Speaker 1: Okay, everything's recording. My cat is grooming herself, So when
Speaker 1: now was the time? Now? Some time? Very great? But
Speaker 1: should just use that as a rang tru Okay, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm fine with that. Whatever, Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1: That's very in true. Sharine's cat is grooming herself, and
Speaker 1: that means that this is it could happen here. And
Speaker 1: I am James Stout and I'm joined by Sharine units
Speaker 1: and not not her cat. She's just she's just rowdy
Speaker 1: and I have to really sometimes plan recording times around
Speaker 1: her schedule. And that's that's just the way my life
Speaker 1: is now. And that's yeah, that's the attention she deserves.
Speaker 1: None of this is important. It's okay, but it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a serious one, sadly. And so I want
Speaker 1: to talk more again about the border, something we've spoken
Speaker 1: about a little bit and something I kind of want
Speaker 1: to keep coming back too, because things haven't really got
Speaker 1: any better. In fact, they've potentially got worse. So where
Speaker 1: I want to start is last month, and we're recording
Speaker 1: this and what the fourth of April, so still for
Speaker 1: a week ago, I think a firing attention twenty eighth Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's that three? Yeah, a week ago, a week ago today.
Speaker 1: A fire in a detention center in sued Ad Huaras
Speaker 1: killed forty one migrants being detained there. Well then two
Speaker 1: dozen other people were seriously injured, and every single one
Speaker 1: of the about one hundred people detained in the migrant
Speaker 1: detention center was hurt in the fire. The reason that
Speaker 1: every single person was hurt became clear in a video
Speaker 1: obtained by Texas Public Radio and later confirmed by the
Speaker 1: government in Mexico. It shows two people dressed as guards
Speaker 1: rush into the camera frame. You can see people in
Speaker 1: the cells just really pulling and kicking and beating on
Speaker 1: the bars. The guards sort of run up to the doors,
Speaker 1: but they don't really appear to make any effort to
Speaker 1: open them or to let the people out of the cells. Instead,
Speaker 1: they hurry away as clouds of smoke begin to fill
Speaker 1: the corners of the cells. Gradually, the smoke fills up
Speaker 1: the whole screen until you can't see anything else and
Speaker 1: the men in the cells are left to die. It's horrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the worst deaths that's available to a
Speaker 1: human being, and the fact that people who are already
Speaker 1: incredibly desperate and have taken huge risks to get there
Speaker 1: and died like literally yards from the United States border.
Speaker 1: Is just it's almost kind of unfathomably cruel. But what
Speaker 1: is in a way crueler is this statement made by
Speaker 1: the US Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar. He said the
Speaker 1: tragedy illustrated the dangerous grifts in traveling north and he
Speaker 1: cited the loss of life in two recent smuggling incidents
Speaker 1: in San Antonio in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
Speaker 1: These cases, he said, are a reminder of the risks
Speaker 1: of irregular migration. But what we're talking about here isn't
Speaker 1: a consequence of irregular migration, really right, because these people
Speaker 1: weren't in the hands of criminals or coyotes or cartels.
Speaker 1: That they were in the hands of the Mexican government
Speaker 1: when they died. And for him to blame this on
Speaker 1: a regular migration, I think it is very indicative of
Speaker 1: the way the bid administration has approached migration policy, which
Speaker 1: is to try and always obfuscate and shirk the responsibility
Speaker 1: for the cruel things that it's doing, for the consequences
Speaker 1: of its policies and its actions, which I want to
Speaker 1: get into more. I don't want to linger on this
Speaker 1: fire too much because it's unfathomably awful, and like I
Speaker 1: don't think it. I don't think we need to spend
Speaker 1: hours and hours like going over something for people to
Speaker 1: know that there is no situation in which the government
Speaker 1: should burn fucking forty people alive, Like, um, it's inexcusable.
Speaker 1: We know that, like it was, the shelter was set
Speaker 1: up in twenty nineteen, and I want to get into
Speaker 1: why this shelter, which seems to have been a pretty
Speaker 1: terrible conditions to begin with, was set up in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: Why people who claim to the United States to try
Speaker 1: and have a better life, to say for life, ended
Speaker 1: up in a shelter in Mexico, And how we've created
Speaker 1: a system where people keep dying at our southern border. Right,
Speaker 1: some of this will be stuff we've covered before. People
Speaker 1: have listened to the other stuff I've done on the boarder.
Speaker 1: If people have listened to the Butterfly Sanctuary episodes, they'll
Speaker 1: be familiar with some of Biden's border policies. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to address these. Did you see that they lowered
Speaker 1: the death toll from forty to thirty eight, I guess
Speaker 1: after hospital visits. Like that's the one part that I've
Speaker 1: read that is nice so far. Yeah, that's good. I've
Speaker 1: seen thirty eight, thirty nine, and forty one, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't sure what being exactly, So thirty eight it's in. Yes,
Speaker 1: right now I'm reading thirty eight after it was it
Speaker 1: was forty and it was lowered to thirty eight. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well two people were reanimated. Yeah, I mean it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just like they're probably in terrible condition, like they're
Speaker 1: probably going they're having like life changing if not like all,
Speaker 1: like it's just terrible. Yeah, And like access to care
Speaker 1: for those people. I mean those people may have access
Speaker 1: to care, right because of what happened was high profile
Speaker 1: and within the news, but like generally access to care
Speaker 1: for people like I have seen I've seen a person
Speaker 1: die because they don't have access to their medicines that
Speaker 1: are very cheap and very easily available. Like again, like
Speaker 1: we are talking feet, like I could throw a tennis
Speaker 1: ball into the United States and where it was stalling.
