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Speaker 4: The Trump administration has begun to pull most immigration officers
Speaker 4: out of Minnesota after immense protest and backlash.
Speaker 5: There are under five hundred ICE agents remaining in Minnesota.
Speaker 5: That's off of the three thousand surge that we saw here.
Speaker 4: Minnesota was one of the latest states to have hundreds
Speaker 4: of ICE and Border Patrol agents descending onto its streets.
Speaker 4: It was the largest immigration enforcement deployment in US history,
Speaker 4: and it reached a tipping point when two people were
Speaker 4: shot dead by federal agents. There was Renee Macklin Good.
Speaker 6: Renee Good was a thirty seven year old US citizen
Speaker 6: and mother of three who moved to Minnesota just last year.
Speaker 3: And Alex Pretty.
Speaker 7: Alex Pretty was thirty seven years old. He worked as
Speaker 7: an ICU nurse taking care of critically ill patients at
Speaker 7: the Minneapolis VA Medical Sector.
Speaker 4: And months before them, in Chicago, Silberio Dillegas Gonzalez was
Speaker 4: also gunned down.
Speaker 5: Breaking news out of the Chicago area Homeland Security officialcy
Speaker 5: and ICE operation left an enforcement officer severely injured and
Speaker 5: the target of a traffic stop dead.
Speaker 4: The country has been grappling with these images border patrol
Speaker 4: and ICE agents wreaking across major cities, But for a
Speaker 4: lot of communities living along the US Mexico border, these
Speaker 4: violent acts look pretty familiar. Jane Guerrero is a journalist, author,
Speaker 4: and contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Jane
Speaker 4: was born and raised on the California Mexico border. She
Speaker 4: recently wrote about how immigration enforcement and how the violation
Speaker 4: of due process is now seeping away from the border
Speaker 4: and trickling into other American cities. The violence is no
Speaker 4: longer quietly happening in the shadows of the borderlands.
Speaker 1: So now it's happening on our streets.
Speaker 4: In a lot of ways, the border has been a
Speaker 4: testing ground for all of this. Jane Guerrero also wrote
Speaker 4: about something else recently that made us want to have
Speaker 4: her back on our show something that has also been
Speaker 4: happening in the shadows hundreds of miles away in Honduras.
Speaker 1: Do not want these startup cities because they do not
Speaker 1: want to be displaced.
Speaker 8: Will actually build new cities in our country, These freedom cities,
Speaker 8: will reopen the frontier.
Speaker 4: Gene argues that Onduras is a testing ground for something
Speaker 4: that may very well soon come to the US. They're
Speaker 4: known as startup cities. From Futuro Media, It's Latino USA.
Speaker 4: I'm Mariano Josa. Today a conversation with journalist Jean Guerrero
Speaker 4: how past border enforcement connect to the ice rates of today.
Speaker 4: Then we turn to the other testing ground, this time
Speaker 4: in Onduras, where tech billionaires are trying to build their
Speaker 4: own private societies.
Speaker 3: So let's get to it.
Speaker 4: We start by talking about how the recent surge of
Speaker 4: immigration enforcement across the US didn't come out of nowhere.
Speaker 4: A lot of people are shocked. You and I are
Speaker 4: not shocked.
Speaker 1: Exactly. It's been happening under Republican administrations.
Speaker 8: It's now my privilege to sign the Homeland Security Act
Speaker 8: of two thousand and two.
Speaker 9: When you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, you
Speaker 9: have to take the children away.
Speaker 1: It's been happening under Democratic administrations.
Speaker 10: President Clinton's decision in nineteen ninety four significantly increased the
Speaker 10: border wall. The twenty two years that followed, at least
Speaker 10: eighty three hundred people died and fifty five hundred disappeared
Speaker 10: while trying to cross.
Speaker 9: CBS News has learned President Biden will issue an executive
Speaker 9: order this week that would partially shut down asylum processing.
