
Speaker 11: most of the people that I met again who are
Speaker 11: not Colombians, were of the wealthier side of the on
Speaker 11: their countries. I met some of Becky's, some Kazakis, a
Speaker 11: bunch of people from India, a couple of Pakistani guys. Mind,
Speaker 11: I mean, they didn't get here cheap.
Speaker 3: The wall behind the people in Hookumba cost twenty five
Speaker 3: million dollars a mile.
Speaker 6: On average.
Speaker 3: The border patrol agent drove around in f one to
Speaker 3: fifty raped to trucks that started eighty thousand dollars and
Speaker 3: each make a starting salary of sixty thousand dollars in
Speaker 3: their first year. Surveillance towers that dot the desert, including
Speaker 3: one which provided a tiny scrap of shade to migrants
Speaker 3: resting under its solar panels, can cost a million dollars apiece,
Speaker 3: But people in a cumber received only one small water
Speaker 3: bottle each day, despite the punishing weather. Although customs and
Speaker 3: border protection did not seem to make any plan to
Speaker 3: shelter migrants in Nucumber. They did plan to have contractors
Speaker 3: paid forty dollars an hour to take them away. I
Speaker 3: found a job advert for a Southwest Border transportation and
Speaker 3: security officer at ISS Action Security. The agency photograph transporting
Speaker 3: migrants in Kumba. The job posting, which was posted two
Speaker 3: weeks before the end of Title forty two, has a
Speaker 3: description that includes patting down all detainees and applying appropriate
Speaker 3: restraints prior to boarding vehicles. The process through its migrants
Speaker 3: become detainees normally involves processing which had not been done
Speaker 3: in Nucumber, but it seems a presumption of ineligibility announced
Speaker 3: on the day Title forty two ended came into effect.
Speaker 3: Here this might seem a minor distinction, but it's important.
Speaker 3: It means that people have to file a defensive asylum
Speaker 3: claim and not an affirmative one. They have to plead
Speaker 3: why they shouldn't be deported, rather than why they have
Speaker 3: a right to stay. Many of the people who have
Speaker 3: been trying to cross before the end of Title forty two,
Speaker 3: like Diana, because they felt they would face a less
Speaker 3: serious penalty. Many of them flew to t win I
Speaker 3: walked from further south in Mexico or even in Central America,
Speaker 3: I likely spent their entire savings on a trip to
Speaker 3: the gap in the wall near hercumber that ended with
Speaker 3: them being held by border patrol and the open desert
Speaker 3: with next to nothing in the way of shelter, sanitation,
Speaker 3: or sustenance. As a way to quantify this, I want
Speaker 3: to reference to UCSD US Immigration Policy Center report apparently
Speaker 3: had some pretty problematic practices, but anyway, these are results
Speaker 3: from its survey. When asked whether border patrol gave them
Speaker 3: enough water for the day, over half of the asylum
Speaker 3: seekers that we interviewed, approximately fifty three per said no.
Speaker 3: Border patrol distributed one water bottle to each migrant in
Speaker 3: the morning. When asked where the border patrol gave them
Speaker 3: enough food for the day, all of the asylum seekers
Speaker 3: said no. Border patrol did not distribute any food. When
Speaker 3: asked where the border patrol provided adequate sanitation such as toilets,
Speaker 3: all of the asylum seekers that we interviewed, meaning one
Speaker 3: hundred percent, said no. Border patrol provided one porter body
Speaker 3: for the entire encampment. When asked where the border patrol
Speaker 3: provided adepriate shelter, such as shade to protect them from
Speaker 3: the sun. All of the asylum seekers that we interviewed
Speaker 3: said no. Border patrol did not provide any shelter. When
Speaker 3: asked where the border patrol provided blankets to keep them
Speaker 3: warm at night, all but one of the asylum seekers
Speaker 3: we interviewed said no Border patrol provided blankets. Some migrants,
Speaker 3: but the overwhelming majority, did not receive blankets. Altogether, two
Speaker 3: thirds of the asylum seekers we interviewed said that they
Speaker 3: agree or strongly agree with the statement if I did
Speaker 3: not receive food and water from volunteers, I would not
Speaker 3: get enough food and water from border patrol to survive.