Speaker 1: And that's because this system treats people like numbers, not people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: migration center is like a like a big jail, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, it doesn't even Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: an old timey fucking Western jail with people crammed it too,
Speaker 1: cells with with you know, like legit bars on the walls,
Speaker 1: so slow. Conditions in Mexican detention are often very poor,
Speaker 1: and those conditions have been exacerbated by something called Title
Speaker 1: forty two. People have probably heard about Title forty two
Speaker 1: a lot. There's a lot to say about Title forty two,
Speaker 1: but very briefly, it's a trump or a public health
Speaker 1: policy that invokes a public health rule to push asylum
Speaker 1: seekers out the US and into Mexico, regardless of whether
Speaker 1: or not they might legally qualify for asylum. This shelter
Speaker 1: was stood up as a consequence of something called the
Speaker 1: Migrant Protection Protocol. People call it the Migrant persecution protocol
Speaker 1: because that's more accurate. But I was going to say, like, wow,
Speaker 1: doing a very job with that. Yeah, Like people enjoy
Speaker 1: being wrong about George orwell, but this ship is perfectly
Speaker 1: orwelly in yea To call a policy which kills little
Speaker 1: fucking children the Migrant Protectional policy is dark, they call it.
Speaker 1: It's often called remain in Mexico as well, which is
Speaker 1: what it does. It requires people to remain in Mexico
Speaker 1: while their asylum claim it's process, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: this might not be a safe country for them, and
Speaker 1: that this might violate various international laws and conventions on asylum.
Speaker 1: But the US doesn't subscribe to all of those. As
Speaker 1: we're going to find out now. Title forty two has
Speaker 1: been through some legal ping pong recently, right with Biden's
Speaker 1: sort of trying to get rid of it, also defending
Speaker 1: getting caught a bunch of conservative states suing to keep it.
Speaker 1: So let's expend a little bit of where we're at
Speaker 1: with Title forty two right now. It's actually set to
Speaker 1: expire on May the eleventh. The Biden administration is rolling
Speaker 1: out plans that will continue to restrict migrant access after
Speaker 1: May the eleventh because they're concerned about like a large
Speaker 1: influx of migrants, which I just want to point out
Speaker 1: was always going to fucking happen, right when you like
Speaker 1: pushed people just the other side of your fictional line
Speaker 1: in the sand, and then at some point you're going
Speaker 1: to have to start because at some point, Mexico is
Speaker 1: already the third most popular country in the world for
Speaker 1: asylum and you can't force this all on them. So
Speaker 1: since it was first implemented in twenty twenty, the government
Speaker 1: has used Title forty two to expel migrants from the
Speaker 1: US Mexico border nearly two point seven million times. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you will see these statistics quoted constantly, credulously,
Speaker 1: like people who don't understand what the fuck they're talking about.
Speaker 1: And it really makes me angry. That doesn't mean two
Speaker 1: point seven million people, right, Because Title forty two makes
Speaker 1: people cross more than once. It creates this kind of
Speaker 1: loop where DHS right normally CBP or bought a patrol, sorry,
Speaker 1: picks people up and dumps them back in Mexico without
Speaker 1: processing them. And those people are now in a place
Speaker 1: they don't know, they don't have any family that have
Speaker 1: any hope, they don't have any money, and all they
Speaker 1: do is kick their heels until they can find a
Speaker 1: way to cross again, or someone to cross them again.
Speaker 1: And sometimes people who are facilitating those crossings will offer
Speaker 1: them unlimited crossings, so they'll pay someone to smuggle them across, right,
Speaker 1: and that person will say, well, you get unlimited crossings,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't even realize. I didn't know it was
Speaker 1: so like standard. They're like, Okay, this is gonna happen.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get elimited cross, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like there's like they're expecting it to be this like
Speaker 1: perpetual loop. Yeah, I mean they a few years ago,
Speaker 1: maybe they wouldn't have done. But another way that this
Speaker 1: is sometimes termed his catch and release, which they're not
Speaker 1: fucking fish. Um shouldn't do that to fish either. It's
Speaker 1: not really nice to fish. But using Yeah, it's extremely
Speaker 1: fucking dehumanizing, right, and what it does and what I've
Speaker 1: seen what I'm not it's not like a unique insight
Speaker 1: of mine is that it forces people to cross in
Speaker 1: more and more dangerous areas. Like you combine that with
Speaker 1: a wall and the fact that like it's very well
Speaker 1: documented that the Trump administration wanted to maximize the amount
Speaker 1: of miles of wall that built. If you remember in
Speaker 1: one of the presidential debates, he made a claim about
Speaker 1: a certain number of miles of new wall he built. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was just speaking out of his ass. I've foyed
Speaker 1: it like the next day and they were like, I
Speaker 1: think they provide a number of different numbers or many
Speaker 1: of which relied heavily on repairing existing board of vents.
