Speaker 1: Going on, yelling and gen length by Molly. It's going off,
Speaker 1: going lengthy and elm see ian for the sky that
Speaker 1: me im pre and Mama says some push free and
Speaker 1: glo for them, say must smile them. No, no, i'
Speaker 1: must do and re be Gannata canna watch me hey man,
Speaker 1: grateful man, grateful I went not on manna smile. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Once there is a live God, I'll want give me
Speaker 1: everything for some five Yeah love Sack Fries, big up
Speaker 1: to jommy car. I got to eat and come back.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing yeah, man, that's it one love Oh.
Speaker 2: On the eleventh of May this year, Title forty two
Speaker 2: finally ended. I stually began to write this episode the
Speaker 2: day before on the tenth of May, but it was
Speaker 2: that day the DHS announced that Title forty two would
Speaker 2: be enforced until eight fifty nine pm Pacific or midnight Eastern.
Speaker 2: They kept Title forty two in place for every single
Speaker 2: minute they could, and that's day. Five hundred active duty
Speaker 2: troops arrived in El Paso and one thousand more set
Speaker 2: off for other border towns to join the two thousand,
Speaker 2: five hundred troops already deployed to the border. According to
Speaker 2: oppress release from an Apartment of Homeland Security.
Speaker 3: CBP and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement are further expanding
Speaker 3: detention capacity, ramping up removal flights, and shifting agents and
Speaker 3: officers to high priority regions along the southwest border. This week,
Speaker 3: CBP opened two new holding facilities, and the Department of
Speaker 3: Health and Human Services is increasing its bed capacity to
Speaker 3: prepare for a potential increase in unaccompanied children. DHS also
Speaker 3: launched targeted enforcement operations and high priority regions along the border,
Speaker 3: including El Paso, to quickly process migrants and place them
Speaker 3: in removal proceedings. DHS last week also announced over two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million dollars in additional assistance for communities
Speaker 3: receiving migrants.
Speaker 2: On the ground. This assistant and planning didn't exactly meet
Speaker 2: the task at hand, albeit the specific call out of
Speaker 2: El PASA so does suggest that they saw their task
Speaker 2: as not looking bad In the right wing media hits
Speaker 2: some audio recorded after a couple of hours walking around
Speaker 2: talking to people at Sanisedro, where Customs and Border Protection
Speaker 2: had detained around five hundred people in between the two
Speaker 2: thirty foot fences that make up the border between Salisedro
Speaker 2: and Tijuana. I'm just for people familiar with San Diego
Speaker 2: in the Tijuana River Valley park by International Hill, where
Speaker 2: border patrol are holding people in between the two border fences.
Speaker 2: For those who thought we didn't have a border wall
Speaker 2: or weren't having a border wall, we have at least two,
Speaker 2: sometimes three, but right here we have two. People are
Speaker 2: being put in between these fences by border patrols. So
Speaker 2: I just spoke to some young Colombian women who had
Speaker 2: crossed about fifteen miles east of here and then been
Speaker 2: relocated here and there in between these border walls. They
Speaker 2: don't have running water. What food and water they have
Speaker 2: appear to being surplied by volunteers on the Norse side.
Speaker 2: They've just been given space blankets, but a lot of
Speaker 2: people are literally sleeping under bin bags right now, blankets.
Speaker 2: It's pretty breek. There's one portal toilet sort of thing
Speaker 2: that we can see about five hundred people, so it
Speaker 2: kind of gives you an idea of the conditions. Obviously
Speaker 2: those don't live up to the detention conditions that border
Speaker 2: patrol are supposed to a hole people under. But here
Speaker 2: we are. I guess border patrol have just said that
Speaker 2: they're calling an ambulance. There have been a number of
Speaker 2: medical emergencies that nearly always are in these situations because
Speaker 2: you're holding people. They're you know, old people, young people,
Speaker 2: sick people, and they're in the sun all day, they're
Speaker 2: in the cold all night. If it rains, they get wet.
Speaker 2: It's hot, they get hot. If it's cold, they get cold.
Speaker 2: Their little children were just asking me for a blanket
Speaker 2: a minute ago, which is always a pretty bleak thing.
Speaker 2: If you've not been here, you'd be forgiven for not
Speaker 2: knowing that we have a double layer of wall separating
Speaker 2: us from our neighbors in Tijuana. Both sections are now
Speaker 2: the Trump period design, but we're standing in a we're
Speaker 2: not so very long ago. Nancy Reagan stood and said
Speaker 2: she hoped that there wouldn't be a fence here for
Speaker 2: very long. Now there are two towering walls, and their
Speaker 2: little children stuck sleeping in the dust between them or
Speaker 2: The aid to these people had to go through the wall, too,
Speaker 2: and that meant no hot meals because the gaps are
Speaker 2: smaller than a plate. Someone tried to bring tents, but
Speaker 2: they wouldn't fit. Everything from food to clothes to medical
Speaker 2: supplies had to go through the gaps in the war.
Speaker 2: Hamara Usefie, a volunteer from the Partnership for the Advancement
Speaker 2: of New Americans, described to me what she saw that night.
Speaker 4: I see about five hundred beautiful, smiling faces of people
Speaker 4: who are desperately trying to get to safety, and they're confused.
Speaker 4: They don't know what's going on. They don't know how
Speaker 4: long it will take them. You know, they many of
Speaker 4: them are aware that something is happening today. So many
Speaker 4: of them are asking does this mean that I'll be
Speaker 4: turned back? What is going on? I see, you know,
Speaker 4: people who don't even have many kids, don't have shoes,
Speaker 4: they don't have I talked to individuals who lost everything
Speaker 4: on them.
Speaker 5: They don't have jackets.
Speaker 4: They're trying to cover themselves with any kind of covering
Speaker 4: that they have. Some of them using trash bags, others
Speaker 4: using scarves and other types of things to cover themselves
Speaker 4: from the sun. We are in San Diego, so it's
Speaker 4: quite sunny here.
Speaker 2: The first thing I noticed on arrival was dozens of
Speaker 2: hands sticking through the wall holding phones and charges. That's
Speaker 2: because people need to use the CBP one app to
Speaker 2: interact with border enforcement. But they've been detained by the
Speaker 2: same border enforcement in between two walls in an open
Speaker 2: field where there obviously isn't any electricity. They also need
Speaker 2: their phones to stay in touch with their families, to
Speaker 2: let them know they survived a difficult and dangerous journey
Speaker 2: and that they're now technically inside the USA. Advet a
Speaker 2: CBP broadcast in Spanish to encourage asylum seekers to download
Speaker 2: the app before they put them in a place they
Speaker 2: couldn't charge their phones.
Speaker 6: Attencion migrante.
Speaker 3: Attention migrants in Mexico City or further north in the country.
Speaker 3: Why do you need to download CBP one. It's a
Speaker 3: free and legal way to get an appointment guaranteed at
Speaker 3: a port of entry. It's a clear way to solicit asylum,
Speaker 3: and you have the possibility to work while your case
Speaker 3: is being processed. If you present without an appointment, you
Speaker 3: can be prohibited from entering the US for five years.
