Speaker 1: The history of the border and its enforcement begins in
Speaker 1: fourteen ninety two with the colonization of what would become
Speaker 1: known as the Americas. It goes through the eighteen forty
Speaker 1: two Mexican American War and a curl of indigenous people's
Speaker 1: lands without their knowledge or consent in the eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: three Gasden Purchase, and of course, through the eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: two Chinese Exclusion Act and numerous other explicit attempts to
Speaker 1: prevent non white people from moving to the USA. From there,
Speaker 1: it weaves its way through the Mexican Revolution and the
Speaker 1: First World Wars GEMA proposal to ally with Mexico to
Speaker 1: reclaim those territories it had lost in the decades before then.
Speaker 1: The Border patrol story itself begins in May nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 1: and in the ninety nine years since it has encompassed
Speaker 1: everything from David Duke to nine to eleven in its
Speaker 1: journey to becoming the biggest and least accountable law enforcement
Speaker 1: agency in the federal government. People from the colonial periphery
Speaker 1: have always migrated to the metropol. It's why a man
Speaker 1: called Fat LEDs singing a song about vinderlou Is basically
Speaker 1: in my country second national anthem, and why every four
Speaker 1: years France accepts black Frenchmen onto its football team before
Speaker 1: it returns to vilifying them in other forms of discourse.
Speaker 1: Migration to the United States is no different. Climate change
Speaker 1: in US imperiodism have destabilized and impoverished nations from the
Speaker 1: Americas to Afghanistan and driven people to the US border
Speaker 1: looking for a better life. What's distinct about the US
Speaker 1: is how obsessed it has become with keeping these people
Speaker 1: out and enforcing the longest land borders in the world.
Speaker 1: But the US border is much bigger than the land
Speaker 1: boundary between the USA and Mexico to the south and
Speaker 1: Canada to the north. If you're listening to this in
Speaker 1: the United States, the chances are that you live in
Speaker 1: the Border Enforcement Zone. This swath of territory outside the
Speaker 1: constitution has been established since the Immigration and Nationality Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty two. Established at a reasonable distance of
Speaker 1: the border would extend one hundred air miles around the
Speaker 1: outline of the country. Two thirds of the US's population
Speaker 1: live within this zone. Washington, d C. San Francisco, Chicago,
Speaker 1: New Orleans, and Boston are all within it, and that
Speaker 1: means that CBP agents can search vehicles and vessels to
Speaker 1: look for property that's in the country without the right documents.
Speaker 1: They can board public transportation or set up interior checkpoints
Speaker 1: and stop, interrogate, and search citizens and non citizens without
Speaker 1: the need for a warrant. Within twenty five miles of
Speaker 1: the border, they can enter your property provide it's not
Speaker 1: a domicile. The Fourth Amendment, part of a foundational bill
Speaker 1: of rights at US likes to tout as what makes
Speaker 1: it different from the rest of the world, doesn't apply
Speaker 1: when you're near the border, and all encompassing history of
Speaker 1: the border and its enforcement is beyond the scope of
Speaker 1: this podcast. Even a history of the Southwest border could
Speaker 1: take up a whole bookshelf, but we will try and
Speaker 1: skim the high points here. Let's start with a Gadsden purchase,
Speaker 1: when a party of military surveyors first bumped into to
Speaker 1: Horn art and elders as they attempted to draw a
Speaker 1: line dividing to Horn autumn people from to Horn Autumn people.
Speaker 1: The southern border is no more obvious today than it
Speaker 1: was then, and of course to the Autumn it was
Speaker 1: and remains, and aberrations that divides them from much of
Speaker 1: their ancestral and current homelands. It has over the years
Speaker 1: seen violent enforcement on members of the nation and a
Speaker 1: growing encroachment of the border patrol into today's to Horn
Speaker 1: Autumn Reservation, which is the second largest in the USA.
Speaker 1: It only represents a fraction of the tribe's historical homeland.
Speaker 1: These surveyors were in the process of finalizing most of
Speaker 1: the California and Arizona border, a border I drove most
Speaker 1: of in the days after Title forty two. The southern
Speaker 1: border as it looks now, was largely shaped by the
Speaker 1: Treaty of Guadalupihidalgo, which Mexico lost fifty five percent of
Speaker 1: its territory, including all of what is today California, Arizona,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada, and parts of what is
Speaker 1: today Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The Gaston Purchase of
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty three added more of southern Arizona. In New Mexico,
Speaker 1: the specific border in Santa Cidro withdrawn so that San
Speaker 1: Diego Bay would fall to north of the line. The
Speaker 1: border in Cucumber seems more arbitrary, a straight line in
Speaker 1: the desert that runs into a pile of rocks. Of course,
Speaker 1: long before the border divided San Asidra fifty one, this
Speaker 1: was Kumia land, and despite the border, it still is.
Speaker 1: The name Tijuana derives from Tijuan, which means by the
Speaker 1: sea in Kumia. Despite this, the Kumii and many other
Speaker 1: indigenous peoples were ignored when the border crossed them, and
Speaker 1: it's becoming harder and harder for them to cross it.
Speaker 1: In parts of desert, it can be pretty hard to
Speaker 1: see the border at all. In twenty twenty, while out
Speaker 1: with a group of Kumii people who were in ceremony
Speaker 1: to honor their ancestors whose burial sites have been and
Speaker 1: continue to be desecrated by border war construction, I had
Speaker 1: to be worried of stepping over it to better frame
Speaker 1: my shots. The emerging declaration Donald Trump made allowed war
Speaker 1: construction to sidestep legislation in place to protect archaeological and
Speaker 1: sacred sites, but it didn't allow me to sidestep into
Speaker 1: Mexico to get a better shot. Luckily, Bortac, a team
Speaker 1: of armed Border patrol agents who you might remember from
Speaker 1: Portland in twenty twenty, provided a guy addressed like he
Speaker 1: was in the Battle of Fallujah. To help me, I
Speaker 1: would say the border is a line in the sand,
Speaker 1: But at the time there wasn't a line that was
Speaker 1: visible at all. The moon a few miles east to
Speaker 1: where that Bortac patrol guard shouted at people stepping too
Speaker 1: close in twenty twenty. The border wall is about waist high, rusty,
Speaker 1: and essentially comprised of a single strand of barbed wire.
Speaker 1: In Hoocumber, the thirty foot trump wall pushes right up
Speaker 1: to a boulder pile and then stops the logic as
Speaker 1: much as there can be any logic, and spending twenty
Speaker 1: five million dollars a mile to desecrate sacred spaces and
Speaker 1: defile the landscape, is that people will be deterred from
Speaker 1: crossing by the harsh landscape brutally hot days and brutally
Speaker 1: cold nights. This logic, of course, fails to consider not
Speaker 1: just where people are going, why they're leaving the places
Speaker 1: they've come from, risking one's life crossing the border makes
Speaker 1: sense only when one considers the danger that many people
Speaker 1: in places around the world face every day. It hasn't
Speaker 1: always been this way. Fear reference here in Reagan and
Speaker 1: Bush talking about migration in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Ask you what you would do about Cuba.
Speaker 4: But now I can hold you.
Speaker 5: Now we're going to have some questions from the audience.