Speaker 1: And I think what's changed is just the brazenness with
Speaker 1: which it's being done so visibly in the middle of
Speaker 1: our cities and in our neighborhoods, whereas so much of
Speaker 1: this violence was previously confined to remote areas of the
Speaker 1: US Mexico border and to immigrant communities as well. But
Speaker 1: the sort of overt to braws and violence that we're
Speaker 1: seeing was something that border patrol was used to being
Speaker 1: able to do with impunity. And this is why you've
Speaker 1: seen thousands of people die at the US Mexico border
Speaker 1: since the nineteen nineties when I was a high school student.
Speaker 1: It's actually what got me into immigration reporting in the
Speaker 1: first place. At the time, I was shocked as a
Speaker 1: teenager to discover what was happening just a few miles
Speaker 1: away from where I was growing up, but it was
Speaker 1: happening systemically in the shadows. It was happening at a
Speaker 1: massive scale that we have not reckoned with until now
Speaker 1: because it's in our faces.
Speaker 4: So because of the fact that you grew up watching this,
Speaker 4: can you take us to some of those memories as
Speaker 4: a young woman on the US Mexico border that kind
Speaker 4: of shifted everything for you.
Speaker 1: My strongest, most powerful memory, it's actually from my early
Speaker 1: parts of my career, which is it actually threw me
Speaker 1: back to when I was in high school because what
Speaker 1: I was doing is I was walking the smuggling routes
Speaker 1: at the US Mexico border in Arizona over the course
Speaker 1: of multiple weekends with volunteers who go out there to
Speaker 1: search for lost migrants and for the bodies of migrants
Speaker 1: who've died in the desert to bring closure to their families.
Speaker 1: What I was seeing, which was literally human remains every
Speaker 1: single time that when I went out there with those volunteers,
Speaker 1: a mass grave at the US Mexico border. This is
Speaker 1: something that I had first learned about when I was
Speaker 1: in high school and I was reading Luis albertore As
Speaker 1: The Devil's Highway where he talks about this group of
Speaker 1: Mexican men who died trying to cross the newly militarized border.
Speaker 1: I remember reading that extremely evocative, reported nonfiction account of
Speaker 1: their experiences and being horrified, How is it possible that
Speaker 1: our immigration policy could be designed to push people to
Speaker 1: their deaths? And I was outraged, And later I was
Speaker 1: just shocked to find that in my late twenties this
Speaker 1: was still happening, and happening on a much more massive
Speaker 1: and cruel scale. This was under the Obama administration, and
Speaker 1: I remember I went out there because Trump was campaigning
Speaker 1: on a promise to build his wall and to bring
Speaker 1: about a much more brasingly cruel immigration policy, and I
Speaker 1: remember thinking it cannot possibly get more cruel than it
Speaker 1: already is. Like I was seeing human remains, skeletons everywhere.
Speaker 1: We have been pushing people to their deaths as a
Speaker 1: fundamental component of our immigration policy. With Stephen Miller and
Speaker 1: Donald Trump are trying to do is there's a variety
Speaker 1: of tactics, but one of them is to make their
Speaker 1: lives so miserable here that they self deport. And one
Speaker 1: of the ways that they're doing that is by introducing
Speaker 1: a level of violence into our communities that we have
Speaker 1: never seen before, at such a shocking open level. And
Speaker 1: it's the same violence that caused those people to die
Speaker 1: in the desert.
Speaker 4: Physical and psychological violence. I think most recently of five
Speaker 4: year old Liam Gonejo Ramos. You might have seen him
Speaker 4: in his blue little bunny hat. He became an international
Speaker 4: symbol of the trauma being inflicted on children across the
Speaker 4: country today.
Speaker 1: Liam Goneho Ramos is a five year old pre kindergartener
Speaker 1: from Minneapolis. He and his dad were walking back from
Speaker 1: school when they were detained by immigration officers.