Speaker 3: You will be subject to expedited deportation unless you comply
Speaker 3: with the strict requirements of the asylum process. In the
Speaker 3: majority of cases, it is assumed that migrants do not
Speaker 3: comply with the requirements for asylum, and you won't have
Speaker 3: the right to work unless you comply with the strict requirements. Again,
Speaker 3: if you are now in Mexico City or further north,
Speaker 3: download CBP one.
Speaker 2: As we heard yesterday, CBP one has been an a
Speaker 2: mitigated disaster. I'd shown a very clear bias towards certain
Speaker 2: types of wealthy and white asylum seekers, despite that it
Speaker 2: seems to have been the only plan in place the
Speaker 2: end of Title forty two. The hundreds of people detained
Speaker 2: in between defenses, whomably didn't have appointments and with no
Speaker 2: way to charge their phones, they couldn't make them. It's
Speaker 2: not clear of making them would have helped, as it
Speaker 2: seems that they were already being detained, and thus they
Speaker 2: would have to file defensive asylum claims, effectively stopping the
Speaker 2: repatriation process by claiming that they couldn't safely be sent
Speaker 2: back to their country of origin. This is opposed to
Speaker 2: making an affirmative asylum claim that people should have been
Speaker 2: able to make at the border. With a CBP one appointment,
Speaker 2: these would not have to be argued with the threat
Speaker 2: of repatriation hanging over the person making them the claim. Volunteers,
Speaker 2: local people, a mosque group, and a church group all
Speaker 2: showed up soon after CBP began dumping more people in
Speaker 2: between the fences. An hour after my own arrival. I'd
Speaker 2: given away all the charge cables that I had in
Speaker 2: my truck, which is a lot more charge cables than
Speaker 2: I thought I had in my truck, and all my
Speaker 2: charge Rick Sacrudo over six years of getting free shied
Speaker 2: at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Later. I
Speaker 2: came back with a massive solar generator that I'd like
Speaker 2: to use when I'm living off grid. But I still
Speaker 2: need to write stuff. Even all my home electronics ephemera
Speaker 2: and the combined efforts of nonprofits, religious and mutual aid
Speaker 2: groups couldn't really make much difference to the five hundred
Speaker 2: people from around the world, mostly families with children, being
Speaker 2: held between the two fences. When it got hot, they
Speaker 2: got hot. When it got cold, they got cold. When
Speaker 2: the wind blew, they got dust in their eyes, and
Speaker 2: everything was constantly dirty. The only hot food volunteers could
Speaker 2: get to them was pizza. Some of the detained people
Speaker 2: have cash, and they were able to order door dash
Speaker 2: on the Tijuana side, but again the meals had to
Speaker 2: fit through a hole barely wider than my arm. The
Speaker 2: only way to get clean was with wet wipes, and
Speaker 2: there was only one bathroom. There was no shade or
Speaker 2: shelter either, and the only way people could construct shelters
Speaker 2: were through tying tops to the border wall itself. I
Speaker 2: like Kaber, the volunteers who came to help describe what
Speaker 2: they saw when participating in Mutilated a couple of days after, but.
Speaker 5: It was definitely was.
Speaker 7: I don't think it really struck me until, you know, after,
Speaker 7: after everything, and you know, after I left several hours later.
Speaker 7: But the kind of I mean, I am right about
Speaker 7: the situation at the border, but the kind of matter
Speaker 7: of fackness of there's just several hundred people, including children,
Speaker 7: just kind of between this fence and they're just stuck
Speaker 7: there with nothing, and the sort of a matter of
Speaker 7: fatness of the all was I think, I think the
Speaker 7: part that struck me the most. And it's been a much.
Speaker 2: Challenging the process. In the days before the end of
Speaker 2: Title forty two, confusion had rained at the border. A
Speaker 2: lot of people I talked to mentioned that they thought
Speaker 2: they had to cross before the end of Title forty
Speaker 2: two or they would be ejected and not able to
Speaker 2: apply for five years at a Title eight This misunderstanding
Speaker 2: might in part be due to some of the misleading
Speaker 2: rhetoric put out by MAJORCAS and others, which focused on
Speaker 2: the harsh penalties for crossing between ports of entry an
Speaker 2: attempt to appear strong on the border to their colleagues
Speaker 2: in DC. They didn't place as much emphasis on the
Speaker 2: right to present and claim asylum at a port of entry.
Speaker 2: But as we saw yesterday, it's virtually impossible to actually
Speaker 2: do that. An Tijuana is already full of thousands of
Speaker 2: people trying to do that exact thing given a set
Speaker 2: of circumstances, it makes sense that many people took the
Speaker 2: days before the end of Title forty two. At the
Speaker 2: final chance to cross before Title forty two ended, I
Speaker 2: spoke to Diana Rodriguez from Colombia about her understanding of
Speaker 2: what was going to happen.
Speaker 6: Later that night, Diana Rodriguez the Columbia.
Speaker 2: Diana was with two friends, all of them wearing little
Speaker 2: daisies in their hair and sharing a tarp shelter they'd
Speaker 2: made by tying a blue tarp against the wall so
Speaker 2: they could get some shade and privacy. I asked her
Speaker 2: where the flowers had come from. You hear theo you
Speaker 2: voice by Scherin.
Speaker 8: Oh, the flowers, the flowers. Well, there are these little flowers,
Speaker 8: flowers that are growing here like in a garden. So
Speaker 8: when we went and took a walk over there and
Speaker 8: we found them, we put them on and they're pretty.
Speaker 8: We call these the little yellow flowers of hope, and
Speaker 8: they match the color of our bracelets. We picked them
Speaker 8: on the day we arrived, and we knew that we
Speaker 8: needed a little bit of encouragement. We got the yellow bracelets.
Speaker 8: Because we arrived on Tuesday, everyone got the same bracelet.
Speaker 2: I asked, Diana, which you'd heard about Title forty two,
Speaker 2: which is ending a few hours after we talked.
Speaker 8: Yes, it's the end of Title forty two. Title forty
Speaker 8: two is the one that endorses mass deportations. Yes, and
Speaker 8: well it's a question of you not just getting deported,
Speaker 8: but being repatriated. In other words, after this they do
Speaker 8: a full repatriation. But right now you are not registered
Speaker 8: in the system. But what they do is that they
Speaker 8: only return you. They don't register you. But let's say,
Speaker 8: on the basis of Article eight, is that a few
Speaker 8: at least we are invading American territory, then we are
Speaker 8: in effect breaking a law, and what Article eight does
Speaker 8: is that they deport you and they put you in
Speaker 8: the registered database saying that you broke the law, and
Speaker 8: they punish you for five years and you lose the
Speaker 8: right to request your asylum through legal channels.
Speaker 2: People at another camp in u Cumba heard the same
Speaker 2: thing from Colombians, and it seems like there are even
Speaker 2: news pieces run on domestic television explain that US plan
Speaker 2: to return many Colombians in the coming months and this
Speaker 2: might be the last best chance to cross the border
Speaker 2: without permanent consequences if you got caught in a Cumba
Speaker 2: volunteered estimated that two thirds of the people corraled under
Speaker 2: the deasert son from Colombia. Of course, in recent years
Speaker 2: there has been instability and violence there, which also drives migration.