Speaker 1: But they just went like hammer and tongs, trying to
Speaker 1: build new sections of wall to include skipping areas where
Speaker 1: it was harder to build valleys, mountains, that kind of thing, Right,
Speaker 1: And so what this wall does is it forces people
Speaker 1: through the areas where it's hardest to cross, and those
Speaker 1: are the areas where it's easiest to die. And so
Speaker 1: these people are now forced to make risky and riskier
Speaker 1: crossings to try and avoid getting caught, or to wait
Speaker 1: in Mexico where they're at a very high risk of
Speaker 1: abduction or sexual assault, extortion or violence. Right, and will
Speaker 1: come on too, maybe a couple of those stories later,
Speaker 1: just from people I've talked to. The result of this
Speaker 1: policy is that border cities in Mexico are flooded with migrants,
Speaker 1: and often with soldiers sent there to supposedly keep the peace.
Speaker 1: Last month, the Mexican National Guard and the immigration authorities
Speaker 1: raided a hotel full of Venezuelan migrants in Hualis. Local
Speaker 1: news outlets reported that the migrants, mostly young men, through
Speaker 1: stones at the officials and they're broad issued and eventually
Speaker 1: they call off the raid. In another incident, authority to
Speaker 1: raided the church and dragged off a number of Venezuelan
Speaker 1: migrants who have been given to sanctuary there. Some were beaten,
Speaker 1: and one advocate said they were essentially tortured. This prompted, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's this is horrific, right, like a lot of so
Speaker 1: a lot of the young men in the it was
Speaker 1: all men in the potential center that caught fire. Most
Speaker 1: of them were from Venezuela place like I've lived in Venezuela.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of sympathy for those people. And yeah,
Speaker 1: she actually I found like a breakdown. I guess there
Speaker 1: is thirteen Hundurians, twelve Salvadorians, twelve Venezuelans, a Colombian and
Speaker 1: an Ecuadorian. So I mean, even that's crazy, like there's
Speaker 1: so many people from all those countries. It's I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see a bit later that there are certain pathways,
Speaker 1: like for Venezuelan people, there are some pathways that don't
Speaker 1: exist through other people then insufficient and they're they're how
Speaker 1: do I say this unfair, but sort of they exist.
Speaker 1: But yeah, those people from from those countries. We see
Speaker 1: a lot of Haitian people at the border here too.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's a pretty common kind of like border
Speaker 1: mix up of folks. Unfortunately, often you won't see Haitian folks.
Speaker 1: That there are sort of segregations even within the migrant community,
Speaker 1: and often Haitian folks is kind of segregated out, which
Speaker 1: is which is unfortunately, Like I thought, the horrors one
Speaker 1: is kind of that the population breakdown, Like wouldn't the
Speaker 1: Haitian border crossing be like somewhere else. I don't think
Speaker 1: to say it's dumb at all. I don't know what
Speaker 1: they breakdown. I know there are Haitian people in ware Is.
Speaker 1: I know the at the Cuban folks in Whuaireas too,
Speaker 1: and they've kind of some of them have stayed in
Speaker 1: wires and established kind of their own communities and that's
Speaker 1: had some sort of some negative results for antimigrant feeling
Speaker 1: in wire Is. From what I've heard, I know there
Speaker 1: are a lot of Haitian folks in Tijuana. A lot
Speaker 1: of the Haitian people come via Brazil, where they've spent
Speaker 1: time like preparing for the Olympics that were there and
Speaker 1: building stadio and stuff. So a lot of them tell
Speaker 1: me they've come up from Brazil and then obviously with
Speaker 1: like increased violence in Haiti. Now you'll see more Haitian
Speaker 1: people again. There's a decent Haitian community that also is
Speaker 1: established in Tijuana and has it's that it's their home now, right,
Speaker 1: Like I had no idea to be honest, So now
Speaker 1: I know, I'll accept being a little bit dumb. So
Speaker 1: everyone it's not very well reported on, and I think
Speaker 1: it's honestly people have stopped reporting on it since twenty
Speaker 1: twenty as well, like since like Orange man Bad started
Speaker 1: being like the prevailing like mass media message, no one
Speaker 1: gives a fuck about microus anymore, Like there's a pronounced
Speaker 1: drop off when I cross of people, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: There are some very good reporters, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: we've spoken to some of them in Tijuana and in
Speaker 1: San Diego. But yeah, you just there was a lot
Speaker 1: of parachute reporting on migration in the tramp Era, and
Speaker 1: some of it very bad, some of it by people
Speaker 1: who didn't have the language skills to be working there
Speaker 1: and didn't understand what was respectful and what wasn't and
Speaker 1: things like that. So I have strong feelings about how
Speaker 1: the migrant care abound in twenty eighteen was was reported
Speaker 1: on for instance. Yeah, but yeah, you'll definitely see a
Speaker 1: ton of Haitian people and that Biden has gone exceptionally hard.
