WEBVTT - CZM Rewind: The U.S. Border Patrol Is A Nightmare That Never Ends 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:02.880 Also media. 0:00:04.559 --> 0:00:08.119 Hey everyone, Robert Evans here, and we're doing a rerun 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:10.360 episode because I need the time to get caught up. 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:13.520 But I figured we do this week. We rerun two 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:15.960 of our old episodes, cut out a bunch of extra 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:18.840 ads and put them in as long single episodes, and 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:21.680 a couple of topics that are very important. First off, 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:24.720 we're going to be talking about the Department of Homeland Security, 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:28.440 which as an organization is as bastardy a bastard as 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:31.480 we have ever discussed on this show. So here, please 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:34.240 listen up to a series of episodes that have unfortunately 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:42.640 only gotten more relevant as time has gone on. You know, 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.680 introducing a podcast is a little bit like Megan Love. 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:52.320 It's not it's not at all. I'm so sorry. I'm 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:56.800 Robert Evans failing to introduce my podcast yet again. It's 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:01.240 behind the bastards. It's about terrible people. I'm so sorry everyone. 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:04.080 I was. I was trying to open with my folksy wisdom, 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:08.240 but I have none, and I now I've watched the 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:12.480 start of this episode here to attempt to take away 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:15.759 some of my shame. Is Caitlin Duranty. Caitlin, how are 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:16.360 you doing today? 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:20.240 Oh? You know, I'm just barely keeping it together at 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:23.800 any moment, but otherwise. 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:28.240 Caitlyn, Okay, think of any similarities between introducing a podcast 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:29.000 and making love? 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:34.840 Well, let me think about that. Oh, I have one, 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:37.839 I have one. I have one. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:40.240 The audio levels can go up and down. 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:42.679 The audio levels can go up and down. 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:44.640 That's a good similarity, thank you very much. 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.720 Sure, maybe an entire episod, not just introducing an episode, 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:51.160 but in an entire episode. I think you could draw 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:54.000 some parallels between because you've got you know, there's like 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:56.960 the intro is sort of like the foreplay, and then 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:00.760 you've got, you know, usually a big climax. Dick finished 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:01.640 to the episode. 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:03.200 Well, there you go, everybody. 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:05.040 If we figured it out, we figured it out. 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.680 You wanted to compare a random episode of my podcast 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:12.280 about bad people to making love, Caitlin Duranty has kind 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:16.280 of made it easier. Maybe, Caitlin, how are you doing today? 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.359 I'm all right, you know, I'm just. 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:23.560 You're in your closet recording. 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:24.320 I'm in my. 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:26.880 Cloth, you're in your closet. I'm looking at your luggage 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.360 right now. Nice luggage. I see you go with the 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:29.880 hard shell. 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:30.840 Thank you. 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:35.120 Yes, it is a really nice closet, if I remember 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:37.160 from the photos you sent me like it's a very 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:38.200 good sized closet. 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:40.119 It truly is. Thank you so much. 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:43.080 You want to hear a little story about me, Caitlin, please, 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:47.400 I'm a narcissist. Okay, so you know I travel a 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:50.919 lot too, Caitlin, and I have refused my entire traveling 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:54.600 life to have like a hard shelled roly suitcase, even 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:56.680 though they're much more comfortable to use at the airport 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:00.160 than a backpack, because as a young man with an 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:05.240 indestructible spine, I was like, only stupid old people use 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:07.720 the rollly backpacks. I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be a 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.480 young adventurer forever and I just get to wear a backpack. 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:12.720 And now I just hurt myself every time I go 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:16.200 to the airport out of pride. And that's why men 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:18.200 shouldn't be allowed to hold political office. 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:24.480 I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah, you mean you 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.359 you carry around one of those like big like backpacking. 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:31.280 Yeah, big old, big old, Yeah, horrible, horrible. Sometimes they 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:32.840 carry a duffel bag even worse. 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:34.560 That's absurd. 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:39.240 Yeah, it's a terrible idea. But you know, it does 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:41.760 tie in with the theme of today's episode, because what 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:43.600 do you do with what do you do with backpacks 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:45.440 and rollly suitcases, Caitlin. 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:48.560 I mean you bring them with you to travel. 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:53.360 You bring them with you to cross borders. Yeah, and 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:57.680 today we're talking about the motherfucking migrat the border patrol. 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:01.520 Oh boy, I just want to say, nice job. 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:05.440 Yeah, thats It's been a long journey to starting the 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:10.200 episode this week, but I think we got there nicely. Yeah. 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:13.000 Sorry to everyone who's been you know, this has been 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:14.560 a little bit of a weird run of Behind the 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:18.360 Bastards the Uprising episodes. We're still going to be doing 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.440 the dictators and grifters, you know, that are bread and butter. 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:25.479 But I keep getting obsessed with different law enforcement agencies, 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:29.039 particularly the ones you know, shooting at me. And so 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:32.760 I started just kind of reading a bunch about customs 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:35.720 and border patrol this last week or so, and I 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:39.200 couldn't stop, and so I wrote a lot about them. 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:41.159 And now we're all going to talk about border patrol 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.560 because Kaitlin, did you know the border patrol kind of problematic? 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:46.640 Wait a minute, what do you mean? 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:53.039 Yeah? Not nice dudes, as it turns out, and have 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:55.880 kind of been dicks for like a hundred something years 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:58.200 or like one hundred years. They've been dicks for a 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:00.000 long time, very close to one hundred years. 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:02.800 Okay, ninety six years, all. 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:06.320 Right, yeah, which you know, they still have time to change. 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:09.760 You know, a lot of people have their best, you know, 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:11.840 their second act after age ninety six. 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:15.839 Yeah. I would say that applies to a large number 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:16.560 of people. 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:21.240 A lot of tortoises, at least a lot of tortoises 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:23.880 go on to do very cool things after age ninety six. 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:27.040 Yeah. Trees as well. There's a lot of old trees that. 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:32.000 Are recent border patrol could be like a sequoia mm hmm, yeah, 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:34.919 but I don't know how likely I think that is. 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:36.800 So we're going to talk about We're going to talk 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:40.000 about lemigra today because they're terrible, and I don't think 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.520 most people know how terrible they are. And their terribility 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:45.440 is important because it is tied in with a lot 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:50.719 of horrible things about this country and the very concept 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:54.799 of whiteness. So how are you feeling about that, Caitlin? 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.520 You know, I don't feel good about it, I really don't. 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:01.599 That's good because my cunning plan has been to blame 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:04.200 you personally for all of the historical crimes of the 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:05.200 US border patrol. 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:09.719 Well, I did, yeh invent them. 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:14.880 You you launched the Immigration Act of nineteen twenty four. 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:18.479 That's Caitlin Doranty's that's a sorry resume. Yeah. 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:21.320 I didn't want that to be my legacy. But here 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:21.680 we are. 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:22.720 Yeah. 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:24.560 A lot of people don't know this, but you used 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:27.120 to be all of Congress in the early nineteen twenties. 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:30.880 M Yeah, yeah, I mean pretty impressive when you think 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:31.000 of it. 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:34.240 Yeah, no, it really is. Yeah, Congress Dorante. 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:35.720 Yeah you were. You were instead of Caitlyn, you were 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:36.480 Congress Dorante. 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:37.680 That's true. 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:39.760 If we're going to talk about the border patrol, we've 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:42.240 got to talk about the border. And given that the 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:46.080 territory we currently know as like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:48.640 and even Mexico is all land that was stolen from 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.120 indigenous people, this is not like a case where there's 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:52.720 a lot of good guys to choose from. If you're 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:56.400 talking about like conflicts over the US Mexican border, you're 0:06:56.400 --> 0:06:59.360 talking about like a bunch of different states that kind 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:02.799 of sucked fighting each other for land that wasn't theirs 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.480 like that. That's the whole that's the whole deal, right. 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:12.040 So the US Mexican War of eighteen forty six eighteen 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:14.600 forty eight is the conflict that gained our nation most 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:17.720 of the modern Southwest. It was a naked war of 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:21.920 imperialist aggression against another nation that brutally subjugated indigenous peoples. 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:24.920 One can argue that Mexico was like a broadly better 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:27.000 country than the US at this point, since it didn't 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:34.360 allow slavery. But both countries not great to anyone any 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:39.520 like indigenous peoples or whatever. Just bad governments. So at 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:41.960 the end of the US Mexican War, the United States 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:44.920 wound up occupying Mexico City, and that nation was forced 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:47.560 to seed fifty percent of its northern territory in the 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.120 resulting treaty. And I think a lot of Americans who 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:53.360 grow up kind of outside of the Southwest don't really 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:57.800 have a clear idea of how much land the United 0:07:57.800 --> 0:07:59.800 States scott as a result of the US Mexican War. 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:03.240 But we took a shitload of land from Mexico. It's 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:06.800 fucking crazy how much of this country used to be Mexico, 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:08.400 Like up into Oklahoma. 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:10.760 Yeah, I don't have a good gauge on that because 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:15.560 I grew up in Pennsylvania and that just wasn't something 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:18.920 that they bothered to tell us in history class. 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:21.760 Yeah, we were, like most of the Southwest was kind of, 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:27.560 at one point or another part of Mexico. And so, yeah, 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:30.680 we took about fifty percent of Mexico's northern territory, and 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:33.440 a new US Mexican border was redrawn along the Rio 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.679 Grande from the Gulf to El Paso and then along 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:40.280 more or less an arbitrary line further west up the Pacific. Now, 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:42.800 this meant that a huge number of people who'd previously 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:45.320 lived in Mexico and had been able to travel freely 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:47.959 around territory that was all part of one nation now 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:52.160 found themselves living in between two nations. This included roughly 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:54.600 one hundred and eighty thousand members of indigenous tribes, as 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:57.360 well as about one hundred and fifty thousand Mexicans. So 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.520 these three hundred thousandish non white folks owned most of 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:03.960 the land, and like the territories in the Southwest that 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:06.559 you know became Texas and some of the surrounding states. 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:09.920 In the decades after the US Mexican War are kind 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.440 of best viewed as a gradual process of white people 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.920 taking this land from non white people, some of it 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.439 through purchase, some of it through like violent threats and intimidation, 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:22.200 some of it as a result of the reservation system 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.240 kicking indigenous people off of their ancestral land, and some 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:27.160 of it through just like good old, you know, good old, 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.880 good old fashioned genocide, Caitlin, just like that, just like 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:32.920 really getting your boots in it, you know. 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:36.640 I mean, those are the main principles that the US 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:40.280 was founded on, right, white people stealing land from non 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:43.440 white people and genociding them. 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.640 Your gosh darn right, Caitlin, Your gosh darn right. And 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:49.559 that's why when I get up in the I'm just 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:51.880 thinking of like a Folger's coffee commercial, you know, one 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:53.800 of those old ones where was like a cowboy getting 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:57.719 up on the range, sipping a Folger's coffee and then 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:01.760 just like stepping into a pile of and just being like, ah, 0:10:01.960 --> 0:10:04.800 nothing like a nice morning walking barthrop through a pile 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:07.959 of bones, the thing that I do every day as 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:08.600 a cowboy. 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:13.600 Yeah, why wasn't that their ad campaign for folders. 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:17.400 Folgers, Well, murder everybody. Coffee helps. 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:24.360 Oh. 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:26.680 I was drinking coffee and it went down the wrong hole, Caitlin. 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:26.920 Oh. 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.760 Now, see, coffee can't be stopped from attempting genocide. 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:34.120 Even coffee wants to murder. 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.800 Coffee wants nothing but to murder. So, as we discussed 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.160 in our last episode of the Behind the Police mini 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:43.640 series that we just did, the Texas Rangers was kind 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:47.360 of the first border patrol type force in you know, 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:50.720 the Southwest, and they began their history as as a 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:55.160 group like a paramilitary organization to protect white settlers in Texas. 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:58.640 They were formed by a local mayor named John Jackson Tumlinson, 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:01.200 who was part of the old three hundred white families 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:04.199 who first settled in Texas with Stephen F. Austin. Now, 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.959 it wasn't a popular decision for these three hundred families 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:12.280 to settle in Texas, and the Comanches, Tunkawa's, Apaches, and Carnkawa's, 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:14.880 who already resided in the area, got kind of angry 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:18.080 and started murdering them. So Tumlinson ordered the formation of 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:21.800 a roving defensive patrol. This patrol became the Texas Rangers. 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:23.800 But Tumlinson never got to see it formed, because he 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:28.120 was almost immediately killed by Karankawa and huaco In indigenous 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:29.760 people before he got off the ground. 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:32.120 Well, it sounds like karma to me. 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:35.800 Yeah, it sounds like it's fine. Like a shame they 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:39.160 didn't get more people. So the Rangers were kind of 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:42.080 this country's first border patrol force, and the primary method 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:44.760 of action for them was just again really just straight 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:46.679 up genocide. In the early days, there were like a 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:49.679 paramilitary army. They acted as scouts for actual militias. They 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:51.959 would swoop in and force Indigenous people out of their 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:54.679 homes and onto reservations, but would also just burn their 0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:57.880 villages sometime and murder their women and children because you 0:11:57.920 --> 0:12:02.600 know whatever, Sometimes you come into the office and you 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.760 want to do things different. I don't know. 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:06.480 Yeah. 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.199 They also engaged in the murder and intimidation of Mexicans 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:11.559 in border communities, and by the early nineteen hundreds, the 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:14.040 indigenous folks had mostly been forced off of their land 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:16.839 and the Rangers had become a police force focused mainly 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:21.640 on Mexicano Mexicano communities on the border. The primary strategy 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:26.360 was known to historians as revenge by proxy, and for 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:28.200 an example, of how that looked. I'm going to quote 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:32.840 from the American Crossroads book Migra quote. On June's twelfth, 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:36.520 nineteen oh one, a Mexicano rancher named Gregorio Cortes stood 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:38.880 at the gate of his home in Cairanes County, Texas. 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:41.000 There he resisted arrest for a crime that he did 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:43.839 not commit. The sheriff persisted, drew his gun and shot 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:46.160 Gregorio's brother in the mouth. When he charged at the 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:49.640 sheriff to protect Gregorio, Gregorio shot back and killed the sheriff, 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:51.520 an act that was sure to bring the Texas Rangers 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.200 to his doorstep. When they came, Gregorio and his family, 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:56.959 including his wounded brother, were gone. All that remained was 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:59.640 the dead body of the sheriff. The news of Gregorio's 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:04.280 deadly fiance quickly spread across southern Texas, and Yeah, for 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:06.800 ten days, the Texas Rangers and posses, numbering up to 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:08.680 three hundred men hunted for him. When they could not 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:11.560 find him, they sought revenge by proxy, arresting, brutalizing, and 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:14.800 murdering an unknown number of Mexicanos. So that's like how 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:16.960 the Texas Rangers kind of worked for a while. Is 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:21.120 a Hispanic person commits a crime or a perceived crime, 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:23.800 and if they can't catch him to murder him publicly, 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:26.280 they just kill a bunch of other random Mexicans so 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:28.800 that like people don't get up at e that's the 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:35.120 that's the first border patrol. Horrible, pretty bad, Caitlin, pretty bad. 