Speaker 2: One of my sources also mentioned a lot of people
Speaker 2: had seen misleading information about immigration lawa on TikTok. Two
Speaker 2: days had passed since Janna arrived. She came with one
Speaker 2: of the girls she was now sharing a top with.
Speaker 2: I met another when they were all dumped in the
Speaker 2: camp together. In the days before they were detained here.
Speaker 2: They crossed three countries on their way to what they
Speaker 2: hope was a better life for young women like them.
Speaker 2: I asked them to describe that journey for me.
Speaker 8: Yes, eight days, eight days more or less walking from
Speaker 8: Colombia from El Salvador to Guatemala, the New Mexico. To
Speaker 8: hear all that time walking and taking the bus. There's
Speaker 8: a part fifteen or twenty minutes from here where the
Speaker 8: wall ends, and we crossed there there was a Mexican
Speaker 8: patrol and when they changed shifts, we ran and here
Speaker 8: we are on American soil. We arrived on foot and
Speaker 8: the police brought us here. They opened the gate and
Speaker 8: dropped us.
Speaker 2: Here along the way, she said, they've run into a
Speaker 2: lot of people. The micand journey north is such a
Speaker 2: common trick that people living along the way have found
Speaker 2: a way to make a buck, but also a way
Speaker 2: to make a difference. It's not uncommon for my gorant
Speaker 2: to be extorted, robbed, or threatened. It's also not uncommon
Speaker 2: for them to be fed by strangers, perhaps handing off
Speaker 2: bags with food in them to passing trains or buses,
Speaker 2: or perhaps given a place to sleep for the night
Speaker 2: by someone they might never see again.
Speaker 8: There were parts where we were extorted. They took all
Speaker 8: the money we brought. They robbed us, they stole our passports,
Speaker 8: they still our documents. So it's always quite dangerous. Let's
Speaker 8: say that it's dangerous to take this journey. Yes, just
Speaker 8: as we have met some bad people along the way,
Speaker 8: we have also met some very good people, people who
Speaker 8: have given us a hand, people who have helped us,
Speaker 8: people who have collaborated with us in ways you least expect.
Speaker 2: I asked Dianna what she hoped for now she was
Speaker 2: technically inside the USA.
Speaker 8: Yes, let's say the hope is that they will listen
Speaker 8: to our case, listen to our case, and let us
Speaker 8: fight the case inside. Yes, because we want to be
Speaker 8: able to explain the conditions we are in and the
Speaker 8: reasons that those of us who are here came here,
Speaker 8: things like extortion, kidnapping, and because our lives are in
Speaker 8: danger in Colombia. So we wish that they at least
Speaker 8: listen to our case and let us plead our cause.
Speaker 2: Before we started recording, Deanna asked what network I was with.
Speaker 2: I thought that was an astute question. Networks like Fox
Speaker 2: show up at the border, although I didn't see any
Speaker 2: Fox National reporters on my trip. Certainly local news channel
Speaker 2: kus I was there, but they're reporting on the ground
Speaker 2: differed from their xenophobic and outright incorrect online coverage. I
Speaker 2: asked Diana, what you'd want to say to folks who
Speaker 2: might have had their perspective influence by the constant demonization
Speaker 2: of migrants by right wing media.
Speaker 8: There are many people who, let's say, are in a
Speaker 8: mindset of not wanting migrants, and they view them with contempt.
Speaker 8: Because where xenophobia exists, it's hard for us because we
Speaker 8: suffer along the way. We would like you to change
Speaker 8: your way of seeing things and your way of thinking
Speaker 8: so that you don't look at us with contempt. We
Speaker 8: have a saying in Columbia that says that he who
Speaker 8: was born in a golden cradle never suffers or never
Speaker 8: sees what he does not know. So it's hard when
Speaker 8: you're born in a golden cradle and you don't see
Speaker 8: beyond what you have. So there are people that in
Speaker 8: our case, in my case, I lived a very hard
Speaker 8: life where you see the war between armed groups. They
Speaker 8: exist outside the law and they can control an area,
Speaker 8: and you see the kidnapping, you see the rape of girls, recruitment, extortion, death, yes,
Speaker 8: So it's hard when we experience that and people say
Speaker 8: things like these migrants are coming to invade our country,
Speaker 8: we also ask them to treat us as people, because
Speaker 8: if we are here, it is not because we want
Speaker 8: to invade a territory. It is because we want to
Speaker 8: come to fight for a better future for our children
Speaker 8: without stepping on anyone. Nobody wants this. But where we
Speaker 8: come from, we receive travelers with open arms. And it's
Speaker 8: hard when one is a migrant, when one lives the
Speaker 8: experience of being a migrant, it is a very hard
Speaker 8: thing to be a migrant, having to endure cold, hunger, rain, sun,
Speaker 8: that is, all these things, and then arriving here and
Speaker 8: seeing faces of contempt. It's hard. It is very hard.
Speaker 8: So yes, the important thing is that people must know
Speaker 8: that being an immigrant is not easy. Being an immigrant
Speaker 8: is not easy.
Speaker 2: One of her friends who she was sharing a top with,
Speaker 2: leaned over to give an example.
Speaker 8: Everyone despairs because everyone wants to leave, so everyone sees
Speaker 8: each other as enemies. So let's say, for example, right now,
Speaker 8: when they are sending cars to collect people to process,
Speaker 8: so everyone there thinks, I hope they take me. Then
Speaker 8: when they don't it gets to a point where, yes,
Speaker 8: where you despair. I mean it's desperate. Well, everyone, everyone
Speaker 8: is in the fight together, all in the fight.
Speaker 2: I have to get another dusting down from a CBP
Speaker 2: agent who really liked to RaSE his squad bike passing
Speaker 2: utulaid tables splayed to a man from Angola. I'll leave
Speaker 2: his name out, as he preferred for me not to
Speaker 2: share it. He'd been into Juana for three days. He
Speaker 2: said he was waiting his chant to plead his case
Speaker 2: for asylum.
Speaker 3: No, it's just me and my sister. We suffered a lot.
Speaker 3: There were bandits. We came here to be safe. It's
Speaker 3: no way to live. People broke into our house to
Speaker 3: violate women, to look for people, and I was injured.
Speaker 3: Then yeah, why did I leave to come here? Over there,
Speaker 3: they're not they're not the means to live.
Speaker 2: We didn't get it. Your aunts to talk for long,
Speaker 2: and some of the recording I got wasn't very good.
Speaker 2: He was waiting in line for food, and to be
Speaker 2: quite honest, I don't like prodding people to share their trauma,
Speaker 2: but with so many journalists crowding the border asking them
Speaker 2: to do just that, it tends to be what people offer.