Speaker 1: I'll include a link at the bottom of like a
Speaker 1: piece I wrote for NBC about bidensti Haitian bullshit but
Speaker 1: like um exceptionally hard, specifically against the Haitian so that
Speaker 1: you can find a tweet from the Haitiana of the
Speaker 1: United States Embassy in Haiti where it's just got a
Speaker 1: picture of Biden. I think it says, don't come. I'm
Speaker 1: paraphrasing that special account. Yeah, yeah, no, it's wild, Like
Speaker 1: you don't see this in other countries either, even you
Speaker 1: know they've made like they've made it. There was a
Speaker 1: ton of special exemptions for people from Ukraine, right, it's
Speaker 1: hard not to see that it's RACI of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course as Ukraine. Yeah yeah, because then it's yeah, great,
Speaker 1: but also you have to look at the like why
Speaker 1: did that happen? Right, And if we can't like express
Speaker 1: like Russian bombs killed kids in the m two Russian
Speaker 1: bombs killed kids all over fucking Africa, and if we
Speaker 1: can't have solidarity with them, or we can with Ukrainian people,
Speaker 1: and then it's hard for me not to see that
Speaker 1: as to do with their skin color. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: that is bullshit, and so yeah, Title forty two were
Speaker 1: end in May when the COVID Public Health Emergency Order expires.
Speaker 1: Biden said earlier on that he would end Title forty two.
Speaker 1: He then faced these lawsuits from conservative states, but at
Speaker 1: the same time that by the ministration fiercely defended Title
Speaker 1: forty two and litigation brought by the ACLU and other
Speaker 1: groups challenging the policy, and even the CDC right the
Speaker 1: CDC Center for these control was like, now the shit
Speaker 1: isn't necessary and it's cool, we should stop. The government
Speaker 1: has argued that public health concerns for letting migrants into
Speaker 1: the country due to continued threat of COVID nineteen outweigh
Speaker 1: the possible harms done to migrants who return to cities
Speaker 1: like or Tijuana. Like, you don't even need a COVID
Speaker 1: test to fly into this country, now, I don't think, right,
Speaker 1: like my family come visit me. So the end of
Speaker 1: the emergency kind of makes that a moot point, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you can't have a public health order to protect us fromidities,
Speaker 1: which you're saying, isn't the problem anymore. But the damage
Speaker 1: that this has done will take years to rectify, and
Speaker 1: the backlog that it's created is already being used as
Speaker 1: an excuse to do more cruel and inhumane things to
Speaker 1: people who are just looking for a fair crack at life. Sure,
Speaker 1: do you know what won't build a wall around itself
Speaker 1: and force people to rest their life to get here?
Speaker 1: You tell me, James, what is it? It is these
Speaker 1: silver coins that have Ronald Reagan on them, who probably
Speaker 1: outflanks our current immigration Yep, Uncle ron Okay, we're back,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Ronald Reagan. Or maybe it was a gold advert.
Speaker 1: I hope it was a gold vause I know that
Speaker 1: everyone enjoys so so much. Please don't message Sophie about
Speaker 1: the fucking gold things. We know, yeah, we know, we know,
Speaker 1: trust us, we know. Yeah. It's also it's just funny.
Speaker 1: It's funny to me that someone's buying gold adverts and
Speaker 1: presumably none of our listeners are buying gold and get
Speaker 1: I have healthcare now, I mean it must be working somewhere,
Speaker 1: like you know what, I mean, why how else would
Speaker 1: they afford to keep advertising? I don't know, Yeah, someone's
Speaker 1: doing something. It's like one guy if you are that
Speaker 1: steadfast listener who buys everything we advertise, Like, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for our We salute your dedication. So Biden
Speaker 1: hasn't really come up with a distinctive immigration policy of
Speaker 1: his own yet. Mostly he's just kind of failed to
Speaker 1: undo the damage Trump has. Don't created a two tia
Speaker 1: system which white Ukrainians get to slip the line well
Speaker 1: back and brown migrants wait terrible conditions, And for some reason,
Speaker 1: he's gone as hard as fuck as he can to
Speaker 1: stop patients coming here, which the reason might be pretty
Speaker 1: obvious to some of you. Oh and we're still building
Speaker 1: the wall, but we're calling it a barrier now of course.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's totally different, Brandy. Yeah, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: a little plate on the top. It's a slightly different shape.
Speaker 1: You can, like, if you scroll back far enough on
Speaker 1: my Twitter, you can find comparison pictures of the Biden
Speaker 1: barrier and the Trump Wall. But it's like literally just
Speaker 1: like a glow up, like like like a terrible, horrifying
Speaker 1: glow up. Yes, yeah, the walls having it's a little
Speaker 1: it's a freedom wall now or something. But if you
Speaker 1: don't follow the butterfly sanctuary, it's well high value Twitter
Speaker 1: account and sometimes stealing automatic rifles. Not stealing, I should say,
Speaker 1: but National Guard leaving automatic rifles on her property that
Speaker 1: she takes care of. But yeah, you can listen to
Speaker 1: our Batterfly Sanctuary episodes for more on like the Biden barrier.
Speaker 1: But we're more than halfway through Biden's term now, and
Speaker 1: we're beginning to see him take aim at something resembling
Speaker 1: a border policy on his own at the same time,
Speaker 1: because we're more than halfway through his term, or perhaps
Speaker 1: just because he never intended to fulfill his campaign policies
Speaker 1: about being kind to migrants. He's trying to move towards
Speaker 1: the center, and the center of US politics is like
Speaker 1: somewhere to the right of Attila the hun these days.