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:37.439 Don't like it. I don't like it one bit. 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:40.880 Okay, so you are you are on the You are 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:43.360 on the record now about not being in favor of 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:49.559 murdering random people as part of a fear based system 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:50.480 of law enforcement. 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:53.960 Yes, and I am. I am happy to be on 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:54.920 the record. 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:59.240 Of state dance. That's a bold stances. Some advertisers, Caitlin, 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:04.680 especially our big advertiser, Raytheon. Yeah, when you really need 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.360 a group of people intimidated by violence, there's no other 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:10.760 option but Ratheon Raytheon. 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:13.320 It's not even robot, it's not even time for an 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:14.840 ad break. You're just doing this. I know. 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:17.240 That's a that's a free that's a free one. Raytheon 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:19.560 just had to lay off a lot of employees. Sophie 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:21.720 and I, for one, have a sense of loyalty, so 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:24.320 I'm trying to help Raytheon out with some free ads. 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:27.920 So look, if you've got a couple billion extra dollars 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:30.080 that you need to spend on missiles that are filled 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:33.640 with knives in order to assassinate, you know, insurgent leaders 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:38.040 in Yemen. Look, don't go to Lockheed Martin, go to Raitheon. Okay, there, 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:40.760 it's just better knife missiles. Right. That's that's all I'm 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:41.240 gonna say. 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:41.960 Mm hmm. 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:46.360 I have a sense of loyalty. So for the first 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.000 twenty years of the century, the US Mexican border was 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:52.240 policed by a mix of Texas rangers and like local sheriffs. 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:55.240 Such enforcement was always piecemeal, with hundreds of miles of 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:59.160 borderland operating basically autonomously, as it had for generations. Like 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:02.880 the idea that we would police our border like didn't 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:05.760 exist until pretty recently. For most of American history, it 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:08.840 was just like, well, yeah, you've got this big empty 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:13.360 chunk of country, and eventually it becomes Mexico, and it's 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:15.800 nobody really gives a shit. Yeah, you see, all these 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:18.400 communities had existed for forever, for hundreds of years in 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:20.400 a lot of cases, and you know, they had family 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:22.000 who would be up in Mexico or up in the 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:25.480 United States, and it would have seemed like it would 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:28.560 have seemed like madness to try to try to split 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:32.440 these communities up based on an arbitrary borderline that nobody 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:37.720 could even see. But yeah, in the nineteen twenties that 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:41.040 started to change. In nineteen twenty four, the Immigration Act 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.320 was passed and the Immigration Act banned all immigration to 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.000 the United States from Asia, and it massively reduced immigration 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:50.840 in from the south from southern and eastern Europe. The 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:52.840 goal of the Act was for the first time, to 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:56.720 enshrine in law the federal government's preference for Nordic whites 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:00.360 above non white people when it came to immigration, so 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:04.920 basically set up a quota system. Yeah, yeah, have you 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:07.000 heard about this. This is when we decided that only 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:09.320 one kind of white people were allowed in the country. 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:18.800 This is the Italians aren't white enough law. But people 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:20.880 used to really care about that, right in the nineteen 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:22.680 twenty four Immigration Act, A big part of it was 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.800 stopping Italians or as they would have called them, Italians, 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:29.520 which it used to be I think more racist than 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:32.040 it is and is now just a funny, old timeyway 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:36.360 of making fun of Italians, which I'm always I'm always 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:40.120 in favor of Caitlin. How do you feel you know, you. 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:41.920 Do know that my last name is Derante and that 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:43.760 I am I partly Italian? 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:46.480 Yeah, so am I? That's why it's okay, good? 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:46.920 All right? 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:51.720 Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Are we are we white? How's that? 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:52.400 How's that work? 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:59.000 Uh? I have heard slightly varying things, but I think 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.560 by in law, large Italian people are considered white. 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:03.000 Yes. 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:06.560 I was looking at a Nazi cartoon the other day 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.879 because I do things like that for my mental health, 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:12.560 and it was like, the point it was making is 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:16.280 that like, social justice advocates are always white, and fascists 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:19.480 are actually really diverse, and so like it was a 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:24.119 bunch of white people lecturing Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohido, but 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:27.520 because it was drawn by a fascist, they drew in 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:30.520 Mussolini as a black man because they don't think Italians 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:33.720 are white. So it's just like there were a lot 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.880 of layers of wrongness there to parse through. Is one 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:39.360 of those things that looked very confusing to people who 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:42.280 don't immediately recognize, Oh, these are the kind of racists 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:46.639 who don't even think Italians count as white. It's very funny, 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:51.080 but in the nineteen twenties, that was all of Congress, sure, 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:52.760 and they were like, we got to pass a lot 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:55.840 to stop these Italians from coming in. So yeah, the 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:59.360 Immigration Act in nineteen twenty four bans all Asian immigration 0:17:59.440 --> 0:18:02.639 and tries to restrict to only the right kind of 0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:05.960 white people. And the one real exception to this. The 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:08.640 only kind of like non white folks who were allowed 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.680 into the country under the Immigration Act without any kind 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:17.240 of restriction were Mexicans. And this is because of hardcore 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:20.919 labor or lobbying by the agricultural industry, right, because like 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:23.560 basically you had all these ranchers and farmers in Texas 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:27.960 particularly and in the Southwest, where like our entire industry 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:30.359 doesn't work without these people, so you have to let 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:34.119 them in. So the nineteen twenty four Act does kind 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:37.879 of make an exception for that. It's very heavily based 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.600 on race science, and in fact, like a big factor 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.159 in what got the Act passed was a bunch of 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:46.560 bogus studies conducted by the Eugenics Research Office at cold 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:50.119 Spring Harbor that kind of provided intellectual justification for the 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:52.400 law by arguing that the wrong kind of immigrants would 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:58.600 leave the surges and violent crime and declines in IQ. No, 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:01.000 this is bad. This is bad. And the nineteen twenty 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.359 four Immigration Act is what establishes the US Border Patrol 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:08.359 for the very first time. So this fundamentally racist law, 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:12.520 written by people who justified it explicitly with race like 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:17.199 bad race science, is where the border patrol is initially established. 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:21.440 So literally born in an orgy of racism. And in fact, 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:24.760 the nineteen twenty four Immigration Act that established the border 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:29.080 patrol was so nakedly racist that Adolph Hitler took inspiration 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:33.400 from it in nineteen Yeah it's bad. It's really bad, Caitlin. 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:38.200 This is where borter patrol comes from. Oh no, yeah, 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:41.760 it's not great. In nineteen twenty eight, Hitler wrote this, 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:44.840 of the law, there is currently one state in which 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:47.240 one can observe at least a week beginnings of a 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:50.119 better conception. This is, of course, not Germany, but the 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:54.639 American Union. The American Union categorically refuses the immigration of 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:58.880 physically unhealthy elements and simply excludes the immigration of certain races. 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.280 So wait, Hitler in the twenties took a look at 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:05.800 what we were doing in the US and was like, 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:10.840 I like the looks of that. Let me copy paste 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:13.600 and do that. 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:18.399 Yeah, exactly what happened. That's exactly what happened. That's exactly. 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:20.959 And he wrote extensively about how inspired he was by 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:23.679 US immigration law, which was like the most racist in 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:26.760 the world at the time. Holy shit, you want to 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:29.200 know something else, Cool, Caitlin, this is a neat story. 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:29.919 You're gonna love this. 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:31.560 Please tell me the story. 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:35.560 You know, El Paso, great town, solid tacos. A lot 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.720 of immigration in Del Passo, right, always has been because 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.520 it's the pass right, you know, that's just where it's located. 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:45.560 Back in like the twenties and thirties, when immigrants would 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:48.440 come in, racist white people were so worried about how 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:52.399 dirty they thought Mexicans were that they would mandate delousing 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.920 bats for everybody who entered the country, and they would 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:59.719 just douse them in pesticide, and the pesticide that they 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:01.600 chose with zyklon. 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:03.760 B Wait, what is that? 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:06.000 That's what they killed all the Jews with and the 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:09.679 good yeah wow, yeah, that's another thing. The Nazis were like, Oh, 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:12.000 this seems like something we could modify a little bit 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:15.560 to make better for us. That's good stuff. 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:17.359 It's not really shit. 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:20.680 It was super flammable and sometimes people burned horribly to death. 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:26.760 Good stuff on the border kind of always a nightmare, 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:29.879 kind of If you study the history of the border, 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:33.359 maybe the only reasonable conclusion is that borders are fundamentally 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:34.600 toxic but. 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:40.000 And completely made up. They're just yeah, and totalitye of 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:45.439 like horrible usually racist ideology. 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:48.520 They're just lines, racist lines we draw on a map 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:52.840 that murder tons of people. It's awesome, it's really good. So, yeah, 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:55.720 the Border Patrol comes out of is formed from a 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:58.119 law that the Nazis look at and go, that's a 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:05.359 good law, says we the Nazis. Sweet stuff, Caitlin. Yeah. So, 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:08.520 because the Immigration Act was passed alongside a surge of 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:11.520 racist nativist fear about those dastardly non white immigrants, it 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:14.520 mandated that the new Border Patrol be established quickly. The 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:17.280 first version of the force was basically built overnight from 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:20.000 May twenty eighth to July first, so rapidly that there 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:22.320 was no time for the patrol to actually create any 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:25.320 kind of qualification exam for its new recruits. The first 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:27.800 wave of men to wear the service's green uniform were 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:31.679 instead required to pass the Railway Mail Clerk Civil Service Exam, 0:22:32.119 --> 0:22:36.480 which I'm sure is basically the same thing. Yeah. So 0:22:36.600 --> 0:22:38.560 as a result, and this is something we'll talk about 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:41.560 in part two, this winds up being a long trend 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:44.200 in the border patrol is every decision they make, they 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:46.840 have to like immediately adopt it, and they never have 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:49.120 time to train anybody to do the job that they're 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:51.879 going to do, and everyone's just fine with this, and 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:53.639 it persists for ninety six years. 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:57.760 So the whole thing every like decisions are made all 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:01.679 willy nilly people are brought in yeah, with no training, 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:06.280 no training implemented, with nobody no thought given to it. 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:10.359 They're just like, here's what we decided, and we're not 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:13.200 going to take a second to examine this at all. 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:14.520 We're just going to do it. 0:23:15.080 --> 0:23:18.960 Yeah. I mean, the current DHS Secretary Chad Wolfe, has 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:21.919 no law enforcement experience, was never in the military, and 0:23:22.000 --> 0:23:25.240 I think went to college on like a tennis scholarship. 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:31.040 So it's great, it's cool how things are always exactly 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:31.960 the same forever. 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:33.000 Hmmm. 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:37.760 Because yeah, again, if people ever learn a single lesson 0:23:37.760 --> 0:23:40.480 from history, the world will explode. So we have to 0:23:41.600 --> 0:23:44.399 not do that anyway. 0:23:45.080 --> 0:23:47.320 But there's also a conundrum there too, right, because so 0:23:47.400 --> 0:23:50.840 much of history that gets taught, at least in schools 0:23:51.000 --> 0:23:56.000 is so horribly whitewashed, and revisionists that like, how can 0:23:56.040 --> 0:23:58.000 anyone learn anything from it? 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:05.480 Yeah, yeah, you know, that's a good point, Caitlin. And 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:07.840 that's why as I see all these kids in the 0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:11.400 street who just aren't going to school anymore and are 0:24:11.400 --> 0:24:14.679 instead spending their nights dropkicking the doors of a federal 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:17.600 courthouse to try to taunt the agents inside to attack them, 0:24:18.040 --> 0:24:28.520 I think, probably fine, probably learning about as much, right, true. So, yeah, 0:24:28.560 --> 0:24:31.400 the very first Border Patrol men were mostly mail clerks, 0:24:31.760 --> 0:24:35.760 and obviously mail clerks maybe aren't super meant to be 0:24:35.960 --> 0:24:39.119 tramping around the desert hunting people, and about a quarter 0:24:39.280 --> 0:24:41.720 of everyone in the Border Patrol quit in their first 0:24:41.720 --> 0:24:45.480 month of the job. Turnover remained incredibly high for basically 0:24:45.480 --> 0:24:48.520 the whole history of the organization, but particularly its early years, 0:24:48.800 --> 0:24:50.800 and this made it kind of impossible for it to 0:24:50.840 --> 0:24:53.760 develop any kind of functional internal culture at the start. 0:24:54.280 --> 0:24:56.720 By nineteen twenty seven, the Border Patrol had been forced 0:24:56.720 --> 0:25:00.320 to hire inspectors who could not even pass civil service exams. 0:25:00.640 --> 0:25:03.800 The agency tried desperately to recruit military veterans and men 0:25:03.840 --> 0:25:06.600 with law enforcement experience, but the vast majority of their 0:25:06.640 --> 0:25:10.040 new hires were just unemployed men who lived in border towns. 0:25:10.080 --> 0:25:13.439 These were white, working class folks who'd had trouble keeping 0:25:13.440 --> 0:25:16.040 a job and were kind of desperate for a leg 0:25:16.119 --> 0:25:18.640 up and the regular income that a law enforcement career 0:25:18.680 --> 0:25:21.359 would allow, as well as kind of the respect in 0:25:21.480 --> 0:25:23.560 pride or respect that you would get as a member 0:25:23.560 --> 0:25:26.600 of law enforcement. Right, Like they wanted some power. These 0:25:26.640 --> 0:25:28.639 were like, poor working class whites. 0:25:31.320 --> 0:25:35.320 Don't give anybody power. It never goes well. 0:25:35.520 --> 0:25:41.800 No, especially not poor white men in the country. Yeah, 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:45.080 so immigration from Mexico into the United States had not 0:25:45.160 --> 0:25:48.639 traditionally been like a major subject of national political debate. 0:25:49.200 --> 0:25:51.360 People in Texas, you know, there were folks who cared 0:25:51.359 --> 0:25:54.000 about it, but like, really, on a national level, if 0:25:54.040 --> 0:25:56.520 you'd like run based on your plan to build a 0:25:56.560 --> 0:25:59.399 wall around Mexico, ninety nine percent of Americans had been like, 0:25:59.440 --> 0:26:02.119 what the fuck is your problem? Like, why do you 0:26:02.160 --> 0:26:05.199 give a shit about that? Right, everyone is dying of 0:26:05.240 --> 0:26:09.320 diphtheria and the economy is permanently crashed. Please please stop, 0:26:11.000 --> 0:26:14.520 which I guess now we're back at so maybe that'll help. 0:26:15.240 --> 0:26:17.440 I mean, wow, the parent I don't hear. 0:26:17.359 --> 0:26:19.600 As many people giving a shit about the border these days. 0:26:19.640 --> 0:26:20.440 I'll say that much. 0:26:20.760 --> 0:26:21.320 That's true. 0:26:21.680 --> 0:26:24.320 Maybe it's because nobody wants to come here anymore. We 0:26:24.400 --> 0:26:27.400 did it, Caitlin, We finally stopped it. 0:26:27.600 --> 0:26:33.280 Just turn the US into a disease uh ridden hellhole. 0:26:33.760 --> 0:26:36.800 All it took was a runaway plague that we completely 0:26:36.840 --> 0:26:41.520 give up any hope of ever dealing with. Yeah, you 0:26:41.560 --> 0:26:45.520 know what, President Trump figured it out. Good for him. 0:26:46.040 --> 0:26:48.200 You know what President Trump didn't figure out. 0:26:49.480 --> 0:26:53.880 Oh, the products and services that support this podcast, that's right. 0:26:53.920 --> 0:26:57.600 We keep them a secret from the president. Yeah, but 0:26:58.280 --> 0:27:01.119 if you listen in, it can be a secret that 0:27:01.200 --> 0:27:04.200 you and I share and hide at all costs from 0:27:04.200 --> 0:27:13.640 the administration. We're back. Oh my gosh, I for one 0:27:13.960 --> 0:27:17.479 love that Trump for America bought up all of our 0:27:17.520 --> 0:27:23.560 advertising space. When I think of President, I think of 0:27:24.600 --> 0:27:29.000 the president anyway. So immigration from Mexico had not traditionally 0:27:29.000 --> 0:27:32.040 been a big, big political debate issue, right The wealthy 0:27:32.040 --> 0:27:36.560 agribusiness owners in Texas preferred simple immigration from Mexico, and 0:27:36.600 --> 0:27:38.960 they fought to ensure that Mexicans were not subject to 0:27:38.960 --> 0:27:41.639 the same harsh immigration restrictions as other immigrants. In the 0:27:41.720 --> 0:27:45.439 nineteen twenty four bill, one business owner put it simply, 0:27:45.720 --> 0:27:51.159 without the Mexicans, we would be done, which hasn't really changed, 0:27:51.200 --> 0:27:54.200 you know. And it's like we'll talk about this a 0:27:54.200 --> 0:27:56.399 little bit later on, but it is this kind of 0:27:57.040 --> 0:27:59.120 one of the things that you I didn't even realize 0:27:59.160 --> 0:28:01.439 was a really problem when I was a young person, 0:28:01.840 --> 0:28:06.960 kind of dealing with the mix between outwardly hateful racists 0:28:07.080 --> 0:28:11.679 in the Southwest and nice people who don't realize they're racist. 