Speaker 2: Lots of African migrants can be quite cautious of the
Speaker 2: media because talking to the media at home could get
Speaker 2: them in trouble. I spoke to a friend of mine,
Speaker 2: himself a migrant from Africa. He said that if migrants
Speaker 2: don't speak English or Spanish, it can be very hard
Speaker 2: for them to get information, and there aren't as many
Speaker 2: nonprofits set up to serve them as there are for
Speaker 2: Spanish speaking people, for example. They can often end up
Speaker 2: isolated and alone. I did get a better chance to
Speaker 2: talk to a Jamaican man called Joseph. It's his singing
Speaker 2: you've heard at the start of this episode. Mostly we
Speaker 2: talked about things in America, about how he lost his
Speaker 2: phone on his journey, we got him another one at Walmart,
Speaker 2: and about things like football and music. I didn't record
Speaker 2: all of that because sometimes it's nice to just talk
Speaker 2: to people. Hopefully it makes their dair a bit brighter
Speaker 2: and gives them some information. Maybe they could help let
Speaker 2: me record a bit of an interview and some of
Speaker 2: him singing. He was pretty guarded on the recording, but
Speaker 2: as you can hear in this clip, we had a
Speaker 2: good time when we weren't recording.
Speaker 1: I am the best one. Yeah, it's got a timber
Speaker 1: raps up.
Speaker 5: He's gotta get.
Speaker 7: My man up.
Speaker 1: There we go and get my man's up. Hey, you
Speaker 1: know it's leg jennly is. He went on yelling and
Speaker 1: genn but Molly, it's going off, not going likely and
Speaker 1: lem see ian for the sky, dunt me I pre
Speaker 1: mama says something push free and glo for them, say
Speaker 1: mut smile them no normals do and re being gonna talk.
Speaker 1: Canna watch me hey man gradeful man, gradeful? I went
Speaker 1: not and go on manna smile. Yeah, once there is life.
Speaker 1: God all want give me everything for some fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: love suck great fries pick up to Jomy, got to eat,
Speaker 1: don't come back. So yeah, man, that's it one. Look.
Speaker 1: Oh that was beautiful. Yeah, I'm I'm Joseph.
Speaker 2: I asked him about some of the stuff we spoke
Speaker 2: about before, but he didn't want to share it.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the old testimony to me and you and God
Speaker 1: have to go into church. But I'm gonna give you
Speaker 1: that the next time.
Speaker 2: Okay, buddy, Alright, just just experienced a lot of personal
Speaker 2: harm from conflict back home in Jamaica. I had a
Speaker 2: difficult journey here with his five year old son.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's rough. It's rough out there, man, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a rough.
Speaker 2: How did you come like you come? I asked him
Speaker 2: how his young son ha dealt with the journey. It's
Speaker 2: not a safe or easy one for an adult, let
Speaker 2: alone for a little child.
Speaker 1: It's it's just kind of scary. B he pulled.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: You have my energy inside.
Speaker 5: That's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Are you how's he finding it here in the camp?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, that camp. I don't know why. That guy
Speaker 1: is just like me. We just don't make anything better us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what it's working there because you guys give it a
Speaker 1: strength and supported in.
Speaker 7: Us the not.
Speaker 2: Joseph wanted me to know that he wasn't giving up
Speaker 2: his home. He loves Jamaica, but he also wants a
Speaker 2: better life for his son.
Speaker 1: Is that it's that? Isn't that like I'm giving away
Speaker 1: my home? My home is a good place. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good island, nice place to be.
Speaker 2: Of course, this perspective is very common, and it's one
Speaker 2: that often gets left out of reporting. Coming to the
Speaker 2: USA is a very hopeful act. It's not abandoning your
Speaker 2: family or your home. It's trying to make their lives
Speaker 2: better in your life, Livabool. Joseph was quite guided with
Speaker 2: his story, and that's fine. It's his to share as
Speaker 2: much as little as he wants. I came to the
Speaker 2: USA without having to get persecuted or hurt, and people
Speaker 2: who don't look like me should have that same right
Speaker 2: as well. Sadly, coming to the USA is also scary
Speaker 2: and confusing, even for me with three university degrees and
Speaker 2: all the intersectional privilege I have and fifteen years living here,
Speaker 2: and I've recently minted US passport. Now, I worried for
Speaker 2: years that maybe I'd made a mistake on a form
Speaker 2: or missed some kind of deadline. Speaking of deadlines, what
Speaker 2: none of the migrants could tell us, what they all
Speaker 2: wanted to ask about was exactly what was happening to
Speaker 2: them As Title forty two expired. A Congolese lady asked
Speaker 2: me if her passport would be confiscated. A lady from
Speaker 2: Senegal asked if she needed to pay a bribe like
Speaker 2: the one she'd paid in Mexico. It wasn't really clear
Speaker 2: at first if these people were being detained and under
Speaker 2: what process they were being received, would they be sent
Speaker 2: back to Mexico and a Title forty two repatriated under
Speaker 2: Biden's interpretation of Title eight, or given the right to
Speaker 2: plead their case as international and US law suggests should
Speaker 2: be able to. CBP made people sit in lines all
Speaker 2: day with no indication of when they would be taken
Speaker 2: to the port of entry for processing. Sometimes I heard
Speaker 2: people saying if everyone didn't sit down, there'll be nobody
Speaker 2: processed that day. But the only food, water, and medical
Speaker 2: attention available to the migrants was ZAK which could be
Speaker 2: passed through the wall, and they had to get out
Speaker 2: of their lines to receive this aid. Yeah, I'll let kay,
Speaker 2: but describe what it looked like.
Speaker 7: They had people waiting in lines that like you're to
Speaker 7: sit in a line in a specific assigned spot. But
Speaker 7: it wasn't always clear if those how those lines actually worked,
Speaker 7: because they would kind of take people from lots of places.
Speaker 7: I think they might have been prioritizing family for children,
Speaker 7: or people with some kind of medical needs or something
Speaker 7: like that. But we would that you would never know
Speaker 7: when they were going to come, and we didn't seem
Speaker 7: to know also who they were going to choose to take.
Speaker 7: We assume we didn't know exactly where we were taking them,
Speaker 7: but we assume they were taking the Port of Venture
Speaker 7: in Sannes ce Tour, which is about a mile away.
Speaker 7: And so what would always happen when they come and
Speaker 7: get a group is like three or four people from
Speaker 7: that group would sprint over to the world because we
Speaker 7: still had their phones and CD people wasn't going to
Speaker 7: wait for us to get the phones.
Speaker 2: One thing a lot of people we talked to shared
Speaker 2: was that there was another camp, which we later found
Speaker 2: house as many as eight hundred single men. It's fairly
Speaker 2: usual to keep single men apart from family, but keeping
Speaker 2: them in an inaccessible place without adequate food or water
Speaker 2: is not usual. The camp was further west, and despite
Speaker 2: repeated requests from myself and others, including those delivering aid,
Speaker 2: we were not allowed to access it. One pair of
Speaker 2: Jamaican twins, both young men, told me they had walked
Speaker 2: up there and that things were very bad. People were
Speaker 2: only given one small water bottom the granola bar every day,
Speaker 2: they said. One person told me they'd heard people eating grass.