Speaker 1: So he's been hit pretty hard by the Republicans on immigration,
Speaker 1: and it's worth pointing out that he's been hit pretty
Speaker 1: hard on largely on just shit that's made up or
Speaker 1: misunderstandings of this, the number of interactions that border patrol
Speaker 1: has or willful or unwilful, I don't know, but many
Speaker 1: of the critiques are in pretty bad faith. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: like it's been an area where they've criticized him right,
Speaker 1: And so he's trying to move towards the quote unquote
Speaker 1: center on that with these new policies. So he's proposed
Speaker 1: of his administration has proposed something called a transit bans,
Speaker 1: a transit ban, people might remember, and the initial kind
Speaker 1: of proposal of this was made by Stephen Miller. Dude
Speaker 1: who looks like a lollipop and also like a white nationalist.
Speaker 1: That's a great His head is too big for his neck.
Speaker 1: He's shiny. Yeah, yeah, that's not the only thing that's
Speaker 1: wrong with him. So this proposal would render migrants ineligible
Speaker 1: for US asylum if they crossed the southern border illegally
Speaker 1: after failing to US for humanitarian refuge in another country
Speaker 1: they travel through, such as Mexico. Right, So unless you
Speaker 1: somehow come straight to the US, which you can't do
Speaker 1: because you can't get on a flight to the US
Speaker 1: without the correct travel documents, then you'd have to travel
Speaker 1: through another country, right, And they're saying that you should
Speaker 1: apply for asylum there. In practice, this would bar most
Speaker 1: northern Mexican asylum seekers, unless he took advantage of one
Speaker 1: of the programs that Biden has proposed to allow people
Speaker 1: in Nicaragua Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela with a US sponsor
Speaker 1: under a humanitarian parole program where they apply from their
Speaker 1: home country and then get to credentials to travel, so
Speaker 1: they'd stay in Cuba or whatever. This might not be
Speaker 1: safe for some people to do in those countries, but
Speaker 1: they have a means to get here and it's metered
Speaker 1: I think at thirty thousand a month. Those people from
Speaker 1: those same countries enduring the same conditions if they came
Speaker 1: here on their own and then applied to asylum, as
Speaker 1: is their right under US law once they entered the country, right.
Speaker 1: And it's worth noting that like most people coming in
Speaker 1: that want to apply for asylum, so they wanted to
Speaker 1: turn up. That might have changed a little with Title
Speaker 1: forty two, but previously people were seeking to turn themselves
Speaker 1: in right and say hey, I'm here to apply for asylum.
Speaker 1: They can now be expelled under this legislation. Right, So
Speaker 1: if they don't use this or they don't have a
Speaker 1: US sponsor, which kind of creates you shouldn't have to
Speaker 1: know someone in America right to come here and avail
Speaker 1: yourself of basic human rights. Yeah, it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: purposely like getting people out of the group that can
Speaker 1: go in you know what I mean, Like it's excluding
Speaker 1: people but yeah, like yeah, right, thousands of people and
Speaker 1: this legislation now allows them for them to be for
Speaker 1: expedited processing expulsion. Um. If people do want to apply
Speaker 1: for asylum at the southern border, they need to use
Speaker 1: an app which is called CBP one. It's just the
Speaker 1: craziest thing I've heard in a while. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: like I'm on another point, like what what I don't know?
Speaker 1: It is incredibly powerful, like lib brain to be like,
Speaker 1: don't worry, We've made the app. We've got you. Like
Speaker 1: it assumes that people have the apple. It's not available
Speaker 1: in all the languages, so people speaking like of course
Speaker 1: not like last time I was at the border, like
Speaker 1: I had. I worked with a colleague who spoke a Romo.
Speaker 1: I speak French. He's Spocasian, Creole, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, right
Speaker 1: like like those of people I interviewed in an in
Speaker 1: an afternoon. You know, there are dozens of languages, so
Speaker 1: the app isn't available in those languages. The app is
Speaker 1: a giant cluster. Fuck, it doesn't work. It crashes all
Speaker 1: the time. Like you can find like like little kids,
Speaker 1: little kids who come up from Tijuana to go to school,
Speaker 1: who can tell you ten things that are wrong about
Speaker 1: this app. But you can also find people who make
Speaker 1: six figure salaries in Washington. You think is great? Right, regardless,
Speaker 1: it's a fucking app on a fucking device that is
Speaker 1: just like like, I don't know, I think it's just
Speaker 1: so lazy. It's lazy and stupid. I don't like it. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is both of those things. It assumes people have
Speaker 1: a cell phone, which is yes, very elitist, Yes exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it maybe your phone could get stolen being fucking
Speaker 1: someone could book all these train game like there's a
Speaker 1: million ware. It assumes you got fucking broadband connectivity, you know, WiFi,
Speaker 1: all these things. It's yeah, it's just insane, Like it's
Speaker 1: amazing how detached one can be from reality and still
Speaker 1: be the person in charge. Yeah, what if no people
Speaker 1: in charge? So migrants cussing the border without documents can
Speaker 1: be subjected to expected removal of the said and the
Speaker 1: proposed regulations indicate the migrants from Kuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela,
Speaker 1: who generally cannot be deported due to strain relations with
Speaker 1: the governments there would face deportation to Mexico instead, which
Speaker 1: fucking just again makes us someone else's problem, right. A
Speaker 1: dozen Senate Democrats called the proposed asylum restrictions unlawful and counterproductive.
