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Speaker 1: Ola Latino USA listener Gomstas. It's Maria Rosa and today

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Speaker 1: I want to share with you a podcasts that we've

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Speaker 1: been listening to here. It's called Maye Lisuenos or Valley

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Speaker 1: of Dreams. It's from our colleagues at Benya Podcast. The

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Speaker 1: podcast follows a group of migrants who, under the former

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Speaker 1: Trump administration, were forced to stay in Mexico while their

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Speaker 1: asylum requests were processed in the US. Under the Migrant

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Speaker 1: Protection Protocols you know, they're known as the Remain in

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Speaker 1: Mexico policy. Thousands of people have lived for months, many

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Speaker 1: for years, in extreme and dangerous conditions while they wait.

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Speaker 1: Amid efforts by the Biden administration to end the program,

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Speaker 1: twenty seven people were chosen to cross into the US.

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Speaker 1: In this first episode of Vaye Lisuos, host Lauda Beena,

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Speaker 1: an attorney, activist and originally from the US Mexico border,

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Speaker 1: is going to tell that story. But what seemed like

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Speaker 1: a long awaited happy ending was not what they imagined

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Speaker 1: it to be. Here's Lauapina in Byasunos.

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Speaker 2: In this episode, we explore the first day of the

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Speaker 2: humanitarian effort in Matamotos and Brownsville, that fateful day, twenty

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Speaker 2: seven people were chosen to be the first to realize

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Speaker 2: the dream of finally entering the United States to seek

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Speaker 2: protection and start a new life. This story is critical

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Speaker 2: now more than ever. For the first time in two years,

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Speaker 2: a judge has ordered that the entire US Mexico border

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Speaker 2: reopened after being closed under a public health emergency order.

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Speaker 2: On December twenty first, twenty twenty two, maybe even after

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Speaker 2: you're hearing this podcast, the US government will be ending

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Speaker 2: this policy, known as Title forty two. The policy shuttered

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Speaker 2: the border and expelled hundreds of thousands of migrants back

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Speaker 2: to dangerous conditions in Mexico go or unilaterally expelled them

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Speaker 2: to their home countries. This story is one example of

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Speaker 2: what can happen when there is political will, international cooperation,

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Speaker 2: and an engaged by national border community. As you listen

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Speaker 2: to these stories, think about scaling this cocktail of priorities.

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Speaker 2: Think about a vision for a better, more dignified, and

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Speaker 2: welcoming border that centers humanity. What transpired in February twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty one is less than perfect, but offers us insight

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Speaker 2: into potential solutions to our migration challenges at the border. Prologue.

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Speaker 2: It was Wednesday, February twenty fourth, twenty twenty one, around

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Speaker 2: ten pm. I was at home. I remember the miraculous

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Speaker 2: lifting of my dog, tired spirit and weary body. I

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Speaker 2: felt an anxious excitement. It was such a foreign feeling

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Speaker 2: to possess after four years of horrifying policies targeting people

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Speaker 2: in the borderlands. The next morning I would be visiting

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Speaker 2: the refugee encampment in Matamodas, Mexico. It was a day

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Speaker 2: that would mark the beginning of the end. I looked

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Speaker 2: over my notes one last time and thought about what

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Speaker 2: had brought me home in the first place. After nearly

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Speaker 2: twenty years in Washington, d C. In California, I returned

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Speaker 2: to my small border community in South Texas to try

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Speaker 2: and make a difference. As my dogs curled up at

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Speaker 2: my feet, I hoped that tomorrow would be an opportunity

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Speaker 2: to make that difference and at least one migrant refugee community.

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Speaker 3: We were overjoyed that we were going to at last

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Speaker 3: see our friends, that we were going to see them

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Speaker 3: on our soil.

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Speaker 2: That is Andrea Rudnick from Team Brownsville. Team Brownsville is

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Speaker 2: a grassroots humanitarian aid organization founded by a group of

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Speaker 2: local teachers.