0:28:11.880 --> 0:28:15.359 Is like the nice people, the outwardly hateful people are like, 0:28:15.400 --> 0:28:17.360 you know, the Trump type folks that you know, who 0:28:17.480 --> 0:28:19.439 want to build a wall and kick all the rapist 0:28:19.760 --> 0:28:20.480 Mexicans out. 0:28:20.560 --> 0:28:23.000 Sure, they're easy to spot, yeah. 0:28:22.800 --> 0:28:24.800 Yeah, And then you have this chunk of people who 0:28:24.800 --> 0:28:27.679 are like, well, I hate what Trump's doing, and like 0:28:27.880 --> 0:28:31.720 I'm happy to have Mexicans here because you know, they 0:28:32.000 --> 0:28:34.280 they do great work, and you know, they're they're they're 0:28:34.320 --> 0:28:35.760 great at this, and they're good at that, and they're 0:28:35.760 --> 0:28:38.760 good at And it's this thing where like, especially like 0:28:38.960 --> 0:28:42.600 you know, you don't necessarily notice, especially as like a 0:28:42.640 --> 0:28:46.400 young white person is eighteen nineteen, like what what's actually 0:28:46.480 --> 0:28:49.840 being said there, which is like the commodification of non 0:28:49.880 --> 0:28:54.880 white bodies, which is like not cool. But we're going 0:28:54.920 --> 0:28:57.480 to talk more about that later because this is where 0:28:57.520 --> 0:29:00.000 that all starts in an organized way, which is awesome. 0:29:02.040 --> 0:29:05.160 So the white working class in text so obviously like 0:29:05.200 --> 0:29:07.200 these kind of these kind of landowners, the kind of 0:29:07.240 --> 0:29:10.480 aristocracy in Texas in this period, right, like the ranchers 0:29:10.560 --> 0:29:14.040 and stuff. They were broadly like they wanted more Mexicans 0:29:14.080 --> 0:29:16.680 and they could never get enough because like they needed 0:29:16.720 --> 0:29:20.320 people to actually work their farms. But the white working 0:29:20.400 --> 0:29:22.560 class in Texas and the white working class even in 0:29:22.640 --> 0:29:26.440 rural areas, really had nursed like a growing hatred of 0:29:26.480 --> 0:29:28.480 Mexican people and had been for years. And this was 0:29:28.480 --> 0:29:31.080 based on a mix of like fear that Mexican immigrants 0:29:31.080 --> 0:29:33.160 would take their jobs, that was always like a core 0:29:33.240 --> 0:29:35.600 part of it, and also based on kind of like 0:29:35.640 --> 0:29:39.320 good old fashioned racism. One labor union official in Texas 0:29:39.360 --> 0:29:41.440 at the time noted, quote, I hope they never let 0:29:41.440 --> 0:29:44.320 another Mexican come to the United States. The country would 0:29:44.320 --> 0:29:46.320 be a whole lot better off for the white laboring 0:29:46.320 --> 0:29:52.160 man if there weren't so many inwards and Mexicans. Oh yeah, Well, 0:29:52.160 --> 0:29:53.560 and this is one of those things if you're like 0:29:53.600 --> 0:29:55.880 kind of squaring yourself with the history of labor, you know, 0:29:56.080 --> 0:29:57.880 I'm a big fan of labor history, and I think 0:29:57.920 --> 0:29:59.760 there's a lot of wonderful stuff there. You do have 0:29:59.800 --> 0:30:01.720 to square with the fact that, like a lot of 0:30:01.720 --> 0:30:03.960 those dudes who were right about a lot of important 0:30:04.000 --> 0:30:07.600 things were incredibly racist and hated non white people because 0:30:07.600 --> 0:30:09.960 they saw them as a threat to white working class people. 0:30:11.640 --> 0:30:16.680 I mean, which that all stems from capitalism more or less. 0:30:17.000 --> 0:30:23.240 Where was any fairness or parody when it came to 0:30:23.560 --> 0:30:28.800 income and labor. People wouldn't have to be worried about 0:30:28.800 --> 0:30:32.320 other people. There wouldn't be this fear of like, who 0:30:32.840 --> 0:30:35.000 is my job in danger? Who's going to take my job? 0:30:36.920 --> 0:30:43.800 Because they're like a more just just socialized economy would 0:30:43.800 --> 0:30:47.040 eliminate that fear absolutely. 0:30:47.880 --> 0:30:51.440 Yeah. So the actual laws on the books in this 0:30:51.480 --> 0:30:53.520 period of time had been written largely by the rich 0:30:53.640 --> 0:30:56.360 land of gentry who needed Mexican immigrants. But now that 0:30:56.400 --> 0:30:59.440 the border patrol existed post nineteen twenty four, the men 0:30:59.520 --> 0:31:02.440 in forceeing those laws were working class whites who really 0:31:02.480 --> 0:31:05.080 just hated Mexicans and they honestly didn't give a shit 0:31:05.120 --> 0:31:07.520 about the needs of farmers, and in fact, a lot 0:31:07.520 --> 0:31:11.960 of them saw kind of being able to police undocumented 0:31:12.120 --> 0:31:15.800 migrants as a way of kind of equalizing their level 0:31:15.840 --> 0:31:18.960 of social power with farmers, because like, you know, they 0:31:18.960 --> 0:31:22.560 were poorer than these guys, they didn't have property, but 0:31:22.680 --> 0:31:26.000 now they had the ability to arrest these dudes workers, 0:31:26.160 --> 0:31:28.640 and like that gave them a level of power in 0:31:28.680 --> 0:31:30.520 their culture and a level of power of these people 0:31:30.520 --> 0:31:34.920 who had kind of previously been the bosses. And you know, 0:31:35.040 --> 0:31:36.960 kind of for a lot of these guys who became 0:31:37.000 --> 0:31:39.400 the first border patrol workers. These were obviously, these were 0:31:39.440 --> 0:31:41.680 white men, but there were men whose kind of sense 0:31:41.720 --> 0:31:44.400 of whiteness had been hanging on by a thread prior 0:31:44.440 --> 0:31:47.160 to this, this opportunity coming around. And I'm going to 0:31:47.240 --> 0:31:50.800 quote again from the book Migra quote. Early officers may 0:31:50.800 --> 0:31:53.200 have lived in white neighborhoods, worshiped at white churches, and 0:31:53.240 --> 0:31:56.760 sent their children to white schools. But as salesman, chauffeurs, machinists, 0:31:56.800 --> 0:31:59.320 and cowpunchers, they had labored at the edges of whiteness 0:31:59.320 --> 0:32:02.440 in the borderland. The steady pay and everyday social authority 0:32:02.440 --> 0:32:05.240 of US immigration law enforcement work dangled before them. The 0:32:05.280 --> 0:32:08.920 possibility of lifting themselves from a marginalized existence as what 0:32:09.000 --> 0:32:12.680 Neil Foley has examined as the white scourge of borderland communities. 0:32:13.040 --> 0:32:16.520 Policing Mexicans, in other words, presented officers with the opportunity 0:32:16.560 --> 0:32:19.760 to enter the region's primary economy and in the process 0:32:20.040 --> 0:32:23.719 shore up their tentative claims upon whiteness. As immigration control 0:32:23.800 --> 0:32:26.920 was emerging as a critical site of simultaneously expanding the 0:32:26.960 --> 0:32:29.920 boundaries of whiteness while hardening the distinctions between whites and 0:32:29.960 --> 0:32:33.800 non whites. The project of enforcing immigration restrictions therefore placed 0:32:33.800 --> 0:32:37.560 border patrol officers at what police scholar David Bailey describes 0:32:37.640 --> 0:32:40.800 as the cutting edge of the state's knife in terms 0:32:40.840 --> 0:32:44.800 of enforcing new boundaries between whites and non whites. So 0:32:44.920 --> 0:32:47.120 that is the border patrol in this period, the cutting 0:32:47.200 --> 0:32:50.680 edge of the state's knife, you know, cleaving the boundaries 0:32:50.680 --> 0:32:53.800 between white and non white people. The way to look 0:32:53.840 --> 0:32:56.560 at it, very picturesque. 0:32:56.960 --> 0:32:58.840 Yeah. 0:32:58.960 --> 0:33:00.960 Now this has made a lot more complicated by the 0:33:00.960 --> 0:33:03.840 fact that a chunk of the early border patrol were 0:33:03.880 --> 0:33:07.080 Mexican American and these guys in a lot of cases 0:33:07.480 --> 0:33:09.960 saw their ability their career in law enforcement as a 0:33:10.000 --> 0:33:13.480 way of separating themselves from non white people. The League 0:33:13.480 --> 0:33:17.680 of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, specifically stated that 0:33:17.760 --> 0:33:21.560 Mexican American association with colored races is what held them 0:33:21.600 --> 0:33:24.240 back from full acceptance by white society in this period 0:33:24.280 --> 0:33:27.600 of time. And the book Migra includes the story of 0:33:27.600 --> 0:33:30.840 one early officer patrol inspector Pete Torres, who was marked 0:33:30.840 --> 0:33:33.840 by a colleague for being Mexican. In response, he shot 0:33:33.840 --> 0:33:36.520 at the man's feet and yelled, I am not a Mexican, 0:33:36.600 --> 0:33:41.160 I am a Spanish American. Yeah. So this is like. 0:33:44.040 --> 0:33:44.920 Internalized. 0:33:45.640 --> 0:33:51.280 Yeah, it's a complicated history here, and I'm not going 0:33:51.360 --> 0:33:54.800 to I'm not going to go into tremendous depth about 0:33:54.800 --> 0:33:56.800 this aspect of the history because I'm just I'm not 0:33:56.880 --> 0:33:59.360 at all the right person to do so. The right 0:33:59.400 --> 0:34:04.000 person to do so, in fact, is probably Kelly Little Hernandez, 0:34:04.040 --> 0:34:07.360 author of the book Migra, History of the US Border Patrol. 0:34:07.440 --> 0:34:09.880 She does talk about this in more depth, and I 0:34:09.920 --> 0:34:12.759 really recommend her book. But you should know that's like 0:34:12.800 --> 0:34:15.640 an aspect of what's going on here. And as a rule, 0:34:15.680 --> 0:34:17.680 one of the things that starts to happen in particularly 0:34:17.719 --> 0:34:21.839 around like the forties is kind of a growing Spanish 0:34:21.960 --> 0:34:26.719 or Mexican American community who are very pro immigration enforcement 0:34:27.239 --> 0:34:30.880 and pro like harsher immigration laws and laws against illlegal immigration. 0:34:31.239 --> 0:34:34.799 They start to solidify as a voting block in the 0:34:34.840 --> 0:34:36.960 Southwest in this period too, and they still are to 0:34:37.040 --> 0:34:39.480 this day. It's a lot of people are like shocked 0:34:39.480 --> 0:34:41.600 when they see Hispanics for Trump and stuff, and there's 0:34:41.600 --> 0:34:46.160 actually pretty deep roots for a lot of that stuff. Yeah. 0:34:46.360 --> 0:34:50.240 So most early border patrol men though, we're white dudes, 0:34:50.280 --> 0:34:52.640 and it would probably be fair to call them white supremacists. 0:34:52.920 --> 0:34:55.160 And as the years went by, our government gave them 0:34:55.200 --> 0:34:58.560 increasing powers to exercise racism with stay of authority behind it. 0:34:58.880 --> 0:35:01.600 From a write up in the Inner While the nineteen 0:35:01.680 --> 0:35:04.440 twenty four immigration law spared Mexico quota, a series of 0:35:04.480 --> 0:35:06.759 secondary laws, including one that made it a crime to 0:35:06.840 --> 0:35:09.399 enter the country outside of official ports of entry, gave 0:35:09.440 --> 0:35:12.160 border and customs agents on the spot discretion to decide 0:35:12.160 --> 0:35:14.320 who could enter the country legally. They had the power 0:35:14.400 --> 0:35:16.560 to turn what had been a routine, daily or seasonal 0:35:16.600 --> 0:35:18.840 event crossing the border to go to work into a 0:35:18.920 --> 0:35:22.680 ritual of abuse. Hygienic inspections became more widespread and even 0:35:22.680 --> 0:35:25.000 more degrading. Migrants had their head shaped, and they were 0:35:25.000 --> 0:35:27.920 subjected to an increasingly arbitrary set of requirements at the 0:35:27.960 --> 0:35:32.239 discretion of patrollers, including literacy tests and entrance fees. The 0:35:32.239 --> 0:35:35.000 Patrol wasn't a large agency at first, just a few 0:35:35.200 --> 0:35:37.799 hundred men during its early years, and its reach along 0:35:37.800 --> 0:35:40.200 a two thousand mile line was limited, but over the 0:35:40.280 --> 0:35:42.960 years its reported brutality grew as the number of agents 0:35:42.960 --> 0:35:46.360 that deployed increased. Border agents beat shot, and hung migrants 0:35:46.360 --> 0:35:49.879 with regularity. Two patrollers, former Texas rangers, tied the feet 0:35:49.920 --> 0:35:51.840 of one migrant and dragged him in and out of 0:35:51.880 --> 0:35:54.640 a river until he confessed to having entered the country illegally. 0:35:54.920 --> 0:35:57.520 Other patrollers were members of the resurgent Ku Klux Klan, 0:35:57.680 --> 0:36:01.000 active in border towns from Texas to California. Yea, practically 0:36:01.040 --> 0:36:03.960 every other member of Elpaso's National Guard was in the klan, 0:36:04.040 --> 0:36:06.879 one military officer recalled, and many had joined the Border 0:36:06.920 --> 0:36:14.320 Patrol upon its establishment. So not great ideally, you know, 0:36:13.960 --> 0:36:16.400 if you ask me, we keep coming back to the 0:36:16.480 --> 0:36:19.840 KKK and how it repeatedly infiltrated law enforcement. 0:36:20.320 --> 0:36:20.680 M M. 0:36:21.400 --> 0:36:26.319 Someone maybe ought to do something about that. So for 0:36:26.400 --> 0:36:29.440 its first ten years of existence, the Border Patrol operated 0:36:29.480 --> 0:36:31.319 under the authority of the Department of Labor, and when 0:36:31.400 --> 0:36:34.480 FDR was elected, he appointed Francis Perkins to be Secretary 0:36:34.480 --> 0:36:36.719 of Labor, and she tried to curtail the violence of 0:36:36.719 --> 0:36:40.680 the Border Patrol and reform it, and this didn't really 0:36:40.719 --> 0:36:42.879 work out in the long run. She attempted to cut 0:36:42.880 --> 0:36:45.640 down a warrantless arrests. She mandated that detained migrants had 0:36:45.640 --> 0:36:47.520 a right to receive phone calls. She fought to provide 0:36:47.520 --> 0:36:49.359 migrants with at least some version of the civil rights 0:36:49.400 --> 0:36:52.480 they lacked as non citizens. But before long, FDR was 0:36:52.520 --> 0:36:55.280 pressured by the agricultural industry to put the Border Patrol 0:36:55.400 --> 0:36:58.759 under the control of the Department of Justice. Now this 0:36:58.880 --> 0:37:01.480 might seem surprising at first, because like these rich farmers 0:37:01.480 --> 0:37:04.040 were the same folks who'd fought to ensure Mexican immigrants 0:37:04.080 --> 0:37:06.440 wouldn't be subject to quotas in the nineteen twenty four 0:37:06.480 --> 0:37:10.680 immigration law. But there's a reason behind it. Because these 0:37:10.680 --> 0:37:14.120 folks had wanted these ranchers and stuff, had wanted Mexicans 0:37:14.120 --> 0:37:16.719 here to work their farms, but they hadn't wanted these 0:37:16.760 --> 0:37:21.000 people to actually stay in the United States lobbyist S. 0:37:21.040 --> 0:37:24.120 Parker Frizzell had told Congress in nineteen twenty six, the 0:37:24.239 --> 0:37:27.120 Mexican is a homer, like the pigeon he goes home 0:37:27.160 --> 0:37:30.239 to roost. And Frizell's promise had been that Mexicans weren't 0:37:30.239 --> 0:37:32.400 really immigrants, and thus they should be exempt from the 0:37:32.440 --> 0:37:36.160 USA's white supremacist immigration laws. They were birds of passage, 0:37:36.200 --> 0:37:39.319 he argued, just hanging around for a little while to work. 0:37:39.960 --> 0:37:41.920 But by the turn of the decade, as we hit 0:37:42.040 --> 0:37:44.800 like start going into the nineteen thirties, Mexicans had started 0:37:44.800 --> 0:37:47.640 to settle all across the Southwest, buying homes and starting 0:37:47.640 --> 0:37:51.160 communities and places like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. 0:37:51.760 --> 0:37:55.000 In nineteen hundred, only about one hundred thousand Mexican immigrants 0:37:55.040 --> 0:37:57.719 had lived in the United States. By nineteen thirty, there 0:37:57.719 --> 0:38:00.640 were one and a half million Mexican immigrants this country. 0:38:02.239 --> 0:38:05.680 So this starts to freak out a lot of white agriculturists, 0:38:05.760 --> 0:38:09.759 right and it kind of you know, they had been 0:38:09.960 --> 0:38:12.200 they had been okay with these people coming into work. 0:38:12.360 --> 0:38:14.640 But at the end of the day, there were the 0:38:14.680 --> 0:38:18.440 same kind of white supremacists as the border patrol men. 0:38:18.480 --> 0:38:20.520 They were just a little bit more refined, and once 0:38:20.560 --> 0:38:23.760 it started to look like these these Mexicans were coming 0:38:23.800 --> 0:38:26.480 in and actually going to be contributing and changing the 0:38:26.520 --> 0:38:30.359 demographics of the nation, they panicked. And the only thing 0:38:30.360 --> 0:38:32.160 they could really think of to do was give the 0:38:32.200 --> 0:38:36.080 border patrol more power to enforce how many Mexicans could 0:38:36.200 --> 0:38:40.200 enter the country. And there was a real big like 0:38:40.920 --> 0:38:46.799 debate over this, right because you still needed at as 0:38:46.840 --> 0:38:49.279 these farmers, you still needed a certain minimum amount of 0:38:50.080 --> 0:38:52.520 migrants coming in every year in order to actually like 0:38:52.640 --> 0:38:55.960 keep your farms working. And the guy who kind of 0:38:55.960 --> 0:38:58.600 figured out a solution to this problem with Senator Coleman 0:38:58.680 --> 0:39:01.920 Livingstone Bliee, was a white supremacist congressman who first took 0:39:01.920 --> 0:39:04.879 office in nineteen twenty five, and his solution was, rather 0:39:04.920 --> 0:39:07.239 than creating a system of quotas and caps that would 0:39:07.239 --> 0:39:10.480 have reduced manpower in American fields, he just wanted to 0:39:10.600 --> 0:39:14.879 criminalize unmonitored border crossing. So this is the very first 0:39:14.920 --> 0:39:18.080 time that it becomes illegal to cross the US Mexican 0:39:18.120 --> 0:39:22.280 border without doing it at a border station. That's nineteen 0:39:22.360 --> 0:39:25.440 twenty nine. That law has passed. And I'm going to 0:39:25.560 --> 0:39:28.799 quote from an article in The Conversation explaining what happened here. 0:39:29.440 --> 0:39:32.360 According to Bliss's bill, unlawfully entering the country would be 0:39:32.360 --> 0:39:35.239 a misdemeanor, while unlawfully returning to the United States after 0:39:35.280 --> 0:39:38.080 deportation would be a felony. The idea was to force 0:39:38.120 --> 0:39:41.040 Mexican immigrants into an authorized and monitored stream that could 0:39:41.040 --> 0:39:43.200 be turned on and off at will at ports of entry. 0:39:43.320 --> 0:39:46.000 Any immigrant who entered the United States outside of bounds 0:39:46.000 --> 0:39:48.759 of the stream would be a criminal, subject of fines, imprisonment, 0:39:48.800 --> 0:39:51.560 and ultimately deportation. But it was a crime designed to 0:39:51.640 --> 0:39:55.800 impact Mexican immigrants in particular. Neither the Western agricultural businessmen 0:39:55.880 --> 0:39:59.960 nor the restrictionists registered any objections. Congress passed Bleiz's bill 0:40:00.040 --> 0:40:02.520 the Immigration Act of March fourth, nineteen twenty nine, and 0:40:02.600 --> 0:40:05.080 dramatically altered the story of crime and punishment in the 0:40:05.160 --> 0:40:09.319 United States with stunning precision. The criminalization of unauthorized entry 0:40:09.320 --> 0:40:12.759 caged thousands of Mexicans Mexico's birds of passage. By the 0:40:12.800 --> 0:40:15.960 end of nineteen thirty, the US Attorney General reported prosecuting 0:40:16.000 --> 0:40:18.799 seven thousand cases of unlawful entry. By the end of 0:40:18.800 --> 0:40:21.480 the decade, US attorneys had prosecuted more than forty four 0:40:21.520 --> 0:40:27.279 thousand cases. Now Bleeze's law applied technically to like Canadians 0:40:27.320 --> 0:40:30.480 as well, but basically everyone prosecuted under it was Mexican, 0:40:30.800 --> 0:40:33.560 and it was mainly used as kind of a method 0:40:33.680 --> 0:40:37.719 of non mostly non violent ethnic cleansing. Like I don't 0:40:37.719 --> 0:40:39.560 even know if I I know if i'd say mostly 0:40:39.600 --> 0:40:42.520 non violent. It was used for ethnic cleansing. Throughout the 0:40:42.560 --> 0:40:45.960 nineteen thirties, Mexicans made up at least eighty five percent 0:40:46.000 --> 0:40:49.160 of all immigration prisoners. Sometimes some years they made up 0:40:49.239 --> 0:40:51.880 ninety nine percent. Three new prisons were built on the 0:40:51.880 --> 0:40:54.080 border to hold them all, and over the course of 0:40:54.120 --> 0:40:57.799 the decades, somewhere around one million Mexicans were deported from 0:40:57.840 --> 0:41:02.279 the United States, and most these people were US citizens. 0:41:02.640 --> 0:41:06.240 Historian Francisco Balderama argues that sixty percent of the million 0:41:06.239 --> 0:41:09.360 people who were deported were US citizens of Mexican descent, 0:41:10.080 --> 0:41:13.000 and border patrol forces would call what was happening here 0:41:13.160 --> 0:41:16.680 repatriation to make it seem voluntary, but what was really 0:41:16.719 --> 0:41:19.360 happening in the thirties was border patrol was just rounding 0:41:19.440 --> 0:41:21.680 up all of the Mexicans they could get and throwing 0:41:21.680 --> 0:41:24.560 them across the border and kind of accusing people of 0:41:24.680 --> 0:41:28.319 unlawful like crossing of the border basically as a justification 0:41:28.480 --> 0:41:32.400 for kicking them out. So that's cool. 0:41:33.080 --> 0:41:40.319 I just the resources that get used and spent to 0:41:42.440 --> 0:41:47.960 enforce these laws and build prisons and maintain the prison 0:41:48.040 --> 0:41:52.800 and just like all of that cost so much time 0:41:53.040 --> 0:41:56.520 and is so much effort. Why, like it would be 0:41:56.560 --> 0:42:01.760 so much easier if we would just let immigrants come 0:42:02.000 --> 0:42:04.879 and then just let them live and be a part 0:42:04.920 --> 0:42:06.759 of the community. 0:42:07.160 --> 0:42:12.520 I mean, I know why, Because yeah, racism, Yeah, yeah, 0:42:12.640 --> 0:42:16.920 it's absurd. Yeah, the Border Patrol's pretty lame, okaylin you 0:42:16.960 --> 0:42:18.840 know this is like that, But like this, this is 0:42:18.840 --> 0:42:21.480 what it is from the beginning, Like one of the 0:42:21.520 --> 0:42:23.959 first things the Border Patrol ever does is to port 0:42:24.040 --> 0:42:26.840 a million people, more than half of whom are US citizens. 0:42:27.640 --> 0:42:30.439 And it just lies about what it's doing because it's 0:42:30.440 --> 0:42:33.560 from the beginning, its job has never been to actually 0:42:33.640 --> 0:42:36.200 enforce the rule of law or even protect the border. 0:42:36.239 --> 0:42:40.880 Its job is to protect whiteness, right yep. So the 0:42:41.040 --> 0:42:44.040 very the primary method of action for Border Patrol agents 0:42:44.400 --> 0:42:47.640 from the beginning up to now was violence. The force 0:42:47.760 --> 0:42:50.760 was always undermanned and underfunded, with a handful of officers 0:42:50.760 --> 0:42:53.520 responsible for thousands of miles of rugged terrain, there was 0:42:53.600 --> 0:42:56.640 little to no oversight and agents generally used violence at 0:42:56.640 --> 0:42:59.759 their discretion, as this anecdote from the book Migra Illustrates 0:43:00.160 --> 0:43:03.680 Quote one day in nineteen twenty eight, explained Stoveall, who 0:43:03.680 --> 0:43:05.960 was a Border patrol agent. He was patrolling alone near 0:43:06.040 --> 0:43:09.200 San Elizario, Texas, when he decided to drive through town. 0:43:09.560 --> 0:43:12.480 San Elizario was this little Mexican town on the Rio Grande, 0:43:12.520 --> 0:43:14.560 said Stoveall, who remembered that when he got to town 0:43:14.560 --> 0:43:16.840 that day, he saw a mexicanyo come out from behind 0:43:16.840 --> 0:43:18.919 the bank of a drainage ditch and then duck back. 0:43:19.239 --> 0:43:21.359 Stoveall admitted to knowing the man, but stopped the car 0:43:21.400 --> 0:43:23.440 and asked him, what do you have there in your bosom? 0:43:23.680 --> 0:43:25.839 The man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out 0:43:25.880 --> 0:43:27.680 two bottles of beer and put them down on the 0:43:27.680 --> 0:43:30.080 bridge and broke them so he wouldn't have any evidence. 0:43:30.400 --> 0:43:33.680 Reflecting upon the incident, Stovall wondered, why didn't I pull 0:43:33.719 --> 0:43:37.000 out my gun and fire at that Mexican. I don't know, 0:43:37.160 --> 0:43:40.040 I don't know why. Instead of reaching for his gun, 0:43:40.040 --> 0:43:42.880 and firing. Stoveall fled. I got in my car and 0:43:42.960 --> 0:43:45.800 got away from there, remembered Stoveall, because it was in daylight, 0:43:45.840 --> 0:43:48.000 about one o'clock. If I had pulled my gun and fired, 0:43:48.040 --> 0:43:50.360 there would have been fifty Mexicans around me that quick. 0:43:50.719 --> 0:43:54.040 According to Stovall, God spared his life that day by 0:43:54.120 --> 0:43:56.800 taking charge of his hands and preventing him from shooting 0:43:56.840 --> 0:44:02.160 at the mexicanyo. So this is nineteen twenty eight and 0:44:02.239 --> 0:44:04.760 kind of a common additude, Like this border patrol agent 0:44:05.239 --> 0:44:07.640 approaches a guy who's got a legal alcohol and the 0:44:07.719 --> 0:44:10.680 dude breaks the bottles on him, and the man's lingering 0:44:10.760 --> 0:44:14.200 question that he's wondering for years afterwards is why didn't 0:44:14.200 --> 0:44:15.880 I shoot that man to death? Like? 0:44:16.880 --> 0:44:23.080 Yeah, what some people think justifies killing another person is 0:44:23.800 --> 0:44:25.960 something I will never comprehend. 0:44:26.640 --> 0:44:31.040 Yeah, I don't think they thought they were people, true. Yeah, 0:44:31.040 --> 0:44:35.400 And it's probably worth noting how common brutality was, like 0:44:35.840 --> 0:44:39.759 open brutality was among US law enforcement officials, even at 0:44:39.800 --> 0:44:42.440 like pretty high levels in politics at this time. In 0:44:42.480 --> 0:44:45.800 May of nineteen fifty four, Herbert Brownell, the Attorney General, 0:44:46.560 --> 0:44:49.919 Eisenhower's attorney General, gave a speech where he asked US 0:44:50.040 --> 0:44:52.200 labor leaders for their support in the event that Border 0:44:52.239 --> 0:44:56.960 patrol agents quote shot wetbacks in cold blood. So again 0:44:57.239 --> 0:44:59.920 not saying like, hey, we might have an accidental shooting 0:45:00.000 --> 0:45:01.680 and I need your support because like what we're doing 0:45:01.719 --> 0:45:03.560 is hard, and you know people are going to mess up. 0:45:03.680 --> 0:45:06.880 Is like, you know, my guys might murder some some Mexicans. 0:45:07.200 --> 0:45:10.120 You know, my guys are absolutely going to commit murder 0:45:10.120 --> 0:45:11.680 in cold blood, and I need you to like have 0:45:11.880 --> 0:45:15.040 my back, right. That's the Attorney General of the United 0:45:15.040 --> 0:45:19.320 States nineteen fifty forties. Cool stuff? 0:45:20.560 --> 0:45:22.200 You know what else is cool stuff? 0:45:24.520 --> 0:45:27.640 Don't, Sophie. I can't imagine what you're going for here. 0:45:28.640 --> 0:45:29.560 What is cool stuff? 0:45:29.600 --> 0:45:32.200 That's fine? Don't that's fine. I'll just leave. 0:45:33.480 --> 0:45:37.400 You know who isn't the Attorney General of the United States, 0:45:37.520 --> 0:45:43.239 hopefully the products and services that support this podcast. So 0:45:44.560 --> 0:45:47.759 racism's not good. You know who else isn't good? The 0:45:47.800 --> 0:45:50.120 head of the Border Patrol in the nineteen fifties. 0:45:51.360 --> 0:45:51.720 Pivot. 