Speaker 1: They joined thousands of migrant advocates and organizations, including the
Speaker 1: United Nations Refugee Agency, in imploring the administration to immediately
Speaker 1: withdraw the regulation. So there's a period of public comment,
Speaker 1: which is what's happening at the moment. Right, So he's
Speaker 1: found a policy which no one likes, both from the
Speaker 1: right and from the people are allowed to live with dignity.
Speaker 1: So that's that's hard to do. Well, you're never he's
Speaker 1: never gonna have fucking imput like I don't know what
Speaker 1: they're like trumplicants want, but like it's some version of
Speaker 1: machine guns on top of a wall killing little children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you could just be a decent person, or you
Speaker 1: could try and implicate fucking psychopathic Fox News people. So
Speaker 1: Mexico is already the third most popular destination for people
Speaker 1: seeking asylum in the world after United States in Germany.
Speaker 1: In Mexico, asylum seekers have to stay in the state
Speaker 1: where they apply, and that's resulted in large numbers of
Speaker 1: people being concentrated in a place like Tampatula on the
Speaker 1: southern border with Guatemala, and that creates like an infrastructure
Speaker 1: issue there, right, which it's also worth lick. I'm sure
Speaker 1: people are well aware that. Like, I wonder why all
Speaker 1: these countries have been fucking destabilized, right, I wonder if
Speaker 1: there if there was a country which helped do that
Speaker 1: for deca leaving their home, Like why can't they go
Speaker 1: back home? Like? Yeah, what I mean there? Yeah, if
Speaker 1: only the clash had written song about it for us
Speaker 1: to understand better. So, Mexico granted sixty one percent of
Speaker 1: asylum requests from January through November last year, compared to
Speaker 1: forty six percent in the US. For fiscal year twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. There is an increase of allow of twenty
Speaker 1: seven percent under Trump, but it's still suggested more than
Speaker 1: half the people get sent back. Right, where the fuck
Speaker 1: do they get sent back to? If they can't reliably
Speaker 1: go back to their home country safely. Mexico abides by
Speaker 1: something called the Cartagena Declaration, which promises a safe haven
Speaker 1: to anyone's threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts,
Speaker 1: massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have
Speaker 1: seriously disturbed public order. The US currently observes a narrow
Speaker 1: definition that requires a person to have been individually targeted.
Speaker 1: That's a distinct thing. Right for limited reasons are spelled
Speaker 1: out in the UN Refugee Convention. But it appears that
Speaker 1: the BIOD administration has plans to retrain DHS agents and
Speaker 1: they're currently telling them, or they seem to be proposing
Speaker 1: to tell them. I should say, to let migrants enter
Speaker 1: the US to pursue protection only if they qualify under
Speaker 1: the International Convention against Torture, which it's an absurdly high yeah,
Speaker 1: like against torture. Wow, yeah, I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to say after all that. Yeah, it's it's a ridiculously
Speaker 1: high bar. Like there are very real things you could
Speaker 1: be afraid of. Like I've spoken to people who've have
Speaker 1: escaped like forced sex work, right, who've had members of
Speaker 1: their family killed for it's made to their own lives.
Speaker 1: Maybe the forced sex worker is torture, but maybe some
Speaker 1: of those things wouldn't meet that bar. But I think
Speaker 1: any reasonable human being, right, if you met someone in
Speaker 1: the street and they said, hey, so you know so
Speaker 1: and so killed my daughter and my father and my uncle.
Speaker 1: And they said they're going to kill me. You'd say, like,
Speaker 1: come into my house, I'll look after you. But there's
Speaker 1: a country we're saying, fuck you, You're on your own. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's not how you be a good neighbor. And
Speaker 1: I saw also on the inside of the administration. Recently
Speaker 1: has reported that the bid administration is considering reviving the
Speaker 1: practice of detaining migrant families called crossing the US Mexico
Speaker 1: border illegally. So this is, this is the thing that
Speaker 1: that all the people were very upset about, the normal
Speaker 1: kids in cages thing, We're fucking doing that again as well,
Speaker 1: I guess't. They likely won't do like separation of minders,
Speaker 1: which which is what they did before they took the
Speaker 1: kids away from their parents and obtained them separately, which
Speaker 1: is just fucking like I cannot imagine. Um still just yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just unspeakable trauma. And like just like for both
Speaker 1: for everybody involved. I mean, like same with the wall though,
Speaker 1: like it's just the same thing where the same thing
Speaker 1: is happening, it's just like marketed differently. It's just like
Speaker 1: packaged in a different way. And it's still fucking terrible. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I just I don't know what you expect these fucking
Speaker 1: people to do, Like, and I don't know how you
Speaker 1: how you expect someone like even if you're purely self
Speaker 1: interested and you're just concerned about like US security and
Speaker 1: like you know, making America great again or whatever, um,
Speaker 1: like if you luck little children up, like they're going
Speaker 1: to fucking hate you and you can't blame them, like,
Speaker 1: it's it's inhumane. It's it's what dictators do. It's it's
Speaker 1: fucking unfathomable. But it also like drives me, like it's
Speaker 1: just insane to think about people that are actually there
Speaker 1: in the flesh like that see people like like children
Speaker 1: crying or something, and like just there's so much terrible
Speaker 1: things going on and no one does there's not enough.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just I can't imagine doing that
Speaker 1: at least be like, Okay, my job is this and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna continue. I don't know. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I don't like it. No, I don't like it either,