Speaker 3: Yes, my name's David Grosberg, and I'd like to know
Speaker 3: do you think the children of illegal aliens should be
Speaker 3: allowed to attend Texas public schools free? Or do you
Speaker 3: think that their parents should pay for their education?
Speaker 6: Who are addressing that?
Speaker 7: To think?
Speaker 8: He was looking right at you, I said he was love.
Speaker 6: I'd like to see something done about the illegal alien
Speaker 6: problem that would be so sensitive and so understanding about
Speaker 6: labor needs and human needs that.
Speaker 9: That problem wouldn't come up.
Speaker 10: But today, if.
Speaker 6: Those people are here, I would reluctantly say I think
Speaker 6: they would get whatever it is that they're you know,
Speaker 6: what the society.
Speaker 10: Is giving to their neighbors.
Speaker 6: But it has the problem has to be solved. The
Speaker 6: problem has to be solved because as we have kind
Speaker 6: of made illegal some kinds of labor that I'd like
Speaker 6: to see legal, we're doing two things. We're creating a
Speaker 6: whole society of really honorable, decent, family loving people that
Speaker 6: are in violation of the law. And secondly, we're exacerbating
Speaker 6: relations with Mexico. The answer to your question is much
Speaker 6: more fundamental than whether they attend Houston schools. It seems
Speaker 6: to me, I don't want to see a whole if
Speaker 6: they're living here, I don't want to see a whole.
Speaker 7: I think a.
Speaker 6: Six and eight year old kids being made, you know,
Speaker 6: one totally uneducated and made to feel that they're living
Speaker 6: with outside the law. Let's address ourselves to the fundamentals.
Speaker 10: These are good.
Speaker 6: People, strong people.
Speaker 10: Part of my family is in Mexican.
Speaker 5: Then I added that I think the time has come
Speaker 5: that the United States and our neighbors, particularly our neighbor
Speaker 5: to the south, should have a better understanding and a
Speaker 5: better relationship than we've ever had. And I think but
Speaker 5: we haven't been sensitive enough to our size and our power.
Speaker 5: They have a problem of forty to fifty percent unemployment.
Speaker 5: Now this cannot continue without the possibility arising with regard
Speaker 5: to that other country that we talked about off Cuba
Speaker 5: and what it is stirring up of the possibility of
Speaker 5: trouble below the border, and we could have a very
Speaker 5: hostile and strange neighbor on our border, rather than making
Speaker 5: them or talking about putting up a fence why don't
Speaker 5: we work out some recognition of our mutual problems make
Speaker 5: it possible for them to come here legally with a
Speaker 5: work permit, and then while they're working and earning here,
Speaker 5: they pay taxes here, and when they go on to
Speaker 5: go back, they can go back, and they can cross
Speaker 5: and open the border both ways. By understanding their problem.
Speaker 1: The mutineer of border enforcement began. As far as we
Speaker 1: can pinpoint a single date with Silvestre Reyes, that then
Speaker 1: sector chief of the Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas, and
Speaker 1: his operation Hold the line the community around McAllen, who
Speaker 1: got tired of border patrol snooping around businesses and even
Speaker 1: schools in a Rio Grand Valley. Instead, Rays deployed his
Speaker 1: agents forward in a sort of human fence along the
Speaker 1: Rio Grand. Rays would later become the chief of the
Speaker 1: OPASA sector and a Democratic Congressman. He lost his seat
Speaker 1: to be to a ROK in twenty thirteen, but this
Speaker 1: strategy would long outlive his career with border patrol. The
Speaker 1: following year, on September seventeenth, nineteen ninety four, US Attorney
Speaker 1: General Janet Reno announced the start of Operation Gatekeeper. The
Speaker 1: first phase of the Operation Focus on the first five
Speaker 1: miles of the western border, including the place where I
Speaker 1: recorded all those interviews you heard earlier this week. According
Speaker 1: to a piece written a quarter of a century later
Speaker 1: in the La Times, the strategy was to deter migrants
Speaker 1: from illegally crossing in the first place, and for those
Speaker 1: who remained undeterred, to encourage him to cross in more
Speaker 1: isolated wilderness areas to the east, where they could be
Speaker 1: more easily captured. There were already fences in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: first a chain link fence and then one made of
Speaker 1: helicopter landing mats left over from Vietnam that had horizontal
Speaker 1: struts that closely resembled and were used as a ladder.
Speaker 1: Anti migrant rhetoric was already there too. California Governor Pete
Speaker 1: Wilson became an outspoken advocate for Prop One eighty seven,
Speaker 1: measure that cut off state services like healthcare and education
Speaker 1: to undocumented people. Here's a clip of Wilson's re election ad.
Speaker 4: They keep coming two million illegal immigrants in California. The
Speaker 4: federal government won't stop them at the border, yet requires
Speaker 4: us to pay billions to take care of them. Governor
Speaker 4: Pete Wilson sent the National Guard to help the border patrol.
Speaker 4: But that's not all.
Speaker 11: For Californias who work hard, pay taxes and obey the laws.
Speaker 11: I'm suing to force the federal government to control the border,
Speaker 11: and I'm working to deny state services to illegal emigrants.
Speaker 4: Enough is enough, Governor Pete Wilson.
Speaker 1: Under the operation, a much higher number of agents were
Speaker 1: deployed to the border. Apprehensions increase, and with them, so
Speaker 1: did funding for border enforcement. It was around this time
Speaker 1: that the narrative around the border began to change. It
Speaker 1: was also around this time, a few months earlier in fact,
Speaker 1: that the US, Mexico, and Canada entered into the North
Speaker 1: American Free Trade Agreement, which made it easier than ever
Speaker 1: for capital to move across border and take advantage of
Speaker 1: low wages in Mexico. To learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about Operation Gatekeeper, I spoke to one of the agents
Speaker 1: who was tasked with execution gear.
Speaker 7: My name is Jen Budd and I'm a former senior
Speaker 7: Patrol agent with the United States Boarder Patrol. I was
Speaker 7: a senior intelligence agent as well as San Diego Sector Headquarters.
Speaker 1: Jennison's left the Border Patrol, but she realizes the impact
Speaker 1: of Operation Gatekeeper on migrants was anything but positive.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Operation Gatekeeper started in nineteen ninety four, in October of
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety four, and I got to Campo in November
Speaker 7: of nineteen ninety five, and so right afterwards in the
Speaker 7: fence was just getting to pick that day when I
Speaker 7: got there. So most of my class, I think we
Speaker 7: had I don't know, forty people graduated or something. Most
Speaker 7: of them went down to Imperial Beach and they had
Speaker 7: a wall there there, and so that was the idea,
Speaker 7: is to fill the San Diego City area with as
Speaker 7: many agents and weapons and all this, and then that
Speaker 7: would push the traffic for their up to the mountains,
Speaker 7: making it more difficult for them to cross, and some
Speaker 7: of them get injured, and we knew some of them
Speaker 7: would die. So it was intentional. The death and the injuries,
Speaker 7: according to management, would deter future crosses. But of course
Speaker 7: that that's not the case.
Speaker 1: Alan Berson, US attorney in San Diego, was named the
Speaker 1: so called Borders Are by President Bill Clinton a few
Speaker 1: years later to implement that same Gatekeeper strategy across the
Speaker 1: rest of the Southwest.