0:45:51.880 --> 0:45:54.200 Nice, yeah, a great pivot. So the guy in charge 0:45:54.200 --> 0:45:56.120 of the Border Patrol as we turn into the nineteen 0:45:56.200 --> 0:45:59.520 fifties is an outright monster by the name of Harlan Carter. 0:46:00.160 --> 0:46:03.759 Now Carter was, by the time he became the head 0:46:03.760 --> 0:46:09.000 of the Border Patrol, a convicted murderer who Yeah, in 0:46:09.120 --> 0:46:12.120 nineteen thirty one, as a teenager, he'd shot a Mexican 0:46:12.160 --> 0:46:14.239 boy in the chest at point blank range with a 0:46:14.280 --> 0:46:17.560 twelve gage shotgun, and the two had been having an argument, 0:46:17.600 --> 0:46:19.400 and the Mexican boy had a knife, but he was 0:46:19.440 --> 0:46:22.120 not actively threatening Carter, and in fact, he'd laughed at 0:46:22.120 --> 0:46:23.880 the boy's gun because he just kind of seemed to 0:46:23.920 --> 0:46:26.160 think it was silly that they were having a fight 0:46:26.200 --> 0:46:28.360 at all, and Carter shot him to death because he 0:46:28.400 --> 0:46:30.800 was angry for being laughed at. He was convicted of 0:46:30.880 --> 0:46:33.279 murder and sentenced to three years in prison, but he 0:46:33.360 --> 0:46:35.960 was let out after two owing to a technicality. So 0:46:36.280 --> 0:46:38.439 back in nineteen thirty one, by the way, you could 0:46:38.440 --> 0:46:40.319 shoot a man in the chest with a twelve gage 0:46:40.320 --> 0:46:44.839 and get three years. That's neat. Um. 0:46:45.480 --> 0:46:51.160 I love laws, Yeah, just so our justice system is cool. 0:46:51.680 --> 0:46:54.160 Yeah, he got rehabilitated. He went on to become the 0:46:54.200 --> 0:46:56.399 head of the Border Patrol and also was the head 0:46:56.400 --> 0:47:00.439 of the NRA. Uh Oh, Harlan Carter's an interest piece 0:47:00.440 --> 0:47:05.280 of shit. So throughout the forties, apprehensions by the Border 0:47:05.280 --> 0:47:07.480 Patrol were kind of ad hoc and disorganized, and they 0:47:07.520 --> 0:47:11.200 were mostly the result of individual agents seeking out undocumented 0:47:11.239 --> 0:47:14.040 immigrants by catching them in transit. This meant that large 0:47:14.120 --> 0:47:16.439 numbers of people were almost never apprehended at a time. 0:47:16.480 --> 0:47:18.799 It was more just like agents kind of going out 0:47:18.840 --> 0:47:21.120 and hunting people down and grabbing a couple of folks. 0:47:21.520 --> 0:47:24.080 This was an easy system for dumb, violent men to 0:47:24.200 --> 0:47:26.040 like figure out, you know, you're just kind of it's 0:47:26.080 --> 0:47:29.040 like hunting basically, and it appealed to the kind of 0:47:29.040 --> 0:47:32.600 folks who became Border Patrol agents. But starting in nineteen fifty, 0:47:32.640 --> 0:47:35.800 a young agent named Albert Quillen began to change things. 0:47:36.040 --> 0:47:38.839 He was intelligent and ambitious, and when the chief supervisor 0:47:38.840 --> 0:47:42.080 of Border Patrol demanded that he and his colleagues increase apprehensions, 0:47:42.320 --> 0:47:46.000 Quillen began experimenting with bold new strategies. At five am 0:47:46.080 --> 0:47:49.160 on February eleventh, Quillan took a detail of twelve patrol 0:47:49.239 --> 0:47:52.680 men with two buses, one plane, one truck, and nine automobiles. 0:47:52.960 --> 0:47:56.320 The men drove out to a small station in real Hondo, Texas, 0:47:56.320 --> 0:47:59.239 and then split into two groups to clean as well 0:47:59.280 --> 0:48:03.160 as possible certain section of illegal aliens. The plane acted 0:48:03.200 --> 0:48:05.240 as a spotter while the buses were used to quote 0:48:05.480 --> 0:48:08.920 Haull Wets to the border. One hundred people were apprehended 0:48:08.960 --> 0:48:11.399 in short order, and they were deported the next day. 0:48:12.000 --> 0:48:14.200 Quillan soon moved on with his force to a series 0:48:14.239 --> 0:48:17.560 of farms near Los Fresnos, Texas. They found five hundred 0:48:17.560 --> 0:48:20.319 and sixty one wets, which is again always the term 0:48:20.320 --> 0:48:21.799 they use for that. Do you understand where that term 0:48:21.800 --> 0:48:22.280 comes from? 0:48:22.360 --> 0:48:25.400 I don't know that I actually know the source of it. No. 0:48:25.920 --> 0:48:29.400 Yeah. So basically the idea is that there were kind 0:48:29.440 --> 0:48:31.799 of two two options for Mexicans at this time. There 0:48:31.840 --> 0:48:34.200 was the Bracero program, which was a program by which 0:48:34.200 --> 0:48:36.880 they could kind of enter the country quasi legally and 0:48:36.960 --> 0:48:39.960 get like legal working rights to be like a laborer 0:48:40.040 --> 0:48:42.680 or something like that. And then there was you could 0:48:42.760 --> 0:48:46.480 just cross the border right illegally, and that usually meant 0:48:46.520 --> 0:48:49.319 crossing the Rio Grande, which is a river, right, so 0:48:49.440 --> 0:48:51.680 you wind up wet on the other side of the river, 0:48:52.400 --> 0:48:55.160 so they call them wetbacks like that's that's still to 0:48:55.200 --> 0:48:58.920 this day a racist slang term for particularly Mexicans, be 0:48:58.960 --> 0:49:01.640 kind of all people of Hispanic descent. And a lot 0:49:01.640 --> 0:49:03.560 of Texas like you hear it a lot from raises 0:49:03.640 --> 0:49:06.399 there and the Border Patrol. It is their standard term 0:49:06.480 --> 0:49:08.600 for these people. This is like on all of their 0:49:08.600 --> 0:49:12.040 professional documents and everything. This is what they call migrants. Yeah. 0:49:13.480 --> 0:49:17.440 So Quillan's forces catch five hundred and sixty one wets 0:49:17.760 --> 0:49:19.640 on their second day, and on their third day they 0:49:19.640 --> 0:49:21.719 catch two hundred and sixty four. On the fourth day 0:49:21.719 --> 0:49:24.279 they catch one hundred and thirty four. In less than 0:49:24.320 --> 0:49:26.520 a week, they captured and deported more than a thousand 0:49:26.680 --> 0:49:30.160 undocumented laborers. And this was like unprecedented. The Border Patrol 0:49:30.200 --> 0:49:32.880 had never caught this many people this quickly. It was 0:49:32.920 --> 0:49:35.719 seen as an astonishing achievement by Quillan's superiors, and they 0:49:35.760 --> 0:49:39.120 began setting up other raids in imitation of his Border 0:49:39.120 --> 0:49:42.160 Patrol supervisors noted that these new task forces, as they 0:49:42.360 --> 0:49:45.800 started being called, we're quote pounding away on these wets 0:49:46.120 --> 0:49:49.799 cool dudes. Soon multiple task forces had been established throughout 0:49:49.840 --> 0:49:52.960 California and Texas, carrying out constant raids and netting huge 0:49:53.040 --> 0:49:56.120 numbers of undocumented persons. On some single days, more than 0:49:56.200 --> 0:49:59.200 five thousand Mexican nationals would be apprehended and shipped to 0:49:59.239 --> 0:50:02.520 temporary to ten camps before being sent back across the border. 0:50:02.760 --> 0:50:06.359 Patrolman handed deportees notes that read quote, you have entered 0:50:06.360 --> 0:50:08.879 the United States illegally and in violation of the laws 0:50:08.920 --> 0:50:11.080 of your land and those of the United States. For 0:50:11.120 --> 0:50:13.200 this reason, you are being returned to your homeland. If 0:50:13.239 --> 0:50:15.800 you return again illegally, you will be arrested and punished 0:50:15.800 --> 0:50:18.279 as provided by law. We understand that the life of 0:50:18.280 --> 0:50:20.799 a wet back is difficult. Wetbacks are unable to work 0:50:20.800 --> 0:50:22.800 for more than a few hours before they are apprehended 0:50:22.840 --> 0:50:25.480 and deported. Remember these words and transmit the news to 0:50:25.520 --> 0:50:27.359 your families and countrymen if you want to do them 0:50:27.400 --> 0:50:31.520 a favor. So that's fun. Yikes, nice letter there. 0:50:31.640 --> 0:50:38.279 Oh, terrifying language. Also, you had said alien that that 0:50:38.440 --> 0:50:42.439 was something that had been and still gets like. That 0:50:42.640 --> 0:50:51.840 language is still used and it's just the most dehumanizing word. Yeah, 0:50:52.280 --> 0:50:57.200 to you'll refer to simply someone who travels to another 0:50:57.280 --> 0:51:00.160 place and wants to stay there. 0:51:00.360 --> 0:51:03.600 It's pretty crazy because we don't use that word for uh, 0:51:05.400 --> 0:51:08.480 I don't know us. I'm I'm excited for when we 0:51:08.640 --> 0:51:11.799 have finally the big civil war that we're we're all 0:51:11.840 --> 0:51:14.440 planning to have and suddenly a shipload of. 0:51:18.520 --> 0:51:19.440 But continue like. 0:51:19.560 --> 0:51:23.440 Yeah, I'm I'm excited for the people who treated Syrian 0:51:23.520 --> 0:51:27.399 refugees and treat Guatemalan and Honduran and Mexican refugees like shit, 0:51:27.520 --> 0:51:30.520 and I'm excited for them all to I don't know, 0:51:30.520 --> 0:51:35.200 get gutten down by Canadian border guards as we deserve 0:51:35.239 --> 0:51:38.320 as a nation. I don't know. I'm angry all the time, Kitlyn, 0:51:38.360 --> 0:51:39.160 I'm sorry. 0:51:38.840 --> 0:51:41.920 That's not right likewise, so am I. 0:51:42.719 --> 0:51:47.160 Yeah. Anyway, it'll be up to Canada to be racist 0:51:47.239 --> 0:51:52.160 then and then eventually Alaska and then the biosphere will die. 0:51:53.200 --> 0:51:58.799 So you know what won't die, Caitlin, are. 0:51:58.719 --> 0:52:03.120 You doing necessary transous? Do your podcast? Do your podcast? 0:52:03.160 --> 0:52:05.120 I know I went off on a really sad rant, 0:52:06.200 --> 0:52:08.520 and so I decided to throw in a raytheon ad 0:52:08.560 --> 0:52:13.239 because everybody likes thinking about raytheon. So back to the 0:52:13.280 --> 0:52:16.480 border patrol. So the border patrol would like pick up 0:52:16.520 --> 0:52:19.120 all these folks, huge numbers, thousands in a day sometimes 0:52:19.160 --> 0:52:21.520 and they would put them in these like temporary camps 0:52:22.120 --> 0:52:24.440 and then would take them into Mexico where the Mexican 0:52:24.440 --> 0:52:26.799 military would basically dump them in the middle of the 0:52:26.840 --> 0:52:29.360 country as far away from the border as possible, and 0:52:29.400 --> 0:52:31.200 these were generally places where there was no work and 0:52:31.239 --> 0:52:34.400 where these migrants had no family connections, and it was 0:52:34.480 --> 0:52:38.240 just a horrible situation for most people. As a result 0:52:38.280 --> 0:52:41.200 of these new tactics, between nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty three, 0:52:41.239 --> 0:52:44.600 the number of Border Patrol apprehensions nearly doubled, from four 0:52:44.640 --> 0:52:47.359 hundred and sixty nine thousand to almost eight hundred and 0:52:47.400 --> 0:52:51.640 forty thousand. This caused immediate problems for ranchers and farmers, 0:52:51.640 --> 0:52:54.080 who started to realize that the new legal powers they'd 0:52:54.080 --> 0:52:58.000 given the Border Patrol had vastly realigned the organization's power 0:52:58.080 --> 0:53:00.359 in a way that allowed the white supremacists too ran 0:53:00.400 --> 0:53:03.960 it to harm agribusiness by wiping out their workforce at 0:53:03.960 --> 0:53:07.040 stake was also a sort of cultural readjustment. Farmers and 0:53:07.120 --> 0:53:09.239 ranchers were used to occupying a position at the top 0:53:09.280 --> 0:53:12.360 of society, but now Border patrol men could exercise the 0:53:12.400 --> 0:53:15.840 power of deportation again and take away their workers. And 0:53:15.960 --> 0:53:20.480 Texas border towns like Marfa, farmers hired armed guards, hired lookouts, 0:53:20.600 --> 0:53:23.640 and booby trapped farm gates in order to protect their workforce. 0:53:23.640 --> 0:53:26.880 There were gunfights with border patrol with these like white 0:53:26.920 --> 0:53:30.320 farmers trying to defend their workforce, and as the conflict 0:53:30.320 --> 0:53:33.560 between the farmers and border patrol grew uglier, white border 0:53:33.560 --> 0:53:36.640 town farmers suddenly found themselves facing off against the same 0:53:36.680 --> 0:53:39.520 men who'd hunted their workers. The book Migra tells the 0:53:39.560 --> 0:53:42.280 story of D. C. Newton, whose family were border patrol 0:53:42.320 --> 0:53:45.440 farmers who posted guards to warn about raids. They went 0:53:45.520 --> 0:53:47.280 to sleep they want to sleep one night in nineteen 0:53:47.320 --> 0:53:49.200 fifty two and woke up to find that dozens of 0:53:49.239 --> 0:53:51.919 Border patrol agents had snuck in with their headlights off, 0:53:51.960 --> 0:53:55.480 and to surprise everyone sleeping in the farmhouse and adjacent quarters. 0:53:56.040 --> 0:53:58.719 The Newton's oldest son was faster, though, and he succeeded 0:53:58.719 --> 0:54:01.919 in warning the undocumented migrants staying on the farm, which 0:54:01.960 --> 0:54:03.839 gave them the time they needed to run like hell 0:54:03.920 --> 0:54:06.279 and height in the trees. When the border patrol men 0:54:06.320 --> 0:54:08.920 came up empty in their search, they went after the 0:54:08.920 --> 0:54:11.600 white folks who awk actually owned the farm. And I'm 0:54:11.600 --> 0:54:14.640 going to quote from book migrenow they entered Newton's parents 0:54:14.719 --> 0:54:17.359 bedroom and began shining the flashlights in my mother's eyes 0:54:17.360 --> 0:54:19.839 and my father's eyes, telling them to get up. We're 0:54:19.880 --> 0:54:21.799 going to go out and find where your Mexicans are. 0:54:22.080 --> 0:54:24.960 With my father and his pajamas, his mother in a nightgown, 0:54:25.000 --> 0:54:27.160 and no one wearing any shoes, the officers forced the 0:54:27.200 --> 0:54:29.960 family out of the house while pushing physically pushing my 0:54:30.000 --> 0:54:31.960 mother in the back, pushing my father in the back, 0:54:32.160 --> 0:54:34.560 and demanding to know where the wet backs were. Most 0:54:34.600 --> 0:54:37.360 of the workers had fled, including Newton's nanny Lupe, for 0:54:37.400 --> 0:54:39.840 whom the officers claimed to be searching. In particular, she 0:54:39.880 --> 0:54:42.120 had heard the arrival of the patrolmen and climbed out 0:54:42.160 --> 0:54:44.160 of the window on the second floor of the farmhouse, 0:54:44.239 --> 0:54:46.200 rolled down onto the roof of the garage, and run 0:54:46.239 --> 0:54:48.760 off to the southeast and was gone. Although the Newtons 0:54:48.760 --> 0:54:51.360 believed they had outsmarted the border patrol by alerting the 0:54:51.400 --> 0:54:54.239 migrants to the raid, the head border patrol inspectors still 0:54:54.320 --> 0:54:57.920 led fifty three apprehended workers away, saying, see how you 0:54:58.040 --> 0:55:02.760 handle your groves. Now, now that's like a bad story 0:55:02.760 --> 0:55:07.920 and everything. What's interesting here is I guess how horrible 0:55:07.960 --> 0:55:11.719 Newton's family is here too, because the interview with him 0:55:11.760 --> 0:55:14.319 goes on and he makes it clear that he kind 0:55:14.360 --> 0:55:16.560 of when his dad explained to him what was happening 0:55:16.560 --> 0:55:19.560 with the Border Patrol. His dad compared the conflict to 0:55:19.640 --> 0:55:23.000 the Civil War, and the side that he identified with 0:55:23.280 --> 0:55:27.040 was not the good side. Quote. Newton's father believed that 0:55:27.080 --> 0:55:30.240 by taking away their workers, the damn Yankee Border Patrol 0:55:30.280 --> 0:55:32.759 were splitting up a household. As he explained it to 0:55:32.800 --> 0:55:35.760 his son, the South Texans protected their homes, their families, 0:55:35.800 --> 0:55:37.600 their property, and their way of life from the Border 0:55:37.640 --> 0:55:40.960 patrol raids. He was the master. The Mexican illegals were 0:55:41.000 --> 0:55:43.400 equivalent to the black slaves, and together they formed a 0:55:43.400 --> 0:55:45.920 household a system of labor relations in a world of 0:55:45.960 --> 0:55:49.520 tightly bound intimacy and inequity. The Border Patrol threatened their 0:55:49.520 --> 0:55:53.920 household by reducing the farmer's control over Mexico's unsanctioned migrant workers. 0:55:54.120 --> 0:55:56.680 So as the Southerners had rebelled against intrusions upon their 0:55:56.719 --> 0:55:59.759 labor relations and plantation lives, the Newton family had to 0:55:59.760 --> 0:56:03.040 defe itself against the US Border Patrol. Newton's brother took 0:56:03.040 --> 0:56:05.239 the lesson to heart. When the Border Patrol raided on 0:56:05.280 --> 0:56:07.360 another night, he stood in the family driveway with a 0:56:07.400 --> 0:56:10.359 shotgun named at the officers. Startled by the hostile twelve 0:56:10.400 --> 0:56:12.800 year old boy. The officers left the property and returned 0:56:12.800 --> 0:56:17.319 on another day. So yeah, this is what's happening here 0:56:17.400 --> 0:56:18.560 is really complicated. 0:56:18.960 --> 0:56:22.240 Yeah right. There's an important thing to remember here, which 0:56:22.320 --> 0:56:28.400 is that even of the like white ranch farm owners 0:56:29.239 --> 0:56:34.880 who are maybe not in favor of their workforce being 0:56:35.040 --> 0:56:39.480 sent back to their country of origin, they are still 0:56:39.600 --> 0:56:46.400 exploiting these workers, these migrant workers, and you know, probably 0:56:46.400 --> 0:56:51.200 not paying them well, probably not offering them you know, 0:56:51.560 --> 0:56:55.719 good benefits, except. 0:56:55.960 --> 0:56:59.799 And probably like keeping them in very primitive living situations, 0:57:00.040 --> 0:57:02.800 often like little more than a shack, often like like 0:57:03.360 --> 0:57:07.160 kind of nightmares situa like these guys did. These migrants 0:57:07.160 --> 0:57:10.239 often did live very similarly to slaves. Right, it wasn't 0:57:10.280 --> 0:57:13.160 quite that bad, but it was bad. And these these 0:57:13.200 --> 0:57:17.400 farmers are like the border patrol agents want these migrants 0:57:17.440 --> 0:57:21.120 out because they're racist as fuck, and these farmers are 0:57:21.160 --> 0:57:24.360 also racist as fuck. They just want the migrants to 0:57:24.400 --> 0:57:25.600 stay because. 0:57:25.280 --> 0:57:27.200 It because they can exploit the basis of. 0:57:27.200 --> 0:57:30.600 Their power exactly right. So again, no one to root 0:57:30.600 --> 0:57:33.880 for here other than like these migrants, but they seem 0:57:33.920 --> 0:57:36.439 to mostly get just fucked over by everybody, and that's 0:57:36.480 --> 0:57:41.840 not fun. Yep. So yeah, it's important to remember that 0:57:41.920 --> 0:57:44.200 kind of the struggle between border patrol and these border 0:57:44.280 --> 0:57:47.000 farmers in Texas was a struggle between two different groups 0:57:47.000 --> 0:57:50.400 of white supremacists, and one group of white supremacists was 0:57:50.480 --> 0:57:54.560 broadly in the right, because I guess it's it's worse 0:57:54.720 --> 0:57:57.240 to round up thousands of people in cattle cars and 0:57:57.280 --> 0:57:59.360 buses and throw them back across a border for no 0:57:59.440 --> 0:58:04.360 good reason. M but there's no one you should be 0:58:04.480 --> 0:58:07.720 rooting for here. But what's really interesting I find fascinating 0:58:07.720 --> 0:58:11.320 about this whole conflict is that these racist plantation owning 0:58:11.480 --> 0:58:15.120 white border farmers wound up like fighting the border patrol 0:58:15.200 --> 0:58:18.040 by kind of co opting the language of social justice. 0:58:18.880 --> 0:58:21.760 Starting in the nineteen fifties, ranchers began to argue that 0:58:21.800 --> 0:58:26.160 Mexican nationals were being unfairly targeted for deportations. They complained 0:58:26.200 --> 0:58:29.120 that the buses, planes, and trains used to take migrants 0:58:29.120 --> 0:58:33.080 away were cruel, in human and outrageous practices, trading in 0:58:33.160 --> 0:58:36.080 human misery. They began to argue that hiring Mexicans was 0:58:36.080 --> 0:58:40.120 an act of kindness by American ranchers. Mexican laborers deserved 0:58:40.120 --> 0:58:42.160 the chance to win a better life by working low 0:58:42.200 --> 0:58:45.440 paid jobs as domestic servants and laborers. The Border Patrol 0:58:45.560 --> 0:58:49.000 was in fact actually fostering communism by sending these men 0:58:49.040 --> 0:58:51.520 and women back to the interior of Mexico, where they 0:58:51.560 --> 0:58:53.919 would no doubt live on in miserable poverty and join 0:58:54.000 --> 0:58:55.360 some leftist gorilla movement. 0:58:56.040 --> 0:59:02.800 So yeah, because they're lies being exploited farm hands in 0:59:02.840 --> 0:59:08.000 the US was so much better. What, Oh my gosh. 0:59:07.080 --> 0:59:11.240 Yeah, it's pretty cool. How naturally that came to these farmers. 0:59:12.760 --> 0:59:16.240 I like it. So the Border Patrol obviously didn't listen 0:59:16.280 --> 0:59:18.840 to the protests against them. They continued to, in their 0:59:18.880 --> 0:59:23.120 own words, pound away in the borderlands, raising apprehensions. The 0:59:23.200 --> 0:59:27.440 increased workload necessary necessitated more men in facilities, and in 0:59:27.520 --> 0:59:30.200 nineteen fifty three, the Border Patrol attempted to hire two 0:59:30.280 --> 0:59:33.400 hundred and forty additional officers and made plans to build 0:59:33.440 --> 0:59:36.240 two new detention centers at the lower Rio Grand Valley. 0:59:36.720 --> 0:59:39.960 This enraged local farmers, and one quote threatened to arm 0:59:40.000 --> 0:59:43.120 his wetback laborers against the Border Patrol, threatening that there 0:59:43.160 --> 0:59:45.400 is liable to be a couple of dead Border patrolmen. 0:59:45.800 --> 0:59:48.600 Death threats against patrolman became a daily occurrence and farmers 0:59:48.600 --> 0:59:51.120 in the Lower Rio Grand lobbied their congressmen to deny 0:59:51.160 --> 0:59:54.440 the appropriation request necessary to fund the new men in facilities. 0:59:55.000 --> 0:59:57.840 These farmers insisted they weren't lobbying for their own benefit, 0:59:57.880 --> 1:00:00.320 but we're doing it for migrants who were victor of 1:00:00.360 --> 1:00:04.000 the Patrol's cheap vindictiveness, a great hunger to ruler, ruin 1:00:04.280 --> 1:00:07.440 to control, to govern, anything to carry a point, reckless 1:00:07.440 --> 1:00:10.080 of the consequences to the poor workmen which they heard 1:00:10.120 --> 1:00:12.560 around us cattle. And they weren't wrong in this. The 1:00:12.600 --> 1:00:15.240 facility the Border Patrol wanted to build was essentially a 1:00:15.280 --> 1:00:20.480 concentration camp. Eventually, Congress listened and the appropriations request was denied. 1:00:20.520 --> 1:00:22.760 So like the protest of all these guys in Texas worked, 1:00:22.960 --> 1:00:24.760 the Border Patrol had to send its two hundred and 1:00:24.800 --> 1:00:28.040 forty men back home and cancel construction. According to the 1:00:28.080 --> 1:00:31.960 book Migra Quote, one month after losing the supplemental appropriation, 1:00:32.280 --> 1:00:34.960 Chief Kelly announced the Border Patrols withdrawal from the Rio 1:00:35.000 --> 1:00:37.680 Grand Valley to a new defense line ten miles to 1:00:37.720 --> 1:00:41.040 the north of Kingsville. Fall furious, and Hebronville rather than 1:00:41.040 --> 1:00:43.280 fight a losing battle in the Lower Rio Grand Valley. 1:00:43.320 --> 1:00:45.280 The Border Patrol decided to pull out of the area 1:00:45.400 --> 1:00:48.280 because with limited forces we can best control the wet 1:00:48.280 --> 1:00:51.920 back invasion as at the line farther north. It's one 1:00:51.920 --> 1:00:54.080 of those things, I guess I always kind of debate 1:00:54.160 --> 1:00:56.720 when you've got like something that is essentially a slur, 1:00:56.840 --> 1:00:59.160 or is a slur in an episode of like this, 1:00:59.520 --> 1:01:01.760 how often to say it? And it's one of those 1:01:01.800 --> 1:01:04.280 things where I kind of feel like cleaning up. The 1:01:04.280 --> 1:01:09.000 Border Patrol's official statements in the matter would be, I 1:01:09.000 --> 1:01:11.720 don't know, making it seem like they were less of 1:01:11.760 --> 1:01:15.240 a naked force for white supremacy than they were, Like 1:01:15.920 --> 1:01:18.920 if you replace that with Mexican nationals, that's not really 1:01:18.960 --> 1:01:21.920 what they're saying, right, Yeah, I don't know. 1:01:22.240 --> 1:01:24.240 That's yeah. I mean that puts you in a pretty 1:01:25.080 --> 1:01:27.640 tricky position. Yeah, I don't know. 1:01:28.480 --> 1:01:32.160 Yeah, they use it a lots. It's the Border Patrol 1:01:32.320 --> 1:01:34.760 are cool guys, And we're about to hear it used 1:01:34.760 --> 1:01:38.200 again in another big way. So the men of the 1:01:38.200 --> 1:01:40.760 Border Patrol did see the immigration of Mexicans into the 1:01:40.840 --> 1:01:43.040 US as an invasion, and they sought to repel it 1:01:43.080 --> 1:01:45.280 with military force. As kind of that language above, right, 1:01:45.400 --> 1:01:47.480 referring to it as a defensive line and stuff like 1:01:47.520 --> 1:01:51.400 they're defending whiteness again, and they see the encroachment of 1:01:51.440 --> 1:01:56.440 these undocumented migrants as like an assault on white blood 1:01:56.560 --> 1:01:59.920 more than anything else. In nineteen fifty three, with the 1:02:00.000 --> 1:02:03.040 rebellion of the Texas Ranchers in full swing, Harlan Carter, 1:02:03.080 --> 1:02:05.200 who's again the murderer who became the head of the 1:02:05.200 --> 1:02:08.479 Border Patrol, sat down with two US generals to ask 1:02:08.520 --> 1:02:11.080 for their help. He wanted the military and the National 1:02:11.120 --> 1:02:14.480 Guard to assist the Border Patrol in a nationwide purge 1:02:14.680 --> 1:02:19.960 of undocumented Mexican nationals called Operation Cloudburst. The first step 1:02:20.000 --> 1:02:22.840 for this would be an anti infiltration campaign to seal 1:02:22.880 --> 1:02:24.760 the border with the help of twenty one hundred and 1:02:24.760 --> 1:02:28.480 eighty troops. Border Patrol would station soldiers at strategic locations 1:02:28.480 --> 1:02:31.360 and build several long fences to block areas of heavy traffic. 1:02:31.680 --> 1:02:34.080 This part of the operation is fairly standard, aside from 1:02:34.080 --> 1:02:36.800 the presence of US troops. Part two, though, would be 1:02:36.840 --> 1:02:40.480 a containment operation, which would involve roadblocks on every major 1:02:40.560 --> 1:02:43.560 highway from the southwest to the interior of North America. 1:02:43.960 --> 1:02:46.680 These checkpoints would be used to search vehicles for illegal 1:02:46.720 --> 1:02:50.040 migrants around the clock. Part three was the mopping up phase, 1:02:50.080 --> 1:02:52.400 and this would involve a massive series of raids in 1:02:52.480 --> 1:02:56.040 northern locations, places far from the border, like San Francisco 1:02:56.360 --> 1:02:59.360 where groups of migrants were believed to have gathered. Businesses 1:02:59.360 --> 1:03:01.640 and camps would be raided and the arrested migrants would 1:03:01.640 --> 1:03:04.480 be airlifted or sent by train to the interior of Mexico. 