Speaker 3: These aren't exaggerations, as we'll see, several migrants did come
Speaker 3: very close to losing their lives in the five or
Speaker 3: more days that CBP detained people out in the open
Speaker 3: along the border. Medical incidents in this kind of attention
Speaker 3: are far from uncommon. A lawsuit filed against Customers of
Speaker 3: Border Protection by the Southern Border Communities Coalition regarding their
Speaker 3: actions this week, stated that quote many migrants have fallen
Speaker 3: into medical distress because of the conditions, and CVP has
Speaker 3: been slow to provide access to medical attention, often only
Speaker 3: responding at the insistence of advocates. As a result, one
Speaker 3: woman suffered life threatening allergies, a child suffered an epileptic seizure,
Speaker 3: and a man suffered an unattended infection on his leg.
Speaker 3: Medical attention was slow to arrive, and when it did arrive,
Speaker 3: it was often insufficient. Like Kay, but describe the conditions
Speaker 3: they saw a couple of days after the end of
Speaker 3: Title forty two.
Speaker 7: It's really the product that it's hard in the state.
Speaker 7: The conditions there were not safe or sanitary. I guess
Speaker 7: this is sort of related to medical issues, but there
Speaker 7: was it's been you know, to their credit assessment. Has
Speaker 7: been reported in the media. But there was a single
Speaker 7: wordable toilet for anywhere from I guess there's probably a
Speaker 7: twilt be four hundred people there. I heard a couple
Speaker 7: of different citations of how often this toilet is serviced
Speaker 7: and cleaned and the waste removed anywhere from once or
Speaker 7: twice a week to once every week or two weeks.
Speaker 7: Either way, that's not remotely sufficient for four hundred people
Speaker 7: using the back room multiple times a day in this
Speaker 7: single portable like just a construction site toilet it was
Speaker 7: right next to the phone charging station on their side
Speaker 7: of the wall, and my I would just feel sick
Speaker 7: if I get if I sit too close to it.
Speaker 7: It was really vile.
Speaker 6: It was not safe.
Speaker 7: It is not a way for people to be helping.
Speaker 7: And I do know, I think a lot of thankfully
Speaker 7: people stop using it, but then they don't have any
Speaker 7: you know, a privacy or that that's still not you know,
Speaker 7: a sanitary in a situation to be in since I mean,
Speaker 7: they don't have a future space anywhere. So that's definitely
Speaker 7: one of the ways that people are doing the food
Speaker 7: in terms of their.
Speaker 6: Health and safety.
Speaker 3: Here's Samara, who will hear more from tomorrow, describe being
Speaker 3: ano of a medical incident.
Speaker 5: And the call that I got this morning was of
Speaker 5: a woman who was rushed out because she had an
Speaker 5: emergency situation, taken to the hospital. The hospital didn't know
Speaker 5: what to do with her, so they sat her right
Speaker 5: back here in the middle of the night, in the
Speaker 5: middle of the night, and they brought her here. She
Speaker 5: doesn't have any documents. CBP didn't get a chance to
Speaker 5: process her yet, so she doesn't even have any proof
Speaker 5: that she actually came to the port of entry and
Speaker 5: tried to seek asylum. And she was just sleeping right here.
Speaker 5: And she has burns all over her body, has an infection.
Speaker 2: I read the.
Speaker 5: Seven medications that they gave her, and she speaks daddy.
Speaker 5: She's from avon Astan. Her husband got taken by the
Speaker 5: Taliban and she escaped, running for her life. And she's
Speaker 5: here and she has sunburns all over her face and
Speaker 5: she has nowhere to go. She thought she was still detained.
Speaker 5: She actually thought she was still detained. She was just
Speaker 5: trying to get back to the other side of the border.
Speaker 5: She thought she was still in Mexico. No one explained
Speaker 5: anything to her. They brought her back here in the
Speaker 5: middle of the night, and she was freezing and so wet.
Speaker 5: That's why I came out here. I talked to her.
Speaker 5: Her The other folks who were out here didn't know
Speaker 5: why she was just sleeping here, and I came out
Speaker 5: and tried and translate it. And now we have her
Speaker 5: at a hotel.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 3: The witness one of the emergencies described in the Southern
Speaker 3: Border Communities Coalition lawsuit. When they visited the camp. He's
Speaker 3: describing it in.
Speaker 7: Terms of you know, medical care as well, like I said.
Speaker 7: One of the parts of the aid operation I was
Speaker 7: my name was most people. I think there's a probination
Speaker 7: both of people who were.