Speaker 7: Border.
Speaker 1: Burst in saw things a little differently.
Speaker 12: Neither side claims it, but Gatekeeper was probably the most
Speaker 12: important domestic achievement accomplished in a purely bipartisan manner through
Speaker 12: three administrations, and the greatest accomplishment since President Eisenhower and
Speaker 12: the Democrats put together the state highway system in the
Speaker 12: mid nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: But in fact, while apprehensions did drop in San Diego,
Speaker 1: they spiked by five hundred and ninety one percent in
Speaker 1: the Tucson sector between nineteen ninety two and two thousand
Speaker 1: and four. The La Times quotes the non partisan Congressional
Speaker 1: Research Service as saying, one unintended consequence of this enforcement
Speaker 1: posture and the shift in migration patterns has been an
Speaker 1: increase in the number of migrant deaths each year. On average,
Speaker 1: two hundred migrants died each year in the early nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: compared with four hundred and seventy two migrant deaths in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five. Many of those deaths are now
Speaker 1: in a sector that encomasses the Autumn Reservation. The desert
Speaker 1: there is particularly hard to cross, and the enforcement that
Speaker 1: began with Operation Gatekeeper pushes more and more people onto
Speaker 1: the reservation Dahna. Autumn people used to travel between the
Speaker 1: United States and Mexico fairly easily a roads without checkpoints
Speaker 1: to visit family, go to school, visit a doctor, or
Speaker 1: perform their traditional ceremonial practices. But after nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: the United States and its Border Patrol began a more
Speaker 1: visible and violent occupation of the reservation. It started with
Speaker 1: a vehicle barrier in two thousand and seven, and it
Speaker 1: continued with CBP's quote unquote virtual wall of surveillance technology,
Speaker 1: cameras and drones. The Israeli company Elbit Systems has built
Speaker 1: fixed surveillance towers which they pioneered in the West Bank
Speaker 1: on tribal land with the permission of tribal council. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: other members of the nation strongly oppose the militarization of
Speaker 1: their homeland in the name of security of whatever homeland
Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security is securing. I'll quote here
Speaker 1: from Todd Miller, whose excellent work on the border has
Speaker 1: required reading for anyone interested in the subject. Amy Juan
Speaker 1: and Nellie Joe David, members of the Horn Autumn her
Speaker 1: Magicum Writes Network. Tohrn joined a delegation to the West
Speaker 1: Bank in October twenty seventeen, convened by the Palestinian organization
Speaker 1: Stop the War. It was a relief, one says, to
Speaker 1: talk with people who understand our fears, who are dealing
Speaker 1: with militarization and technology. In twenty seventeen, to Horn Autumn
Speaker 1: vice chairman Verlin Hoose said that a war will be
Speaker 1: built quote over my dead body, and the tribe released
Speaker 1: a video saying there is no Autumn word for war.
Speaker 1: The sixty two miles of the border on their reservation
Speaker 1: would remain without one, they said. By twenty twenty, the
Speaker 1: Trump administration had fought through a wall or much of
Speaker 1: the border using what is known as the Roosevelt Reservation.
Speaker 1: This is a sixty foot wide strip of land that
Speaker 1: the federal government owns along the border in California, Arizona,
Speaker 1: and New Mexico. Although much of the Autumn Nation remains
Speaker 1: war free and somehows what's called a vehicle barrier or
Speaker 1: a normandy barrier, approximately one third of the Roosevelt Reservation
Speaker 1: is on tribal land. Since two thousand and five, realized
Speaker 1: the Act, environmental surveys and laws have been waived for
Speaker 1: border security, and this gave the Trump administration a way
Speaker 1: to justify the destruction of Autumn and Kumi burial grounds,
Speaker 1: sawad or cacti that the Autumn seas relatives, and other
Speaker 1: sacred sites along the border. Despite efforts by tribal members
Speaker 1: and allies to stop the construction, members of the Tahanna
Speaker 1: Autumn Nation have been pepper sprayed, beaten, tailed, and shot
Speaker 1: by Border patrol. In two thousand and two, a Border
Speaker 1: Patrol agent ran over and killed an Arthamn teenager. Last week,
Speaker 1: the same night I was waiting down by the border
Speaker 1: for the end of Title forty two, Border patrol agents
Speaker 1: shot and killed Raymond Mattia, an odd man who had
Speaker 1: called and asked him for help. He was shot thirty
Speaker 1: eight times just two feet from his front door, recording
Speaker 1: to his family Well, mister Mattia's death is still being investigated.
Speaker 1: The Border Patrol has a long tradition of literally getting
Speaker 1: away with murder. This is because they investigate themselves using
Speaker 1: so called critical incident teams. I talked to Jen about
Speaker 1: what those teams do, and so.
Speaker 7: What they would do is they would get there first
Speaker 7: on the scene because we would call them first. We
Speaker 7: wouldn't call anybody else. We'd call them first, and then
Speaker 7: they come. They get rid of the witnesses. They set
Speaker 7: the scene up the way we want to be done,
Speaker 7: and they tell you the narrative that you're going to
Speaker 7: stick with. You talk to your union reps, and it's
Speaker 7: all this giant cover up.
Speaker 1: Here's John Carlos Free, a journalist who covered CIIT cover ups,
Speaker 1: talking to Democracy Now about how these teams work.
Speaker 13: Within the victual agency of the US Border Patrol, there
Speaker 13: is an investigated body called SIT, the Critical Incident Team.
Speaker 13: They are tasked with investigating incidents that involve Border Patrol
Speaker 13: and it can be anything from a car accident to
Speaker 13: in this case, an individual who's killed at the hands
Speaker 13: of the US Border Patrol. In this particular case of
Speaker 13: Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, border Patrol agents deleted video, they collected
Speaker 13: evidence at the scene. They were present in the hospital
Speaker 13: when Anastasio was being treated, They were present at the autopsy.
Speaker 13: They fudged reports, they deleted reports, They coached their own
Speaker 13: agents on what kind of testimony they were to give.
Speaker 13: They were present at every one of the depositions. They
Speaker 13: made sure that they were the victims in this case.
Speaker 13: And when I say that, what I mean is that
Speaker 13: Border Patrol agents SIT team agents make sure that Border
Speaker 13: Patrol agents are looked at as the victims in any
Speaker 13: sort of an incident, meaning that they are allowed then
Speaker 13: to use lethal force if a Border Patrol agent has
Speaker 13: rocks thrown at them or in the case of Anastasio,
Speaker 13: they alleged that Anastasio was violent and that he was
Speaker 13: kicking and punching and he needed to be subdued. If
Speaker 13: we take a look at the videotape, that's not actually
Speaker 13: what happened. He's handcuffed, he's prone on the ground, his
Speaker 13: faces down, agents are on top of him. But if
Speaker 13: you read the reports in this case that were prepared
Speaker 13: by sid Anastasio was a violent man and needed to
Speaker 13: be subdued.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, Border Patrol was ordered to disband
Speaker 1: these teams, but Jen says they simply moved them somewhere
Speaker 1: else and gave them a different name.
