Speaker 1: Try and carpool, try and shove into cars as best
Speaker 1: you can, just so that we don't have a mile long.
Speaker 2: Line of cars.
Speaker 3: We have trash bags, we have gloves, we have things
Speaker 3: that we're bringing up there, so what we have cars
Speaker 3: that you can get all of that out of.
Speaker 4: Once we pull over.
Speaker 2: We're also setting up a couple.
Speaker 5: Of pop ups.
Speaker 6: Hocumba, California, is a tiny town. You've probably never heard
Speaker 6: of it. It's actually really charming. There's a hot spring
Speaker 6: and a gorgeous hotel, a few stores selling our drinkets,
Speaker 6: that kind of thing. There's a lovely lake fed by
Speaker 6: the spring. And on this Sunday morning, there are about
Speaker 6: fifty people outside an old petrol station, nervously pounding bottles
Speaker 6: of water, applying sunscreen, and getting ready to head out
Speaker 6: of the desert to clear up the ad hoc migrant
Speaker 6: camp that has held as many as fifteen hundred people
Speaker 6: out in the open when Title forty two ended and
Speaker 6: Border patrol made no plans to keep them anywhere. It
Speaker 6: was a diverse bunch of people hidden beneath sun hats.
Speaker 6: There's an Australian film producer who was at a conference
Speaker 6: in Orlando and booked a fly over a grad student painter.
Speaker 6: The folks who were in the Hookumber Hotel who organize
Speaker 6: this whole thing, they're friends from the hospitality industry in
Speaker 6: San Diego. There were students and mums and dads and
Speaker 6: about the entire population of this tiny desert town. There
Speaker 6: were also two form international aid workers who are in
Speaker 6: a tower where you can look at the desert, which
Speaker 6: is actually a much cooler thing than it sounds. And
Speaker 6: there's also a museum of boulders right next to it.
Speaker 6: You should probably check them out. During the area. I
Speaker 6: spent the day helping out in Necumber after the refugees,
Speaker 6: some of them in handcuffs, had been taken by private
Speaker 6: contractors to be processed by CBP's Office of Field Operations.
Speaker 6: We met at a petrol station in the middle of town.
Speaker 6: The space where the pumps should be was filled with tons,
Speaker 6: and I do mean tons of bottled water, masks, hand
Speaker 6: sanitized and other necessary supplies. When I'd arrived the night before,
Speaker 6: around ten pm, the eerie green and yellow lights reflecting
Speaker 6: from the roof had lit up a palace of water
Speaker 6: like some kind of giant lava lamp, and driving across
Speaker 6: the desert. The town looked like it was glowing. The
Speaker 6: town certainly has had a bit of a glow up
Speaker 6: in the last few years. Three business partners purchased their
Speaker 6: Cumber hot Springs Hotel, a down in the mouth property
Speaker 6: that had once been a glamorous desert resort, and they've
Speaker 6: been restoring the place for nearly two years. Inadvertently, they
Speaker 6: also purchased a lot of land and a few other
Speaker 6: rundown buildings in a town that were sold as a
Speaker 6: lot with the hotel. It was in one of these buildings,
Speaker 6: the old gas station, that they set up a de
Speaker 6: facto mutual aid hubbo almost overnight. The hotel's not finished yet,
Speaker 6: and they probably didn't make much progress on it during
Speaker 6: the week when they were feeding more than a thousand
Speaker 6: people in the desert. The town's lake, fed by a
Speaker 6: natural spring an old bath house used to be attractions.
Speaker 6: Today the bathhouse of roof have fallen off, but it
Speaker 6: still makes a pretty cool concert venue, and the whole
Speaker 6: town offers commanding views of the border wall, which sadly
Speaker 6: is only a couple of hundred yards from the main street.
Speaker 6: When I arrived in Cucumber, every think was close. The
Speaker 6: mini Mark was sold out, the hotel was still being
Speaker 6: worked on, and the hotel kitchen was churning out food
Speaker 6: for volunteers at the clean up effort. I asked Marissa,
Speaker 6: one of the volunteers I met that day, about her
Speaker 6: first impressions on arriving at the meeting point.
Speaker 7: I was incredibly impressed by what the people of hu
Speaker 7: Kumba and the hotel group of individuals that have organized this,
Speaker 7: Like I couldn't believe seeing their donation depot in that
Speaker 7: old car wash, just to how well organized everything was,
Speaker 7: and that they provided so much for the volunteers, and
Speaker 7: just the level of love and compassion and was. Yeah,
Speaker 7: it was an amazing opportunity to be part of, very humbling.