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Speaker 3: I know the people in the encampment felt they were

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Speaker 3: incredibly excited. Was just a lot of partying, a lot

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Speaker 3: of excitement, a lot of joy.

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Speaker 2: Matamotos is the second largest city in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico,

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Speaker 2: with a population more than double the size of its

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Speaker 2: US sister city, Brownsville, Texas. Matamotos and Brownsville are so

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Speaker 2: close in proximity to each other that sometimes when I

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Speaker 2: ride my bicycle along the river, I can smell the

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Speaker 2: food coming from Matamotos homes, hear kids yelling as they play,

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Speaker 2: and see laundry drying in the wind. But for the

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Speaker 2: massive intrusion of a border wall, the Rio Grande River

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Speaker 2: or Rio Bravo, flows through one bi national community. As

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Speaker 2: the border began to tighten in the mid nineteen nineties,

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Speaker 2: our binational community began seeing divisions slowly percolate on both

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Speaker 2: sides of the river. By twenty ten, crime and insecurity

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Speaker 2: had become so ubiquitous to Matamotos that many residents of

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Speaker 2: the city opted to move to the US side. In Brownsville.

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Speaker 2: Migration patterns along the border had always ebbed and flowed,

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Speaker 2: but the harm full treatment of migrants took a turn

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Speaker 2: for the worse under Donald Trump.

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Speaker 4: There is a.

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Speaker 5: Ruling humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border. Every day,

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Speaker 5: customs and Border patrol agents encounter thousands of illegal immigrants

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Speaker 5: trying to enter our country. We are out of space.

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Speaker 6: To haul them, and we have no way to promptly

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Speaker 6: return them back home to their country. My administration has

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Speaker 6: presented Congress with a detailed proposal to secure the border

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Speaker 6: and stop the criminal gangs, drug smugglers, and human traffickers.

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Speaker 6: This is the tragic reality of a legal immigration that

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Speaker 6: I am determined.

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Speaker 2: To Under the law, people seeking asylum at official ports

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Speaker 2: of entry are allowed to have their claim heard in

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Speaker 2: the safety of the US. But just months after the

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Speaker 2: images of parents and children being violently separated at the

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Speaker 2: border had shocked the collective consciousness of a Mayormerricans, the

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Speaker 2: Trump administration ruled out yet another assault on immigrant lives,

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Speaker 2: and they did it on a technicality. The Immigration and

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Speaker 2: Nationality Act as a set of federal laws that govern

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Speaker 2: immigration in the United States. There's an obscure line in

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Speaker 2: the fast tracked Deportations section that states an official may

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Speaker 2: return a non citizen to foreign territory contiguous to the

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Speaker 2: United States, in this case Mexico. Because let's be honest,

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Speaker 2: nobody in the Trump administration was worried about immigrants coming

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Speaker 2: from Canada. But let's focus on the most important word

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Speaker 2: in that line. May may return a non citizen, not must,

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Speaker 2: not shall may. The word itself is permissive, meaning optional,

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Speaker 2: not mandatory. By subverting that narrow, discretionary language, the Trump

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Speaker 2: administration built an entirely new deportation system that penalized migrants

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Speaker 2: by forcibly returning only Spanish speaking non citizens entering from Mexico.

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Speaker 2: The policy was called the Migrant Protection Protocols and became

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Speaker 2: more widely known as Remain in Mexico. This policy forced

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Speaker 2: thousands of people to wait months between their asylum hearings.

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Speaker 2: Over the course of nearly two years, more than sixty

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Speaker 2: eight thousand migrants were sent back to Mexico without food, shelter,

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Speaker 2: or any regard for their safety. Along the river in Matemotos,

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Speaker 2: hundreds of men, women, and children built lives in a small,

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Speaker 2: tense city, trying their best to create a sense of

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Speaker 2: safety and normalcy for themselves. In spite of their circumstances.