Speaker 7: So then they said that they disbanded them because we
Speaker 7: brought the truth out and how they did all this
Speaker 7: and we proved it. But what they actually did is
Speaker 7: they did a retention. So they had the Border Patrol
Speaker 7: agents resigned from the Border Patrol and move over to
Speaker 7: cbp OPR and we hired them under there so the
Speaker 7: team that likely went to go investigate the tahonum Otem killing.
Speaker 7: I believe his name is Matia, Martia Raymond Matia is
Speaker 7: likely the Border Patrol fit teams. So if the Border
Speaker 7: Patrol agents, a lot of people don't understand, it's like
Speaker 7: a coult you know. They always say you blee green,
Speaker 7: you know, and you don't go back hung green, and
Speaker 7: probably one of the few that ever left, you know,
Speaker 7: and tells the truth about it.
Speaker 1: Of Course, the vast majority of people whose families will
Speaker 1: never find justice because of these cit teams are not white,
Speaker 1: and of course Border Patrol has long rooted links to
Speaker 1: white nationalism. In nineteen seventy seven, about forty five minutes
Speaker 1: from San Diego and another forty five minutes from Komba,
Speaker 1: David Duke, grand Dragon of the Knights of the klu
Speaker 1: Klux Klan at the time, announced the official beginning of
Speaker 1: Clan Border Watch. Do you claim there were hundreds of
Speaker 1: Klansmen on the border, but local newspapers The Desert Sun
Speaker 1: reported that there were in reality at least ten are
Speaker 1: quote directly from the Desert Suns reporting at a time here,
Speaker 1: Duke said clans On would refrain from direct contact with
Speaker 1: it eagle aliens if any had found, He said. Klansmen
Speaker 1: would not talk to them or contact them, but if
Speaker 1: any illegal crossings a scene, they're going to use CBE
Speaker 1: radios to relate the information to border patrol, Duke said.
Speaker 1: Duke of Metairie, Louisiana, claimed the clan has the support
Speaker 1: of the American people in helping the border patrol stem
Speaker 1: the influx of illegal aliens into this country. He claimed,
Speaker 1: the illegal aliens take jobs away from US citizens. We
Speaker 1: feel this rising tide washing over our border is going
Speaker 1: to affect our culture, he told reporters at the time,
Speaker 1: in a statement that wouldn't sound out of place on
Speaker 1: Fox News today. In response, more than one thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred brown Berries threatened to rally against Duke and protest
Speaker 1: far out numbering his patrols popped up along the border.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, Texas
Speaker 1: Knights of the KKK leader Louis Beam, a Vietnam War
Speaker 1: veteran who had helped to organize and promote Duke's border stunt,
Speaker 1: established paramilitary camps around Texas and train children as young
Speaker 1: as eight in the deadly guerrilla warfare tactics he learned overseas.
Speaker 1: He rallied white fishermen against Vietnamese migrants and burned their boats.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, a Border patrol agent from Logales named
Speaker 1: Matthew Bowen was accused of knocking down a Guatemala maunt
Speaker 1: with his vehicle, then lying to a quart about the incident.
Speaker 1: The prosecutors in the case showed the jury text Bowen sent,
Speaker 1: including one which called migrants quote disgusting, sub human shit,
Speaker 1: unworthy of being kindling for a fire. In several text messages,
Speaker 1: Bowen references quote tonks. This is a derogatory term for
Speaker 1: border crossing migrants. The origin to determine a little bit unclear,
Speaker 1: but it seems to be derived from the sound of
Speaker 1: a flashlight hitting the back of someone's head. In argument
Speaker 1: against submitting the texts, defense lawyer Sean Chapman wrote that
Speaker 1: he would argue certain terms are quote commonplace throughout the
Speaker 1: border patrols. To some sector, this is part of the
Speaker 1: agency's culture, and therefore it says nothing about mister Bowen's mindset. Genses'
Speaker 1: kind of language and attitude was not uncommon in her
Speaker 1: time in border patrol. From the mid nineties to the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, but things have got worse since.
Speaker 7: There have been some definite changes in the border patrol,
Speaker 7: in the training from before nine to eleven to after
Speaker 7: nine to eleven, and what you also see, so their
Speaker 7: vocabulary has changed, so like they refer to migrants and
Speaker 7: asylum secrecs invaders. We never use that term prior to
Speaker 7: nine to eleven, and we did have racist words that
Speaker 7: were used for them, and I use them as well
Speaker 7: on not denying there.
Speaker 1: Of course, this kind of language isn't just restricted to
Speaker 1: border patrol.
Speaker 3: The US has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems.
Speaker 3: I care, it's true, and these are the best and
Speaker 3: the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending
Speaker 3: their best. They're not sending you.
Speaker 9: They're not sending you.
Speaker 3: They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're
Speaker 3: bringing those problems with those. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime,
Speaker 3: they're rapists, and some are assumer good people.
Speaker 1: There has been white supremacist violence at the border ever
Speaker 1: since Duke and long before. Often it's been at the
Speaker 1: hands of groups outside of the state. Sometimes it's been
Speaker 1: in the hands of the state in Arizona, groups like
Speaker 1: Arizona Border Ricon and Minute Men American Defense have terrorized
Speaker 1: border communities for decades, engage renewed momentum from Trump's consistent
Speaker 1: demonization of migrants. I spent a bit of time looking
Speaker 1: for them and the desert in Arizona last week, but
Speaker 1: I didn't see much, not that I really wanted to.
Speaker 1: Interaction with these militias, probably far more off and than
Speaker 1: we have documented evidence for, can be fatal, just like
Speaker 1: interaction with customs and border protection. Here's just one example,
Speaker 1: called from David Newitt's excellent book, and hell followed with her.
Speaker 1: On May thirtieth, two thousand and nine, Seana Ford, Jason
Speaker 1: Eugene Bush, and Albert Gacxiola, all members of Ford's Vigilante group.
Speaker 1: Men at Man American Defense, forced their way into Raoul
Speaker 1: Flores Junior's home in Araavika, Arizona, by pretending to be
Speaker 1: border patrol agents. The group planned to steal and sell
Speaker 1: drugs they thought Flores had.
Speaker 10: In his house.
Speaker 1: The FBI knew about this, but did nothing to stop them.
Speaker 1: Finding no drugs in the house, c Vigilante's murdered Flores
Speaker 1: and his nine year old daughter. Briisnia Flora's wife and
Speaker 1: Blissenia's mother, Gina Marie Gonzalez, was shot three times. She
Speaker 1: played dead, but when attackers returned, she exchanged fire with them,
Speaker 1: using her husband's handgun. In doing so, she hit Bush.