Speaker 6: I've been there since late the night before after visiting
Speaker 6: border crossings in California and Arizona, and Jeff, one of
Speaker 6: the co owners a hotel, can you let me pull
Speaker 6: up my truck in some desert behind his house.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: I'm a person who enjoys sleeping outside, and I do
Speaker 6: it as often as I can. I try and camp
Speaker 6: police once a month. But that night I was cold,
Speaker 6: even underneath my down blanket, and I couldn't help but
Speaker 6: think of how desperate it must have been to spend
Speaker 6: nearly a week out there with nothing but in my
Speaker 6: last base blanket and some thorny bushes to keep you warm.
Speaker 6: It's certainly not the welcome that one would expect from
Speaker 6: the richest nation on earth, which had three years to repair.
Speaker 6: For the day, Title forty two ended to get a
Speaker 6: bit of background out of town. I spoke to Natalie.
Speaker 3: So the previous owner bought it at an auction, and
Speaker 3: I don't think that the previous owner didn't realize how
Speaker 3: much she was getting, and he kind of just like
Speaker 3: neglected a bunch of it, you know. And then he
Speaker 3: was older, and so he finally sold off the hotel.
Speaker 3: He thought he was just buying the hotel, but he
Speaker 3: buying all the land as well. So they when they
Speaker 3: bought the hotel, they acquired all the land and they're
Speaker 3: actually putting money into it and fixing everything up, which
Speaker 3: is really wonderful.
Speaker 6: The hotel in Lake and hot Spring really are wonderful.
Speaker 6: But the scene that had played out there on the
Speaker 6: eleventh of May, with anything but within a short period
Speaker 6: of time, more than a thousand people of all ages
Speaker 6: nationalities will be held in the open desert and left
Speaker 6: defend Lardi for themselves. I let Natalie describe the space
Speaker 6: there in.
Speaker 3: There's lots of cactuses everywhere, so there's environmental like a
Speaker 3: watch out where you're.
Speaker 5: Walking that it's hot. It's hot in the day and
Speaker 5: really cold at nights. It's the high desert.
Speaker 3: There can be gusts of wind that can just take over,
Speaker 3: get dust in your eyes, your hair, everything is just
Speaker 3: you're just filthy.
Speaker 5: And don't lack of food.
Speaker 3: I mean there's no resources. You're in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 6: I talked to a lot of the volunteers, many of
Speaker 6: whom have been in the desert for me at week.
Speaker 6: It'd first been made aware of the impending humanitarian crisis
Speaker 6: late on Thursday night, but one of the people working
Speaker 6: on the renovation of the Hot Springs Hotel got a
Speaker 6: call about it. Within a few hours, the hotel zonners
Speaker 6: and all this stuff running what became very nearly the
Speaker 6: only source of food, shelter, and water for more than
Speaker 6: a thousand people trapped and held in the desert by CBP.
Speaker 6: I spoke to Sam, another volunteer, to get sensor response.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: Sam is a kind of guy who just looks like
Speaker 6: he's a home in the desert. His wie brim hat, boots,
Speaker 6: and long cleaved shirt and pants told me he spent
Speaker 6: plenty of days under the baking sun out here, and
Speaker 6: his readiness with an isoproble alcohol spray disinfect people's boots
Speaker 6: after walking in an area that was likely covered in
Speaker 6: human shit told me he'd been around one or two
Speaker 6: situations like this in the past.
Speaker 4: I spent a great deal of my life as his
Speaker 4: second career, working for in developmental relief logistics in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 4: mainly working with large ege organizations, for example World Food Program,
Speaker 4: Doctors without Borders show units many many differ from their
Speaker 4: place things.
Speaker 6: In the context of that kind of experience, it's easy
Speaker 6: to understand why people come to the United States, But
Speaker 6: I asked Sam to put the situation here into perspective
Speaker 6: for me. It's understandable that folks came to the US,
Speaker 6: but why to a tiny desert town of five hundred people.
Speaker 4: These people were radically unprepared for what they were going
Speaker 4: to go through because they were sold to bill of
Speaker 4: goods by coyotes on the other side about what was
Speaker 4: going to happen to them, you understand so they had
Speaker 4: really no idea what they were getting into at all,
Speaker 4: and so there was not anything in the way of
Speaker 4: life threatening situations for any of those people in any
Speaker 4: meaningful way, a great deal of discomfort. It could have
Speaker 4: turned very badly if these people here had not stepped up,
Speaker 4: because the border patrol was completely overwhelmed, and so there
Speaker 4: was never that bad of a situation here compared to
Speaker 4: what I have seen in other places in the past.