Speaker 1: Like this of all the things I've reported on and
Speaker 1: like I've put it on some dark shit and like
Speaker 1: being to some dangerous places et cetera. Like, nothing has
Speaker 1: been harder for me to get over then little kids
Speaker 1: at the border, Like I have hundreds of stories about it,
Speaker 1: but I remember one little girl. This shit makes me
Speaker 1: want to cry. I remember it's one little girl whom
Speaker 1: she had left her teddy bear behind. She wanted a
Speaker 1: teddy bear. And like this, little girls are cleaving in
Speaker 1: a fucking tent. Right. This is in twenty eighteen, when
Speaker 1: when like the mid terms were happening. So they were
Speaker 1: holding a large group of people right next to the border,
Speaker 1: right they were staying in a baseball stadium, and myself
Speaker 1: and some friends had gone to help. And this little
Speaker 1: girl was just like the sweetest little kid. Like she
Speaker 1: came out, she was holding my hand, and then I
Speaker 1: asked if she wanted to go on my shoulders. She
Speaker 1: wanted to go on my shoulders, you know. And at
Speaker 1: this point, the way that they were getting people to
Speaker 1: leave that area and go to another area was by
Speaker 1: cutting off their access to water. Oh my god, they
Speaker 1: wanted so like we were able to get some water,
Speaker 1: and we were able to give them as much water
Speaker 1: as we could buy on our credit cards. And I
Speaker 1: asked her what she wanted, and she said she had
Speaker 1: to leave her teddy bear behind, and it just fucking
Speaker 1: broke my heart, like without like you know, going into
Speaker 1: too much personal trauma. Details like that shit kept me
Speaker 1: from sleeping for weeks, and I found it so hard
Speaker 1: to come back it us like twenty eighteen, around November,
Speaker 1: I guess and like go to like a remember someone's
Speaker 1: having some Thanksgiving thing and just I just wanted to
Speaker 1: fucking shout at everyone and be like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: is wrong with you? Anyway, So I went and bought her.
Speaker 1: It's especially from a from a child, you know, like
Speaker 1: their their experience, in their perspective is just like just
Speaker 1: I don't know, you see how rad is Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I don't know. Children shouldn't be treated about that, forced
Speaker 1: up like we shouldn't be standing in the parking lot
Speaker 1: of a fucking Tommy Hill Figure discount store in San
Speaker 1: Diego launching tear gas at little children in Mexico. It's
Speaker 1: one of the like the images of like what America
Speaker 1: does to people that will stick with me forever. It's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you were down there helping though, Like especially again,
Speaker 1: according their access off to water is like the most
Speaker 1: like one of the most inhumane things, but then against
Speaker 1: all very inhumane Yeah, and that time was difficult for
Speaker 1: everyone involved. That was also one of the most impressive.
Speaker 1: This is one of the times when large NGOs weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to operate because of various concerns and legal things.
Speaker 1: So the entirety of the aid effort for those people
Speaker 1: was done through mutual aid, right through completely ad hoc mechanisms.
Speaker 1: That were church people, people from various migrant advocacy groups
Speaker 1: in San Diego, people from my love to Alado, who
Speaker 1: we've spoken to on the podcast. That's how I met
Speaker 1: them for the first time. Number of those people actually
Speaker 1: were surveiled by border patrol, as we found out two
Speaker 1: years later, and had warrants on them, etc. But everyone
Speaker 1: who came came like not because it was a job,
Speaker 1: because it was the right thing to do, and like
Speaker 1: there wasn't a day I was down there then there
Speaker 1: weren't people turning up with trucks full of stuff. This
Speaker 1: is my friend and I. Someone managed to get us
Speaker 1: a projector from their workplace. And know how they got
Speaker 1: a projector from their workplace, I don't care, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of DVDs. My friend used to be an electrician
Speaker 1: and they moved everyone to a nightclub. It was a
Speaker 1: nightclub and another part of Tijuana at our old nightclub
Speaker 1: Old and massive thousands of people were in this big
Speaker 1: kind of open at nightclub situation. It was very strange.
Speaker 1: They had the women and the young children in one
Speaker 1: area that like very clearly had been a pole dance
Speaker 1: room like anyway, and they had like these bars that
Speaker 1: were like, you know, like a balcony area. So we
Speaker 1: went up to the balcony area and then me and
Speaker 1: a couple of these older kids who with the migrant
Speaker 1: group were able to get climb across the room, find
Speaker 1: some wires connected projector and do a little a little
Speaker 1: movie theater for the children. And they remember they were
Speaker 1: watching like Beverly Hills Chihuahua Sweet when I left, And yeah,
Speaker 1: they were having like just little gestures are so important though,
Speaker 1: like yeah, I mean, it doesn't fucking fix anything, but
Speaker 1: if they can have two hours of watching a film
Speaker 1: about a dog or whatever like not that that yeah exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah they deserve that, and they deserve a lot more
Speaker 1: than that. But yeah, it was those little nice things
Speaker 1: that made it bearable, I guess. But yeah, there was
Speaker 1: I still have like fairly disturbing recollections of lots of
Speaker 1: things asking on the border. So let's just do a
Speaker 1: quote from Joe Biden, because we do do love a
Speaker 1: bit of Joe Biden. My message is this, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to leave cool By, nickar Owaga or Haiti have
Speaker 1: agreed to begin a journey to America, do not do
Speaker 1: not Just shut up at the border, stay where you
Speaker 1: are and apply legally starting today. If you don't apply
Speaker 1: through the legal process, you will not be eligible for
Speaker 1: this new parole program. Anyway. Joe By can go fuck himself.