Speaker 1: Bush had proviously been charged with a September nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: seven execution of an Aryan Nation associate for the supposed
Speaker 1: crime of being a race traitor. Both Ford and Bush
Speaker 1: are currently on death row in Arizona. The KKK was
Speaker 1: not the only group recruiting children for border patrolling. Since
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen eighties, the Border Patrol's Explorer Program has
Speaker 1: recruited young men and women of high school age. The
Speaker 1: program is charted through Learning for Life, which is a
Speaker 1: subsidiary of the Scouts of America. For kids, often the
Speaker 1: children of immigrants living in border towns where industry has
Speaker 1: long since gone in a decent wage is hard to
Speaker 1: come by, the program offers the chance at a starting
Speaker 1: salary of sixty two thousand dollars, twice a median income
Speaker 1: in some of these towns. Young explorers will learn tracking, survival, shooting,
Speaker 1: and how to detain and process on documented migrants, people
Speaker 1: who in some cases are walking in the footsteps of
Speaker 1: their own parents. According to an article by Moraling Music
Speaker 1: in the Nation, young Explorers have to earn the right
Speaker 1: to their uniform by participating in their sixty hour Basic
Speaker 1: ex Explorer Academy, of which they learned CPR drills and
Speaker 1: the methods of conducting vehicle stops. It also offers courses
Speaker 1: in radio communications, public speaking, report writing, and ethics and integrity,
Speaker 1: and introduces the youth to criminal juvenile immigration of Fourth
Speaker 1: Amendment law. While I was writing so checked out the
Speaker 1: San Diego sector page, which seems to show young people running, shooting,
Speaker 1: and one who looks like he's just been mased in
Speaker 1: the face. The next photo on the Facebook page dedicated
Speaker 1: to this Border Patrol sector shows a man in handcuffs.
Speaker 1: Above this is a video of someone dropping a chilt
Speaker 1: from the top of the border fence. Without figures from
Speaker 1: the CVP, it's hard to tell if participation in the
Speaker 1: Explorers has dropped as public awareness of family separation assault
Speaker 1: anw the behavior doesn't exactly fit with the Border Patrol's
Speaker 1: motto on a first has spread. I asked Jen for
Speaker 1: her take on the Explorer program.
Speaker 7: Well, I call it Border patrol youth because it reminds
Speaker 7: me a lot of the hipper youth, where we go
Speaker 7: into the high schools and we get the kids that
Speaker 7: are in trouble, and typically they are Latino dominant high schools,
Speaker 7: and we teach them how to be many Border patrol agents,
Speaker 7: and we teach them to hate somebody else instead of themselves.
Speaker 7: So we indoctrinate them into the same stuff that I
Speaker 7: was indoctrinating in too. But it's even gone so far
Speaker 7: and now as to they do the dog and pony
Speaker 7: shows at the elementary school, so they're getting them when
Speaker 7: they're like six seven years old, and they go there
Speaker 7: with you a little Border Patrol bulletproofess and put them
Speaker 7: on them and take pictures and put it on social media,
Speaker 7: and they have them sit in their trucks and turn
Speaker 7: the signs on and all this other stuff.
Speaker 1: That indoctrination is crucial to border patrol culture. And to
Speaker 1: be honest, the reason I wanted to talk to Jen
Speaker 1: was to understand it better. In Occomber, I see a
Speaker 1: young Border patrol agent, a woman giving volunteers rights. I'm
Speaker 1: not about to get into a Border Patrol truck. Myself,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't going to get a responsive by asked
Speaker 1: the agent how she squared up her role in holding
Speaker 1: people in the desert with the fact that some volunteers
Speaker 1: said she'd spend her own money buying supplies. Jen said
Speaker 1: that this kind of behavior can be pretty common with
Speaker 1: young agents.
Speaker 7: I intended to go to law school to be a
Speaker 7: civil rights attorney when I joined the Border Patrol, and
Speaker 7: for me, I ignored my core values and ignored that I
Speaker 7: was enforcing laws that sent thousands of human beings to
Speaker 7: their deaths because I felt like I was trying to survive.
Speaker 7: I was raped in the academy by a fellow agent,
Speaker 7: and they covered that up, and I was really trying
Speaker 7: to get out of the South and start my life.
Speaker 7: I oftould say, like, especially with female agents, they calls
Speaker 7: it verse five percent, because there's never been more than
Speaker 7: five percent of women in the Border Patrol rates. And
Speaker 7: they say, oh, it's because it's very hard. It's not
Speaker 7: because it's very hard. I mean, it is very hard
Speaker 7: to get through, but it's also it's because there's actually
Speaker 7: assaulting us all the time in the academy and lassing us.
Speaker 7: So I go back and forth in my mind, and
Speaker 7: I would imagine this young woman. You know, she has
Speaker 7: days where she arrests some pretty decent criminals every now
Speaker 7: and then once in a blue moon, but the majority
Speaker 7: of them, if she's paying attention and not completely self absorbed,
Speaker 7: she'll realize that they're not criminals and their families just
Speaker 7: simply seeking asylum. So she at some point has to
Speaker 7: decide in her mind, is this what I got into?
Speaker 7: Is this what I want to do with my life?
Speaker 1: In the wake of nine to eleven and quite telling me,
Speaker 1: the Border Patrol moved from oversight by the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice to the new Department of Homeland Security. This move
Speaker 1: from Justice as Security has been echoed in its recruiting,
Speaker 1: which once drew heavily on those with humanitarian aid experience
Speaker 1: and now tries to appeal to veterans of the two
Speaker 1: decades of war that have accompanied the growth of DHS
Speaker 1: Since two thousand and one, when the DHS was first established,
Speaker 1: the name struck many as problematic. In the two thousand
Speaker 1: and two article in The New York Times, Elizabeth Becker
Speaker 1: wrote that the name had worrying similarities to the way
Speaker 1: the Nazis talked about their fatherland, and it didn't really
Speaker 1: fit with the way Americans spoke. Nobody in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one was talking about the homeland. For two decades
Speaker 1: and billions of dollars later, it's hard to find much
Speaker 1: in the way of criticism of the agency in DC,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that the twenty twenty two budgets of
Speaker 1: CBP and ICE was sixteen and eight billion, respectively, and
Speaker 1: every year since two thousand and one, DHS has obtained
Speaker 1: more guns, more drones, and more surveillance technology that is
Speaker 1: inevitably used to spy on citizens as well as non citizens.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety five, there are about four thousand CBP agents.
Speaker 1: By twenty twenty there were twenty thousand, with seventeen thousand
Speaker 1: stations on the southern border. This is a slight drop
Speaker 1: from a peak of just over twenty one thousand. Under Obama,
Speaker 1: who is often called the deporter in chief, is fondness
Speaker 1: for expelling people from the United States for crimes like
Speaker 1: having a PieP or financial misconduct. There so called aggravated
Speaker 1: felonies and crimes of moral turpitude that only exist for
Speaker 1: non citizens. These agents today have the ability to operate
Speaker 1: in what the ACLU calls a constitution free zone and
Speaker 1: can conduct suspicion free searches of electronic devices, use cell
Speaker 1: site simulators, and sweep up data about thousands of people
Speaker 1: never accused of any crime. One of the more notable
Speaker 1: examples of this happened only a few yards from where
Speaker 1: I was recording last week in Santasidro. It's a story
Speaker 1: worth recounting in detail because it brings together the themes
Speaker 1: we've spoken about so far, demonization of migrants, government overreach,
Speaker 1: and a frank disregard for international and national law. In
Speaker 1: late twenty eighteen, I was enjoying a break from work
Speaker 1: in a caravan near in Sonata. If you think back
Speaker 1: to that time, right before the midterms, you might remember
Speaker 1: some of the rhetoric thats circulated around large group of
Speaker 1: migrants making their way to the southern border. I'll play
Speaker 1: some of the clips from Fox that MPR cut together
Speaker 1: in their coverage of the issue.