Speaker 4: I mean, I wake up thinking about little Liam, but
Speaker 4: there are so many little Liams, whether they're in Minnesota,
Speaker 4: or they're in Chicago, or they're in LA I'm wondering
Speaker 4: what do you think will happen with these children who
Speaker 4: are being exposed to this. It wasn't new, but for
Speaker 4: children in places like Minnesota, like OHI, this is in
Speaker 4: fact going to change their experience as an American kid.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly traumatizing even just reading about what was happening
Speaker 1: to me as the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and
Speaker 1: a Puerto Rican woman, and being part of a family
Speaker 1: of immigrants and people a mixed status family. It was
Speaker 1: shocking to me to learn about the in humanity with
Speaker 1: which the government was treating people like us simply because
Speaker 1: of our language, simply because of the national origin of
Speaker 1: our families. It created a sense of not belonging, of
Speaker 1: not being wanted, and having to prove constantly my right
Speaker 1: to exist. And I think it's really interesting what we're
Speaker 1: seeing now because it seems that one of the reasons
Speaker 1: people are starting to care is because they're realizing something
Speaker 1: that the immigrant rights activists have been warning us for
Speaker 1: a very long time about, which is that the attack
Speaker 1: on immigrant rights is a trojan horse for an attack
Speaker 1: on civil rights. The attacks on immigrant communities are being
Speaker 1: used as a testing ground and as a way to
Speaker 1: expand the erosion of our civil rights through the surveillance
Speaker 1: economy and just slowly eroding our ability to be autonomous,
Speaker 1: free citizens of this country. And people are trying to
Speaker 1: realize it. Even if you are a citizen, you are
Speaker 1: no longer safe. If you go out onto the street
Speaker 1: and you stand up to protect your neighbors, you are
Speaker 1: potentially going to be shot dead in the middle of
Speaker 1: the street. That is what this is all about. It
Speaker 1: is about power, impunity, the ability to operate without any
Speaker 1: accountability whatsoever for governments that are in the pocket of
Speaker 1: corporations that surveil and jail human beings for profit.
Speaker 4: When we come back, Jingeretro makes a direct connection between
Speaker 4: the recent presidential elections and tech billionaires.
Speaker 1: You cannot understand the erosion of civil rights that we
Speaker 1: are seeing in the United States and the unleashing of
Speaker 1: federal agents on our communities without looking at what is
Speaker 1: happening in Hunters, because it is the most blatant example
Speaker 1: of Central America being used as a testing ground.
Speaker 3: Stay with us.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's Latino USA. I'm Maria Josa. I'm speaking with
Speaker 4: journalist jan Guerrero. We're going to talk now about a
Speaker 4: direct link between the newly elected right wing president of
Speaker 4: Hoduras nasri As Fua, and the billionaire tech world. Gin
Speaker 4: is going to tell us how all of this connects
Speaker 4: to the States and what it could mean for all
Speaker 4: of us. You recently wrote a piece for The New
Speaker 4: York Times titled Trump is not a nationalist, He's something worse.
Speaker 4: And you say that what's happening in on Duras. Some
Speaker 4: people are like, wait a second, we're just trying to
Speaker 4: understand what's happening in our own country. You want us
Speaker 4: to understand what's happening in Onduas in order to see
Speaker 4: how this plays out here in the United States and
Speaker 4: the repercussions. So make those connections for our listeners.
Speaker 1: You cannot understand the erosion of civil rights that we
Speaker 1: are seeing in the United States and the unleashing of
Speaker 1: federal agents on our communities without looking at what is
Speaker 1: happening in Hunduras, because it is the most blatant example
Speaker 1: of Central America being used as a testing ground. So
Speaker 1: the reason nadreyas Fuda is in power now in Hunduras
Speaker 1: is because Donald Trump did everything that he could to
Speaker 1: get him power.
Speaker 10: Nazri Asfulla, the conservative businessman backed by US President Donald Trump,
Speaker 10: finally declared winner of the Honduran presidential vote.
Speaker 4: Trump endorsed Nasiri as Fuda in November, saying on social
Speaker 4: media that he was the best candidate for Honduras and
Speaker 4: that the US could only work with him to fight
Speaker 4: so called narco communists. Trump berated the other candidates. He
Speaker 4: also threatened to cut off usaid if us Fuda did
Speaker 4: not win, but that wasn't the only outside influence happening
Speaker 4: in the country at the time.