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Speaker 2: Here is Anhelolvo, a human rights defender and local attorney,

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Speaker 2: and describing them Matamotos Encampment.

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Speaker 7: My name is Angelo Lo Garcia. I always is both

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Speaker 7: in last names in honor of my mother and my father.

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Speaker 7: I'm from Puerto Rico. First, my background has always been

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Speaker 7: being involved in whatever has to do with social justice,

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Speaker 7: social components. I feel myself that I'm luggy enough to

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Speaker 7: have a lot of opportunities, So how can I make

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Speaker 7: that change so that everyone has that opportunity. They're just

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Speaker 7: differing aspect of how to describe them campman itself. You know,

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Speaker 7: physically it's not a pretty sight. You have tents there,

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Speaker 7: you have a lot of people, like in a very

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Speaker 7: small space.

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Speaker 8: There was no space even to walk around in that plaza.

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Speaker 2: This is my friend and attorney Jody Goodwin. She started

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Speaker 2: as a volunteer with Team Brownsville and became the first

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Speaker 2: lawyer in Matamoros to provide legal aid to migrants early

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Speaker 2: in the Trump era.

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Speaker 8: And then there was no other place for them to go.

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Speaker 9: So then they started to go up onto the levee,

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Speaker 9: and the levee got full, and then they started to

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Speaker 9: go down onto the banks of the river, and it

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Speaker 9: just kept growing and growing and growing because there was

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Speaker 9: nowhere else for them to go. And I think people

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Speaker 9: stay right there near the border because they were afraid

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Speaker 9: to go anywhere else. Matamotos is a very very dangerous

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Speaker 9: place for anyone, but it's even more dangerous for migrants

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Speaker 9: just because of their vulnerability to be to be kidnapped.

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Speaker 2: But as dangerous as Matamotos was for the recently arrived,

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Speaker 2: it was not without some glimmers of community, hope, and dreams.

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Speaker 7: The other thing that you cannot perceive is the stories

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Speaker 7: and make the camp what it was in between like

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Speaker 7: this probably horror. They came together and build something, and

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Speaker 7: then you have restaurants, you have tanditas, it's the little stores.

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Speaker 7: So that gives like a sense of like there's a

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Speaker 7: lot going on, but there's community and people are looking

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Speaker 7: for each other.

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Speaker 2: Many advocates on the US side of the border had

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Speaker 2: been together under the banner of the Rio Grande Valley

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Speaker 2: Welcoming Committee, groups like Team Brownsville, Angry at Tiasiavoelas, and

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Speaker 2: Sidewalk School for asylum Seekers. What they all had in

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Speaker 2: common was that they were people who wanted to make

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Speaker 2: a difference and bring some sense of dignity to a

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Speaker 2: completely undignified situation. The next morning, I made my way

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Speaker 2: to the encampment. As I dropped my four quarters into

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Speaker 2: the turnstile to cross the bridge and walk from Brownsville

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Speaker 2: to Matamotos, I thought back to an earlier zoom call

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Speaker 2: I had with Biden White House officials and other government agencies.

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Speaker 2: Something had clicked with the Biden folks. There was movement.

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Speaker 2: The Matamodos encampment had come to symbolize the Trump administration's

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Speaker 2: mistreatment of migrants, and there appeared to be political will

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Speaker 2: to reverse course to end remain in Mexico and shut

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Speaker 2: the Matamotos encampment down. We had agreed to meet by

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Speaker 2: the dumpsters on the Mexican side of the border. I

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Speaker 2: kept an eye out for the turquoise t shirts I

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Speaker 2: had Quit designed for our group. A white dove in

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Speaker 2: the middle of the shirt bore the name Comite de

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Speaker 2: bien Venida Welcoming Committee. We stood there, waiting and wondering

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Speaker 2: who would be able to cross today. Over months of

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Speaker 2: working in the camp, we had grown close with many

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Speaker 2: of the residents. We knew the impossible situations they were

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Speaker 2: fleeing and held out hope that they'd soon be on

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Speaker 2: their way to safety. Here's Jody Goodwin.