1:03:05.120 --> 1:03:09.200 Now again using the military. This was essentially he wanted 1:03:09.200 --> 1:03:12.440 to bring in the army to carry out a military 1:03:12.560 --> 1:03:16.480 action to purge the United States of Hispanic people. That's 1:03:16.520 --> 1:03:18.520 what the head of Border patrols trying to do here, 1:03:18.800 --> 1:03:21.040 and all of the military guys he talked to are like, 1:03:21.120 --> 1:03:23.000 this sounds like a great idea. We'd love to help, 1:03:23.600 --> 1:03:26.680 but it's illegal, right possecomatadis means you can't use the 1:03:26.800 --> 1:03:30.400 army for shit like this. The only way around it 1:03:30.480 --> 1:03:34.120 is a presidential proclamation, and Dwight Eisenhower was actually initially 1:03:34.320 --> 1:03:38.200 all on board with issuing that proclamation, but in the 1:03:38.280 --> 1:03:41.280 end he kind of backed away and instead he appointed 1:03:41.280 --> 1:03:44.040 a General Joseph Swing to be the new Commissioner of 1:03:44.080 --> 1:03:48.280 the Immigration and Naturalization Service and was basically like, we 1:03:48.320 --> 1:03:52.040 can't use soldiers for this because it's unconstitutional. But I'm 1:03:52.040 --> 1:03:54.200 going a promoted general to be in charge of the 1:03:54.240 --> 1:03:57.400 i INS and you figure out a way to do 1:03:57.520 --> 1:04:01.640 the same thing with the resources Border Patrol has, like, yeah, yeah, 1:04:01.640 --> 1:04:04.400 I still want a military operation to clear out these 1:04:04.480 --> 1:04:07.600 Hispanic people. I just can't use soldiers. 1:04:08.240 --> 1:04:14.760 So that's good grief. Yeah, the mental gymnastics that what, yeah, 1:04:14.920 --> 1:04:20.880 that these people do to justify their horrible actions. Anyway, sorry, 1:04:20.960 --> 1:04:21.720 go ahead. 1:04:21.960 --> 1:04:25.000 Yeah, it's pretty great. I don't know. So one month 1:04:25.040 --> 1:04:28.360 after joining i INS, General Swing announces that he's going 1:04:28.400 --> 1:04:30.760 to be leading the Border Patrol in a new paramilitary 1:04:30.760 --> 1:04:34.800 campaign based on the tactics pioneered by Albert Quillen. The 1:04:34.880 --> 1:04:40.560 new operation is given the name Operation Wetback Again. That's 1:04:40.600 --> 1:04:43.120 the Border Patrol's official name for it. That's what all 1:04:43.120 --> 1:04:44.960 these guys call it. That's what it's written up in 1:04:45.200 --> 1:04:46.360 the documents and stuff. 1:04:46.400 --> 1:04:47.280 She's Louise. 1:04:47.800 --> 1:04:50.480 Yeah, they just didn't have a fuck to give on 1:04:50.520 --> 1:04:53.760 this matter. So true to form, Border Patrol was only 1:04:53.760 --> 1:04:55.960 given four weeks to prepare for what would become the 1:04:56.040 --> 1:04:58.960 largest operation in their history. The plan was to engage 1:04:58.960 --> 1:05:02.320 in an unprecedented deporting hundreds of thousands of people. No 1:05:02.400 --> 1:05:06.120 one received any training or specialized equipment to actually do this, though. 1:05:06.760 --> 1:05:09.560 All that most agents had on June ninth, nineteen fifty four, 1:05:09.640 --> 1:05:12.240 when the operation began, was a letter from General Swing 1:05:12.800 --> 1:05:16.439 ordering them to purge the nation by removing the huge 1:05:16.520 --> 1:05:18.920 number of Mexican nationals who were in this country in 1:05:19.040 --> 1:05:22.959 violation of the immigration laws. Always good to hear about 1:05:22.960 --> 1:05:28.040 a purge. Y. Yeah, So in its first day, California 1:05:28.680 --> 1:05:30.640 or in the first day of this operation, California and 1:05:30.680 --> 1:05:34.440 Arizona agents apprehended nearly eleven thousand migrants. The flood of 1:05:34.440 --> 1:05:36.960 people only accelerated after that, and the sheer number of 1:05:37.040 --> 1:05:40.760 deportees overwhelmed the Border Patrol's capacity to hold or carry them. 1:05:41.000 --> 1:05:44.520 People were left in primitive exposed concentration camps for days. 1:05:44.800 --> 1:05:47.720 The Border Patrol turned a Lesion Park in Los Angeles 1:05:47.720 --> 1:05:53.200 into an open air concentration camp. Yeah, that's Nate, go 1:05:53.320 --> 1:05:54.120 to Alesian Park. 1:05:55.920 --> 1:05:59.120 I've been there before and I'll never go again. 1:05:59.520 --> 1:06:01.120 A lot of the men who were in turn there, 1:06:01.120 --> 1:06:03.920 men and women, got sick and sometimes died of sunstroke 1:06:04.040 --> 1:06:06.720 because there was no care given to their health. And 1:06:06.800 --> 1:06:11.400 it can get very hot down there. Twenty five percent 1:06:11.400 --> 1:06:14.200 of all deportees were transported by boats, many of which 1:06:14.200 --> 1:06:16.920 were so cramped and filthy that their occupants later compared 1:06:16.920 --> 1:06:22.920 them to slave ships or penal hell ships. So that's great. 1:06:23.360 --> 1:06:26.120 The Mexican government's capacity to take and transport all these 1:06:26.160 --> 1:06:28.680 people broke down almost immediately, and they were like, we 1:06:28.760 --> 1:06:31.520 need you to not send these people to us so 1:06:31.600 --> 1:06:34.520 quickly because we can't handle them. And the US government said, 1:06:34.720 --> 1:06:38.840 we don't give a fuck and kept just shotgunning people 1:06:38.840 --> 1:06:42.000 on over there, and the sheer scale of deportations began 1:06:42.040 --> 1:06:44.760 to fuck with American industry. But border patrol didn't really 1:06:44.760 --> 1:06:46.600 give a shit about this either. I'm going to quote 1:06:46.600 --> 1:06:50.320 again from the book Migra. Between June seventeenth and July 1:06:50.400 --> 1:06:53.800 twenty sixth, nineteen fifty four, twenty eight hundred and twenty 1:06:53.840 --> 1:06:55.920 seven of the four thousand, four hundred and three migrants 1:06:55.960 --> 1:06:58.760 apprehended by the task force assigned to the Los Angeles 1:06:58.800 --> 1:07:01.600 area had worked in industry. After border patrol raids during 1:07:01.600 --> 1:07:04.160 the summer of nineteen fifty four, three Los Angeles brickyards 1:07:04.160 --> 1:07:07.080 were left without sufficient numbers of workers and temporarily closed 1:07:07.080 --> 1:07:10.840 down their operations. Similarly, Border Patrol officers paid close attention 1:07:10.920 --> 1:07:14.200 to the hotel and restaurant business, which routinely hired undocumented 1:07:14.200 --> 1:07:18.000 Mexican immigrants as bus boys, kitchen help waiters, etc. Officers 1:07:18.000 --> 1:07:21.080 reported apprehending such workers at well known establishments such as 1:07:21.080 --> 1:07:25.080 the Biltmore Hotel, Beverly Hills Hotel, Hollywood, Roosevelt Hotel, Los 1:07:25.120 --> 1:07:28.040 Angeles Athletic Club, and the Brown Derby. At times, the 1:07:28.040 --> 1:07:31.080 Border Patrol raids created moments of chaos at popular restaurants 1:07:31.080 --> 1:07:33.920 when migrants attempted to escape by running through the serving area. 1:07:34.520 --> 1:07:37.480 The raids were public and regularly drew significant attention from 1:07:37.480 --> 1:07:39.440 the press, and this was part of the point. The 1:07:39.520 --> 1:07:42.560 reason the Border Patrol focused so much on Los Angeles 1:07:42.560 --> 1:07:45.880 onlike raids in big Hollywood locations is because they were 1:07:45.880 --> 1:07:48.120 trying to make a point to these like these ranchers 1:07:48.160 --> 1:07:50.400 who were still fighting them in South Texas. And the 1:07:50.760 --> 1:07:53.280 message was, if we're willing to do this shit in 1:07:53.360 --> 1:07:55.840 fucking Hollywood, you'd better believe that one day we're going 1:07:55.880 --> 1:07:57.640 to come to your ranch and fuck you up, right, 1:07:57.920 --> 1:08:00.280 Like if we'll do this to the Biltmore, we'll ruin you, 1:08:00.360 --> 1:08:02.760 Like we don't give a shit, we're the Border Patrol. 1:08:04.360 --> 1:08:06.920 And in the end, Operation Wetback was responsible for the 1:08:06.960 --> 1:08:09.640 deportations of somewhere between a quarter of a million at 1:08:09.640 --> 1:08:12.200 the low end and about one point five million people 1:08:12.240 --> 1:08:16.599 at the high end, and at the end of the day, yeah, 1:08:16.720 --> 1:08:19.280 it kind of ended in retreat by the Border Patrol. 1:08:19.880 --> 1:08:22.160 Part of this was that around the same time, the 1:08:22.280 --> 1:08:26.000 US government reformed the Brassero program, which allowed Mexican nationals 1:08:26.000 --> 1:08:28.519 to get legal working status in the US, and that 1:08:28.560 --> 1:08:30.920 became much more popular after this time, So a lot 1:08:30.960 --> 1:08:33.920 of these these ranchers and farmers started making sure that 1:08:33.960 --> 1:08:36.360 their workers kind of went through a legal path to 1:08:36.400 --> 1:08:39.560 gain working status in the United States. And some of 1:08:39.600 --> 1:08:42.560 it was just that, like there was blowback to this program. 1:08:42.640 --> 1:08:45.679 It wasn't very popular all of the massive public raids, 1:08:46.439 --> 1:08:49.520 and kind of as a result, border patrol apprehensions plummeted. 1:08:49.520 --> 1:08:52.639 The next year, in nineteen fifty five, the task forces 1:08:52.680 --> 1:08:54.760 that had once captured thousands of migrants in a day 1:08:54.800 --> 1:08:58.040 were disbanded and demobilized, and for a little while it 1:08:58.080 --> 1:09:01.080 seemed as if the Border Patrol had gone into hibernation. 1:09:01.640 --> 1:09:04.960 Of course, that Caitlin was not the case, and in 1:09:05.000 --> 1:09:07.479 Part two, we're going to talk about the fact that 1:09:07.680 --> 1:09:09.400 we haven't even talked about any of the worst shit 1:09:09.479 --> 1:09:12.360 that the Border Patrol gets up to in this episode, 1:09:12.439 --> 1:09:14.560 because that's how much worse it gets. 1:09:14.960 --> 1:09:18.320 Oh, they can't wait to hear about it. 1:09:18.840 --> 1:09:20.000 So how are you feeling? 1:09:21.840 --> 1:09:22.960 I feel pretty terrible. 1:09:23.400 --> 1:09:25.559 That's good. I love it when people feel terrible. 1:09:27.400 --> 1:09:29.840 I'm always like, oh, I can't wait to be a 1:09:29.920 --> 1:09:33.280 guest on Behind the Bastards, And then every time I 1:09:33.320 --> 1:09:37.280 do it, I'm like, oh, yes, I'm reminded by how 1:09:37.360 --> 1:09:39.760 horrible people have been to each other. 1:09:41.080 --> 1:09:42.920 Yes, and you were the one who picked this topic 1:09:43.000 --> 1:09:46.000 with a text message. Lol. I think the Border Patrol 1:09:46.120 --> 1:09:54.479 sounds fund. 1:09:52.600 --> 1:09:58.599 That did never happen. But yeah, I mean it's good 1:09:58.640 --> 1:10:02.360 to be informed about these things, so I appreciate learning 1:10:02.400 --> 1:10:08.240 and being further informed about it. So yeah, thank you, 1:10:08.400 --> 1:10:09.040 thank you for that. 1:10:10.439 --> 1:10:13.400 Yep, you're welcome, Caitlin, Thank you for coming on. 1:10:13.800 --> 1:10:17.160 Is there a place as people might be able to 1:10:17.320 --> 1:10:22.040 find you, listen to you, ways to support your work? 1:10:22.800 --> 1:10:27.040 Why? There certainly are places to do that, starting with 1:10:28.200 --> 1:10:32.400 You can follow me personally on Twitter and Instagram at 1:10:32.439 --> 1:10:35.720 Caitlin Durante. You can also check out my podcast right 1:10:35.760 --> 1:10:39.000 here on this network. It's called The Bechdel Cast. I 1:10:39.080 --> 1:10:43.080 co host it with Jamie Loftus, and we talk about 1:10:43.880 --> 1:10:48.200 the representation of women in film and just film in general, 1:10:48.400 --> 1:10:53.280 examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. So that is 1:10:55.000 --> 1:10:57.200 what we do, and you can, yeah, check out. 1:10:57.680 --> 1:10:59.559 Podcast screenwriting classes right now. 1:11:00.160 --> 1:11:03.320 Oh yes, I am, thank you so much for bringing 1:11:03.320 --> 1:11:08.120 that up. I also teach screenwriting on account of a 1:11:08.160 --> 1:11:12.479 master's degree in screenwriting that I absolutely hate to mention 1:11:12.720 --> 1:11:17.080 or ever just bring up, but it does allow me 1:11:17.160 --> 1:11:20.839 to teach online classes. So if that's of any interest 1:11:20.840 --> 1:11:25.200 to anyone, go to my website Caitlinderante dot com slash 1:11:25.280 --> 1:11:31.400 classes and I usually have news sections coming up starting 1:11:31.439 --> 1:11:33.000 soon at any given point. 1:11:33.600 --> 1:11:36.400 And if you want to learn from me, I don't 1:11:36.439 --> 1:11:40.080 teach screenwriting, but I do teach screenwriting, which is where 1:11:40.720 --> 1:11:42.760 you sit down with a pencil and paper and I 1:11:42.800 --> 1:11:45.400 scream at you and then eventually you give me money 1:11:45.400 --> 1:11:45.960 to go away. 1:11:47.360 --> 1:11:49.680 That sounds very educational. 1:11:50.640 --> 1:11:57.280 We all have to have an extra couple, so either 1:11:57.720 --> 1:12:01.120 pay Caitlin for an actual service or pay me to 1:12:01.320 --> 1:12:01.920 abuse you. 1:12:02.520 --> 1:12:07.679 Either way, don't love that as an You know what Sophie. 1:12:07.800 --> 1:12:10.880 Look everybody, look, you gotta. You gotta be mean to 1:12:10.920 --> 1:12:12.200 the audience, Sophie, you gotta. 1:12:12.400 --> 1:12:16.879 I don't know about who. I love them, I appreciate them, 1:12:18.000 --> 1:12:21.720 and I appreciate you, Robert, so kindness. 1:12:22.439 --> 1:12:25.640 Is there any way in which you think that, like 1:12:25.760 --> 1:12:29.439 closing out a podcast is similar to making love just 1:12:29.479 --> 1:12:31.479 to bring things full service? Wow? Good question. 1:12:32.479 --> 1:12:36.800 Here's how closing a podcast is like making love. Both 1:12:36.840 --> 1:12:39.680 of them are inherently disappointing. 1:12:40.000 --> 1:12:46.639 And you can, Robert and I write, okay on Twitter. 1:12:46.680 --> 1:12:49.080 You can follow us at Bastards Fought on Twitter and Instagram. 1:12:49.120 --> 1:13:07.920 We have a tea public store. Uh that's it, Bye. 1:12:54.920 --> 1:13:08.400 Bye, hello world, but specifically Australia. This is Robert Evans 1:13:08.400 --> 1:13:11.320 hosted Behind the Bastards, and I just wanted my Australian 1:13:11.320 --> 1:13:13.479 listeners in particular to know that I stood up for 1:13:13.520 --> 1:13:18.799 you against Caitlin's cruelty. Just a minute ago, she pronounced 1:13:18.840 --> 1:13:24.879 the name of your greatest city, Melbourne, Melbourne. I guess, savage, Yeah. 1:13:24.680 --> 1:13:29.080 I said Melbourne. And then okay, well, what about the 1:13:29.080 --> 1:13:35.280 people who live in Sydney or other cities in Australia. 1:13:35.600 --> 1:13:38.439 One city in Australia, its name is Melbourne, and that's 1:13:38.479 --> 1:13:42.680 the end of this digression. Hello, Caitlyn Duranty, guest for 1:13:42.760 --> 1:13:44.200 today's episode. How are you doing? 1:13:44.680 --> 1:13:44.840 Ah? 1:13:45.080 --> 1:13:47.280 Well, I would be doing better if you would pronounce 1:13:47.320 --> 1:13:48.960 my last name correctly. 1:13:49.760 --> 1:13:53.799 Speaking of mispronunciation, donte Caitlin. 1:13:53.920 --> 1:13:57.479 Yes, I think we've all learned a lesson about maybe 1:13:57.479 --> 1:14:00.040 not judging each other, because it's impossible to ever know 1:14:00.080 --> 1:14:01.400 how words are supposed to be said. 1:14:01.640 --> 1:14:02.040 He thinks. 1:14:02.040 --> 1:14:05.200 Ariana Grande's name is Ariana grand So you. 1:14:05.160 --> 1:14:07.879 Know, Sophie, you've been giving me guff about that one. 1:14:07.720 --> 1:14:11.080 For a while, as it deserves mm hmm. 1:14:11.840 --> 1:14:14.000 Well now I'm sad. 1:14:14.560 --> 1:14:16.080 Don't be sad, Robert. 1:14:16.520 --> 1:14:17.320 This is part two. 1:14:17.600 --> 1:14:19.680 If we get to pick on a white man at 1:14:19.720 --> 1:14:23.639 the beginning of an episode, then like, what's the point? 1:14:24.240 --> 1:14:28.040 Yeah, this is this is a whole episode about I 1:14:28.080 --> 1:14:28.519 don't know. 1:14:30.479 --> 1:14:33.040 Series. Let's pass the Bechdel test right now, Sophie. 1:14:33.080 --> 1:14:37.200 Oh, Caitlin, I I'm really enjoying the bluish shirt you're 1:14:37.200 --> 1:14:38.000 wearing right now. 1:14:38.760 --> 1:14:40.559 Oh my gosh. Well, I'm so glad you brought it 1:14:40.640 --> 1:14:45.759 up because it's it's a Paddington shirt that says migration 1:14:46.120 --> 1:14:51.200 is not a crime, which is relevant to today's episode. 1:14:51.720 --> 1:14:54.680 Oh wow, it really is relevant today's episode. 1:14:54.960 --> 1:14:59.320 That But then I said Paddington and that that I 1:14:59.360 --> 1:14:59.599 was like. 1:14:59.560 --> 1:15:02.040 Are we just during Paddington right now because. 1:15:02.600 --> 1:15:05.840 Heddington is a non binary asexual icon. 1:15:06.080 --> 1:15:09.320 Yes, yes, yes, yes, so I kind of passed the 1:15:09.320 --> 1:15:11.320 backl Thats okay, Robert, you want to ass your show 1:15:11.360 --> 1:15:12.879 behind the bastards right now because. 1:15:12.640 --> 1:15:15.920 I don't actually know if we passed the Bechdel test there. 1:15:16.040 --> 1:15:18.240 But you know what test we did pass is the 1:15:19.320 --> 1:15:23.920 writing for many hours about the border patrol test. Yes, 1:15:24.000 --> 1:15:31.000 which is a more important test, I think. So you 1:15:31.040 --> 1:15:33.400 know this one we're splitting up a little bit weirdly 1:15:33.880 --> 1:15:37.320 over the course of two weeks because my entire life 1:15:37.400 --> 1:15:40.800 and schedule has been continually thrown into chaos. So I 1:15:40.800 --> 1:15:43.240 do apologize for this one being done a little bit 1:15:43.240 --> 1:15:47.360 differently than others are done. On December sixth, twenty eighteen, 1:15:47.680 --> 1:15:51.120 seven year old Jacqueline Call crossed the US Mexico border 1:15:51.120 --> 1:15:54.519 near a place called Antelope Wells, New Mexico. She was 1:15:54.520 --> 1:15:57.439 with her father, twenty nine year old Nary Call. Both 1:15:57.479 --> 1:16:00.000 were Kekchi Maya, and they'd lived most of their life 1:16:00.000 --> 1:16:03.200 lives in the Alta Vera Paz region of Guatemala. Starving 1:16:03.240 --> 1:16:05.400 and desperate, she and her family turned themselves into the 1:16:05.400 --> 1:16:08.519 border Patrol. When Jacqueline was taken into their custody, she 1:16:08.600 --> 1:16:10.840 was already beginning to show signs of illness what would 1:16:10.880 --> 1:16:15.280 turn out to have been a streptococcal infection. DHS maintains 1:16:15.320 --> 1:16:17.720 that they conducted an initial screening and that there was 1:16:17.880 --> 1:16:21.400 no evidence of health issues in the little girl. Jacqueline 1:16:21.400 --> 1:16:24.320 was placed on a border patrol bus feverish and vomiting 1:16:24.320 --> 1:16:27.879 from severe dehydration. Eight hours after being taken into custody, 1:16:27.920 --> 1:16:30.800 she began to suffer seizures. She died the next day. 1:16:32.040 --> 1:16:36.160 Gomez Alonzo, age eight, crossed the Aos Mexico border sometime 1:16:36.240 --> 1:16:39.639 around December eighteenth. He and his father, Augustin, were members 1:16:39.680 --> 1:16:42.840 of the Chuj people, another Mayan group who came from 1:16:42.880 --> 1:16:46.559 the Juahuitenango region of Guatemala. Gomez spent six days in 1:16:46.560 --> 1:16:49.679 border patrol custody, shuttled around from New Mexico to El Paso, 1:16:49.920 --> 1:16:51.720 and then back to New Mexico to be interned in 1:16:51.760 --> 1:16:55.400 an attention facility named near Alamagordo. He started to show 1:16:55.400 --> 1:16:57.639 symptoms of sickness. On the twenty fourth, he was taken 1:16:57.680 --> 1:16:59.599 to the hospital, where he was tested for the cold, 1:16:59.720 --> 1:17:02.599 but not for influenza, which he had. He was given 1:17:02.640 --> 1:17:04.960 medicine that could not help him and sent back to jail, 1:17:05.000 --> 1:17:10.360 where he died on Christmas Eve, twenty eighteen. No, yep, good, 1:17:10.400 --> 1:17:11.040 good times. 1:17:11.880 --> 1:17:12.439 That's awful. 1:17:12.800 --> 1:17:15.959 Yeah, it's real bad. The deaths of Gomez and Jacqueline 1:17:15.960 --> 1:17:18.600 were briefly very big news in the United States. It 1:17:18.680 --> 1:17:20.719 was believed that the two were the first child immigrant 1:17:20.760 --> 1:17:24.840 deaths in border patrol custody since twenty ten. In twenty nineteen, though, 1:17:24.840 --> 1:17:28.519 it was revealed that another child, Darylyn Cordovaval of l Salvador, 1:17:28.600 --> 1:17:32.920 had actually died back in September twenty eighteen under similar circumstances. 1:17:33.160 --> 1:17:35.600 The Trump administration received a lot of blame, both for 1:17:35.680 --> 1:17:37.920 covering this death up to try to influence the midterm 1:17:37.960 --> 1:17:40.639 elections and for their failure to push DHS to take 1:17:40.680 --> 1:17:43.599 any meaningful action to stop kids from dying at the border. 1:17:44.120 --> 1:17:46.839 Three dead children is a tragedy, but their little corpses 1:17:46.840 --> 1:17:49.280 are actually just the top of an iceberg of dead people, 1:17:49.720 --> 1:17:51.960 many of them Guatemalan, that we can lay at the 1:17:52.000 --> 1:17:54.880 feet of border patrol agents and you might be surprised 1:17:54.960 --> 1:17:57.559 to learn how that whole situation came about. You want 1:17:57.600 --> 1:17:59.480 to hear about this, Caitlin. 1:18:00.080 --> 1:18:03.759 So I have to also what colorful language you used 1:18:03.760 --> 1:18:07.240 in terms of the corpses or at the top of 1:18:07.280 --> 1:18:08.440 an iceberg. 1:18:08.760 --> 1:18:12.840 I mean, well, yeah, you know, I think if you're 1:18:12.840 --> 1:18:15.000 gonna talk about dead kids, you should do it with 1:18:15.040 --> 1:18:19.600 a little bit of panazz, pizaz panash. 1:18:19.640 --> 1:18:21.439 All right, I'm ready, I'm keep going. 1:18:22.360 --> 1:18:26.360 All right, So let's talk about the border patrol and 1:18:26.880 --> 1:18:31.160 in Central America. We're gonna talk about something I don't 1:18:31.160 --> 1:18:34.160 think a lot of people know about because usually, as 1:18:34.160 --> 1:18:36.080 a rule, when we talk about how bad the border 1:18:36.080 --> 1:18:38.599 patrol is, we talk about like how mean they are 1:18:38.680 --> 1:18:40.960 to people who come up to the border. But we 1:18:40.960 --> 1:18:43.599 don't talk about what a lot of border patrol guys 1:18:43.640 --> 1:18:47.240 did in the countries that these people are fleeing from 1:18:47.520 --> 1:18:50.120 before people started fleeing from those countries. So this is 1:18:50.120 --> 1:18:53.679 gonna be fun, Okay, It's gonna be good time for everybody. 1:18:54.640 --> 1:18:54.800 So. 1:18:55.120 --> 1:18:58.479 John P. Longan was a US Border patrol agent in 1:18:58.520 --> 1:19:01.240 the nineteen forties and fifties. He worked near the Mexican border, 1:19:01.240 --> 1:19:04.240 close to where both Jacqueline and Gomez crossed over. Most 1:19:04.280 --> 1:19:06.120 sources you find on the manner will note that he 1:19:06.200 --> 1:19:09.559 had a reputation for violence, but this was not at 1:19:09.600 --> 1:19:11.720 all uncommon among the men of the Border Patrol, nor 1:19:11.840 --> 1:19:14.920 is it uncommon now. During Operation wet Back, when the 1:19:14.920 --> 1:19:18.240 Border Patrol reformed itself into a paramilitary force to wage 1:19:18.320 --> 1:19:21.360 war on Mexican immigrants, Longan run The Patrols ran the 1:19:21.360 --> 1:19:25.479 Patrol's equivalent of a military intelligence service. Longan's base was 1:19:25.479 --> 1:19:28.680 an unmarked building near Alameda. He and his men interrogated, 1:19:28.720 --> 1:19:31.639 captured migrants, extrapped into information, and used it to find 1:19:31.680 --> 1:19:34.320 and capture other groups of migrants. Few of the men 1:19:34.320 --> 1:19:36.840 who endured these interrogations ever spoke about it, but a 1:19:36.840 --> 1:19:39.160 lot of what happened in those cells probably verged on 1:19:39.200 --> 1:19:42.240 what we'd consider torture. Long End was good at his job, 1:19:42.320 --> 1:19:44.600 and his performance and Operation wet Back earned him a 1:19:44.640 --> 1:19:48.160 transfer to the State Department's Public Safety Program. Now, this 1:19:48.320 --> 1:19:52.240 was in reality a CIA operation geared at providing counterinsurgency 1:19:52.320 --> 1:19:56.280 training and advice to Allied nations combating Communist insurgencies. The 1:19:56.280 --> 1:19:58.920 CIA hand picked a number of Border Patrol agents to 1:19:58.960 --> 1:20:02.080 travel to places like the Zezuela, Thailand, the Dominican Republic 1:20:02.120 --> 1:20:05.960 in Guatemala. They particularly liked recruiting guys like long End 1:20:06.000 --> 1:20:09.040 because they were likely to speak Spanish. Now, the way 1:20:09.080 --> 1:20:12.520 the State Department framed this program was training law enforcement. 1:20:13.479 --> 1:20:17.120 So uh yeah, the State Department framed this program as 1:20:17.160 --> 1:20:19.880 training law enforcement. The reality, though, is that Longan and 1:20:19.920 --> 1:20:22.280 his fellow Border patrolmen were sent over to places like 1:20:22.280 --> 1:20:26.599 Guatemala to create and train death squads during Operation Went Back. 1:20:26.680 --> 1:20:29.360 Border patrol administrators had described their work as fighting back 1:20:29.400 --> 1:20:32.439 against an invasion. In Guatemala, where long En arrived in 1:20:32.520 --> 1:20:35.200 nineteen sixty five, he was finally able to wage a 1:20:35.320 --> 1:20:38.479 real war using real weapons. I'm going to quote now 1:20:38.520 --> 1:20:42.599 from an article in The Nation. Quote. Longan taught local 1:20:42.640 --> 1:20:45.439 intelligence and police agencies how to create death squads to 1:20:45.479 --> 1:20:48.800 target political activists, deploying tactics that he had earlier used 1:20:48.840 --> 1:20:51.800 to capture migrants on the border. He arrived in Guatemala 1:20:51.800 --> 1:20:54.080 in late nineteen sixty five, where he put into place 1:20:54.080 --> 1:20:57.200 a paramilitary unit that early the next year would execute 1:20:57.200 --> 1:21:00.599 what he called Operation Limpieza, or Operation and clean Up. 1:21:00.840 --> 1:21:03.679 Within three months, this unit had conducted over eighty raids 1:21:03.680 --> 1:21:07.519 and multiple extrajudicial assassinations, including an action that, over the 1:21:07.520 --> 1:21:10.400 course of four days, captured, tortured, and executed more than 1:21:10.439 --> 1:21:14.040 thirty prominent Left opposition leaders. The military dumped their bodies 1:21:14.040 --> 1:21:16.200 into the sea, while the government denied any knowledge of 1:21:16.200 --> 1:21:19.600 their whereabouts. According to Stuart Schrader in his up forthcoming 1:21:19.640 --> 1:21:23.920 Badges Without Borders, how global counterinsurgency transformed American policing, It 1:21:24.000 --> 1:21:26.519 was common practice during the Cold wartis and former Border 1:21:26.520 --> 1:21:29.120 Patrol agents like long End to train foreign police through 1:21:29.120 --> 1:21:32.080 CIA linked public safety programs. Since they were more likely 1:21:32.080 --> 1:21:34.200 to speak Spanish than agents from other branches of law 1:21:34.280 --> 1:21:37.599 enforcement in countries like El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, they 1:21:37.600 --> 1:21:40.479 did the dirty work that Reagan's envoys said needed doing. 1:21:40.800 --> 1:21:43.519 Until the early nineteen seventies, the United States, according to 1:21:43.560 --> 1:21:46.559 a nineteen seventy four Los Angeles Times report, was flying 1:21:46.600 --> 1:21:49.360 its Latin American Death Squad apprentices up to the Border 1:21:49.600 --> 1:21:53.040 Patrol Academy in Los Fresnos, Texas to receive training from 1:21:53.080 --> 1:21:56.280 CIA instructors and the design, manufacture, and potential use of 1:21:56.320 --> 1:21:59.960 bombs and incendiary devices. Long End himself in nineteen fifty 1:22:00.080 --> 1:22:02.200 seven clearly describe what he thought he was doing at 1:22:02.200 --> 1:22:05.439 the border. We're fighting a war on a wide battle front, 1:22:06.200 --> 1:22:06.840 so that's good. 1:22:07.560 --> 1:22:11.479 So they're just basically training kill squads. They're just telling 1:22:11.520 --> 1:22:14.000 people to murder people. 