Speaker 1: MS thirteen was going around posing as election observers and
Speaker 1: telling Hundurance that if they didn't vote for the Trump
Speaker 1: backed candidate that they would kill them and their entire families.
Speaker 2: MS thirteen literally drove voters to the polls to make
Speaker 2: sure they cast a ballot the right way.
Speaker 4: And Trump's interest in the country continued. The following month.
Speaker 4: In December, Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, Orlando Ernandez,
Speaker 4: a move that shocked many people.
Speaker 9: Demand that I pardoned was if you could equate it
Speaker 9: to us. He was treated like the Biden administration treated
Speaker 9: a man named Trump. This was a man who was
Speaker 9: persecuted very unfairly.
Speaker 4: In Nandez had been in a high security US prison
Speaker 4: after being convicted of drug trafficking. He was sentenced to
Speaker 4: forty five years.
Speaker 1: He pardoned the former president Juan or Landoornandez, who not
Speaker 1: only was convicted of federal drug trafficking charges and his
Speaker 1: role in one of the largest, most violent drug trafficking
Speaker 1: conspiracies in the world. So somebody who sees this and
Speaker 1: doesn't understand why is probably utterly shocked of course, because
Speaker 1: Trump supposedly is the worst nightmare of drug cartels. Why
Speaker 1: is he putting somebody or a party in power that
Speaker 1: has historically overseen huge waves of migration from people who
Speaker 1: were fleeing the Narco state.
Speaker 4: On January twenty seventh, nasri As Fuda officially became President
Speaker 4: of Honduras when he was sworn into office. See both
Speaker 4: of these Honduran leaders, as Fuda and Ernandez belonged to
Speaker 4: the right wing party, and Jin Guerrero says this is
Speaker 4: important because Trump and his allies wanted the Honduran Conservative
Speaker 4: Party to win in order to allow tech billionaires to
Speaker 4: build so called startup cities.
Speaker 1: I mean you look at Roger Stone.
Speaker 4: Roger Stone as in the controversial political strategist who was
Speaker 4: close to Trump. Remember the gray hair, flashy suit guy.
Speaker 4: Think Russian interference.
Speaker 1: He put out a blog within days of Trump coming
Speaker 1: into power in twenty twenty five saying that Trump needed
Speaker 1: to pardon at Nandez as a death blow to Shiamata Castor,
Speaker 1: the democratically elected progressive president of Honduras at the time,
Speaker 1: because she was against these startup cities that are backed
Speaker 1: by Trump aligned tach billionaires who want to be able
Speaker 1: to use Honduras to spread these neocolonial experiments where they
Speaker 1: take over Honduran land in violation of Hunduran sovereignty, create
Speaker 1: their own laws, and they want to be able to
Speaker 1: do this with impunity.
Speaker 4: And one of the biggest and most controversial startup cities
Speaker 4: is on a Honduran island. The city is named Prospera.
Speaker 6: Prospera is building the fastest growing private city project in
Speaker 6: the world, elevating human potential through a radically decentralized private
Speaker 6: governance framework. Our platform is currently powering the next generation
Speaker 6: prosperous city in the island of Roatan in Honduras, as
Speaker 6: well as an emerging Prosperity hub on the Honduran mainland
Speaker 6: with more location.
Speaker 1: Shamatacasto had said, no, you guys cannot do that, and
Speaker 1: the Hounduran Congress had voted to repeal the law that
Speaker 1: allowed these startup cities to be created. And Rogers Stone
Speaker 1: told Trump, you need to pardoner and none this so
Speaker 1: that we can re empower the right wing party, so
Speaker 1: that we can protect Prospera, so that we can save
Speaker 1: prosper It's dizzying and it seems to contradict his other
Speaker 1: medaling in Latin America, like him capturing Minnesota's President Nicolas
Speaker 1: Maludo to bring him here on alleged federal drug trafficking charges.
Speaker 4: Maludo responded that he is a man of God and
Speaker 4: a prisoner of war, kidnapped by the American.
Speaker 1: Military, threatening to do the same with the Colombian president.