Speaker 2: I asked CBP's press office for information on this, but
Speaker 2: they didn't respond. Here's one clip of a man trying
Speaker 2: to explain how bad things were there. It's hard to
Speaker 2: communicate across language barriers, and with a war between you
Speaker 2: is even harder. But I could tell he was very
Speaker 2: concerned for the folks that we couldn't get to, despite
Speaker 2: myself and others trying and me addressing this issue directly
Speaker 2: and emails to CBP, and never got any response on
Speaker 2: why people were not allowed to help the single men
Speaker 2: in the other camp.
Speaker 5: Just not helping. What little water?
Speaker 9: Nothing else? No food, no water, blankets, clothes, nothing. I'll
Speaker 9: go try and go up there.
Speaker 2: Even with these camps being pretty desperate places, folks look
Speaker 2: after one another. We spoke a lot with one lady
Speaker 2: who spoke English. She was there with her own family,
Speaker 2: but she was also looking after two Tagi children who'd
Speaker 2: come alone. Their mother spoke a little English, so she
Speaker 2: relayed news to the children by calling their mother and
Speaker 2: having her translated for her children. Other folks took it
Speaker 2: upon themselves to try and walk to the camp for
Speaker 2: single men with water, and people constantly helped us find
Speaker 2: the owners of phone about wandering through the rows of
Speaker 2: people sheltering under taps and space blankets to look for
Speaker 2: people who had left us their devices to charge in Nukumber,
Speaker 2: a town an hour or so east of San Diego,
Speaker 2: things were worse. Cumber's home to a cute hotel, a
Speaker 2: lovely lake, a hot spring, and an awful lot of
Speaker 2: big rugs. When the border wall was being built in
Speaker 2: Earnest before the twenty twenty election, they skipped some of
Speaker 2: the harder areas. Perhaps they figured it would be too
Speaker 2: hard to cross there, it's not Perhaps they wanted to
Speaker 2: maximize the mileage before election day. Well, it didn't help much,
Speaker 2: but either way, for some reason, the wall just takes
Speaker 2: a little break in Hucumber and this makes crossing much
Speaker 2: only easier there. However, the boulder fields, scorching hot days
Speaker 2: and cold nights make it anything but easy. On Thursday night,
Speaker 2: the eleventh of May, locals in u Cumba became aware
Speaker 2: that CBP were holding people on a dirt road in
Speaker 2: the open desert, just a few miles east of town
Speaker 2: and a few hundred feet from the wall. The people
Speaker 2: held they didn't have access to toilets, running water, or shelter.
Speaker 2: With every hour that went past, the number of people grew.
Speaker 2: The biggest camp soon held over one thousand people desperately
Speaker 2: trying to scratch out a little shade in the desert. Others,
Speaker 2: all accounts popped up. One was apparently in someone's yard,
Speaker 2: and the people of this tiny desert town so about
Speaker 2: helping as best they could. Soon they were joined by
Speaker 2: volunteers from all over the county. Katie was one of
Speaker 2: those volunteers. She doesn't live in a Cumber, but her
Speaker 2: friends do and her family sometimes spends time there. Once
Speaker 2: she heard about what was happening, she knew she had
Speaker 2: to help. I let her describe her feelings after she
Speaker 2: saw the post online and then drove out to Cumber
Speaker 2: to see what she could do to help.
Speaker 6: At first, I was just super touched by the activation
Speaker 6: and the carrying, and my son was asleep, comfortable in
Speaker 6: his car seat, you know, in our Mercedes van. And
Speaker 6: my husband is still trying to get citizenship after being
Speaker 6: here since he was two years old. So and we're
Speaker 6: married and he pays taxes. And when I saw our
Speaker 6: friends activating, I just told him tomorrow's Mother's Day and
Speaker 6: I need to come back here, and it's not safe
Speaker 6: for you here. So when I first arrived, I thought
Speaker 6: it was kind of odd that everything was organized around
Speaker 6: a random road that has a gate and there were
Speaker 6: five only five border patrol at the time, and about
Speaker 6: that was a larger camp, so I want to say
Speaker 6: at least eight hundred people, maybe a thousand. I didn't
Speaker 6: see them all because many of them would received their
Speaker 6: donations and the assistance and went back to their shelters.
Speaker 2: A few days after the migrants arrived, I camped out
Speaker 2: in Hukumba. I was cold in my sleeping bag at
Speaker 2: night and dizzy in the sun in the day. It's
Speaker 2: not a place where you'd want to be stuck outside
Speaker 2: the long but it's a place where fifteen hundred or
Speaker 2: so people were held for days little more than the shelters.
Speaker 2: They are built out of creosota and mesquite to protect
Speaker 2: their families from the elements. They slept on the dirt
Speaker 2: or in cardboard boxes left over from the food volunteers
Speaker 2: fed them and under whatever folks and tiny desert count
Speaker 2: could find to give them. By the time I arrived,
Speaker 2: the migrants were gone and volunteers were cleaning up. The
Speaker 2: landscape was dotted with impressively constructed brush shelters. Volunteers from
Speaker 2: her Cumber set up tables to distribute food, blankets, water,
Speaker 2: and clothing. Other volunteers stayed away from the camp itself
Speaker 2: and spent time packing things into individual sizes, perhaps combining
Speaker 2: hats and socks and maybe a toy for a child
Speaker 2: in one bag, or breaking down costco packages of snacks
Speaker 2: into individual portions. It's not necessarily the most rewarding task,
Speaker 2: but it's an important one. I asked Marissa, another volunteer
Speaker 2: who had previously worked in San Diego for the Forest Service,
Speaker 2: what she felt when we were cleaning out some of
Speaker 2: those shelters together a couple of days later.
Speaker 10: I don't know the best way to say this, but
Speaker 10: what hit me deeper was when this might seem strange,
Speaker 10: but when I saw women's sanitary napkins or the diapers,
Speaker 10: or the babies, like it was kind of like a
Speaker 10: fabric padded crib basinet type thing. That suddenly hit me
Speaker 10: on a deeper level would make me emotional, because it's
Speaker 10: like then you start to realize, like, wow, what if
Speaker 10: that was me and my child? Or I'm not a mother,
Speaker 10: but I can only imagine what that must be like
Speaker 10: for them to be going through these things as a
Speaker 10: as a woman, being on your period and being out
Speaker 10: and not having anything you know, going to the bathroom
Speaker 10: out there, what do you use when you don't have
Speaker 10: those supplies?
Speaker 5: So yeah, it just.
Speaker 11: That was when it hit me deeper, and I knew
Speaker 11: I was doing the right thing by being out there
Speaker 11: and helping in whatever way I could, because I don't
Speaker 11: I don't when it comes to the politics side of it,
Speaker 11: when it comes to like legality and just different aspects
Speaker 11: of it. In that way, I don't have necessarily an
Speaker 11: opinion one way or another. I'm not educated enough to
Speaker 11: feel like I can I can argue one way or another,
Speaker 11: or defend one position or another. I went out there
Speaker 11: purely for my love of humanity, and I think being
Speaker 11: able to support in whatever way I can that was
Speaker 11: the way that I felt like I could serve and
Speaker 11: BeO support.