Speaker 6: You know, and then street medicine as well as people.
Speaker 7: Who were like nurses volunteering their prime and like that
Speaker 7: and mostly taking care of just kind of routine first
Speaker 7: aid for the most part. There was a situation where
Speaker 7: someone was having an a perject reaction, a fairly severe one,
Speaker 7: and I happened to carry and epythens, so I simply
Speaker 7: give that to one of one of the street medics
Speaker 7: and then they eventually did all this person the reaction
Speaker 7: bought severe enough about it was an an hour or
Speaker 7: so later at that nine, one was called, I assumed
Speaker 7: by one of the volunteers, and uh AM vialance and
Speaker 7: border patrol came to open the gate and bring this
Speaker 7: person in the country. They did eventually treat her, but
Speaker 7: it was a very it was a long time. I
Speaker 7: connuanced it of sometimes which is someone as someone who
Speaker 7: has anaphylexis reactions food and it's had that happened many
Speaker 7: times in their life. That is an absolutely terrifying I
Speaker 7: cannot imagine how terrifying it would be to be experiencing
Speaker 7: a life writing situation when you work trapped and and
Speaker 7: and you know there's no authority that really cares that
Speaker 7: you're there. And I don't know if she would have
Speaker 7: been able to get help.
Speaker 6: If there have been volunteers. I I said the ball,
Speaker 6: especially once.
Speaker 3: With medical training, where volunteers weren't. Things were worse in Texas,
Speaker 3: and I just Ae Reyes Alvarez, an eight year old
Speaker 3: girl born in Panama to Honduran parents, died in CBP custody. Rossellerees,
Speaker 3: the girl's father, told NBC News that they gave authorities
Speaker 3: documents about the girl's medical conditions congenital heart disease and
Speaker 3: sickle cellonemia while they were in immigration custody. They said
Speaker 3: that a doctor there examined Danideth and that she had
Speaker 3: contracted the flu Alvarez. Her mother said she spoke to
Speaker 3: both detentional authorities and medical personnel at the station multiple
Speaker 3: times to explain her daughter was complaining of pain and
Speaker 3: shortness of breath and that she was getting worse. All
Speaker 3: quite the next part directly from the NBC story. They
Speaker 3: never listened to me, she said. Rayes said his daughter
Speaker 3: was in a lot of pain. A lot of pain.
Speaker 3: I begged them to call an ambulance, Alvarez said, adding
Speaker 3: their authorities told her the girl's condition wasn't serious enough
Speaker 3: to warrant calling an ambulance. Avarez said her daughter begged
Speaker 3: authorities as well, telling them she could not breathe from
Speaker 3: her nose or mouth. Alvarez says that eventually her daughter
Speaker 3: lost consciousness and died in my arms. She said, authorities
Speaker 3: took the girl from her arms and put her on
Speaker 3: the floor trying to revive her. My daughter died there
Speaker 3: in the station, she said. Avare said she feels authorities
Speaker 3: did not do enough to help her little girl. My
Speaker 3: daughter is a human being. They had to take care
Speaker 3: of her, she said. Despite what you might have heard
Speaker 3: on the network news, the asylum process is anything but easy.
Speaker 3: I've had several visas, a Green card, and a US passport,
Speaker 3: and I can comply tell you the only easy way
Speaker 3: I've ever seen to come here is to be very rich.
Speaker 3: But even among the convoluted bureaucratic mess at his US immigration,
Speaker 3: the asylum process stands out as both rigorous and complicated.
Speaker 3: Asylum is a process by which people unable are unwilling
Speaker 3: to return to their country because of persecution or a
Speaker 3: well founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, politics,
Speaker 3: or membership of a particular social group, may remain in
Speaker 3: a safe country. From the eleventh of May onwards, migrants
Speaker 3: at the border were assumed ineligible for asylum. If they
Speaker 3: cross between points of entry, they must enter the defensive
Speaker 3: asylum process to prevent themselves from being deported. What this
Speaker 3: means for people we heard from earlier is that they
Speaker 3: are now taken, for whatever God forsake and holding area.