Speaker 9: Columbia is very sick to run by a sick man
Speaker 9: who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.
Speaker 1: Threatening to bomb cartels in Mexico tonight.
Speaker 5: Mexico's president is urging closer coordination with the US after
Speaker 5: President Trump threatens land strikes on drug cartels that he
Speaker 5: claims are running Mexico.
Speaker 1: It all seems contradictory, but actually there is a completely
Speaker 1: coherent logic to it, and what that lodge is that
Speaker 1: he is trying to empower a class of transnational elites
Speaker 1: and expand their territorial power. All of these actions do that,
Speaker 1: and in Hunters in particular, the real reasons for his
Speaker 1: pardon are hidden in plain sight. It's these transnational elites
Speaker 1: who want to operate across borders, who don't believe in
Speaker 1: national sovereignty, who do not believe in borders, and it
Speaker 1: shows that Trump is not a nationalist. He claims he's
Speaker 1: all about patriotism, He's all about America first. But what
Speaker 1: these policies show is that he is in league with
Speaker 1: transnational elites who are actively working to accelerate the decline
Speaker 1: of the nation state globally.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back, Yes, Hey, we're back.
Speaker 4: I'm going to wrap up my conversation with Jing Guerero
Speaker 4: and we're going to talk more about Prospera and how
Speaker 4: the fate of working class Americans is intertwined with those
Speaker 4: in Onduras. So, Jing, you've laid out this concept of
Speaker 4: these independent cities within the country of Onduras. I think
Speaker 4: it might make some people stop for a second and say,
Speaker 4: how does what happens in Hoduras, in these independent cities prospera.
Speaker 4: How does that actually touch anybody that lives in the
Speaker 4: United States.
Speaker 1: There's two main reasons that touches us, all aside from
Speaker 1: the fact that they are planning to bring these experiments here.
Speaker 1: I said this openly. Trump has openly said I'd love
Speaker 1: to have freedom cities in the US.
Speaker 8: Will actually build new cities in our country. These freedom
Speaker 8: cities will reopen the frontier and.
Speaker 1: What they're doing is it's this hub for human enhancement
Speaker 1: for the rich. So they are offering experimental gene therapies
Speaker 1: for life extension that cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 11: I'm traveling to a remote island for an extreme medical
Speaker 11: procedure that could change the future of humanity. Humans have
Speaker 11: a one hundred and twenty year sailing and so far
Speaker 11: no one can punch through it. Gene therapy might be
Speaker 11: the answer. This is a journey in search of the
Speaker 11: fountain of youth.
Speaker 1: They're offering cybernetic implants for what they call self sovereign cyborgs.
Speaker 2: I also recently got myself like an implant into my hands.
Speaker 11: Here you can program several things into it, like opening
Speaker 11: Tesla car.
Speaker 1: It's part of this transhumanist movement that I personally see
Speaker 1: as the successor to the nineteen hundreds eugenics movement in
Speaker 1: the United States, where it's about breeding a superior race
Speaker 1: of humans using technology. And what's interesting about it is
Speaker 1: that it's only accessible to the rich because the people
Speaker 1: who are advocating for transhumanism as it is unfolding in Prospera,
Speaker 1: and as it is unfolding in many other cities. They
Speaker 1: believe that only certain people should have access, and they
Speaker 1: believe that the world should be structured to allow for
Speaker 1: humanity to reach what they call technological maturity at any cost.
Speaker 1: So if that means destroying the earth, if that means
Speaker 1: killing billions of human beings, they are fundamentally okay with that.
Speaker 1: It's part of this movement that is gaining power, and
Speaker 1: some of the most wealthy individuals are subscribers to this movement,
Speaker 1: and Prospera is key to that movement because they were
Speaker 1: creating this hub for human enhancement.
Speaker 4: There geneses that it's important to recognize that Prospero was
Speaker 4: built in a special economic zone, a model that was
Speaker 4: originally pioneered in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 3: After World War Two, the.