Speaker 2: Katie hadn't expected to make migrants at the camp when
Speaker 2: she first showed up. She knew it was important not
Speaker 2: to flog the camp with volunteers, and their help was
Speaker 2: needed packaging and preparing aid drops, which she was happy
Speaker 2: to do. But in the end, she traveled up to
Speaker 2: the camp with a friend who spoke Portuguese so they
Speaker 2: could help translate and distribute supplies. I asked her what
Speaker 2: it was like to see the supplies she'd purchased a
Speaker 2: few hours before end up in the hands of people
Speaker 2: who desperately needed them.
Speaker 6: They don't even have a grocery store in her cumber
Speaker 6: They have one mini mart with nothing in it, and
Speaker 6: that was sold out the first day. So these people
Speaker 6: who we would look at without a lot of resources,
Speaker 6: passing the abundance of what they actually have. Well, I
Speaker 6: saw a lot of families. I could tell that there
Speaker 6: were leaders within the group because they were helping organize
Speaker 6: as much as the volunteers were. And unfortunately there was
Speaker 6: language barriers, you know, and so those that could speak
Speaker 6: multiple languages, whether they were border crossers or volunteers, were
Speaker 6: together in it. And that was part of that organization
Speaker 6: that I'm talking about, you know. And it was actually
Speaker 6: a very calm scene.
Speaker 5: When we first came up. I saw my son's.
Speaker 6: Hat that I donated and a little boy hugging this
Speaker 6: jaguar stuffed animal, and the jaguar was really significant to
Speaker 6: my friend and I when we found it.
Speaker 5: So it was really touching just to like.
Speaker 6: See the things that we were bringing being literally being
Speaker 6: distributed like sometimes when you think you're helping. I worked
Speaker 6: for a door to door campaign when I was in
Speaker 6: my teens and I got fifty percent of what I raised,
Speaker 6: so and it was like disheartening, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 6: this is how it works. And in this case, money
Speaker 6: that I directly spent on resources that were needed was
Speaker 6: going directly to the people.
Speaker 2: In all likelihood, people crossed in a specific spot because
Speaker 2: someone dropped them there telling them it would be easy.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was anything but people die crossing around here.
Speaker 2: In the dirt around Cucumber, I found discarded fly tocineries
Speaker 2: and documents from Turkey, Nicaragua, Columbia, Mexico. There were also
Speaker 2: little children's toys, shoes, and hundreds of empty water bottles
Speaker 2: which we diligently picked up. But none of the more
Speaker 2: than one thousand people who had board patrol held in
Speaker 2: this camp have planned for what they got, which was
Speaker 2: several days being detained in the desert by CBP with
Speaker 2: inefficient water, no shelter, and very little food, and no
Speaker 2: information on what was happening or how long they could
Speaker 2: expect to be there. Sadly didn't get there in time
Speaker 2: to speak to any of them. I was in Arizona
Speaker 2: looking for border of vigilantes and wondering what CBP had
Speaker 2: been doing to migrants there where they have the full
Speaker 2: support of local law enforcement and a large percentage of
Speaker 2: the aging population. To my surprise, I didn't find much.
Speaker 2: It seems like most people had crossed in the San
Speaker 2: Diego County area. Many had flown or walked to Tijuana.
Speaker 2: Of course, migrants, just like us, have accessed the news
Speaker 2: and to weather forecast and maps. Crossing in Arizona, a
Speaker 2: place known for cruelty and very hot weather doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense when California offers a better political and weather climate,
Speaker 2: and with the mixed messages coming down about immigration law,
Speaker 2: these folks may not have been intending to evade border patrol,
Speaker 2: but to come to the USA and to take their
Speaker 2: legal right to claim asylum. I spoke to Sam, a
Speaker 2: volunteer with extensive on the ground experience and umanitarian crises,
Speaker 2: about what he'd seen at the camp.
Speaker 12: Oh my name is Sam Schultz.
Speaker 2: He said, many of the people who found themselves in
Speaker 2: a cumber had likely been told by people smokelers, but
Speaker 2: this was an easy way into the US. In the end,
Speaker 2: it was anything but.
Speaker 12: They I mean, I know they didn't expect that they
Speaker 12: were just waltz across the border at a normal check station.
Speaker 12: But they thought it was going to be they were
Speaker 12: sold in bill of goods.
Speaker 2: So let's put it that way.
Speaker 7: Walk.
Speaker 12: Yes, that's it. And so I mean, I feel sorry
Speaker 12: for anybody who's taken advantage of all like that. But
Speaker 12: most of the people that I met again who are
Speaker 12: not Colombians, were of the wealthier side of the on
Speaker 12: their countries. I met some of Becky's, some Kazakis, a
Speaker 12: bunch of people from India, a couple of Pakistani guys.
Speaker 12: I mean, they didn't get here cheap.
Speaker 2: The wall behind the people in Hookumba cost twenty five
Speaker 2: million dollars a mile. On average. The border patrol agent
Speaker 2: drove around in f one to fifty rapped to trucks
Speaker 2: that started eighty thousand dollars and each make a starting
Speaker 2: salary of sixty thousand dollars in their first year. Surveillance
Speaker 2: towers that dot the desert, including one which provided a
Speaker 2: tiny scrap of shade to migrants resting under its solar panels,
Speaker 2: can cost a million dollars apiece, but people in the
Speaker 2: cumber received only one small water bottle each day, despite
Speaker 2: the punishing weather Although Customs and Border Protection did not
Speaker 2: seem to make any plan to shelter migrants in Cucumber,
Speaker 2: they did plan to have contractors paid forty dollars an
Speaker 2: hour to take them away. I found a job advert
Speaker 2: for a Southwest Border Transportation and Security officer at ISS
Speaker 2: Action Security. The agency photograph transporting migrants in the Cumber.
Speaker 2: The job posting, which was posted two weeks before the
Speaker 2: end of Title forty two, has a description that includes
Speaker 2: patting down all detainees and applying appropriate restraints prior to
Speaker 2: boarding vehicles. The process through its migrants become detainees normally
Speaker 2: involves processing which had not been done in Nucumber, but
Speaker 2: it seems a presumption of ineligibility announced on the day
Speaker 2: Title forty two ended came into effect.
Speaker 7: Here.
Speaker 2: This might seem a minor distinction, but it's important. It
Speaker 2: means that people have to file a defensive asylum claim
Speaker 2: and not an affirmative one. They have to plead why
Speaker 2: they shouldn't be deported, rather than why they have a
Speaker 2: right to stay. Many of the people who have been
Speaker 2: trying to cross before the end of Title forty two,
Speaker 2: like Diana, because they felt they would face a less
Speaker 2: serious penalty. Many of them flew to t Win I
Speaker 2: walked from further south in Mexico or even in Central America.
Speaker 2: I likely spent their entire savings on a trip to
Speaker 2: the gap in the wall near Haucumber that ended with
Speaker 2: them being held by border patrol in the open desert
Speaker 2: with next to nothing in the way of shelter, sanitation,
Speaker 2: or sustenance. As a way to quantify this, I want
Speaker 2: a reference to UCSD US Immigration Policy Center report apparently
Speaker 2: had some pretty problematic practices, but anyway, these are results
Speaker 2: from its survey. When asked whether border patrol gave them
Speaker 2: enough water for the day, over half of the asylum
Speaker 2: seekers that we interviewed, approximately fifty three perc said no.