Speaker 1: But I think that I hope, I hope that obviously
Speaker 1: lots of little anecdotes of help, but we shouldn't see
Speaker 1: these people as statistics or numbers, and we should see
Speaker 1: them as people. So I've got a couple of interviews
Speaker 1: that I've done and needs to just one as I
Speaker 1: went back to some notes and found so I was
Speaker 1: just going to read them out. So I won't give
Speaker 1: their names just for their own security. And but sometimes
Speaker 1: I've used pseudonyms on the publicies. Sometimes I have used
Speaker 1: their names when they're willing to use their names, like
Speaker 1: it's it's their choice, right It should always be their choice.
Speaker 1: If you're a fucking reporter and you're filming children without
Speaker 1: their consent or their parents concent you camp just a
Speaker 1: spectacle for your story. Yeah, exactly. You can jog on
Speaker 1: and I hope someone throws your camera in a river,
Speaker 1: so he's one. I have three daughters, age thirteen, ten
Speaker 1: and six. I've always had my own business selling food,
Speaker 1: and I paid what we would call extortion money, but
Speaker 1: with the pandemic, I couldn't pay welly over three or
Speaker 1: four months. They said that I didn't pay, they would
Speaker 1: burn down my shop and me and my daughters would
Speaker 1: be raped and killed. With what little I had left,
Speaker 1: I left with my daughters. It's hard to get work here.
Speaker 1: That's an immigrant. There are some jobs, but not the
Speaker 1: sort that are for me. I have to try and
Speaker 1: be an example to my kids. One day I was
Speaker 1: juggling by the traffic lights and some guys tried to
Speaker 1: pick me up. They said they knew where I lived
Speaker 1: and they would hurt me and my daughters, who didn't
Speaker 1: work for them. They made me work in a bar.
Speaker 1: I escaped, but that's how I broke my hand. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go to the US, but I need
Speaker 1: to leave this country now for the same reason I
Speaker 1: left my own. Then I'll read one more. We came
Speaker 1: from Mondoras to flee the violence. We have come to
Speaker 1: this camp in the last few days, but it's scary here.
Speaker 1: We don't feel safe. There are people coming or taking
Speaker 1: photos of children of the women. Men off for the
Speaker 1: women here money to go with them. They tried to
Speaker 1: get them to sleep with them. There's a woman here
Speaker 1: filming us as well. We found actually a big activist
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump. This was in twenty twenty one. Some
Speaker 1: people came to snatch a child here. Between the group,
Speaker 1: we're working to make a security committee to protect the
Speaker 1: children because there are people who would take the children here.
Speaker 1: We aren't a caravan. We're just people from all over
Speaker 1: the world who have come here for a better future.
Speaker 1: We're asking Biden. We know it's complicated and he has
Speaker 1: a lot to sort out, and we have patience. We
Speaker 1: know he has to make compromises, but please think of
Speaker 1: us here. We are in danger. Please give us a solution.
Speaker 1: It's sucking, heartbreaking, Yeah, it is heartbreaking. Shit. I wish
Speaker 1: there was like some kind of happy ending I can
Speaker 1: put on this or I don't know there are great
Speaker 1: things you can do with mutual a groups. There's a
Speaker 1: group that I'm hoping to interview next week called Borderland's
Speaker 1: Relief Collective in San Diego, who do kind of a
Speaker 1: lot to help people crossing the border. There are groups
Speaker 1: like Altro Lalo you can donate to. The public. Comment
Speaker 1: is still available for the Biden to propose new restrictions,
Speaker 1: so I guess you can come out on that if
Speaker 1: you think that will help help. I guess this is
Speaker 1: an area sometimes we're talking to politicians my help, because
Speaker 1: they make the laws that that affects people's right to
Speaker 1: kind of live with basic dignity. But yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: have a great solution to this, especially like if people
Speaker 1: aren't in a place where they know people here are
Speaker 1: struggling to get by. I understand that not everyone can
Speaker 1: afford to donate, of course. Yeah, but yeah, this is
Speaker 1: pretty bleak. And just because it's not like being beamed
Speaker 1: into your living rooms anymore because Orange Man bad doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that it's still not impossibly cruel. Yeah, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: just because another old guy took over, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: like the same things were already there. It's not like
Speaker 1: they just poofed into thin air, like all the terrible
Speaker 1: things that were already happening. That's what I don't understand
Speaker 1: is like people just assume. I don't know what they assume.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to ramble on like that, but it's
Speaker 1: heartbreaking and you should donate if you can. Yeah, yeah, donate,
Speaker 1: Do you stuff, shout at people and do whatever you
Speaker 1: think we'll make a difference because it's pretty bad. It
Speaker 1: could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.