1:22:14.439 --> 1:22:17.040 Yeah, and they're they're pulling border patrol guys off the 1:22:17.120 --> 1:22:19.760 line to do some of the training to be like, oh, 1:22:19.840 --> 1:22:22.679 you already are good at like tracking down these groups 1:22:22.680 --> 1:22:26.519 of people who are trying to facilitate movement of migrants 1:22:26.560 --> 1:22:29.240 through the United States. You can use those skills to 1:22:29.320 --> 1:22:32.599 track down political activists, except that, you know, since it's 1:22:32.600 --> 1:22:34.919 in a foreign country, you can just have them brutally 1:22:35.000 --> 1:22:38.640 murdered by death squads. And these guys are happy to 1:22:38.640 --> 1:22:40.719 do it because they want to be murdering people anyway. 1:22:40.720 --> 1:22:44.639 They just can't quite usually murder people, you know, at 1:22:44.680 --> 1:22:46.920 the border. I mean they do it a lot anyway, 1:22:47.000 --> 1:22:48.559 but like they have to be a little bit careful. 1:22:48.600 --> 1:22:50.440 But you don't have to be careful at all in Guatemala. 1:22:50.520 --> 1:22:51.320 So that's great. 1:22:51.640 --> 1:22:54.479 Oh, gie, Whiz, have you ever. 1:22:54.320 --> 1:22:58.479 Been to Guatemala, Caitlin, I have not, rules. Yeah, yeah, 1:22:58.479 --> 1:23:00.360 I spent a lot of time there. It's a great country, 1:23:00.400 --> 1:23:05.120 beautiful place, completely dysfunctional government, and you can see like 1:23:05.240 --> 1:23:08.080 signs of the horrible Civil war there all over the place. 1:23:08.200 --> 1:23:10.120 Just like you'll cross the street and there'll just be 1:23:10.200 --> 1:23:12.400 a bunch of guys who are all missing arms and legs. 1:23:13.479 --> 1:23:15.280 You'll be driving through the middle of nowhere and you'll 1:23:15.280 --> 1:23:17.840 see like businesses that have been like were shot up 1:23:17.880 --> 1:23:20.479 decades ago with mortars and stuff, and it you know, 1:23:20.520 --> 1:23:24.360 it all kind of descends from this. The series of 1:23:24.360 --> 1:23:28.120 political conflicts that launch in this period of time, particularly 1:23:28.160 --> 1:23:31.280 in the early nineteen eighties, that are backed by the 1:23:31.400 --> 1:23:35.160 United States and supported enthusiastically by the Reagan government, and 1:23:35.200 --> 1:23:40.160 these kind of networks of right wing murder crews that 1:23:40.240 --> 1:23:43.479 were trained up and sent out by the CIA and 1:23:43.840 --> 1:23:46.880 their buddies and groups like the Border Patrol. This all 1:23:46.920 --> 1:23:49.400 starts now, and it's cool, it's great, and. 1:23:49.320 --> 1:23:53.800 It's probably it's I mean, it's refugees from yep, these 1:23:53.840 --> 1:23:57.160 conflicts that are seeking refuge in right up to the 1:23:57.160 --> 1:24:01.040 today US and then and then they get here and 1:24:01.080 --> 1:24:05.439 they're like, well, sorry, fuck, you were either going to 1:24:05.560 --> 1:24:10.439 murder you or the peligeon and let you die in 1:24:10.479 --> 1:24:13.800 our custody or send you back to this you know, 1:24:14.200 --> 1:24:16.559 war torn country. You're in. 1:24:17.040 --> 1:24:19.400 Yeah. If you listen to right wingers, they'll usually say 1:24:19.400 --> 1:24:21.800 something like, oh, they should go back to their own 1:24:21.800 --> 1:24:24.840 country and fix its problems. And the reality is that, like, well, 1:24:25.080 --> 1:24:26.840 some of them tried to do that, and then we 1:24:26.920 --> 1:24:29.599 trained death squads to murder them and throw their bodies 1:24:30.320 --> 1:24:35.679 in rivers and stuff in the ocean. And that's why 1:24:35.720 --> 1:24:38.519 people are less willing to try to fix problems because 1:24:38.560 --> 1:24:40.880 they get killed, and so did their children because of 1:24:40.920 --> 1:24:43.280 the guys that we hired and trained to kill them 1:24:43.280 --> 1:24:48.080 and their children when they attempt to fight for economic justice. Oops, 1:24:48.240 --> 1:24:51.360 it's good. It's really good, is what I'm getting at. 1:24:51.479 --> 1:24:55.599 So Operation Limpieza, which you know Longen the Border Patrol 1:24:55.680 --> 1:24:59.160 guy orchestrated himself, was a major moment in the history 1:24:59.320 --> 1:25:03.360 of Guatemala's collapse into a nightmare. The military intelligence system 1:25:03.400 --> 1:25:05.839 he helped to build would eventually eliminate tens of thousands 1:25:05.840 --> 1:25:09.479 of leftist, activist sympathizers and random people mistaken for either 1:25:09.920 --> 1:25:13.800 More than two hundred thousand people were massacred openly. Tens 1:25:13.800 --> 1:25:16.080 of thousands more were tortured in this way. The brave 1:25:16.080 --> 1:25:18.120 men of the Border Patrol wound up at both sides 1:25:18.120 --> 1:25:21.520 of a tragedy. The genocide they trained right wing Guatemalan 1:25:21.520 --> 1:25:24.439 militants to execute fell heavily on various Maya peoples of 1:25:24.439 --> 1:25:27.760 the region, including the Kecchi in the Jews. The right 1:25:27.760 --> 1:25:30.360 wing dictator who helped to organize much of this violence 1:25:30.439 --> 1:25:33.680 was General Afrain Rios Mont. He rose to power in 1:25:33.760 --> 1:25:36.439 nineteen eighty one and nineteen eighty two, cooping his way 1:25:36.439 --> 1:25:38.439 into command with the help of his good friends. The 1:25:38.560 --> 1:25:41.760 US Ronald Reagan described him as a man of great 1:25:41.840 --> 1:25:46.320 integrity who was totally dedicated to democracy. The nation's ride 1:25:46.400 --> 1:25:51.720 up makes it continues quote. On June seventeenth, nineteen eighty two, 1:25:51.720 --> 1:25:54.599 Guatemalan soldiers under the command of Rios Mont entered the 1:25:54.640 --> 1:25:58.840 San Francisco Catalyst State immediately adjacent to Yallam Bulock. The 1:25:59.080 --> 1:26:01.920 estate's owner, a military colonel, had fled because of guerrilla 1:26:01.960 --> 1:26:04.639 activity in the area. Soldiers went house by house, rounding 1:26:04.680 --> 1:26:07.200 up workers in their families whom they accused of supporting 1:26:07.200 --> 1:26:10.040 the guerrillas. They separated children from their parents and killed 1:26:10.080 --> 1:26:13.040 them by slashing their stomachs or smashing their heads against poles. 1:26:13.200 --> 1:26:15.960 Women were raped and then burned alive. The soldiers killed 1:26:15.960 --> 1:26:18.280 them in with bullets or by beheading. After a day 1:26:18.320 --> 1:26:20.920 of slaughter, three hundred and fifty people were dead. A 1:26:20.960 --> 1:26:24.320 lone survivor made his way into Mexico, where Guatemalan anthropologist 1:26:24.320 --> 1:26:27.679 and Jesuit priest Ricardo Fala interviewed him. The San Francisco 1:26:27.800 --> 1:26:31.679 massacre was highlighted in Guatemala's nineteen ninety nine Truth Commission report. 1:26:32.120 --> 1:26:35.400 After the massacre, Yellum Biloc residents fled along with thousands 1:26:35.400 --> 1:26:38.599 of others, leaving the border corridor between Guatemala and Mexico 1:26:38.640 --> 1:26:42.559 completely depopulated. As government troops raised their villages, some were 1:26:42.600 --> 1:26:44.760 captured and killed by the army as they fled. Others 1:26:44.840 --> 1:26:48.160 ended up in refugee camps or dispersed throughout Mexico's southern states. 1:26:48.400 --> 1:26:50.880 Still others continued on to the United States, beginning the 1:26:50.880 --> 1:26:55.320 Great Movement of Guatemalans to El Norte. All told, one 1:26:55.360 --> 1:26:58.439 point five million people were displaced by the Guatemalan armies 1:26:58.479 --> 1:27:01.280 scorched Earth campaign in nineteen eighty one. In nineteen eighty two, 1:27:01.600 --> 1:27:05.479 Guatemala's Commission for Historical Clarification called the violent displacement in 1:27:05.520 --> 1:27:09.679 the Maya Cheus region an active genocide. Young Felipe Gomez 1:27:09.720 --> 1:27:12.040 Alazano's father. He was the little kid, one of the 1:27:12.080 --> 1:27:15.320 little kids who died. Augustine Gomez Perez was a child 1:27:15.320 --> 1:27:18.360 of eleven during that execute. Y'all Unblock's villagers stayed away 1:27:18.360 --> 1:27:20.800 for fourteen years, returning only after the signing of the 1:27:20.840 --> 1:27:25.760 Peace Accords in nineteen ninety six. So that's cool, m. 1:27:27.439 --> 1:27:30.240 What can you say science that's horrible. 1:27:30.640 --> 1:27:33.240 You can say that, Like, we're focusing on Guatemala right 1:27:33.280 --> 1:27:37.360 here because it's one where there's a bit more documentation, 1:27:37.439 --> 1:27:39.200 but like, this shit happened in Al Salad, or it 1:27:39.200 --> 1:27:41.280 happened in a bunch of different parts of Latin in 1:27:41.320 --> 1:27:47.639 Central America where you know, refugees come from all the time. 1:27:47.680 --> 1:27:51.519 Now it was, it's still in a lot of ways 1:27:51.520 --> 1:27:53.120 going on today if you want to read about like 1:27:53.120 --> 1:27:55.920 Plan Columbia and stuff like, there's aspects of this that 1:27:55.960 --> 1:27:59.519 are very much still occurring, and that the border patrol 1:27:59.640 --> 1:28:02.280 still ends up getting tied up and from time to time, 1:28:02.360 --> 1:28:03.440 and that's great. 1:28:05.280 --> 1:28:05.920 Good grief. 1:28:07.000 --> 1:28:10.320 Yeah, this is like the stuff that part of me 1:28:10.400 --> 1:28:12.880 that like is optimistic wants to believe that, oh if 1:28:12.880 --> 1:28:16.920 people just knew this, like knew how this all, how 1:28:17.040 --> 1:28:24.880 US policy and US plotting played into the tragedy being 1:28:24.960 --> 1:28:28.240 suffered by these people, and like the insecurity of these regions, 1:28:28.760 --> 1:28:33.240 they would have better attitudes towards you know, Guatemal immigration 1:28:33.400 --> 1:28:37.080 and whatnot into the United States. And then the part 1:28:37.120 --> 1:28:39.519 of me that has been paying attention for the last 1:28:40.000 --> 1:28:44.160 several decades knows that like, no, actually people would cheer 1:28:44.280 --> 1:28:46.680 the murders of the folks and the destruction of these 1:28:46.720 --> 1:28:51.840 areas because Americans have been so thoroughly broken by propaganda 1:28:52.040 --> 1:28:54.240 that the people who are still on the right and 1:28:54.280 --> 1:28:59.200 still broadly pro American can't be convinced by any reason 1:28:59.240 --> 1:29:04.520 that any amount of murder or violence is not justified 1:29:04.560 --> 1:29:08.560 by the fact that America is cool as hell. 1:29:08.600 --> 1:29:16.280 It is this what a toxic mentality that we as Americans, 1:29:16.360 --> 1:29:19.120 or at least some of us have, because like, and 1:29:19.160 --> 1:29:21.920 this is I'm not about to say anything new or 1:29:22.000 --> 1:29:26.759 profound here, but the fact that you know, the white 1:29:26.800 --> 1:29:31.320 European settlers were escaping the same you know, kind of 1:29:32.840 --> 1:29:37.040 civil unrest or religious persecution or whatever it was the 1:29:37.120 --> 1:29:42.639 coust them to flood their countries, and then we settled 1:29:42.680 --> 1:29:48.839 here by killing millions of indigenous people, and now we're like, well, 1:29:48.920 --> 1:29:52.479 our borders are closed now. Sorry everyone, And it's like, 1:29:52.600 --> 1:29:55.320 how can you live? How can these people live with 1:29:55.360 --> 1:30:00.760 the hypocrisy of that simple fact. 1:30:02.120 --> 1:30:06.880 Because they're they're ship anyway. Uh So, most of these 1:30:06.880 --> 1:30:11.679 death squads were trained in the United States because like, hey, 1:30:11.720 --> 1:30:14.519 if you're gonna build a death squad for a foreign country, 1:30:14.680 --> 1:30:17.360 you don't want to like train it there. That's kind 1:30:17.360 --> 1:30:19.519 of ghosh. Uh So you bring them into your country 1:30:19.560 --> 1:30:22.599 to train them there because you're you know, you're good 1:30:22.600 --> 1:30:25.639 at training death squads. So the facility where they actually 1:30:25.680 --> 1:30:27.640 trained a lot of these death squads, and again not 1:30:27.760 --> 1:30:30.599 just in Guatemala, but for places like Columbia and El 1:30:30.680 --> 1:30:34.240 Salvador all throughout fucking world. The place where they would 1:30:34.320 --> 1:30:36.920 like take these men to teach them how to be terrorists, 1:30:37.240 --> 1:30:39.600 how to make bombs and all this shit was the 1:30:39.680 --> 1:30:44.759 Los Fresnos, Texas Border Patrol facility. It was an existing base, 1:30:44.880 --> 1:30:48.479 it was in a good location, and the Border Patrol 1:30:48.560 --> 1:30:51.280 was perfectly happy to have minsilt over there to learn 1:30:51.360 --> 1:30:54.799 how to become murderous gorillas and then set off terrorist 1:30:54.920 --> 1:30:58.000 bombs in the middle of their own countries because they 1:30:58.000 --> 1:30:59.719 were like that sounds like a thing the border patrol 1:30:59.720 --> 1:31:03.519 should be involved with. Now. The Technical Investigations course that 1:31:03.640 --> 1:31:07.240 was given to foreign police there was taught by CIA instructors. 1:31:07.720 --> 1:31:11.959 It lasted for weeks and it included curriculum like terrorist concepts, 1:31:12.120 --> 1:31:15.679 terrorist devices, fabrication and functioning of devices and provides, triggering 1:31:15.680 --> 1:31:20.240 devices and scendiaries, and assassination weapons, a discussion of various 1:31:20.280 --> 1:31:22.960 weapons which may be used by the assassin. And when 1:31:22.960 --> 1:31:24.479 you read it like that, you can kind of trick 1:31:24.520 --> 1:31:27.400 yourself into thinking it might not be like it might 1:31:27.400 --> 1:31:29.639 be a reasonable thing for cops to learn. Right, of course, 1:31:29.680 --> 1:31:31.960 cops might need to learn about terrorist concepts and the 1:31:32.040 --> 1:31:34.960 kind of weapons assassins use. But these were not just 1:31:35.080 --> 1:31:38.479 informational courses. They were instructed. So the police who attended, 1:31:38.520 --> 1:31:41.320 we're just learning, Oh, here's weapons that assassins sometimes use. 1:31:41.360 --> 1:31:44.160 They were learning, like, if you're going to assassinate somebody, 1:31:44.360 --> 1:31:46.599 here's a variety of different weapons that you can use 1:31:46.640 --> 1:31:49.519 to assassinate people. And we're just learning, like, here's different 1:31:49.560 --> 1:31:52.719 ways terrorists build triggers for bombs. They were learning, here's 1:31:52.720 --> 1:31:54.840 how to build triggers for the bobs you're going to 1:31:54.880 --> 1:32:00.080 make to kill people. The reality of the whole The 1:32:00.080 --> 1:32:03.920 whole program came out during congressional investigations in the nineteen seventies. 1:32:03.920 --> 1:32:05.559 And I'm going to quote now from a book titled 1:32:05.560 --> 1:32:09.720 Instruments Instruments of state Craft, US Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and 1:32:09.760 --> 1:32:12.280 counter Terrorism, which is available for in full for free 1:32:12.320 --> 1:32:16.719 online right now. Quote. During congressional investigations led by Senator 1:32:16.800 --> 1:32:21.200 James Alboresque in nineteen seventy three, eight officials admitted that 1:32:21.240 --> 1:32:23.400 the Los Fresno sessions, what the press would call the 1:32:23.439 --> 1:32:26.320 Bomb School, offered lessons not in bomb disposal, but in 1:32:26.400 --> 1:32:29.000 bomb making. The course is not designed to nor does 1:32:29.040 --> 1:32:31.160 it prepare the student to be a bomb or explosive 1:32:31.640 --> 1:32:35.280 disposal technician. The thrust of the instruction introduces trainees to 1:32:35.280 --> 1:32:39.120 commercially available materials and home laboratory techniques in the manufacture 1:32:39.160 --> 1:32:42.360 of explosives and incendiaries. Different types of explosive techniques and 1:32:42.400 --> 1:32:45.600 booby traps and their construction and use by terrorists are demonstrated. 1:32:46.080 --> 1:32:48.120 And again, all these classes were taught at a border 1:32:48.120 --> 1:32:51.240 patrol facility. And while the main instructors were CIA agents, 1:32:51.280 --> 1:32:53.479 it was not just the convenient location that made the 1:32:53.520 --> 1:32:56.799 ad agency use Los Fresnos. The Border Patrol had always 1:32:56.800 --> 1:32:59.719 had within it the seeds of a national secret police force. 1:33:00.160 --> 1:33:03.840 Decades before CBP agents were operating in unmarked snatch fans 1:33:03.840 --> 1:33:05.840 on the streets of Portland and it was Customs and 1:33:05.880 --> 1:33:09.120 Border Patrol who was doing that. They helped to train 1:33:09.280 --> 1:33:12.479 foreign police to do the exact same thing and much worse. Besides, 1:33:12.920 --> 1:33:16.280 that's fun, Like I carry, I keep like wanting to say, like, ah, 1:33:16.479 --> 1:33:18.760 what a fun thing. What I don't know what else 1:33:18.800 --> 1:33:21.200 to say. It's just like this kind of litany of 1:33:21.200 --> 1:33:23.960 ours that we've all just kind of blithely funded our 1:33:24.120 --> 1:33:27.479 entire lives, even though a great deal of information exists 1:33:27.479 --> 1:33:32.280 on how bad this agency has always been. Because the 1:33:32.280 --> 1:33:35.000 only real if you actually get into it as we 1:33:35.080 --> 1:33:37.719 are today, the only real conclusion is that like, oh, 1:33:37.880 --> 1:33:40.680 maybe when you have people whose job it is to 1:33:40.720 --> 1:33:43.600 police the border, they're they're they're just going to be 1:33:43.640 --> 1:33:46.720 the worst people. And and maybe you shouldn't police the 1:33:46.760 --> 1:33:49.000 border at all because this happened. 1:33:49.560 --> 1:33:55.880 But borders are completely arbitrary and mean nothing, And why 1:33:56.439 --> 1:34:00.479 or why have we decided that they that cross them 1:34:00.800 --> 1:34:01.559 is a crime. 1:34:03.520 --> 1:34:07.400 Yeah, yeah, it's bad. And the kind of people who 1:34:07.439 --> 1:34:10.000 decide that they want to make their whole lives about 1:34:10.080 --> 1:34:13.120 punishing desperate people for the quote unquote crime of crossing 1:34:13.120 --> 1:34:17.320 a border are monsters, and when you start giving them 1:34:17.320 --> 1:34:21.640 guns in power, they use it to enable genocides and 1:34:21.680 --> 1:34:24.840 political oppression abroad and then inevitably do so back at home, 1:34:25.360 --> 1:34:28.280 which is what's happening now. So when it comes to 1:34:28.360 --> 1:34:32.439 government agencies that Americans, particularly liberals, rage against, customs and 1:34:32.479 --> 1:34:34.920 Border Patrol has spent most of its history kind of 1:34:34.960 --> 1:34:38.000 sliding under the mainstream radar. But liberals who only started 1:34:38.000 --> 1:34:40.640 paying attention to the agency after Trump took office might 1:34:40.680 --> 1:34:43.320 be surprised to know that NYT Report or New York 1:34:43.360 --> 1:34:46.759 Times reporter John Crudsen won a Pulitzer Prize in nineteen 1:34:46.840 --> 1:34:49.200 eighty for a series of articles about the Border Patrol 1:34:49.439 --> 1:34:51.599 whose titles would not look at all out of place 1:34:51.600 --> 1:34:55.120 in twenty twenty, titles like Border Patrol sweeps of illegal 1:34:55.160 --> 1:35:00.719 aliens leave scores of children in jails a little familiar. 1:35:01.360 --> 1:35:05.800 The intercept summarizing his work notes patrollers he reported regularly 1:35:05.840 --> 1:35:09.040 engaged in beating's, murder, torture, and rape, including the rape 1:35:09.080 --> 1:35:11.479 of girls as young as twelve Some patrollers ran their 1:35:11.479 --> 1:35:14.840 own in house outlaw vigilante groups. Others maintained ties with 1:35:14.880 --> 1:35:17.640 groups like the Clan. Border patrol agents also used the 1:35:17.720 --> 1:35:20.080 children of migrants, either as bait or as pressure. A 1:35:20.120 --> 1:35:23.320 pressure tactic to force confessions. When coming upon a family, 1:35:23.400 --> 1:35:26.080 agents tried to apprehend the youngest member first, with the 1:35:26.120 --> 1:35:28.400 idea that relatives would give themselves up so as not 1:35:28.439 --> 1:35:31.360 to be separated. It may sound cruel, one patroller said, 1:35:31.479 --> 1:35:35.040 but it often worked. Separating migrant families was not official 1:35:35.160 --> 1:35:38.160 government policy in the years Crudsen was reporting on abuses, 1:35:38.320 --> 1:35:41.200 but left to their own devices, Border patrol agents regularly 1:35:41.200 --> 1:35:44.040 took children from parents, threatening that they would be separated 1:35:44.080 --> 1:35:46.400 forever unless one of them confessed that they had entered 1:35:46.439 --> 1:35:50.439 the country illegally. Mothers, especially an, agents said, would always break. 1:35:50.760 --> 1:35:53.400 Once a confession was extracted, children might be placed in 1:35:53.479 --> 1:35:56.479 foster care or left to languish in federal jails. Others 1:35:56.520 --> 1:35:59.519 were released into Mexico alone, far from their homes, forced 1:35:59.520 --> 1:36:03.480 to survive, according to public defenders, by garbage can scrounging, 1:36:03.560 --> 1:36:07.200 living on rooftops, and whatever. Ten year old Sylvia Alvarado 1:36:07.280 --> 1:36:10.080 separated from her grandmother as they crossed into Texas was 1:36:10.160 --> 1:36:12.240 kept in a small cinder block cell for more than 1:36:12.280 --> 1:36:16.000 three months. In California, thirteen year old Julia Perez, threatened 1:36:16.000 --> 1:36:18.720 with being arrested in denied food, broke down and told 1:36:18.720 --> 1:36:21.120 her investigator that she was Mexican, even though she was 1:36:21.120 --> 1:36:24.400 a US citizen. The Border Patrol released Perez into Mexico 1:36:24.479 --> 1:36:26.839 with no money or way to contact her US family. 1:36:27.160 --> 1:36:29.519 Such cruelties weren't one offs, but part of a pattern 1:36:29.680 --> 1:36:32.200 encouraged and committed by officers up the chain of command. 1:36:32.400 --> 1:36:35.839 The violence was both gratuitive and systemic, including stress techniques 1:36:35.920 --> 1:36:37.719 later associated with the war in Iraq. 1:36:38.040 --> 1:36:41.680 I mean, wow, what. 1:36:41.800 --> 1:36:47.280 Kind of truly inhuman monster do you have to be 1:36:48.360 --> 1:36:53.639 to use to be yes, and more specifically to use 1:36:53.920 --> 1:37:00.000 children as bait or to like snatch them first as 1:37:01.439 --> 1:37:05.520 just like I can't even form a sentence. 1:37:05.160 --> 1:37:07.240 That is Yeah, it's not great. 1:37:08.240 --> 1:37:11.200 I mean the sentence that you said, like I got 1:37:11.360 --> 1:37:15.559 teary eyed with the mother, Yes, the mothers broke first 1:37:15.760 --> 1:37:18.400 or whatnot? Yeah? That was yeah, horrible. 1:37:19.280 --> 1:37:22.280 No, it's I don't know, you know, when I talk 1:37:22.479 --> 1:37:25.360 about how this all actually makes me feel, there's no 1:37:25.479 --> 1:37:29.160 way to do that without repeatedly urging other people to 1:37:29.240 --> 1:37:33.920 commit federal crimes up to when including assault and murder. 1:37:34.000 --> 1:37:36.839 So I'm just like gonna stop right there and continue 1:37:36.840 --> 1:37:40.640 talking about the Border Patrol instead, because we shouldn't do 1:37:40.720 --> 1:37:44.200 that on a podcast. One tactic the Border Patrol came 1:37:44.200 --> 1:37:46.400 to a door was the locking of migrants in freezing 1:37:46.479 --> 1:37:50.040 cold rooms called hellieras or ice boxes. This goes back 1:37:50.080 --> 1:37:52.759 at least to the nineteen eighties. According to Krudsen, agents 1:37:52.800 --> 1:37:55.920 would tell prisoners in this place, you have no rights. 1:37:56.360 --> 1:37:58.680 Since these people had committed no crime beyond crossing a 1:37:58.720 --> 1:38:01.160 line in the dirt, their detention serve no real purpose 1:38:01.200 --> 1:38:05.360 beyond cruelty. Cruelty was the point. Border Patrol agents throughout 1:38:05.360 --> 1:38:09.320 the seventies, eighties, and nineties were repeatedly documented torturing migrants. 1:38:09.640 --> 1:38:12.360 A popular method was handcuffing them to squad cars and 1:38:12.400 --> 1:38:14.880 then making them run alongside the video as it half 1:38:15.000 --> 1:38:18.200 dragged them to the border. Outright murder was common as well. 1:38:18.439 --> 1:38:21.920 One patrol agent told Krudsen that agents commonly pushed illegals 1:38:21.960 --> 1:38:24.720 off cliffs so it would look like an accident. Much 1:38:24.720 --> 1:38:27.840 of the agency's behavior was indistinguishable from that of a 1:38:27.840 --> 1:38:31.599 straight up Gang. Agents with ins Border Patrol's parent agency 1:38:31.640 --> 1:38:34.040 at the time were caught trading Mexican women to the 1:38:34.080 --> 1:38:39.559 Los Angeles Rams in exchange for season tickets. What yes, 1:38:39.760 --> 1:38:40.759 the thing that happened. 1:38:44.520 --> 1:38:46.000 I can't. 1:38:47.640 --> 1:38:50.640 Brave men and women of the Border Patrol. We're in 1:38:50.640 --> 1:38:51.080 the green. 1:38:51.760 --> 1:38:54.160 Oh my god, it's time for an AD break so 1:38:54.200 --> 1:38:55.200 that I can go vomit. 1:38:55.960 --> 1:39:01.720 Yeah, you know who doesn't trade women for it? 1:39:02.080 --> 1:39:04.719 Vomit. It's an AD break. 1:39:05.520 --> 1:39:16.240 Products and services and we're back. We're having a good time. 1:39:18.840 --> 1:39:19.479 Jeez, so. 1:39:21.040 --> 1:39:24.080 I n S agents were also caught supplying Mexican prostitutes 1:39:24.080 --> 1:39:27.599 to congressmen and judges in exchange for political favors. Over time, 1:39:27.720 --> 1:39:30.120 the Border Patrol found ways to get over their long 1:39:30.160 --> 1:39:34.200 standing conflicts with UH with Texan ranchers. In numerous cases, 1:39:34.240 --> 1:39:36.599 they worked out deals with ranch owners whereby they would 1:39:36.640 --> 1:39:39.599 hold off on immigration raids until right before payday, giving 1:39:39.680 --> 1:39:42.080 ranchers the use of migrant bodies without the need to 1:39:42.120 --> 1:39:44.679 pay them. Border patrol men got to hunt and fish 1:39:44.720 --> 1:39:46.680 for free on their ranches as payments. This is kind 1:39:46.680 --> 1:39:49.200 of how they they worked out that that little set 1:39:49.200 --> 1:39:53.200 of disagreements, that little UH. The the uprising in Texas 1:39:53.640 --> 1:39:55.720 that had been sparked by a lot of. 1:39:55.680 --> 1:39:59.519 The labor and then have an agreement with the border 1:39:59.520 --> 1:40:02.040 patrol and like, okay, seize them on this day. 1:40:02.360 --> 1:40:03.040 Yeah, so that. 1:40:03.080 --> 1:40:05.920 I don't have to pay all My god, it's good. 1:40:06.400 --> 1:40:09.600 Yeah crudzen. That New York Times journalist even documented that 1:40:09.640 --> 1:40:12.000 one of the rangers the Ranch's border patrol worked at 1:40:12.040 --> 1:40:15.240 an arrangement with was owned by President Lyndon B. Johnson 1:40:15.479 --> 1:40:21.519 while he was president. Oh holy shit, good stuff. Between 1:40:21.600 --> 1:40:24.439 nineteen eighty five and nineteen ninety, federal agents gunned down 1:40:24.479 --> 1:40:27.799 twenty two migrants just in the area around San Diego. 