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Speaker 8: That very first group that crossed. There was a specific

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Speaker 8: family they had taken in, a Cuban woman. She had

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Speaker 8: to lee Rey Noosa because her her cousin was shot

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Speaker 8: and killed by border patrol. And when I got there

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Speaker 8: and I saw her name on the list, I was

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Speaker 8: so relieved that she was going to be able to cross.

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Speaker 2: Around the camp. Jody became affectionately nicknamed Lauerrauola, the Blonde Lawyer,

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Speaker 2: and as a first group of asylum seekers gather, she

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Speaker 2: led some of them in prayer. Meanwhile, I could see

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Speaker 2: Sister Norma Pi Mendel from Catholic Charities of the Rio

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Speaker 2: Grande Valley directing people clipboard in hand. The irony of

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Speaker 2: the lawyers leading prayer and the religious leader directing logistics

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Speaker 2: was not lost on us. Sister Norma was no stranger

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Speaker 2: to the ins and outs of coordinating mass efforts from migrants.

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Speaker 2: For years, Catholic Charities has been right in the middle

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Speaker 2: of humanitarian efforts, providing temporary shelter and assistance to thousands

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Speaker 2: of people.

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Speaker 4: My name is Sister Norma Pi Mendel and I am

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Speaker 4: Director for Catholic Chariteys of the Rio Grande Valley. Catholic

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Speaker 4: charitys is the charble arm of the Catholic Church, and

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Speaker 4: so what we do is respond to in collaboration with

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Speaker 4: other entities, in addressing the needs that we see here

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Speaker 4: in our community, especially people who fall between the cracks

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Speaker 4: that are not able to receive the system or helped any.

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Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, Sister Norma was named one of Time

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Speaker 2: Magazine's one hundred most Influential People in America. That same year,

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Speaker 2: Pope Francis called her by name and essentially described her

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Speaker 2: as the hand of God. But today she stood in

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Speaker 2: her simple navy habit and open toad sandals, anxiously watching

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Speaker 2: the clock with the rest of us.

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Speaker 4: It was hard to truly take in the intensity of

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Speaker 4: the moment, you know, and what we were all part of,

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Speaker 4: because we lived through all those months with them and

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Speaker 4: knew them and their struggles, their fears, all that their

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Speaker 4: kids suffered, you know, and it all was at that

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Speaker 4: moment that started on that first day and continued on

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Speaker 4: for the rest of the week. Was sort of of

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Speaker 4: a validation of humanity. Walking together, holding hands crying.

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Speaker 7: It was beautiful.

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Speaker 2: The International Bridge is flanked by a pair of iconic

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Speaker 2: red and today they shone brightly under the sun. Everyone

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Speaker 2: lined up in a specific order, and Sister Norma, Jody,

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Speaker 2: myself and you and humanitarian aid workers escorted the group

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Speaker 2: across the bridge. Emotions ran high as I stood by

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Speaker 2: a twelve year old girl and her mother. When we

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Speaker 2: began walking, a reporter with a camera jumped a small

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Speaker 2: barrier and got in the little girl's face. What are

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Speaker 2: you feeling now that you are being allowed into the US?

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Speaker 2: I pushed the camera away and urged the girl to

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Speaker 2: keep walking.

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Speaker 8: We're crossing the bridge. We're actually gonna be able to

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Speaker 8: get these people out of significant danger. MPP really really

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Speaker 8: really is ending. They're going to come out on the

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Speaker 8: other side. This, this is happening like it was like elation.