Speaker 6: A sound pointed out the migrants were now gone, but
Speaker 6: we were still surrounded by times of supplies. But at
Speaker 6: the time there was no way of knowing the scope
Speaker 6: or scale of the need. People reacted as best they could.
Speaker 4: Actually it was overkilled, but you had no way of
Speaker 4: knowing right at the time. There's just no way to know.
Speaker 4: How do you know ahead of time? You always ask
Speaker 4: for as much as you can get, because why would
Speaker 4: you not. I mean, you never know. You don't know
Speaker 4: how many of them with babies that are on the
Speaker 4: other side of the wall right now might be zero,
Speaker 4: might be five hundred. You have no idea, you.
Speaker 6: Know, before anyone knew how if this was going to end,
Speaker 6: or really what even was going on, dozens of people
Speaker 6: across the county decided to help. One of them was Katie.
Speaker 6: Here she is describing some of the volunteers she worked alongside.
Speaker 8: There was a hard hodgepodge of people and as volunteers
Speaker 8: and leading it were some of the owners of a
Speaker 8: hotel out there, and that was.
Speaker 2: The main organizers.
Speaker 8: But who showed up were people from the town, people
Speaker 8: that I knew and recognized. There were some really devout,
Speaker 8: like they're twenty four hours a day, and then there
Speaker 8: was some coming in and out. But I met people
Speaker 8: from all over the county, and most of them answered
Speaker 8: the car through instagram of the hotel.
Speaker 6: All those volunteers called their friends, who called their friends,
Speaker 6: who gradually coordinated response. Natalie first became aware of this,
Speaker 6: as many volunteers did, through an Instagram post by Melissa,
Speaker 6: another of the three co owners of the Combo Hotel,
Speaker 6: on Thursday night, just as title forty two was ending.
Speaker 6: Natalie saw the post and decided to help. At first,
Speaker 6: she wanted to leave right then at one am as
Speaker 6: soon as she'd seen the post, but after consulting her family,
Speaker 6: she decided to make her own post, asking for people
Speaker 6: to bring supplies that were needed. Soon she was overwhelmed
Speaker 6: by the response.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean immediately, even at one in the morning,
Speaker 3: I was getting messages because I posted it. That's when
Speaker 3: I posted the story, I immediately got messages from front
Speaker 3: say I'll bring a blanket over. What's your address. Yeah,
Speaker 3: everyone just kind of rallied and started bringing supplies over,
Speaker 3: collecting money as well. Some friends started collecting money and
Speaker 3: then bought stuff and brought loads of food and things
Speaker 3: to my house.
Speaker 6: Her husband and ferried the supplies to Komba, where they
Speaker 6: were joined by donations from all over the county in
Speaker 6: the old petrol station. Like Natalie, Katie also saw a
Speaker 6: post and immediately felt compelled to help. She called a
Speaker 6: friend and some members of her family and seid about
Speaker 6: raising funds and buying supplies.
Speaker 8: So I met my friend at a cafe and in
Speaker 8: that in the meantime, and I don't know how much
Speaker 8: of this is really important. So in the meantime, I
Speaker 8: text my mother and my two sisters who live on
Speaker 8: the East coast, and just it was late at night
Speaker 8: for them, and I just said, I would love for
Speaker 8: you to send prayers, because.
Speaker 2: That's something that I believe in.
Speaker 8: I believe in prayer or intention and thought reality. And
Speaker 8: some of it was just because I felt so touched,
Speaker 8: like praying for the community that I love too. And
Speaker 8: the next thing, I know, like my venmo was blowing
Speaker 8: up and there was one thousand dollars in my venmo
Speaker 8: sent from my family members. And so by the time
Speaker 8: my friend arrived, we were like, let's go and we.
Speaker 2: Filled our car.
Speaker 8: With Amazingly, we found like organic, there's grocery outlet, right,
Speaker 8: so we found organic soup for you know, dollars something
Speaker 8: a can, and we spent a few hundred dollars. And
Speaker 8: the next morning we met early and we stopped in
Speaker 8: El Cone on the way and we spent all the
Speaker 8: rest on We went to three or four thrift stores
Speaker 8: and bought every blanket and hat and baby carrier. Because
Speaker 8: we have both focused on motherhood in our careers.