Speaker 12: US government and Puerto Rico's own leadership cited that the
Speaker 12: island needed to modernize its economy, so they pitched this
Speaker 12: grand Plan Industrialize, bring in US factories. The government gave
Speaker 12: huge tax breaks and incentives to American companies to set
Speaker 12: out factories on the island. Puerto Rican workers were promised
Speaker 12: jobs and prosperity, but the factories often paid low wages.
Speaker 12: The profits went right back to the mainland.
Speaker 1: I'm Puerto Rican. My mother and all of my family
Speaker 1: members left Puerto Rico because of the lack of economic opportunity,
Speaker 1: the widespread unemployment, and that all started because of the
Speaker 1: entire island of Puerto Rico being transformed into a special
Speaker 1: economic zone. So startup cities are using special economic zones
Speaker 1: to proliferate. And they always say that these special economic
Speaker 1: zones are going to create economic prosperity and all kinds
Speaker 1: of opportunities for the domestic populations. But that is the
Speaker 1: biggest lie, because you look at history, you look at
Speaker 1: what happened in Puerto Rico. Most Puerto Ricans live outside
Speaker 1: of Puerto Rico because of what they did there, and
Speaker 1: so now they're trying to multiply this and ultimately bring
Speaker 1: it here. It is not just about these other places.
Speaker 1: The other places are just the start. In the same
Speaker 1: way that immigrants were used in the United States to
Speaker 1: erode the rule of law and civil rights for all citizens,
Speaker 1: these regions are being used as a testing ground for
Speaker 1: similarly bringing that here. As I argue, I say, the
Speaker 1: interest of working class native born Americans is not really
Speaker 1: in conflict with the interests of indigenous communities across the Americas,
Speaker 1: and if we're able to help people understand how their
Speaker 1: faiths are intertwined, how these startup cities that are being
Speaker 1: used to displace people in Latin America are eventually going
Speaker 1: to come here. I think if people start to understand
Speaker 1: those connections, then then there is a way out of
Speaker 1: this nightmare. Like people talk about immigrants in a way
Speaker 1: that makes other people think that it has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with them, but it has everything to do with them.
Speaker 1: As long as we allow the most vulnerable members of
Speaker 1: our society to be rounded up, to be disappeared, we
Speaker 1: are basically creating a situation where we are not going
Speaker 1: to have a country. We are not going to have rights,
Speaker 1: we are not going to have law and order any
Speaker 1: of us. People aren't seeing immigrants as equals. They're seeing
Speaker 1: them as lesser, as as people who are suffering. And
Speaker 1: it's like no, no, no, Our fates are deeply, deeply entwined,
Speaker 1: and we are equals here and we need to fight
Speaker 1: like equals.
Speaker 4: Jan Guerrero contributed to The New York Times journalist and author,
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for joining me again on Not
Speaker 4: the New USA.
Speaker 13: Thank you, Maria.
Speaker 4: This episode was produced by Rinaldo Leanos Junior. It was
Speaker 4: edited by our managing editor Fernando Echavari. It was mixed
Speaker 4: by Stephanie Lebou and JJ Carubin. Fact checking for this
Speaker 4: episode by Roxana Aguire. Nancy Truchuillo is our production manager.
Speaker 4: The Latino USA team also includes Julia Caruso, Rebeccai Barra Res,
Speaker 4: Luna dorimr Marquez, Julieta Martinelli, Monica Morales Garcia and Adriana Rodriguez.
Speaker 4: Bennilee Ramirez and I are executive producers. I'm your host
Speaker 4: Mariao Josa. Latino USA is part of Iheart's Michu Dura
Speaker 4: podcast network. Executive producers at iHeart are Leo Gomez and
Speaker 4: Arlene Santana. Join us again on our next episode. In
Speaker 4: the meantime, look for us on social media, and don't
Speaker 4: forget to join Futuro Plus. Dear listener, you get to
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Speaker 4: makes episodes like this one possible.
Speaker 3: So muchas gracyes to it now, don't y Yes.
Speaker 12: Joe, Latino USA is made possible in part by the
Speaker 12: Ford Foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of
Speaker 12: social change worldwide, the Tao Foundation and the Heising Simons Foundation,
Speaker 12: unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities.
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