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Speaker 2: As we came to the end of the bridge, we

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Speaker 2: could see the inspection area, where another group of US

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Speaker 2: immigration officials were posted. For many of us growing up

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Speaker 2: along the border, crossing into the United States was little

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Speaker 2: more than a formality. You walk up, show your identification,

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Speaker 2: answer a few boilerplate questions about bringing in fruits or vegetables,

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Speaker 2: and be on your way. People would cross to eat dinner,

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Speaker 2: fill prescriptions, get dental work, visit family, or go drinking.

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Speaker 2: It was part of the regular rhythm of life. But

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Speaker 2: for the immigrants crossing today, the border had become an

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Speaker 2: impenetrable wall, not of metal and concrete, but of bureaucracy

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Speaker 2: and procedure. Sister Norma was ahead of us and entered

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Speaker 2: the inspection station with the first group of men, women

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Speaker 2: and children, But as Jodie and I approached, we were

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Speaker 2: stopped dead in our tracks and told no lawyers.

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Speaker 8: It was so infuriating because having had so many calls

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Speaker 8: and discussions with people at the very top levels of

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Speaker 8: the administration from the White House letting us know that

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Speaker 8: we can be in the tents where they were processing

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Speaker 8: people so that we could make sure that any issues

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Speaker 8: that came up were to be handled, to be able

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Speaker 8: to be monitored, et cetera. Yeah, the troops on the ground,

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Speaker 8: they never got that message. They were never going to

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Speaker 8: get that message, and it also became apparent that there

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Speaker 8: was nothing that the White House could do about that.

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Speaker 2: As attorneys, this set off all kinds of alarms and

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Speaker 2: red flags. We had seen firsthand the horrible abuses the

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Speaker 2: US immigration system was capable of, especially when they thought

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Speaker 2: no one was looking. These migrants had come so far

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Speaker 2: and endured unimaginable difficulty to get to this point, and

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Speaker 2: it felt like it could all come undone at the

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Speaker 2: whim of an official inside at tent, we could not enter.

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Speaker 2: All we could do was wait and hope. While we waited,

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Speaker 2: Jody and I did what any other same Texan would

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Speaker 2: do with some time to kill. We went to Whataburger

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Speaker 2: if you know?

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Speaker 7: You know?

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Speaker 2: We walked into the bus station with our greasy fries

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Speaker 2: and the iconic bright orange and white paper bags. Rows

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Speaker 2: of tables were set up with welcome signs the parking

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Speaker 2: spot where the bus was set to arrive with the

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Speaker 2: first group of migrants. The friars turned cold, and I

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Speaker 2: suddenly lost my appetite as we waited for the immigration

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Speaker 2: process to play out. Why was the process taking so long?

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Speaker 2: What if the US officials changed their minds? I tossed

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Speaker 2: the bag of fries into the trash bin and sat

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Speaker 2: down next to Jodie. I thought about the twenty seven

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Speaker 2: people whose lives were in the hands of just a

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Speaker 2: few border agents, the one woman whose cousin had just

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Speaker 2: been shot and killed by a border patrol agent. I

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Speaker 2: thought about the mother and daughter duo clinging to each

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Speaker 2: other as they crossed the bridge. As anybody in immigration knows,

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Speaker 2: sometimes the most painful part of the journey is.

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Speaker 7: The wait.

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Speaker 2: On the next episode of Via Li Suenos.

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Speaker 8: And they had to make the choice, you know, do

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Speaker 8: we all stay here because he had already lost his case,

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Speaker 8: or do we let you know, mom and daughter cross

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Speaker 8: and leave dad and in the can.

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Speaker 2: Via the Suenols is produced by Selina Pena, Charlie Vela,

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Speaker 2: and Me, made in partnership with Rucha RGV edited an

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Speaker 2: original theme composed by Charlie Vella, written and hosted by

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Speaker 2: Me Laura Pena, with artwork by Monica Lugo. Music in

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Speaker 2: this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound. For full track listing,

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Speaker 2: check the show notes. For more information about Via the Suenos,

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Speaker 2: please visit us online at Viasuenos dot com with a

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Speaker 2: regular end