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