Speaker 2: Border patrol distributed one water bottle to each migrant in
Speaker 2: the morning. When asked where the border patrol gave them
Speaker 2: enough food for the day, all of the asylum seekers
Speaker 2: said no. Border patrol did not distribute any food. When
Speaker 2: asked where the border patrol provided adequate sanitation such as toilets,
Speaker 2: all of the asylum seekers that we interviewed, meaning one
Speaker 2: hundred percent, said no. Border patrol provided one porter body
Speaker 2: for the entire encampment. When asked where the border patrol
Speaker 2: provided adepriate shelter, such as shade to protect them from
Speaker 2: the sun, all of the asylum seekers that we interviewed
Speaker 2: said no. Border patrol did not provide any shelter. When
Speaker 2: asked where the border patrol provided blankets to keep them
Speaker 2: warm at night, all but one of the asylum seekers
Speaker 2: we interviewed said no. Border patrol provided blankets. Some migrants,
Speaker 2: but the overwhelming majority, did not receive blankets. Altogether, two
Speaker 2: thirds of the asylum seekers we interviewed said that they
Speaker 2: agree or strongly agree with the statement if I did
Speaker 2: not receive food and water from volunteers, I would not
Speaker 2: get enough food and water from border patrol to survive.
Speaker 2: These aren't exaggerations, as we'll see, several migrants did come
Speaker 2: very close to losing their lives in the five or
Speaker 2: more days that CBP detained people out in the open
Speaker 2: along the border. Medical incidents in this kind of attention
Speaker 2: are far from uncommon. A lawsuit filed against Customers to
Speaker 2: Border Protection by the Southern Border Communities Coalition regarding their
Speaker 2: actions this week stated that quote many migrants have fallen
Speaker 2: into medical distress because of the conditions and CBP has
Speaker 2: been slow to provide access to medical attention, often only
Speaker 2: responding at the insistence of advocates. As a result, one
Speaker 2: woman suffered life threatening allergies, a child suffered an epileptic seizure,
Speaker 2: and a man suffered an unattended infection on his leg.
Speaker 2: Medical attention was slow to arrive, and when it did arrive,
Speaker 2: it was often insufficient. Like Kay, but describe the conditions
Speaker 2: they saw a couple of days after the end of
Speaker 2: Title forty two.
Speaker 7: It's really the product that it's hard to under state.
Speaker 7: The conditions there were not safe or sanitary. I guess
Speaker 7: this is sort of related to medical issues, but there was.
Speaker 7: It's been, you know, to their credit. The suspect has
Speaker 7: been reported in the media that there was a single
Speaker 7: portable toilet for anywhere from I guess there's probably twenty
Speaker 7: to four hundred people there. I heard a couple of
Speaker 7: different citations of how often this toilet is serviced and
Speaker 7: cleaned and the waste removed anywhere from once or twice
Speaker 7: a week to once every week or two weeks. Either way,
Speaker 7: that's not remotely sufficient for four hundred people using the
Speaker 7: back room multiple times a day in this single portable
Speaker 7: like just a construction site toilet. It was right next
Speaker 7: to the phone charging station on their side of the wall.
Speaker 7: And my I would just feel sick if I get
Speaker 7: if I sit too close to it. It was really vile.
Speaker 7: It was not safe. It is not a way for
Speaker 7: people to be helping. And I do know, I think
Speaker 7: a lot of thankfully people stop using it, but then
Speaker 7: they don't have any you know, a privacy or that
Speaker 7: it's still not you know, a sanitary in a situation
Speaker 7: to be in since I mean, they don't have a
Speaker 7: future for space. So that's definitely one of the ways
Speaker 7: that people are being fed in terms of their health
Speaker 7: and safety.
Speaker 2: Here's Amara who hear more from tomorrow describe being inn
Speaker 2: of a medical incident.
Speaker 4: And the call that I got this morning was of
Speaker 4: a woman who was rushed out because she had an
Speaker 4: emergency situation, taken to the hospital. The hospital didn't know
Speaker 4: what to do with her, so they sent her right
Speaker 4: back here in the middle of the night. In the
Speaker 4: middle of the night and they brought her here. She
Speaker 4: doesn't have any documents. CBP didn't get a chance to
Speaker 4: process her yet, so she doesn't even have any proof
Speaker 4: that she actually came to the port of entry and
Speaker 4: try to seek asylum. And she was just sleeping right here.
Speaker 4: And she has burns all over her body, has an infection.
Speaker 5: I read the.
Speaker 4: Seven medications that they gave her, and she speaks daddy.
Speaker 5: She's from Avon as Than.
Speaker 4: Her husband got taken by the Taliban and she escaped,
Speaker 4: running for her life. And she's here and she has
Speaker 4: sunburns all over her face and she has nowhere to go.
Speaker 4: She thought she was still detained. She actually thought she
Speaker 4: was still detained. She was just trying to get back
Speaker 4: to the other side of the border. She thought she
Speaker 4: was still in Mexico. No one explained anything to her.
Speaker 4: They brought her back here in the middle of the night,
Speaker 4: and she was freezing and so wet.
Speaker 5: That's why I came out here. I talked to her.
Speaker 1: Her.
Speaker 4: The other folks who were out here didn't know why
Speaker 4: she was just sleeping here, and I came out and
Speaker 4: tried and translated.
Speaker 5: And now we have her at a hotel.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: The witness one of the emergencies described in the Southern
Speaker 2: Border Communities Coalition lawsuit. When they visited the camp, he's
Speaker 2: describing it in.
Speaker 7: Terms of you know, medical care as well. I guess
Speaker 7: in one of the parts of the aid operation I
Speaker 7: was my known was most people. I think there's a
Speaker 7: probination both of people who were you know, and then
Speaker 7: street medicine as well as people who were like nurses
Speaker 7: volunteering their prime and things like that and mostly taking
Speaker 7: care of just kind of protain first aid for the
Speaker 7: most part. There was a situation where someone was having
Speaker 7: an a perject reaction, a fairly severe one, and I
Speaker 7: happened to carry in EpiPens, so I simply that to
Speaker 7: one of one of the street medics, and then they
Speaker 7: eventually did.
Speaker 9: All this person.
Speaker 7: The reaction bought severe enough that it was an an
Speaker 7: hour or so later at that none one was called,
Speaker 7: I assumed by one of the volunteers, and uh Amber
Speaker 7: Valance and Border patrol came to open the gate and
Speaker 7: bring this person into the country. They did eventually treat her,
Speaker 7: but it was a very it was a long time
Speaker 7: a from thence that of somethings, which is someone as
Speaker 7: someone who has anaphylexis reactions food and it's had that
Speaker 7: happened many times in her life. That is absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 7: I cannot imagine how terrifying. It would be to be
Speaker 7: experiencing a life writing situation when you work for RAPS
Speaker 7: and and and you know there's no authority that really
Speaker 7: cares that you're there. And I don't know if she
Speaker 7: would have been able to get help if there have
Speaker 7: been volunteers on I said for the wall, especially once with.