Speaker 8: The sympathetic, overwrought coverage of this invading horde is calling
Speaker 8: it a caravan is a misnomer in a frankly sick name.
Speaker 10: Or sample the Chipper Morning show, Fox and Friends.
Speaker 14: I've gotten so many email from people who said, don't
Speaker 14: call it a caravan, call it an invasion.
Speaker 10: Yes, Is that fair? Host Steve Doocy put the question
Speaker 10: to conservative pundit Michelle Melkin. Of course it is.
Speaker 14: It is a full scale invasion by a hostile force,
Speaker 14: and it requires our president and our commander in chief
Speaker 14: to use any means necessary to protect our sovereignty.
Speaker 10: CNN's Brian Stelter found that Fox News featured segments using
Speaker 10: the phrase invasion more than sixty times this month about
Speaker 10: the migrants. On Fox Business Network, lou Dobbs's program invoked
Speaker 10: it dozens of times. Trump ordered five thousand troops to
Speaker 10: the border. He tweeted yesterday, quote, this is an invasion
Speaker 10: of our country, and Trump has, without evidence, claimed gang
Speaker 10: members and criminals and Middle Easterners are among them. Over
Speaker 10: on Fox, guests have similarly, without supporting facts, suggested people
Speaker 10: from Isis and the Taliban might be among those migrants.
Speaker 10: Even so, the network's chief news anchor, Shepherd Smith, tried
Speaker 10: to put on the brakes yesterday.
Speaker 15: Tomorrow is one week before the midterm election, which is
Speaker 15: what all of this is about. There is no invasion,
Speaker 15: No one's coming to get you. There's nothing at all
Speaker 15: to worry about this month.
Speaker 10: Fox hosts and guests have repeatedly questions whether the migrants
Speaker 10: might bring in infectious diseases again without evidence. Laura Ingram,
Speaker 10: we don't know.
Speaker 8: What people have coming in here. We have diseases in
Speaker 8: this country we haven't had for decades.
Speaker 1: I'll leave you to process the incredible arrogy of the
Speaker 1: network that killed the decent percentage of its viewers by
Speaker 1: denying that COVID was serious or a disease, or the
Speaker 1: vaccines and masks are useful panicking about infectious diseases. Just
Speaker 1: two years before the pandemic began, the Tree of Life
Speaker 1: shooter who we won't name here, who is currently facing
Speaker 1: a death penunty trial for murdering eleven people in a
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh synagogue, were obsessed with the caravan. The victims of
Speaker 1: the largest anti Semitic mass murder in US history included
Speaker 1: a beloved community doctor, a great grandmother, and a couple
Speaker 1: who'd gotten married at the same synagogue more than sixty
Speaker 1: years earlier. The shooter's last post on hate speech social
Speaker 1: media site gap, posted just minutes before the synagogue massacre,
Speaker 1: spells it out with a reference to the Hebrew immigrant
Speaker 1: aid Society, the Jewish nonprofit that resettles refugees in the
Speaker 1: United States. Hias liked to bring invadives to kill our people.
Speaker 1: I can't sit by on watch my people get slaughtered.
Speaker 1: Screw your optics, I'm going in. The shooter was obsessed
Speaker 1: with the idea that a caravan of migrants with not
Speaker 1: a group of people trying to save their own lives,
Speaker 1: but a coordinated and somehow Jewish led invasion an attempts
Speaker 1: to demographically restructure the United States. If you're unding where
Speaker 1: he got that idea from, he is America's favorite job
Speaker 1: seek at Tucker Carlson on the caravan.
Speaker 14: Over the past month, a caravan of Central American migrants
Speaker 14: has gradually made its way up from Honduras through Mexico
Speaker 14: all the way to Tijuana opposite San Diego. At one point,
Speaker 14: Mexican authorities claimed they broke up the group, and American media,
Speaker 14: of course dutifully reported that they did, But they didn't.
Speaker 14: That was just a pr gesture and a temporary one.
Speaker 14: In fact, during parts of the trip, Mexican police escorted
Speaker 14: the migrants northward.
Speaker 12: In other words, the.
Speaker 14: Mexican government a bet did illegal immigration into this country
Speaker 14: as it has done for many years. Well tonight the
Speaker 14: caravan is on our southern border. Rather than wait for
Speaker 14: the crossing station as Hena Sidro to open, many of
Speaker 14: them just jumped the fence. Some waved Honduran flags when
Speaker 14: they got to the top, And that tells you everything.
Speaker 14: When you arrive in a country to contribute to it
Speaker 14: and to assimilate into its culture, you don't wave the
Speaker 14: flag of a foreign nation. That's what you do in
Speaker 14: triumph when you invade country.
Speaker 1: On my way home from Mansnado in twenty eighteen, I
Speaker 1: saw that quote invading Horde in the Benito Quadi Sports
Speaker 1: Complex and probably turned around and went back. My instinct
Speaker 1: as a journalist is to cover things like this, but
Speaker 1: my instinct is the person is to help first. On
Speaker 1: the first day, I was there with two friends I
Speaker 1: know from the weird world of pro cycling. Things were
Speaker 1: pretty bad. We'd obtained a backpack foot of stroop waffles
Speaker 1: that a friend who makes stroop waffles have given us.
Speaker 1: Once we gave those out, I talked to a few
Speaker 1: people about what they needed. We coordinated with mutual A
Speaker 1: groups in Tijuana and offered support or hoever wee could
Speaker 1: in the next few weeks, my friends and I spent
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars at a Tijuana costco, received
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars in donations from people we hadn't seen
Speaker 1: in years, and in one memorable instance, rigged up and
Speaker 1: projected as someone had tactically obtained from an office to
Speaker 1: a DVD player which we'd installed in the roof of
Speaker 1: a dilapidated nightclub for little children and their mothers so
Speaker 1: they could watch Beverly Hills, Chihuahua and forget about the
Speaker 1: fact that the country they were traveling to was portraying
Speaker 1: these little infants as invaders. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: very complicated memories of those few weeks. Little girls braiding
Speaker 1: my hair, little boys and girls trying to comprehend exactly
Speaker 1: how I could be this bad at football, and people
Speaker 1: from San Diego churches, tijuan anarchist kitchens, and mutual a
Speaker 1: groups around the region coming together to look after a
Speaker 1: group of people who'd been so heavily demonized by folks
Speaker 1: who had never met them or even been here. His
Speaker 1: Trump defending calling the caravan an invasion and simultaneously explaining
Speaker 1: why migrants low wage labor is desirable for people like him.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 2: As President, I challenge you on one of the statements
Speaker 2: that you made in the tail end of the campaign
Speaker 2: in the mid terms that here we go that, well,
Speaker 2: if you don't mind, miss president coming that this caravan
Speaker 2: was an invasion, as you know consider it to be.
Speaker 2: As you know, miss President, the caravan was not an invasion.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a a group of migrants moving up
Speaker 2: from Central America towards the.
Speaker 10: Border with the US.
Speaker 9: Thank you for dan.
Speaker 2: Why why did you why did you characterize it as such?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 9: As I consider an invasion. You and I have a
Speaker 9: difference of.
Speaker 2: A BUTI do you think that you demonized immigrants? Not
Speaker 2: election to try.