Speaker 3: They're in a bust to a processing facility where they're
Speaker 3: interviewed by an asylum officer to determine if they have
Speaker 3: a credible fear of persecution. They may need to provide
Speaker 3: a translator if there is an interviewing agent who speaks
Speaker 3: their language, and if they're determined to have a credible fear,
Speaker 3: they're told to check in with the US Customs and
Speaker 3: Immigration Office and sometimes given a notice which may or
Speaker 3: may not be dated to appear in court. My colleague
Speaker 3: Joe tried to get into one of these hotels to
Speaker 3: talk to one of the people we'd spoken to at
Speaker 3: the border, but he was pretty quickly shut down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how you doing either. I'm a freelance journalist.
Speaker 3: I'm here reporting for my boss, James Stout, He's at iHeartMedia.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if you're letting media in here to see.
Speaker 3: The guys, sadly not.
Speaker 2: Okay. Also the act you guys, and that's the strict
Speaker 2: union of this area here. Okay, you're going to set up,
Speaker 2: it has to be on the side of the line
Speaker 2: because I have a lot of traffic. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: very dangerous for you. Okay, So like beyond here, a
Speaker 2: past the college. Yeah, from here over Okay, cool, I'll
Speaker 2: say how you're working. Thank you.
Speaker 3: One of the folks we'd met was able to stay
Speaker 3: in touch for our WhatsApp and share the hotel rules
Speaker 3: with us. They were pretty strict. Migrants are confined to
Speaker 3: their rooms, they can't have visitors, and they can't even
Speaker 3: order food delivery from the hotel where they're hosted by
Speaker 3: Catholic charities. Migrants need to get to their sponsor in
Speaker 3: the United States.
Speaker 7: If they have one.
Speaker 3: If they don't have one, they can be sent just
Speaker 3: about anywhere. I've heard of East African folks having ended
Speaker 3: up in Alaska, for example. Once they get to where
Speaker 3: they're going to be. They check him with US customers
Speaker 3: and Immigration services in their new location, and they're given
Speaker 3: a special phone which also tracks their movements. They may
Speaker 3: have a DNA sample take and in addition to fingerprints. Later,
Speaker 3: sometimes years later, they attend a court hearing or two
Speaker 3: to determine their eligibility to stay. I've heard of lawyers
Speaker 3: charging from five thousand dollars to twelve thousand dollars for
Speaker 3: these hearings, and nonprofit legalists and services are totally overwhelmed.
Speaker 3: At the moment, the systems massively backed up, and court
Speaker 3: dates are being given as far out as twenty twenty
Speaker 3: seven already. They may or may not be able to
Speaker 3: work during that period, and uther the table work is
Speaker 3: getting harder and harder to find. Even if they do
Speaker 3: find work on less than minimum wage, it can be
Speaker 3: very hard to say about five thousand dollars for a
Speaker 3: lawyer A Migrants who can't find nonprofit help are at
Speaker 3: a significant disadvantage when it comes to their asylum hearings. Again,
Speaker 3: private security contractors, this time from Allied, were transporting migrants
Speaker 3: to the hotel and guarding it. Like CBP, the private
Speaker 3: contractors you guard transport and ink pass rate migrants or
Speaker 3: rely on the broken in immigration system to make money.
Speaker 3: Unlike CBP, the agents themselves aren't well paid. Nineteen dollars
Speaker 3: an hours are going rate for Allied, not much higher
Speaker 3: than San Diego's sixteen dollars and thirty cents minimum wage.
Speaker 3: But the company itself is huge. It's the third last
Speaker 3: yearest private employer in North America after Walmart and Amazon.
Speaker 3: Allied guards are at prisons, airports, and shopping malls across America,
Speaker 3: and it's alleged that some are underpaid, insufficiently trained, and
Speaker 3: improperly vetted. The company grosses over twenty billion dollars, and
Speaker 3: it's affiliates are frequent political donors. All across this story
Speaker 3: you'll see this Allied security iss action, security people, smugglers,
Speaker 3: customs and border protection, contractors who build the war pieces
Speaker 3: and contractors who install the wall pieces, General Atomics who
Speaker 3: sell CBP drones, and the Israelian American companies who sell
Speaker 3: the surveillance technology to the government. All these people make money,
Speaker 3: but the poorest people in the world are the only
Speaker 3: ones losing money, and sometimes they're lives when they cross
Speaker 3: our southern border tomorrow, we'll hear from some of the
Speaker 3: people who made no money and looked after the migrants,
Speaker 3: and we'll continue to support them through the asylum process.
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