1:40:28.240 --> 1:40:31.960 The Intercept reports quote on April eighteenth, nineteen eighty six, 1:40:32.000 --> 1:40:35.240 For instance, patroller Edward Cole was beating fourteen year old 1:40:35.320 --> 1:40:38.080 Eduardo Corrillo Estrada on the US side of the border's 1:40:38.160 --> 1:40:40.920 Chain League fence when he stopped and shot Eduardo's younger brother, 1:40:41.000 --> 1:40:43.760 Humberto in the back. Umberto was standing on the other 1:40:43.800 --> 1:40:46.280 side of the fence on Mexican soil. A court ruled 1:40:46.280 --> 1:40:48.439 that Cole, who had previous incidents of shooting through the 1:40:48.439 --> 1:40:50.639 fence at Mexicans, had reason to fear for his life 1:40:50.680 --> 1:40:55.200 from Humberto and used justifiable force. Such abuses persisted through 1:40:55.200 --> 1:40:57.720 the nineteen nineties and two thousands. In nineteen ninety three, 1:40:57.760 --> 1:41:01.439 the House Subcommittee on International Law, immigran and Refugees held 1:41:01.439 --> 1:41:04.080 hearings on border patrol abuse, and its transcript is a 1:41:04.160 --> 1:41:07.280 catalog of horrors. One former guard, Tourney Hefner, at the 1:41:07.280 --> 1:41:10.760 Ions Detention Center in Port Isabel, Texas, reported that a 1:41:10.760 --> 1:41:14.160 young Salvadoran girl was forced to perform personal duties like 1:41:14.280 --> 1:41:18.200 dancing the Lombarda for IONS officials. In twenty eleven, Hefter 1:41:18.240 --> 1:41:21.400 published a memoir with more accusations of sexual abuse by 1:41:21.520 --> 1:41:25.599 as Hefner writes, the Ions brass Roberto Martinez, who worked 1:41:25.600 --> 1:41:28.120 with the San Diego based US Mexico Border program for 1:41:28.160 --> 1:41:31.679 the American Friends Service Committee, testified that human and civil 1:41:31.760 --> 1:41:34.760 rights violations by the Border Patrol run the gamut of 1:41:34.760 --> 1:41:38.919 abuses imaginable, from rape to murder. Agents regularly seized original 1:41:38.920 --> 1:41:42.080 birth certificates in green cards from Latino citizens, leaving the 1:41:42.160 --> 1:41:44.280 victim with the financial burden of having to go through 1:41:44.320 --> 1:41:47.240 a lengthy process of applying for a new document. Rapes 1:41:47.280 --> 1:41:50.240 and sexual abuse in Ions attention centers around the United 1:41:50.280 --> 1:41:53.599 States Martinez said, seemed to be escalating throughout the border region. 1:41:53.880 --> 1:41:59.280 Okay, I have to talk through something here. So, in theory, 1:42:00.320 --> 1:42:09.000 law enforcement is there to prevent crime, stop crime, find criminals, 1:42:09.240 --> 1:42:11.679 et cetera. We know that that's barely what they do, right, 1:42:12.000 --> 1:42:16.800 But that's in theory the purpose of law enforcement. And 1:42:16.880 --> 1:42:22.559 so by extension border patrol if it is since it 1:42:22.640 --> 1:42:26.040 is for some reason illegal to you know, cross a 1:42:26.080 --> 1:42:31.759 border undocumented or without the proper documentation, that is quote 1:42:31.840 --> 1:42:36.720 a crime according to ridiculous standards, right. And I also 1:42:36.880 --> 1:42:42.840 understand in theory the concept of like punishing things that 1:42:42.920 --> 1:42:47.360 are actual crime. That makes sense to me as long 1:42:47.400 --> 1:42:51.120 as it's done responsibly, which it never is. The idea 1:42:51.240 --> 1:42:56.360 of seeing crossing a border without the proper documentation and 1:42:57.040 --> 1:43:02.320 deciding that the punishment for that crime, I'm warrants things 1:43:02.479 --> 1:43:11.559 like human trafficking, murder, sexual assault, all manner of other horrible, horrible, 1:43:11.640 --> 1:43:18.599 unmentionable things like where I just it is the most 1:43:18.640 --> 1:43:19.719 disgusting thing. 1:43:19.920 --> 1:43:23.920 I think the problem here that you're having is in 1:43:24.000 --> 1:43:27.200 thinking that the goal, the purpose is ever to prevent crime, 1:43:28.479 --> 1:43:33.080 whereas the reality is the purpose is to is to protect. 1:43:33.400 --> 1:43:37.519 It's to protect whiteness exactly, Yes, yeah, And it's to 1:43:37.720 --> 1:43:42.880 provide an outlet for for fascists in this country to 1:43:42.920 --> 1:43:46.479 do horrible violence on people in a way that is, 1:43:47.080 --> 1:43:51.400 rather than being disorganized and sort of being anti state 1:43:51.640 --> 1:43:56.680 and being something that like causes disorder, being violence that 1:43:56.680 --> 1:44:00.680 they are allowed to carry out, that that enforces the uh, 1:44:02.160 --> 1:44:05.160 the kind of the state itself that like that like 1:44:05.280 --> 1:44:08.479 backs up the existence of the state. Right, Like you 1:44:08.520 --> 1:44:11.599 have all these you have all these tremendously violent people, right, 1:44:12.880 --> 1:44:16.400 and you can do a couple of things to them, 1:44:16.720 --> 1:44:20.040 but they're there. So either you you try to like 1:44:20.120 --> 1:44:23.360 deal with them and deradicalize them and make them less dangerous, 1:44:23.439 --> 1:44:27.160 you kill them, or as we do, you give them 1:44:27.200 --> 1:44:30.080 guns and make them unaccountable and allow them to do 1:44:30.160 --> 1:44:32.880 horrible violence to large groups of people who have no 1:44:32.960 --> 1:44:34.000 political agency. 1:44:34.680 --> 1:44:37.360 Yes, that is exactly what it is. Like people who 1:44:37.400 --> 1:44:42.680 are like, well, the general population thinks that, you know, 1:44:42.880 --> 1:44:46.720 being a member of a hate group like the KKK 1:44:47.560 --> 1:44:50.160 is bad. So I'm going to do the same exact 1:44:50.200 --> 1:44:55.840 things that the KKK does, but it's being masked as 1:44:56.360 --> 1:45:00.800 a government agency. Like basically, this terror terrors organization, this 1:45:00.920 --> 1:45:07.880 hate group is protected and quote justified because it is 1:45:08.240 --> 1:45:13.600 a government agency, even though they're committing the same heinous 1:45:13.600 --> 1:45:19.080 acts in the name of under the guise of some 1:45:19.160 --> 1:45:24.200 kind of protection. But truly it is the like you said, 1:45:24.240 --> 1:45:30.280 protection of whiteness and criminalizing being not white. 1:45:29.880 --> 1:45:33.200 And that's the that's the only way it's ever been, 1:45:34.840 --> 1:45:36.720 and that's the only way it ever will be, as 1:45:36.760 --> 1:45:42.080 long as we have a border and we consider there 1:45:42.080 --> 1:45:45.760 to be some sort of fundamental value in the sanctity 1:45:45.800 --> 1:45:49.080 of that border. Right, And that's good. 1:45:49.640 --> 1:45:50.599 I want to cry about it. 1:45:51.439 --> 1:45:54.880 Yeah, it's it's good to do that sometimes. Other times 1:45:54.960 --> 1:45:58.360 it's good to continue reading a podcast script, which I 1:45:58.439 --> 1:46:01.599 will now do, okay, because this is how I deal 1:46:01.640 --> 1:46:05.200 with problems. This is the only way that I deal 1:46:05.240 --> 1:46:09.360 with problems is by reading podcast scripts. 1:46:09.520 --> 1:46:14.040 I mean informing the people helps. 1:46:14.400 --> 1:46:17.120 Yeah, that's a way that you can describe this as 1:46:17.200 --> 1:46:21.559 informing the people. I don't know, you know. In nineteen 1:46:21.600 --> 1:46:24.920 seventy nine, Maria Contreras, nine months pregnant, crossed back into 1:46:24.920 --> 1:46:28.040 the United States from Mexico legally after shopping for food. 1:46:28.360 --> 1:46:30.960 Border patrol agents found the suspicious and they tortured her 1:46:31.000 --> 1:46:33.959 to try to get her to reveal information about undocumented migrants. 1:46:34.120 --> 1:46:38.160 She died under interrogation, leaving six children behind. This sort 1:46:38.160 --> 1:46:39.720 of thing happened all the time. You know, we have 1:46:39.800 --> 1:46:43.160 documentation about Maria Contreras's case, but this is maybe even 1:46:43.160 --> 1:46:46.000 a daily matter, and it's something that continues to this 1:46:46.200 --> 1:46:50.240 day in dark and terrifying corners of the border where 1:46:50.360 --> 1:46:54.640 such things are not documented most of the time, but 1:46:54.760 --> 1:46:57.240 which we all pay for. Throughout all of this, the 1:46:57.240 --> 1:46:59.240 border patrol and i ins were sort of the red 1:46:59.240 --> 1:47:02.280 headed step chat to federal agencies with law enforcement powers. 1:47:02.920 --> 1:47:05.400 They were barely funded because, if you can imagine this, 1:47:05.720 --> 1:47:08.680 illegal immigration was not something people cared about. So for 1:47:08.720 --> 1:47:10.640 most of these period, this period, while all of the 1:47:10.680 --> 1:47:13.360 horrible things we've been talking about have been happening, border 1:47:13.400 --> 1:47:18.840 patrol has basically no money and very few agents considering 1:47:18.920 --> 1:47:21.080 like what it's supposed to be watching in its purview, 1:47:21.120 --> 1:47:22.800 it's just kind of a place where we keep all 1:47:22.840 --> 1:47:26.439 of our most violent law enforcement officers and they don't 1:47:26.439 --> 1:47:29.760 have the money to do much, but nobody's watching them, 1:47:29.760 --> 1:47:32.160 so they can carry out horrific acts of violence. And 1:47:32.200 --> 1:47:35.559 that's the border patrol and really ins too for the 1:47:35.560 --> 1:47:41.000 most part. Yeah, states probably had you know not. Probably 1:47:41.080 --> 1:47:43.759 border states had debates on the matter of illegal immigration. 1:47:43.800 --> 1:47:46.320 It was certainly like, you know, a political issue in Texas, 1:47:46.880 --> 1:47:50.439 in New Mexico and stuff. But random people in random 1:47:50.439 --> 1:47:53.599 Americans and Duluth or you know, Wichita or bubble fuck 1:47:53.640 --> 1:47:56.639 Montana or whatever didn't really care about the border right 1:47:56.880 --> 1:47:59.479 eighties and nineties, it was not a big vote getter 1:47:59.640 --> 1:48:02.200 for most to that period of time. Now, at the 1:48:02.240 --> 1:48:04.880 start of the Clinton administration, there were only about four 1:48:04.920 --> 1:48:09.439 thousand border patrol agents watching both Canada and Mexico, which 1:48:09.479 --> 1:48:11.200 is not a lot if you think about how big 1:48:11.200 --> 1:48:12.200 both of those borders are. 1:48:12.520 --> 1:48:13.800 There are many miles long. 1:48:14.080 --> 1:48:17.240 Yeah, they're pretty big. In nineteen ninety three, NAFTA became 1:48:17.240 --> 1:48:19.880 a thing, the North American free trade thing of a jigger, 1:48:20.479 --> 1:48:24.599 and illegal immigration grew by leaps and bounds alongside right 1:48:24.640 --> 1:48:28.080 wing fear mongering about illegal immigration. The border patrol more 1:48:28.120 --> 1:48:30.400 than doubled in size by the turn of the millennium. 1:48:30.439 --> 1:48:32.120 So this is like the first thing that really leads 1:48:32.160 --> 1:48:34.799 to a massive surge in the border patrol is NAFTA 1:48:34.840 --> 1:48:37.080 becomes a thing, and suddenly a shitload more people are 1:48:37.080 --> 1:48:40.360 trying to cross the border. Illegal immigration by the end 1:48:40.400 --> 1:48:43.799 of the nineteen nineties is a major national political issue 1:48:43.920 --> 1:48:47.040 in the Border Patrol more than doubles under Clinton. In 1:48:47.080 --> 1:48:50.520 the year two thousand, our nation's peak year for illegal immigration, 1:48:50.920 --> 1:48:55.680 border patrol agents apprehended one point six million people. This, though, 1:48:55.800 --> 1:48:57.960 was just a fraction of the total that got through. 1:48:58.280 --> 1:49:01.360 Border Patrol agents were unhappy about the fact that most 1:49:02.360 --> 1:49:05.439 undocumented migrants were still getting through the border, and that 1:49:05.479 --> 1:49:07.439 the many rules and that there were many rules in 1:49:07.479 --> 1:49:10.839 place to stop them from you know, doing Operation Wetback 1:49:10.880 --> 1:49:13.600 type stuff and basically carrying out an ethnic cleansing to 1:49:13.600 --> 1:49:17.479 get rid of non white people from border areas. From 1:49:17.520 --> 1:49:20.200 an article in Politico quote quote. Near the top of 1:49:20.200 --> 1:49:22.559 the Border Patrol's list of complaints was the policy known 1:49:22.600 --> 1:49:26.120 internally as KARP or the catch and release policy. By 1:49:26.120 --> 1:49:28.439 the end of the Clinton administration, eighty percent of people 1:49:28.439 --> 1:49:30.639 who were caught and released with a notice who appeared 1:49:30.640 --> 1:49:33.519 a deportation hearing never showed up in court. But despite 1:49:33.600 --> 1:49:36.160 millions of border crossings, the Border Patrol had the financing 1:49:36.160 --> 1:49:38.640 in two thousand and one for just sixty detainees a 1:49:38.720 --> 1:49:41.640 day across the entire country. They could turn themselves in 1:49:41.680 --> 1:49:43.559 and have a high confidence that they wouldn't be returned 1:49:43.560 --> 1:49:46.800 to their home countries, recalls Michael Cherdoff, who would go 1:49:46.880 --> 1:49:50.080 on to become President George W. Bush's second Secretary of 1:49:50.080 --> 1:49:53.800 Homeland Security. Mostly, agents just asked border violators for their 1:49:53.880 --> 1:49:56.799 names and then did a cursory background check before returning 1:49:56.840 --> 1:49:59.479 them to Mexico or releasing them into the United States. 1:49:59.680 --> 1:50:03.080 Sometimes they ran fingerprints, sometimes they didn't. In June nineteen 1:50:03.160 --> 1:50:05.840 ninety nine, agents captured one of the FBI's ten most 1:50:05.840 --> 1:50:09.640 wanted fugitives, a rapist and serial killer named Angel Maturino 1:50:09.880 --> 1:50:14.360 Racindez aka the Railway Killer, and unknowingly released him back 1:50:14.400 --> 1:50:17.920 into Mexico, whereupon Rascindez promptly sneaked back into the United 1:50:17.960 --> 1:50:20.680 States and murdered four more people before being apprehended by 1:50:20.720 --> 1:50:24.360 Texas rangers. So the story of the Railway Killer was 1:50:24.400 --> 1:50:26.719 of course used to justify the need for more funding 1:50:26.760 --> 1:50:30.240 to the Border Patrol. What the whole story really illustrates 1:50:30.320 --> 1:50:32.639 is that even when the Border Patrol had occasional chances 1:50:32.680 --> 1:50:36.320 to actually protect Americans by apprehending people, they were as 1:50:36.400 --> 1:50:38.439 likely to fuck up as anything, because most of them 1:50:38.479 --> 1:50:42.000 were shit ass incompetent in anything besides doing violence. So 1:50:42.680 --> 1:50:46.759 nine to eleven happens. You remember nine to eleven, I remember, 1:50:47.760 --> 1:50:49.280 It's good. You're not supposed to forget it. 1:50:49.520 --> 1:50:49.720 Now. 1:50:49.920 --> 1:50:52.160 Nine to eleven happens. And if you were alive and 1:50:52.200 --> 1:50:54.759 cognizant at the time, you might remember that. Basically everybody 1:50:54.760 --> 1:50:57.439 in their grandma was obsessed with the imminent possibility that 1:50:57.439 --> 1:51:00.360 al Qaeda might drive a regiment of terrorist nuclear tanks 1:51:00.400 --> 1:51:03.200 or whatever across the Texas border. As someone who lived 1:51:03.240 --> 1:51:04.880 in Texas at the time, we were a bunch of 1:51:04.880 --> 1:51:07.360 people freaking out about how, like terrorist hit squads we're 1:51:07.400 --> 1:51:08.760 going to be making their way up through the border. 1:51:08.840 --> 1:51:11.640 Kids at my suburban Texas high school were certain that 1:51:11.680 --> 1:51:13.639 al Qaida was going to be sending people to shoot 1:51:13.720 --> 1:51:17.200 up our school because, like Plano, Texas was real high 1:51:17.240 --> 1:51:19.479 on fucking Osama bin Laden's hit list. 1:51:20.240 --> 1:51:22.800 Wait, did they think they were going to like go 1:51:22.880 --> 1:51:25.240 to Mexico first and then cross the border? 1:51:25.400 --> 1:51:25.439 Is? 1:51:25.560 --> 1:51:28.240 Yeah, what they thought? It didn't really scan a lot. 1:51:28.280 --> 1:51:31.280 I mean, I'll say this, I think that it's maybe 1:51:31.320 --> 1:51:33.680 not talked about enough that agree to which guys like 1:51:33.720 --> 1:51:36.800 John Milnius and movies like Red Dawn prepared everybody to 1:51:36.840 --> 1:51:39.559 believe the bullshit the Bush administration said about how terrorists 1:51:39.560 --> 1:51:43.400 we're going to be sneaking through the border, but like, yeah, whatever, 1:51:43.920 --> 1:51:45.840 it was very dumb. It was a very dumb time. 1:51:46.040 --> 1:51:48.639 But also like you know, a bunch of guys had 1:51:49.439 --> 1:51:52.240 worked together to ram planes into the Pentagon and destroy 1:51:52.280 --> 1:51:54.760 two skyscrapers in New York City. People were really to 1:51:54.800 --> 1:51:57.719 believe a lot of terrible things were possible. And because 1:51:57.760 --> 1:52:01.679 the border, you know, right wing pundits had been convincing 1:52:01.720 --> 1:52:05.599 everybody that the border was this dangerous and unmonitored place 1:52:05.760 --> 1:52:07.640 for so long. People were like, oh, my god, of 1:52:07.680 --> 1:52:11.479 course the terrorists will try there. They never did, but 1:52:11.560 --> 1:52:15.559 you know they still might any day now, Caitlin, any 1:52:15.640 --> 1:52:18.599 day Al Kaita's got out. Finally get a squad up there. 1:52:19.200 --> 1:52:23.640 Nobody will notice all of the anyway. Whatever. So yeah, 1:52:23.680 --> 1:52:26.840 Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania, was made President. 1:52:26.920 --> 1:52:29.519 Bush's homeland securities are Now this was before the Department 1:52:29.560 --> 1:52:32.320 of Homeland Security existed. That came about in like November 1:52:32.360 --> 1:52:35.160 of two thousand and two. But as soon as like 1:52:35.240 --> 1:52:37.200 nine to eleven is a thing, Bush is like, ah, 1:52:37.240 --> 1:52:40.599 we got to have somebody whose job is to think 1:52:40.600 --> 1:52:44.160 about safety for the country, which like, there were already 1:52:44.160 --> 1:52:46.240 a bunch of people doing that and it hadn't helped. 1:52:46.920 --> 1:52:51.360 But anyway, whatever, So Tom Ridge is like is made 1:52:51.439 --> 1:52:55.360 the czar of Homeland Security, and he made border control 1:52:55.439 --> 1:52:58.680 one of his priorities. He realized pretty much immediately that 1:52:58.760 --> 1:53:00.680 the border patrol was going to be issue for him. 1:53:00.960 --> 1:53:03.240 Robert Bonner, who worked with Ridge and later became the 1:53:03.280 --> 1:53:06.320 first head of Customs and Border Patrol, told Politico quote, 1:53:06.840 --> 1:53:09.800 within the ions structure, they were the poor stepchild. That 1:53:09.920 --> 1:53:12.200 was how most ofs viewed them at every level. They 1:53:12.240 --> 1:53:14.920 weren't appreciated and weren't viewed with respect, and that created 1:53:14.920 --> 1:53:18.479 this defensiveness and insolerity within the Border Patrol. There was 1:53:18.520 --> 1:53:20.200 a lot of debate about what to do with the 1:53:20.280 --> 1:53:22.360 organization and whether or not to just take all the 1:53:22.400 --> 1:53:25.439 different groups that handled various border related things and merged 1:53:25.479 --> 1:53:28.320 them into one border agency. But that would have meant 1:53:28.439 --> 1:53:32.080 several different cabinet secretaries would have each lost tiny amounts 1:53:32.080 --> 1:53:34.040 of power and money because you know, you have this 1:53:34.120 --> 1:53:36.280 group that's like, you know, your job is to look 1:53:36.320 --> 1:53:39.680 for war criminals who might have like accidentally gotten citizenship 1:53:39.720 --> 1:53:42.040 or green cards. You have this other group. His job 1:53:42.120 --> 1:53:44.599 is to like, you know, handle customs enforcement. You know, 1:53:44.640 --> 1:53:47.320 you have the Border Patrol. You have like the group 1:53:47.360 --> 1:53:49.439 that's job is to go around and look for people 1:53:49.479 --> 1:53:51.559 who might be violating immigration law. You have all these 1:53:51.560 --> 1:53:54.120 different groups that are like under different sort of people's purview, 1:53:54.560 --> 1:53:58.200 and putting them all in one like organized border patrol 1:53:58.200 --> 1:54:00.080 that does everything would have meant that all of the 1:54:00.080 --> 1:54:02.719 different cabinet secretaries lost a little bit of money in power. 1:54:02.920 --> 1:54:05.880 So they all vetoed that idea in unison. No no, no, no, 1:54:05.960 --> 1:54:10.000 fuck that shit. Instead, the decision was made to dissolve 1:54:10.120 --> 1:54:13.080 i INS and put the Border Patrol under the purview 1:54:13.240 --> 1:54:16.360 of the new Customs and Border Patrol, which would itself 1:54:16.439 --> 1:54:19.000 be part of the brand new Department of Homeland Security. 1:54:19.560 --> 1:54:22.320 The final nail in Ins's coffin was the fact that 1:54:22.360 --> 1:54:25.160 the agency had approved visas for two of the nine 1:54:25.160 --> 1:54:29.160 to eleven hijackers after nine eleven. So this is kind 1:54:29.160 --> 1:54:31.800 of what like, yeah, that's the that's the wrong time 1:54:31.840 --> 1:54:35.920 to do that. Somebody probably should have gotten on the 1:54:35.960 --> 1:54:38.800 phone immediately after that and been like, hey, you we 1:54:38.840 --> 1:54:40.840 should run these names, like just make sure we're not 1:54:40.880 --> 1:54:44.920 going to embarrass everybody, but they did. And when the 1:54:44.920 --> 1:54:47.560 news kind of came out that i INS had approved 1:54:48.000 --> 1:54:50.320 visas for two of the people who had just carried 1:54:50.320 --> 1:54:52.720 out the biggest terrorist attack in the US history, the 1:54:52.760 --> 1:54:56.440 Bush administration was really not happy with IONS, and that 1:54:56.520 --> 1:54:59.720 kind of that kind of spelled their doom, and in fact, 1:55:00.000 --> 1:55:02.560 in they dissolved the agency. No one from the White 1:55:02.560 --> 1:55:09.280 House even thought to call the INS commissioner and tell him. 1:55:09.320 --> 1:55:12.880 I'm going to quote again from Politico's article, i INS 1:55:13.040 --> 1:55:14.920 was such a broken bureaucracy that it would be the 1:55:14.960 --> 1:55:18.000 single agency in the entire US government to receive the 1:55:18.120 --> 1:55:21.000 ultimate death penalty. After nine to eleven, in the wide 1:55:21.120 --> 1:55:24.720 ranging bureaucratic reorganization that led to the Department of Homeland Security, 1:55:25.000 --> 1:55:28.440 i INS was completely disbanded, its responsibilities removed from the 1:55:28.560 --> 1:55:33.440 Justice Department, and its duties reassigned among three new DHS agencies, 1:55:33.640 --> 1:55:38.600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE, Citizenship and Immigration Services CIS, 1:55:38.640 --> 1:55:42.000 and Customs and Border Protection CBP in the newly created 1:55:42.040 --> 1:55:44.680 DHS would be a reality in less than a year. 1:55:44.960 --> 1:55:46.440 So that's the situation. 1:55:48.160 --> 1:55:48.360 Now. 1:55:48.440 --> 1:55:52.000 The man tasked with creating the CBP was Robert Bonner, 1:55:52.080 --> 1:55:55.280 a federal judge and a former DEA head. His first 1:55:55.320 --> 1:55:57.960 and most pressing decision was whether or not to change 1:55:58.000 --> 1:56:02.200 the agency's famous green union, which is obviously more important 1:56:02.200 --> 1:56:06.600 than like the rapes, the right trading of women for 1:56:06.680 --> 1:56:07.800 sports tickets and stuff. 1:56:08.080 --> 1:56:10.360 Why is that the first order of business? Why are 1:56:10.360 --> 1:56:11.520 they us? 1:56:11.960 --> 1:56:15.160 Look, Caitlin, These brave men of the Border Patrol who 1:56:15.200 --> 1:56:18.920 only occasionally commit mass rape and sex trafficking that includes 1:56:18.960 --> 1:56:22.000 sex trafficking of twelve year olds, and only occasionally torture 1:56:22.000 --> 1:56:25.120 pregnant women to death. Those brave men have a lot 1:56:25.160 --> 1:56:26.840 of pride in their uniform, and they want to know 1:56:26.880 --> 1:56:29.200 that that uniform is not going to change. 1:56:29.440 --> 1:56:29.640 You know. 1:56:30.200 --> 1:56:34.200 They have to be presentable. That's the most That's the 1:56:34.240 --> 1:56:34.920 most important thing. 1:56:35.240 --> 1:56:37.160 The most important thing is that they they get to 1:56:37.200 --> 1:56:39.400 still feel like they're part of the part of the 1:56:39.400 --> 1:56:41.360 old Border Patrol that they love. You know, the old 1:56:41.400 --> 1:56:45.400 Border Patrol. Let them torture all those people and throw 1:56:45.480 --> 1:56:49.560 kids into into t dank, freezing cells for months on end, 1:56:49.760 --> 1:56:53.320 many of whom are actually American citizens. That's just how 1:56:53.320 --> 1:56:59.200 it's it's important, you know, yeah, so uh from Politico 1:56:59.360 --> 1:57:02.280 quote weeks before the new agency officially launched on March 1:57:02.400 --> 1:57:04.440 first two thousand and three, he invited all of the 1:57:04.440 --> 1:57:07.800 Border Patrols twenty sector chiefs to Washington to discuss the transition. 1:57:08.120 --> 1:57:11.120 They all arrived in DC in full dress, green uniforms, 1:57:11.160 --> 1:57:14.360 shoes polished brass, buttons gleaming. As Bonner walked into the room, 1:57:14.560 --> 1:57:17.640 everyone stood and snapped to attention. The new Commissioner began 1:57:17.680 --> 1:57:21.200 his remark, simply, the Border Patrol will remain green. The 1:57:21.280 --> 1:57:24.440 room erupted in applause and cheers. They're proud of the green. 1:57:24.560 --> 1:57:27.320 They were very proud of that uniform, Bonner recalls today. 1:57:27.480 --> 1:57:30.480 They were concerned about losing that identity. 1:57:31.760 --> 1:57:36.360 Eh, who cares about your green uniform? 1:57:36.520 --> 1:57:36.680 Oh? 1:57:36.680 --> 1:57:38.000 The Border Patrol cares. 1:57:37.840 --> 1:57:40.640 Fuck off and fucking losers. 1:57:41.160 --> 1:57:45.280 See this is why, as I've always said, uh and 1:57:45.320 --> 1:57:47.040 so if you can back me up on this, Caitlin, 1:57:47.200 --> 1:57:49.360 you would be a terrible head of the Border. 1:57:49.080 --> 1:57:54.240 Patrol because I don't respect the green exactly. 1:57:54.280 --> 1:57:57.120 Well, I don't even I don't wear green. But it's 1:57:57.160 --> 1:58:00.960 because I hate the Celtics. I can't have Aby there. 1:58:01.040 --> 1:58:01.360 Okay. 1:58:02.240 --> 1:58:04.680 See, Sophie, you'd be bad at this too, because as 1:58:04.680 --> 1:58:08.320 a Border Patrol agent, you should be trading kidnapped women 1:58:08.360 --> 1:58:10.440 to the Celtics in exchange for season tickets. 1:58:10.680 --> 1:58:12.880 Oh my god, can we just go to an ad break, 1:58:13.000 --> 1:58:14.400 Jesus Christ. 1:58:14.600 --> 1:58:18.520 Speaking of the Celtics, you know who else supports this podcast? 1:58:18.720 --> 1:58:19.320 Hey? 1:58:19.360 --> 1:58:20.120 You know who else is? 1:58:20.160 --> 1:58:20.280 Who? 1:58:20.520 --> 1:58:30.280 Nope, nope, nope, and we're back that that that Celtics. 1:58:30.320 --> 1:58:33.720 Dig I just would like to denote that. I will 1:58:33.800 --> 1:58:35.400 keep doing that and also high prop. 1:58:36.440 --> 1:58:40.560 Yeah, it's that I don't understand who the Celtics are Celtics. 1:58:40.600 --> 1:58:42.760 I don't understand any of this. This is all Sophie. 1:58:43.280 --> 1:58:46.200 If you love that team, if you love that team, 1:58:46.720 --> 1:58:48.080 send your death threats to Sophie. 1:58:48.160 --> 1:58:49.960 Yeah, if you love that if you love that team, 1:58:50.240 --> 1:58:52.960 just unfollow me because we will never be friends. 1:58:53.080 --> 1:58:54.120 Also, I don't know. 1:58:54.000 --> 1:58:54.320 Who they. 1:58:55.840 --> 1:58:59.720 If you, if you don't give a ship about sports 1:58:59.760 --> 1:59:03.320 teams in existence tennis, follow me. 1:59:04.440 --> 1:59:04.680 Yeah. 1:59:04.720 --> 1:59:08.040 Except for soccer, Soccer is allowed. Soccer's cool. Soccer is 1:59:08.040 --> 1:59:08.640 the only sport. 1:59:08.760 --> 1:59:08.960 No. 1:59:09.080 --> 1:59:10.480 Soccer is definitely not allowed. 1:59:10.880 --> 1:59:12.640 What soccer soccer is allowed. 