Speaker 2: Practical training, where volunteers weren't. Things were worse in Texas,
Speaker 2: and I just a Reyes Alvarez, an eight year old
Speaker 2: girl born in Panama to Honduran parents, died in CBP custody.
Speaker 2: Rossell Rees, the girl's father, told NBC News that they
Speaker 2: gave authorities documents about the girl's medical conditions congenital heart
Speaker 2: disease and sickle cellonemia while they were in immigration custody.
Speaker 2: They said that a doctor there examined dan adeath and
Speaker 2: that she had contracted the flu. Alvarez her mother said
Speaker 2: she spoke to both detention authorities and medical personnel at
Speaker 2: the station multiple times to explain her daughter was complaining
Speaker 2: of pain and shortness of breath and that she was
Speaker 2: getting worse. I'll quite the next part directly from the
Speaker 2: NBC story. They never listened to me, she said, Reyes
Speaker 2: said his daughter was in a lot of pain, a
Speaker 2: lot of pain. I begged them to call an ambulance,
Speaker 2: Alvarez said, adding their authorities told her the girl's condition
Speaker 2: wasn't serious enough to warrant calling an ambulance. Avarez said
Speaker 2: her daughter begged authorities as well, telling them she could
Speaker 2: not breathe from her nose or mouth. Avares says that
Speaker 2: eventually her daughter lost consciousness and died in my arms.
Speaker 2: She said, authorities took the girl from her arms and
Speaker 2: put her on the floor trying to revive her. My
Speaker 2: daughter died there in the station, she said. Avare said
Speaker 2: she feels authorities did not do enough to help her
Speaker 2: little girl. My daughter is a human being. They had
Speaker 2: to take care of her, she said. Despite what you
Speaker 2: might have heard on the network news, the asylum process
Speaker 2: is anything but easy. I've had several visas, a Green
Speaker 2: card and a US passport, and I can compily tell
Speaker 2: you the only easy way I've ever seen to come
Speaker 2: here is to be very rich. But even among the
Speaker 2: convoluted bureaucratic mess at his US immigration, the asylum process
Speaker 2: stands out as both rigorous and complicated. Asylum is a
Speaker 2: process by which people unable are unwilling to return to
Speaker 2: their country because of persecution or a well founded fear
Speaker 2: of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, politics, or
Speaker 2: membership of a particular social group may remain in a
Speaker 2: safe country. From the eleventh of May onwards, migrants at
Speaker 2: the border were assumed ineligible for asylum. If they cross
Speaker 2: between points of entry, they must enter the defensive asylum
Speaker 2: process to prevent themselves from being deported. What this means
Speaker 2: for people we heard from earlier is that they are
Speaker 2: now taken, for whatever God forsake and holding area. They're
Speaker 2: in a bust to a processing facility where they're interviewed
Speaker 2: by an asylum officer to determine if they have a
Speaker 2: credible fear of persecution. They may need to provide a
Speaker 2: translator if there is an interviewing agent who speaks their language,
Speaker 2: and if they're determined to have a credible fear, they're
Speaker 2: told to check in with the US Customs and Immigration
Speaker 2: Office and sometimes given a notice which may or may
Speaker 2: not be dated to appear in court. My colleague Jo
Speaker 2: tried to get into one of these hotels to talk
Speaker 2: to one of the people we'd spoken to at the border,
Speaker 2: but he was pretty quickly shut down.
Speaker 5: Yeah, how you either.
Speaker 1: I'm a freelance journalist.
Speaker 12: I'm here reporting.
Speaker 5: For my boss, James Stout. He's at iHeartMedia.
Speaker 12: I'm wondering if you're letting media in here to see.
Speaker 5: The guys said only not okay.
Speaker 1: Also the actually guys and not the strict n of
Speaker 1: this area here Okay.
Speaker 5: So if we're going to set up, it has to
Speaker 5: be on the side of the line.
Speaker 1: Because I'm a lot of traffic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's very dangerous for your pa.
Speaker 1: So like beyond here, a past the college.
Speaker 5: Yeah, from here over okay, cool, I'll.
Speaker 6: Say how you're working.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: One of the folks we'd met was able to stay
Speaker 2: in touch for our WhatsApp and share the hotel rules
Speaker 2: with us. They were pretty strict. Migrants are confined to
Speaker 2: their rooms, they can't have visitors, and they can't even
Speaker 2: order food delivery from the hotel where they're hosted by
Speaker 2: Catholic charities. Migrants need to get to their sponsor in
Speaker 2: the United States if they have one. If they don't
Speaker 2: have one, they can be sent just about anywhere. I've
Speaker 2: heard of East African folks having ended up in Alaska,
Speaker 2: for example. Once they get to where they're going to be,
Speaker 2: they check him with US Customs and Immigration Services in
Speaker 2: their new location, and they're given a special phone which
Speaker 2: also tracks their movements. They may have a DNA sample
Speaker 2: take and in addition to fingerprints. Later, sometimes years later,
Speaker 2: they attend a court hearing or two to determine their
Speaker 2: eligibility to stay. I've heard of lawyers charging from five
Speaker 2: thousand dollars to twelve thousand dollars for these hearings, and
Speaker 2: nonprofit legalists and services are totally overwhelmed. At the moment,
Speaker 2: the systems massively backed up, and court dates are being
Speaker 2: given as far out as twenty twenty seven already. They
Speaker 2: may or may not be able to work during that period.
Speaker 2: Another table, work is getting harder and harder to find.
Speaker 2: Even if they do find work on less than minimum wage,
Speaker 2: it can be very hard to say about five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars for a lawyer. A Migrants who can't find nonprofit
Speaker 2: help are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to
Speaker 2: their asylum hearings. Again, private security contractors, this time from Allied,
Speaker 2: were transporting migrants to the hotel and guarding it. Like CBP.
Speaker 2: The private contractors you guard, transport and incs rate migrants
Speaker 2: or rely on the broken in immigration system to make money.
Speaker 2: Unlike CBP, the agents themselves aren't well paid. Nineteen dollars
Speaker 2: an hours are going great for Allied, not much higher
Speaker 2: than San Diego's sixteen dollars and thirty cents minimum wage.
Speaker 2: But the company itself is huge. It's the third last
Speaker 2: yearest private employer in North America after Walmart and Amazon.
Speaker 2: Allied guards are at prisons, airports, and shopping malls across America,
Speaker 2: and it's alleged that some are underpaid, intufficiently trained, and
Speaker 2: improperly vetted. The company grosses over twenty billion dollars, and
Speaker 2: it's affiliates are frequent political donors. All across this story
Speaker 2: you'll see this Allied Security iss action security people, smugglers,
Speaker 2: customs and border protection, contractors who build the war pieces
Speaker 2: and contractors who install the wall pieces, General Atomics who
Speaker 2: sell CBP drones, and the Israelian American companies who sell
Speaker 2: the surveillance technology to the government. All these people make money,
Speaker 2: but the poorest people in the world are the only
Speaker 2: ones losing money, and sometimes they're lives when they cross
Speaker 2: our southern border. Tomorrow we'll hear from some of the
Speaker 2: people who made no money and looked after the migrants,
Speaker 2: and we'll continue to support them through the asylum process.
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