Speaker 9: I want them. I want them to come into the country,
Speaker 9: but they have to come in legally. You know, they
Speaker 9: have to come in Jim through a process. I wanted
Speaker 9: to be a process and I want people to come in.
Speaker 9: And we need the people.
Speaker 10: Your campaign, your campaign.
Speaker 9: You know why we need the people, does you? Because
Speaker 9: we have hundreds of companies moving in we need the people.
Speaker 1: Trump, as you heard in the clip, used a migrant
Speaker 1: caravan and to a prop for its racism, bigoted midterm campaign.
Speaker 1: It didn't work, and he lost control of the house,
Speaker 1: but he did succeed in forcing these people to spend
Speaker 1: months in the cold, first in a sports stadium and
Speaker 1: then the old nightclub. Even as a migrant gradually reduced
Speaker 1: in number, with many finding work and a new life
Speaker 1: in Mexico, some finding their way north. The long legacy
Speaker 1: of that caravan was only just starting. In the months
Speaker 1: of followed Journalists who'd covered the caravan, as well as
Speaker 1: those who offered assistant to caravan members, so they felt
Speaker 1: they'd become targets of intense inspections of scrutiny by border officials.
Speaker 1: I got pulled into secondarily once during this time, and
Speaker 1: that was entering Mexico. The worst I got was a
Speaker 1: chance to inspect my nineteen eighty pickup truck so oil pen.
Speaker 1: But for others things weren't so easy. Homeland Security Investigation
Speaker 1: special agent turned whistleblower Wesley Peteranac helped NBC to document
Speaker 1: that under the umbrella of what was called Operation Secure Line,
Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security created a database of activists, journalists,
Speaker 1: and social media influences tied to the migrant caravan when
Speaker 1: they crossed the border. Individuals in that database, were often
Speaker 1: subjected to hours long screenings and in some cases had
Speaker 1: flagspaced on their passports. A PowerPoint slideshow which Peternac leaked
Speaker 1: to NBC seven list some of the people, some of
Speaker 1: them have been guests on this show. They include ten
Speaker 1: journalists so on no whom are US citizens, a US attorney,
Speaker 1: forty eight people from the US and other countries who
Speaker 1: are labeled as organizers, instigators, or having unknown rules. The
Speaker 1: target lists also includes organizers from groups like Border Angels
Speaker 1: and Pueblos and Froontella's I asked journalist brook Bink Cowsey
Speaker 1: to describe her experience of increased border scrutiny in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 16: If you don't have a pre approved card, you have
Speaker 16: to like go through wait and line, wait in this
Speaker 16: long ass line, and then you know, you go and
Speaker 16: get vetted by CDP. They ask you some questions or
Speaker 16: they just wave you through, depending on what kind of
Speaker 16: day they're having or whatever. So in my case, I
Speaker 16: started getting pulled into secondary inspection more and more so
Speaker 16: they would wave my car over and then take me
Speaker 16: into this secondary place where it's sort of like this
Speaker 16: back it's like a quonset pet sort of and in it,
Speaker 16: like all these cars drive in and out, and they'll
Speaker 16: they'll go through your things, they'll get in your face,
Speaker 16: you know, they'll do all kinds of stuff. And I
Speaker 16: don't there have to be cameras in there somewhere, but
Speaker 16: I've never seen any. So I just kept getting pulled
Speaker 16: into secondary more and more as though I was this
Speaker 16: suspicious person, as though I was suspected of something, and
Speaker 16: every time I asked, they'd be like, I don't know,
Speaker 16: it's just random, ma'am, and ma'am, it's just random. So
Speaker 16: actually this started about twenty fourteen for me, but it
Speaker 16: started to escalate in twenty eighteen. Twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen
Speaker 16: started to escalating. I was like a fucking Trump administration,
Speaker 16: of course going to escalate.
Speaker 1: Right under Trump, she said, things got worse.
Speaker 16: From twenty seventeen through twenty eighteen. It kind of worked
Speaker 16: where you push back and I'd be like, you need
Speaker 16: to let me fucking go. You know, I'm century, I'm
Speaker 16: already pre checked. If you think that there's something wrong
Speaker 16: that I'm doing, and take my fucking century away, and
Speaker 16: I want to talk to your manager type stuff, right,
Speaker 16: So I was doing that That worked until twenty eighteen,
Speaker 16: and then it started to get really normally.
Speaker 1: Eventually things came to a head. The day before the
Speaker 1: migrants of the caravan were tear gassed. And I've seen
Speaker 1: most people remember from twenty eighteen.
Speaker 16: So but on that night, as I was coming back,
Speaker 16: I drove through and I did the sentry thing, you know,
Speaker 16: the usual stuff, and got pulled into secondary. And this
Speaker 16: time it was really like gnarly. The time before that
Speaker 16: had also been really gnarlly, like nobody hurt me, nobody
Speaker 16: did anything. But they got really close to my face,
Speaker 16: like brighten my face, you know, and started screaming at me,
Speaker 16: like screaming over me. And I kept going, I'd like
Speaker 16: to speak to your manager, you know, sir, like please
Speaker 16: please get out of my face, sir. And it was
Speaker 16: it was gross and they were going through my shit
Speaker 16: and that was gross. Like they didn't find anything, but
Speaker 16: it was just an invasive, hostile, disgusting thing.
Speaker 10: And that was when so I.
Speaker 16: Said, can I speak to your manager? Which is a
Speaker 16: magic phrase when you're a middle aged white woman. So
Speaker 16: I say this, and they bring over some guy and
Speaker 16: he goes, ma'am, can I help you? I'm like yeah,
Speaker 16: what the fuck. You know, why are you treating me
Speaker 16: this way? Why did any of this happen? And he goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 16: I'm sorry. Your name's on a list somewhere. You've been
Speaker 16: flat And I'm like, so every time I've crossed, I've
Speaker 16: been flagged. He's like, yeah, and yeah, you've been. There's
Speaker 16: a flag on your passport or against your name and
Speaker 16: that's why. And I said, well, why is there a
Speaker 16: flag against my name? And he goes, I don't know,
Speaker 16: You're going to have to do a Freedom of Information
Speaker 16: Act request or something. I don't even know if he
Speaker 16: knew I.
Speaker 1: Was a journalist Sadly Brook last crossing twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 1: since I photographed those Cumi folks in ceremony near Campo,
Speaker 1: the border wall has only got longer. Every mile it
Speaker 1: stretches out means another milet of desert people have to walk,
Speaker 1: and that means that more people won't walk out of
Speaker 1: that desert. Those people who lost their lives and an
Speaker 1: attempt to save them. A mark with little red dots
Speaker 1: on the various maps that attempt to put the humanitarian
Speaker 1: crisis into a visual form. Those dots begin in South
Speaker 1: America's people die traveling north, but they're sparse and isolated.