1:59:12.440 --> 1:59:12.800 There is. 1:59:12.880 --> 1:59:16.160 There is one sport allowed in my ideal world, and 1:59:16.200 --> 1:59:18.840 it's that that game they play in Afghanistan where they 1:59:18.840 --> 1:59:20.880 all ride around on horseback with a goat head and 1:59:20.880 --> 1:59:24.800 people get killed sometimes because they it's it's yeah, you. 1:59:24.840 --> 1:59:27.960 Just fully Robert died this entire thing. Anyway, it's follow 1:59:28.040 --> 1:59:30.200 Caitlin on Twitter on Instagram. She's a great follow. 1:59:30.320 --> 1:59:34.480 Continue with your podcast Afghanistan to play sports anyway. They 1:59:34.480 --> 1:59:37.400 were not particularly concerned the Border Patrol with making any 1:59:37.480 --> 1:59:39.680 changes to reduce the number of migrants killed by border 1:59:39.680 --> 1:59:42.680 patrol agents. Since two thousand and three, border Patrol agents 1:59:42.720 --> 1:59:45.200 have killed at least ninety seven people. Six of those 1:59:45.240 --> 1:59:48.240 people were children. They've also taken repeated action to stop 1:59:48.280 --> 1:59:51.240 other people from saving lives. As summers grew more brutal, 1:59:51.280 --> 1:59:53.760 more and more migrants started dying in the Sonoran Desert. 1:59:53.920 --> 1:59:56.360 In two thousand and four, the faith based organization No 1:59:56.440 --> 1:59:59.320 More Deaths started leading gallant leaving gallon jugs of water 1:59:59.400 --> 2:00:01.880 out near cop and footpaths and the desperate hope that 2:00:01.920 --> 2:00:04.040 it might stop a few people from dying horribly in 2:00:04.080 --> 2:00:06.600 the desert. They soon noticed that their water bottles were 2:00:06.600 --> 2:00:10.000 being slashed open. No More Death set up hidden cameras 2:00:10.160 --> 2:00:13.720 they found in every case border Patrol agents destroying water 2:00:13.800 --> 2:00:16.800 caches almost with visible glee. You can see one of 2:00:16.840 --> 2:00:20.240 these videos for yourself and the PBS documentary Need to Know. 2:00:20.720 --> 2:00:24.440 Salon dot COM's description is quite good. Quote. Three Border 2:00:24.480 --> 2:00:27.000 Patrol agents, two men and a woman are walking along 2:00:27.080 --> 2:00:29.920 a migrant trail and approaching half a dozen one gallon 2:00:29.960 --> 2:00:32.320 jugs of water. The female agent stops in front of 2:00:32.320 --> 2:00:34.440 the containers and begins to kick them with force down 2:00:34.440 --> 2:00:37.879 a ravine. The bottles crash against rocks, bursting open. She's smiling. 2:00:38.120 --> 2:00:40.280 One of the agents watching her smiles as well, seeming 2:00:40.280 --> 2:00:42.920 to take real pleasure in the spectacle. He says something 2:00:43.000 --> 2:00:45.680 under his breath, and the word tonk is clearly audible. 2:00:46.000 --> 2:00:47.120 Do you know what tonk means? 2:00:47.680 --> 2:00:48.120 I don't. 2:00:48.600 --> 2:00:51.040 So we talked about wetback in episode one and how 2:00:51.040 --> 2:00:55.960 that was the Border Patrol's old term for particularly Mexican immigrants, 2:00:55.960 --> 2:00:58.800 because of the river they have to cross. Tonk is 2:00:59.320 --> 2:01:02.000 new the new slur that the Border Patrol uses for 2:01:02.040 --> 2:01:05.320 a documented immigrants, and it comes from the sound that 2:01:05.360 --> 2:01:07.640 a flashlight makes when you hit someone in the head. 2:01:08.240 --> 2:01:11.200 Oh my god, you'll hear. 2:01:11.120 --> 2:01:13.640 This if in any article you read about the modern 2:01:13.680 --> 2:01:16.600 Border Patrol that they the word tonk is like their 2:01:16.680 --> 2:01:20.520 standard term for migrants, and it's a term because of 2:01:20.600 --> 2:01:22.960 what it sounds like when they beat these people with flashlights. 2:01:23.120 --> 2:01:29.880 Well, m okay, let me just process that. 2:01:30.560 --> 2:01:32.960 New slurs were. Of course, of course, far from the 2:01:33.000 --> 2:01:35.440 only changes to hit Border Patrol during the Bush years. 2:01:35.520 --> 2:01:37.920 By the time President Obama took office, the Border Patrol 2:01:37.960 --> 2:01:40.640 had gone from an underfunded force of about nine thousand 2:01:40.880 --> 2:01:44.160 to a twenty one thousand person army, the largest federal 2:01:44.240 --> 2:01:48.240 law enforcement agency in the country. There are actual armies 2:01:48.280 --> 2:01:52.400 smaller than the Border Patrol and less well equipped. They're 2:01:52.440 --> 2:01:55.880 the largest law enforcement agency in the country now, so 2:01:55.920 --> 2:01:58.760 that's good. All those new officers had to be trained 2:01:58.840 --> 2:02:00.960 up quick, and this did not lead time for rigorous 2:02:01.040 --> 2:02:04.160 vetting and background checking that other federal agents go through. 2:02:04.360 --> 2:02:07.240 Border Patrol agents today still have the least average years 2:02:07.240 --> 2:02:10.160 of experience of any federal law enforcement agency. They also 2:02:10.200 --> 2:02:12.920 have the lowest standards for new recruits. This may have 2:02:12.960 --> 2:02:14.920 something to do with the fact that Border Patrol agents 2:02:14.960 --> 2:02:17.680 are involved in more fatal shootings than any other federal 2:02:17.800 --> 2:02:22.440 law enforcement agency. Yeah, you know, probably. It's not like 2:02:22.520 --> 2:02:25.080 any federal lawenforcement agency is good about giving us numbers 2:02:25.080 --> 2:02:27.920 about how many people they shoot, but probably they kill 2:02:27.960 --> 2:02:29.000 more than any of the others. 2:02:29.360 --> 2:02:30.280 Okay, I believe it. 2:02:30.920 --> 2:02:34.760 Yeah. One senior DHS official even admitted to Politico quote, 2:02:34.920 --> 2:02:37.240 the agency has created a culture that says, if you 2:02:37.360 --> 2:02:39.480 throw a rock at me, you're going to get shot. 2:02:40.360 --> 2:02:43.040 Between two thousand and five and twenty twelve, roughly one 2:02:43.040 --> 2:02:46.560 CBP officer was arrested for misconduct every single day. During 2:02:46.640 --> 2:02:49.600 President Obama's first term. Things got so bad that DHS 2:02:49.640 --> 2:02:53.560 Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered the CBP to change its institutional 2:02:53.560 --> 2:02:56.080 definition of the word corruption so they wouldn't have to 2:02:56.120 --> 2:02:58.440 admit to as many problems. When they were questioned by 2:02:58.440 --> 2:03:03.640 Congress about all of the murder, it's yeah, wow again 2:03:06.160 --> 2:03:15.280 under Obama, it's pretty much impossible. No, I just like, yeah, Like, 2:03:15.360 --> 2:03:17.520 we're not even really gonna get into the Trump years 2:03:17.720 --> 2:03:20.360 in this two parter because that's like a whole nother 2:03:20.440 --> 2:03:24.200 thing to start talking about. Yeah, like most of this 2:03:24.520 --> 2:03:28.760 that we're talking about today, I mean it's Reagan Bush Senior, 2:03:28.920 --> 2:03:32.560 Clinton Bush Junior, and Obama, Right, those are the guys 2:03:32.600 --> 2:03:34.839 that this is happening under. Those are the guys funding 2:03:34.840 --> 2:03:39.680 this right enthusiastically. All of the politicians that everybody thinks 2:03:39.720 --> 2:03:42.600 are fine now because Trump is such a such a 2:03:42.640 --> 2:03:47.680 dick anyway. Yeah, it's pretty much impossible to exaggerate how 2:03:47.720 --> 2:03:51.880 bad Border patrol ISNT. Was like, I'm gonna guess that 2:03:52.040 --> 2:03:54.560 most of our listeners come from a broad position that 2:03:54.640 --> 2:03:58.080 like Feds are not good, which is fine and accurate. 2:03:58.320 --> 2:04:00.720 But even among that company, like even if you're like, oh, 2:04:00.840 --> 2:04:03.720 federal agents are pretty much all bad, it's shocking how 2:04:03.840 --> 2:04:07.720 bad the agents of the CBP are. It's like, it's 2:04:08.920 --> 2:04:14.280 staggering how shitty they particularly become in the aughts. And 2:04:14.320 --> 2:04:17.560 I'm going to quote from Salon again. There was the 2:04:17.600 --> 2:04:20.560 Miami CBP officer who used his law enforcement status to 2:04:20.600 --> 2:04:24.680 bypass airport security and personally smuggle cocaine and heroin into Miami. 2:04:24.880 --> 2:04:27.440 There was the green uniformed agent in Yuma, Arizona, who 2:04:27.520 --> 2:04:30.280 was caught smuggling seven hundred pounds of marijuana across the 2:04:30.280 --> 2:04:32.800 border in his green and white Border patrol truck. The 2:04:32.880 --> 2:04:35.160 brand new twenty six year old border patrol agent who 2:04:35.240 --> 2:04:37.680 joined a drug smuggling operation to distribute more than a 2:04:37.760 --> 2:04:40.840 thousand kilograms of marijuana in Del Rio, Texas. The thirty 2:04:40.840 --> 2:04:43.000 two year old border patrol agent whose wife would tip 2:04:43.080 --> 2:04:45.920 him off on which buses filled with illegal immigrants to 2:04:46.000 --> 2:04:48.839 let through his checkpoint on I thirty five in Laredo, Texas. 2:04:49.120 --> 2:04:51.240 Some cases were more obvious than others, like the new 2:04:51.280 --> 2:04:53.880 Border Patrol agent who took an unusual interest in maps 2:04:53.880 --> 2:04:56.760 of the agency's sensors along the border and was arrested 2:04:56.800 --> 2:04:59.400 just seven months into the job after he sold smugglers 2:04:59.400 --> 2:05:03.000 those maps fifty five hundred dollars. In November two thousand 2:05:03.040 --> 2:05:06.360 and seven, CBP official Thomas Winkowski wrote an agency wide 2:05:06.360 --> 2:05:09.839 memo citing numerous incidents or, as he called them, disturbing events, 2:05:09.960 --> 2:05:12.960 saying that the leadership was concerned about the increase in 2:05:13.000 --> 2:05:16.520 the number of employee arrests. The memo, never made public, 2:05:16.520 --> 2:05:19.560 but obtained by the Miami Herald, reminded officers and agents, 2:05:19.600 --> 2:05:22.720 it is our responsibility to uphold the laws, not break 2:05:22.760 --> 2:05:27.280 the law now. Right around that time, internal CBP investigations 2:05:27.360 --> 2:05:30.320 uncovered that the agency had, in dozens of cases, hired 2:05:30.320 --> 2:05:33.640 members of Mexican drug cartels and gangs like MS thirteen 2:05:33.720 --> 2:05:37.120 to be agents. They'd also hired at least one serial killer, 2:05:37.320 --> 2:05:40.760 Juan David Ortiz, who murdered five women during his time 2:05:40.800 --> 2:05:43.800 as an intelligence analyst for the agency. He is also 2:05:43.800 --> 2:05:46.440 suspected of kidnapping a woman. We'll never really know the 2:05:46.480 --> 2:05:48.680 exact extent of his crimes, and in that regard he 2:05:48.680 --> 2:05:52.520 fits in with another border patrol veteran Esteban Manzanares. It 2:05:52.600 --> 2:05:55.600 is possible that Estebon Manzanares was not a serial killer. 2:05:55.680 --> 2:05:57.760 He hasn't been convicted of any murders, but he was 2:05:57.800 --> 2:06:00.600 caught abducting three migrant women, a mother and her two 2:06:00.640 --> 2:06:03.720 teenage daughters. He attempted to bury one alive, and he 2:06:03.840 --> 2:06:07.480 raped another. And yeah, earlier this year, in appeals court 2:06:07.520 --> 2:06:09.920 ruled that his victims could not sue the federal government 2:06:09.960 --> 2:06:13.040 as Mensinares was not acting in his official capacity as 2:06:13.080 --> 2:06:16.440 a border patrol agent when he assaulted those women. Sure, 2:06:16.480 --> 2:06:19.120 he arrested them during his duties as a border patrol agent, 2:06:19.240 --> 2:06:21.680 and he took them to a border patrol processing facility 2:06:21.720 --> 2:06:24.200 before taking them to a gated compound to assault them, 2:06:24.440 --> 2:06:27.120 but he wasn't acting as a border patrol agent. 2:06:27.600 --> 2:06:34.960 Oh wow, the mental gymnastics as people do. 2:06:33.880 --> 2:06:34.960 Just legal ones. 2:06:36.360 --> 2:06:38.720 Yeah, okay, yeah. 2:06:38.760 --> 2:06:41.360 Now, the good news is that a few bad apples 2:06:41.400 --> 2:06:44.200 like Manzanares and Arties, and also all of the thousands 2:06:44.240 --> 2:06:47.160 of agents who got arrested on an early daily basis 2:06:47.200 --> 2:06:50.560 for seven straight years didn't stop the orchard from detaining 2:06:50.560 --> 2:06:53.640 more migrants than ever before. During the Obama years, DHS 2:06:53.640 --> 2:06:57.560 deported more undocumented migrants than ever four hundred thousand a year. 2:06:57.800 --> 2:07:00.960 As President Obama said in twenty eleven, the presence of 2:07:01.000 --> 2:07:03.480 so many illegal immigrants make a mockery of all those 2:07:03.480 --> 2:07:10.120 who are trying to immigrate legally. Now, yeah, that's good, mama, 2:07:10.720 --> 2:07:15.879 it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. What a problem this was. Yeah, 2:07:15.960 --> 2:07:20.160 so and again, all of these legal immigrants make a 2:07:20.200 --> 2:07:23.360 mockery of everyone trying to immigrate illegally. The data shows 2:07:23.400 --> 2:07:26.040 that during this period, this like fucking seven year period, 2:07:26.240 --> 2:07:29.240 an average of one border patrol agent per day almost 2:07:29.280 --> 2:07:32.920 was arrested for serious crimes like ranging from like rape 2:07:32.920 --> 2:07:36.920 and sexual assault to attempted murder to you know, drug smuggling. 2:07:37.320 --> 2:07:40.320 Like every day a border patrol agent basically was getting 2:07:40.400 --> 2:07:45.000 arrested during these years. But that's not making a mockery 2:07:45.440 --> 2:07:52.200 of life, right, law enforcement or whatever. Yeah, yeah, Now, 2:07:52.320 --> 2:07:54.440 there were a number of reasons why things got so 2:07:54.520 --> 2:07:56.880 bad in border patrol. We've talked about some of them, 2:07:56.920 --> 2:07:59.560 just sort of like the inherent racist nature of the 2:08:00.080 --> 2:08:03.200 existence of the Border patrol. But there are also just 2:08:03.240 --> 2:08:07.160 sort of some some reasons that you would describe as 2:08:07.280 --> 2:08:10.520 kind of broadly bureaucratic. There were a bunch of bureaucratic 2:08:10.600 --> 2:08:12.960 reasons why it happened to right, kind of outside of 2:08:13.000 --> 2:08:19.040 the inherent, you know, problems of policing a border. For 2:08:19.160 --> 2:08:21.920 one point, like, they were increasing the size of the 2:08:21.960 --> 2:08:25.840 Border Patrol faster than any law enforcement agency had ever 2:08:25.880 --> 2:08:28.680 been increased, and that meant bringing in a shitload of 2:08:28.720 --> 2:08:31.960 people who weren't qualified. They had all of this money, 2:08:32.000 --> 2:08:34.120 and they did not have enough people who could actually 2:08:34.120 --> 2:08:36.600 responsibly do the job. So they were just throwing people 2:08:36.680 --> 2:08:40.920 in chairs and giving them guns and badges. Now, the 2:08:41.000 --> 2:08:43.280 issues of hiring a bunch of people for an agency 2:08:43.320 --> 2:08:47.200 based on assaulting non white people and giving them, you know, 2:08:47.320 --> 2:08:51.720 broad powers, were compounded by structural problems within the like 2:08:51.760 --> 2:08:53.920 the way the border patrol was set up. Most border 2:08:53.960 --> 2:08:58.280 patrol men are agents. This differs from special agents, which 2:08:58.280 --> 2:09:00.800 are the cool dudes like Fox Molder. Everyone who becomes 2:09:00.800 --> 2:09:04.280 a FED wants to be Special agents can both arrest 2:09:04.320 --> 2:09:09.280 people and investigate crimes. Agents only have arresting powers. They 2:09:09.280 --> 2:09:13.480 cannot investigate crimes now. Because CBP is seen as the 2:09:13.520 --> 2:09:16.640 shittiest federal law enforcement agency, the dumping ground for all 2:09:16.680 --> 2:09:19.480 of the violent assholes, our government doesn't like to make 2:09:19.480 --> 2:09:23.040 them special agents. According to Politico Quote. In many ways, 2:09:23.040 --> 2:09:25.920 the difference between the two is CBP's original sin, a 2:09:25.960 --> 2:09:29.240 seemingly minor technical distinction made in the harried heat of 2:09:29.360 --> 2:09:32.320 DHS creation a decade ago, that would allow hundreds of 2:09:32.320 --> 2:09:35.320 cases of corruption in CBP's Office of Field Operations and 2:09:35.400 --> 2:09:38.880 use of force abuses in the Border Patrol offestor for years. 2:09:39.240 --> 2:09:42.280 The problem was that no one at CBP received what's 2:09:42.320 --> 2:09:45.960 known as eighteen eleven authority. When DHS was set up, 2:09:46.040 --> 2:09:49.680 ICE was given exclusive eighteen eleven authority to conduct investigations 2:09:49.680 --> 2:09:52.440 in the border region. CBP was only given so called 2:09:52.480 --> 2:09:55.400 eighteen oh one authority, a lesser classification that allowed border 2:09:55.400 --> 2:09:58.560 patrol agents and customs officers to make arrests an enforced 2:09:58.600 --> 2:10:01.360 federal law, but not in investigate. They could be cops 2:10:01.360 --> 2:10:04.600 but not detectives. This didn't particularly matter, and the daily 2:10:04.640 --> 2:10:07.560 performance of CBP's duties the borders were patrolled to the 2:10:07.560 --> 2:10:11.720 ports of entry watched except that CBP was legally prohibited 2:10:11.920 --> 2:10:17.400 from policing its own workforce. Yeah, and it's again one 2:10:17.400 --> 2:10:19.879 of these things. Every single person who's ever been involved 2:10:19.880 --> 2:10:22.280 in running the CBP agrees, like, yeah, this is a 2:10:22.320 --> 2:10:25.080 real big problem because it means that they're even less 2:10:25.080 --> 2:10:28.520 accountable than other law enforcement agencies because those ones are 2:10:28.520 --> 2:10:32.200 barely accountable and those ones are barely accountable. But like, 2:10:32.280 --> 2:10:34.640 even when Border Patrol agents commit a crime that other 2:10:34.680 --> 2:10:39.200 border patrol agents think is horrible, like they can't investigate. 2:10:40.320 --> 2:10:44.480 Wow, no accountability, Holy crap. 2:10:45.400 --> 2:10:49.600 Yeah. Yeah, other law enforcement agencies look at Border Patrol 2:10:49.600 --> 2:10:52.000 and go Jesus Christ, those people are unaccountable when they 2:10:52.000 --> 2:10:53.760 commit acts of unspeakable violence. 2:10:54.320 --> 2:10:56.840 That is bleak. That's bleak, very bleak. 2:10:58.120 --> 2:11:01.880 By twenty twelve, the problems in Border Patrol were obvious 2:11:01.960 --> 2:11:04.320 enough that they spilled out into the public's fear. The 2:11:04.360 --> 2:11:07.440 Arizona a Public conducted an investigation which showed that agents 2:11:07.440 --> 2:11:09.640 had killed at least forty two people, thirteen of whom 2:11:09.680 --> 2:11:12.240 were citizens, since two thousand and five. In none of 2:11:12.240 --> 2:11:14.960 these killings was any agent known to effaced consequences of 2:11:15.000 --> 2:11:18.200 any kind. Congressional pressure forced the agency to submit to 2:11:18.200 --> 2:11:21.839 an investigation by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, 2:11:21.920 --> 2:11:26.120 DC based law enforcement think tank. The PERF investigated sixty 2:11:26.120 --> 2:11:29.160 seven cases of lethal force by Border Patrol agents. They found, 2:11:29.200 --> 2:11:32.200 among other things, cases of agents firing at fleeing vehicles. 2:11:32.440 --> 2:11:35.160 The report concluded too many cases do not appear to 2:11:35.200 --> 2:11:37.720 meet the test of objective reasonableness with regard to the 2:11:37.800 --> 2:11:41.480 use of deadly force. The PERF report advised, among other things, 2:11:41.480 --> 2:11:44.280 that agents should not use lethal force on unarmed drivers 2:11:44.360 --> 2:11:47.040 or rock throwers. The agency rejected this out of hand, 2:11:47.080 --> 2:11:49.080 with the head of Border Patrols saying in an interview, 2:11:49.280 --> 2:11:51.680 I've known agents who have almost died from being rocked 2:11:51.680 --> 2:11:54.320 along the border, and I think it was completely ridiculous 2:11:54.320 --> 2:11:57.000 that they wanted that prohibition. I should note here that 2:11:57.080 --> 2:11:59.560 no Border Patrol officer has ever been killed by Iraq. 2:12:00.000 --> 2:12:02.560 I can't really find evidence of one being seriously injured 2:12:02.560 --> 2:12:05.120 by Iraq either. What I can find is that in 2:12:05.160 --> 2:12:09.040 twenty fourteen, CBP leadership estimated a full twenty percent of 2:12:09.080 --> 2:12:12.000 their force was corrupt. Attempse at reform were made in 2:12:12.040 --> 2:12:14.600 the last two years of the Obama administration, and in 2:12:14.600 --> 2:12:17.520 twenty sixteen it looked like things might finally be headed 2:12:17.560 --> 2:12:20.320 in a less murdery direction. But then Donald Trump became 2:12:20.360 --> 2:12:24.240 the president, and here we are a presidential administration filled 2:12:24.240 --> 2:12:26.800 with literal Nazis. Was handed a vast, heavily armed force 2:12:26.840 --> 2:12:29.640 of sociopaths and rapists who just spent the last two 2:12:29.720 --> 2:12:31.880 years being told that they had to rape and murder less, 2:12:32.080 --> 2:12:33.840 and then all of a sudden they were told, whatever 2:12:33.880 --> 2:12:35.640 you want to do is find just get these brown 2:12:35.640 --> 2:12:37.840 people out of the United States. And that's kind of 2:12:37.880 --> 2:12:41.280 where things stand today with the Border Patrol as sort 2:12:41.320 --> 2:12:44.560 of the turning into the official armed wing of the 2:12:45.240 --> 2:12:50.280 racist right, with these CVP and BORTAC units set up 2:12:50.360 --> 2:12:53.960 using Border patrol men being sent into American cities to 2:12:54.160 --> 2:12:58.000 police dissent because they're the most dedicated and least accountable 2:12:58.040 --> 2:13:02.960 and most violent law enforcement officers the country has. And yeah, 2:13:03.000 --> 2:13:05.840 there's a lot more I could and should get into 2:13:06.040 --> 2:13:10.760 about where things are at the moment with Border Patrol, 2:13:11.080 --> 2:13:13.880 But this is it took me this long just to 2:13:13.880 --> 2:13:16.480 get us up to the fucking Trump administration. 2:13:16.160 --> 2:13:18.400 Right, and yeah we're not even at the you know, 2:13:18.560 --> 2:13:24.320 the whole the frenzy around Yeah, build the wall and 2:13:25.040 --> 2:13:30.760 just like yack, yeah, yeah, so yeah, I guess that's 2:13:30.800 --> 2:13:31.760 another podcast. 2:13:33.000 --> 2:13:36.640 Yeah, it's another kind of podcast. And I guess if 2:13:36.640 --> 2:13:41.120 I'm gonna lead leave somewhere or in this somewhere, I 2:13:41.280 --> 2:13:46.160 probably it would probably be good to end by talking 2:13:46.320 --> 2:13:50.680 again about Harlan Carter for just a little bit. Do 2:13:50.680 --> 2:13:53.720 you remember Harlan Carter. He was the former Border Patrol 2:13:53.760 --> 2:13:56.080 head it was in charge during Operation Wetback, and who 2:13:56.080 --> 2:13:59.000 was a convicted murderer in nineteen thirty one, he shot 2:13:59.240 --> 2:14:02.880 a Mexican boy in the chest. So yeah, the young 2:14:03.920 --> 2:14:06.520 Mexican boy that he murdered was named Raymond Cassiano. And 2:14:06.560 --> 2:14:09.560 there's actually a really good song about the Border Patrol 2:14:09.640 --> 2:14:12.120 and about Raymond Casiano by a band I quite like 2:14:12.200 --> 2:14:15.480 called Drive By Truckers, And there's a line in it 2:14:15.680 --> 2:14:18.720 about Harlan Carter. You know, this former head of the 2:14:18.720 --> 2:14:20.520 Border Patrol who goes on by the way to become 2:14:20.520 --> 2:14:22.240 the head of the NRA and is like one of 2:14:22.240 --> 2:14:24.120 the guys in charge of the NRA when it turns 2:14:24.160 --> 2:14:26.720 into the NRA we all know today from the organization 2:14:26.760 --> 2:14:31.240 that was like, oh, people should learn how to shoot 2:14:31.280 --> 2:14:33.480 accurately so they can hunt deer, right, like the NRA 2:14:33.640 --> 2:14:35.680 used to just be like a normal, pretty normal thing, 2:14:35.800 --> 2:14:37.920 and then it turns into this crazy thing that it 2:14:37.960 --> 2:14:40.960 is today, this quasei military or not quasi military, but 2:14:41.040 --> 2:14:47.080 like this explicitly fascist organization urging political violence. Anyway, Harlan 2:14:47.160 --> 2:14:48.680 Carter is the guy behind that too. 2:14:48.920 --> 2:14:51.840 So not somebody we'd want to get a drink. 2:14:51.600 --> 2:14:53.960 With, not somebody you'd want to get a drink with. 2:14:54.080 --> 2:14:56.120 And there's there's a couple of lines about him in 2:14:56.160 --> 2:14:59.240 this song Raymond Casiana, which is named after the guy 2:14:59.280 --> 2:15:03.880 that Harlan Carter killed, and it's it's a song yeah, 2:15:03.920 --> 2:15:06.320 really about not just Harlan Carter, but about the kind 2:15:06.320 --> 2:15:10.440 of men who become border patrol agents. He had the 2:15:10.480 --> 2:15:13.080 makings of a leader of a certain kind of men 2:15:13.440 --> 2:15:15.920 who need to feel the worlds against him, out to 2:15:15.920 --> 2:15:19.480 get him if it can, men who's trigger pull their fingers, 2:15:19.760 --> 2:15:23.200 of men who'd rather fight than win united in a revolution, 2:15:23.840 --> 2:15:27.960 like in mind and like in skin. Yeah, yeah, it's 2:15:27.960 --> 2:15:28.480 a good song. 2:15:28.800 --> 2:15:30.520 Mm hm, well good it a listen. 2:15:31.120 --> 2:15:34.640 So Caitlin, you wanna you wanna plug your pluggables? 2:15:35.360 --> 2:15:41.000 Sure well, thank you for enlightening me with this information. 2:15:41.320 --> 2:15:45.720 A lot of it I did not know, so I 2:15:45.720 --> 2:15:50.760 I appreciate now knowing depressing and upsetting though it may be, 2:15:51.800 --> 2:15:56.080 it's good to be informed. You can follow me on 2:15:56.160 --> 2:16:01.480 Twitter and Instagram at Caitlyn Dante, and you can check 2:16:01.520 --> 2:16:06.200 out my podcast on this network called The Bechdel Cast. 2:16:06.440 --> 2:16:09.600 So you know, that little conversation that Sophie and I 2:16:09.680 --> 2:16:12.760 had at the beginning was a reference to that. We 2:16:12.800 --> 2:16:19.120 talk about the representation of women in film. A yeah, 2:16:19.320 --> 2:16:23.720 check check, check it all out, check it all out. 2:16:23.880 --> 2:16:26.520 And you can follow Robert on Twitter at I Write Okay. 2:16:26.560 --> 2:16:29.160 You can follow this podcast on Twitter, at Instagram at 2:16:29.200 --> 2:16:34.080 Bastards Pod. You can now email us at Behind the 2:16:34.160 --> 2:16:38.800 Bastards at iHeartMedia dot com. And you can buy merch 2:16:38.840 --> 2:16:40.880 at our Tea Public Store. You can also buy merch 2:16:40.920 --> 2:16:44.080 from Caitlin and Jamie's Tea Public Store, which has some 2:16:44.120 --> 2:16:47.039 of my absolute favorite items in the entire planet. 2:16:48.840 --> 2:16:49.440 This diicon. 2:16:49.600 --> 2:16:50.760 How's that for a plug? 2:16:52.000 --> 2:16:53.320 That great? Thank you, Sophie. 2:16:53.480 --> 2:16:56.400 Feminist icons. You know who else is a feminist icon? 2:16:57.000 --> 2:16:58.560 I can't wait to see who? You say? 2:16:58.640 --> 2:17:00.400 Dear Caitlin Durante. 2:17:00.480 --> 2:17:04.520 Oh thank you, all right, I'll. 2:17:04.360 --> 2:17:07.199 Say very very very very warmly. 2:17:08.720 --> 2:17:09.000 Thank you. 2:17:09.600 --> 2:17:11.400 That's the that's the episode Bye Guys. 2:17:12.440 --> 2:17:15.680 Episode. 2:17:16.879 --> 2:17:19.600 Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. 2:17:19.959 --> 2:17:22.560 For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool 2:17:22.640 --> 2:17:26.600 Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 2:17:26.680 --> 2:17:29.840 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the 2:17:29.879 --> 2:17:33.920 Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday 2:17:34.040 --> 2:17:37.680 and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash 2:17:37.879 --> 2:17:39.359 at Behind the Bastards