Speaker 1: Where that changes is the places I've been driving all week,
Speaker 1: Eastern California, southern Arizona. Places I know from years of hiking, climbing,
Speaker 1: and cycling. Places when one mistake can be fatal. I
Speaker 1: know for my friends who spend time resupplying water caches
Speaker 1: and searching for missing people. The You don't have to
Speaker 1: make any mistakes to die in the desert, especially if
Speaker 1: you're young or old, or sick or afraid to ask
Speaker 1: for help. These are the places we force people to
Speaker 1: travel through on foot to come here and create a
Speaker 1: better future for themselves. Dehydration, exposure and drowning or rank
Speaker 1: highly as caused a death along the border. Last year
Speaker 1: saw a record for border death, and with Biden attempting
Speaker 1: to take a hard line going into twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and climate change and instability continuing to drive migrants north
Speaker 1: to the place that causes so much of that climate
Speaker 1: change and instability, there's no reason to believe things will
Speaker 1: get better. I want to point to one tragic loss,
Speaker 1: one of thousands, that happened not far from where I live.
Speaker 1: In February of twenty twenty, Juana Margarita and Paula Santosarthe
Speaker 1: were traveling by foot from Wahaka to their future in
Speaker 1: the United States along a trail sometimes known as the
Speaker 1: Shrine Trail. Their family told media back home that they
Speaker 1: were searching for us. When you are a Medicano the
Speaker 1: American dream. Along their route is a small religious shrine
Speaker 1: which marks the last point from which you can see
Speaker 1: in Mexico. It's well inside the US along a dry
Speaker 1: creek bed in the Laguna Mountains. It can be hot
Speaker 1: in the summer and cold in the winter. Last November
Speaker 1: I camped out there, and even with thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: in gear, I was dangerously close to cold injury. I've
Speaker 1: also rescued hikers with dehydration symptoms near here. The desert
Speaker 1: and the weather might be part of the story, but
Speaker 1: the desert doesn't kill people on its own. It's the
Speaker 1: border that forces people deep into the desert that kills them.
Speaker 1: The desert is just a tool for a system that
Speaker 1: uses death of the torrent. When the girls crossed the
Speaker 1: border near Campo on the ninth of February, it was raining.
Speaker 1: As it climbed in the Laguna Mountains, it started to snow,
Speaker 1: They huddled under a bolder for warmth, and the two
Speaker 1: men smuggling them across struck out to get SAR reception
Speaker 1: and call nine to one one. By the time boor
Speaker 1: Star Border Patrol Search Trauma and Rescue team arrived, two
Speaker 1: of the girls had died as they tried to save Juana.
Speaker 1: Their request for air support was declined, and she died
Speaker 1: with one of the agent's jack kits wrapped around her
Speaker 1: and another agent's beanie on her head. For some reason,
Speaker 1: the girl's remains were not recovered right away, and they
Speaker 1: were not rewarmed, and so they last their last chance
Speaker 1: at the American dream and not life. Today, their final
Speaker 1: resting place is marked by three crosses and a cash
Speaker 1: of supplies placed there by volunteers. At the time I'm
Speaker 1: recording this, we don't know where all the folks we
Speaker 1: met at the border are now. Then we might never know.
Speaker 1: Not being able to follow stories is the sad part
Speaker 1: of this reporting. Sometimes knows people will have my phone number,
Speaker 1: but they might not. Only more have their phones or
Speaker 1: this scrap of paper are wroteed on. Often these things
Speaker 1: can be taken for them in custody. What we do
Speaker 1: know is that on May eighteenth, exactly one week after
Speaker 1: Title forty two ended, Immigration and Customer to Enforcement also
Speaker 1: known as ICE, tweeted a video of Customs Enforcement and
Speaker 1: Removal Operations agents walking down the corridor of a flight
Speaker 1: full of mass people. The caption read ICE conducted multiple
Speaker 1: removal flights including Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras as part of
Speaker 1: dozens flights conducted each week. On the wall of my
Speaker 1: office as I write this, there are several propaganda posters
Speaker 1: from the Spanish Second Republic. One is as simple as
Speaker 1: it is heartbreaking. The poster depicts a squadron of fascist
Speaker 1: bombers and the dead body of a child. The slogan
Speaker 1: underneath reads, if you tolerate this, then your children will
Speaker 1: be next. The poster was, of course correct. It was
Speaker 1: the inspiration for songs for the Clash and the Manstree Preachers,
Speaker 1: which are what, in turn made me want to learn
Speaker 1: about the Spanish Civil War. The slogan, coined in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven, feels as relevant today as it does then.
Speaker 1: It was one that folks on the border might as
Speaker 1: well have been screaming by twenty eighteen, but one that
Speaker 1: went ignored, just as it did in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, folks began to realize what it meant
Speaker 1: when border patrol drones circled the Skuise around Minneapolis and
Speaker 1: cell phone signal interceptors tracked citizens all over the US
Speaker 1: when they came together to demand that the police stop
Speaker 1: murdering people. It became more real in twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: when under DeSantis, Florida began the process of legalizing state
Speaker 1: kidnapping of trans and gender nonperforming kids from their loving families.
Speaker 1: But that all began when the state ripped Indigenous children
Speaker 1: for their families in nineteenth and twentieth centuries who tried
Speaker 1: to destroy their culture by punishing them for wearing their clothes,
Speaker 1: speaking their languages, or using their names. Wasn't a big
Speaker 1: leap from there to Trump's family separation policy, which detained
Speaker 1: kids on their own away from their families as a
Speaker 1: means of punishing a deterring migrants, and it's reached its
Speaker 1: obvious endpoint in Florida, because despite all the people chanting
Speaker 1: about kids in courages in twenty twenty, it's almost universal
Speaker 1: bipartisan agreement on treating people of our southern border like
Speaker 1: humans without rights and because for two decades we've allowed
Speaker 1: the border surveillance industrial complex to grow to an unprecedented
Speaker 1: and uncontrollable scale. But what you us all changing things
Speaker 1: now will be very difficult. DHS aren't numbers many nations armies,
Speaker 1: and it's considerably better equipped. But unless people show up
Speaker 1: and take action, things are going to get considerably worse,
Speaker 1: regardless of who you vote for or what they say
Speaker 1: in order to get you to vote for them. As
Speaker 1: Katie said, little things can make a difference, and if
Speaker 1: you listen this far, I hope you'll take the time
Speaker 1: to try and do those little things. Before we go,
Speaker 1: I want to update you on what's happened in the
Speaker 1: week we've been publishing this. Although there are no longer
Speaker 1: people held out in the open in ho Gomber and
Speaker 1: sant Asedra, there are still many people trying to present
Speaker 1: themselves at the sant Asedra border to claim asylum. Today
Speaker 1: I was told they about one hundred of them. They're
Speaker 1: waiting there often for days. Most of them are getting
Speaker 1: turned away. They're all frustrated with CVP one which continues
Speaker 1: to be buggy, offer no appointments and struggle to photograph
Speaker 1: black faces. I also wanted to mention some of the
Speaker 1: organizations you can find and donate to if you'd like
Speaker 1: to support the refor They are the Asian Solidarity Collective,
Speaker 1: Alo Trollaro, the American Friends Service Committee, Border Kindness, Borderlands
Speaker 1: Relief Collective, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, the Partnership for the
Speaker 1: Advancement of New Americans, and PREVENKASA pr E V E
Speaker 1: n C A s A. I'd also like to thank
Speaker 1: Joe Oriana his Twitter is at Joe or Photo for
Speaker 1: his reporting which very much contributed to this series.
Speaker 10: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 7: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 7: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.