Speaker 6: I asked people I spoke to about a week later
Speaker 6: how the experience had impacted them.
Speaker 3: It was overwhelming, just the the way the community really
Speaker 3: came around.
Speaker 5: And supported.
Speaker 3: The people in Hukumba that were finding help. You know,
Speaker 3: after we finished cleaning up, when we were back at
Speaker 3: the gas station, the Amazon driver was delivering, like I
Speaker 3: think he delivered three hundred and fifty boxes, and so
Speaker 3: we had to open them up and sort them and
Speaker 3: it was there was so much food. I think that
Speaker 3: it was insane amount of food, and it was awesome.
Speaker 3: It was really cool just to see how people stabbed
Speaker 3: up and donated.
Speaker 6: I like some of the people I saw in Santa Cedro. Natalie, Katie,
Speaker 6: Sam and Marissa are not part of an NGO or
Speaker 6: a mutual aid collective. They're just people who wanted to help,
Speaker 6: and that describes most of the people in Hucumber, although
Speaker 6: some of them did have previous and regular volunteer experience
Speaker 6: with excellent groups like Border Kindness. I asked Katie to
Speaker 6: reflect on the mutual aid approach and the absence of massive,
Speaker 6: multimillion dollar organizations. Yeah, wasn't there, right.
Speaker 2: No, they weren't there.
Speaker 8: We were told that the Red Cross couldn't come unless
Speaker 8: Border Patrol called, and Border Patrol told us that they
Speaker 8: weren't allowed to call the Red Cross.
Speaker 5: That's a pretty standard.
Speaker 6: The one institution that did show support to people in
Speaker 6: Hucumber was one that you might not expect, given the
Speaker 6: support for this cruel immigration policy by almost all the
Speaker 6: Democrats in DC. But things are different when you can
Speaker 6: see the results of these policies with your own eyes.
Speaker 6: Perhaps that's why I didn't see a single elected official
Speaker 6: in my entire week at the border. But one person
Speaker 6: I missed, whoever won't mentioned, was a lady who worked
Speaker 6: for California Senator Steve Pidia. I won't name her as
Speaker 6: I don't have her permission, but hopefully one day soon
Speaker 6: we'll be able to interview her. I'll let Katie describe
Speaker 6: the role this woman played.
Speaker 8: There was someone from Steve Padilla's team, and that's the
Speaker 8: woman I rode with, and she was incredible. Her brother
Speaker 8: in law is the chef at the hotel, so I think,
Speaker 8: I mean, she might have came anyway, but she came
Speaker 8: faster and there was true connection, and she stood up
Speaker 8: to the border patrol and said, you know, said we're allowed.
Speaker 8: We're here on behalf of this senator. So I mean
Speaker 8: I saw some like had had like arguments about our
Speaker 8: right to be there, and most of us didn't. Weren't
Speaker 8: paying attention to that. We're paying attention to the people
Speaker 8: that we were, you know, around and no one that
Speaker 8: was out there what didn't believe that we should be
Speaker 8: out there, and that more help should be out there.
Speaker 6: Sadly, part of that familiarity with the system this woman
Speaker 6: brought to the team also meant a familiarity with the
Speaker 6: cruel and arbitrary nature of it. Katie says that they
Speaker 6: had to organize for that as well.
Speaker 8: So my friend and I we ended up writing in
Speaker 8: her truck, so in Steve Padia's Senator Padia's.
Speaker 2: Assistant truck.
Speaker 8: So we had the opportunity to ask some questions that
Speaker 8: probably everyone out there wanted to know, including the migrants,
Speaker 8: And it was like, what will happen in what's the
Speaker 8: process from here? And how do you know that these
Speaker 8: people are being tended to? And I literally heard her
Speaker 8: on the phone getting as many bodies on the ground
Speaker 8: to start going to those centers where they're being taken
Speaker 8: to make sure that they were but that we would
Speaker 8: follow them through the entire process as best possible, monitoring
Speaker 8: their well well cared for, that they were well cared for,
Speaker 8: as well cared for as possible.
Speaker 2: In a system and a process like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but she literally said they're going to be busted
Speaker 8: off and putt in cages, and that they would do
Speaker 8: their best to make sure that that no one was
Speaker 8: split up and that everyone was fed, showered, and they
Speaker 8: weren't allowed to bring anything with them, so a lot
Speaker 8: of the cleanup was all of the things that everyone
Speaker 8: donated that had to be left behind, including some of
Speaker 8: the stuffed animals.
Speaker 6: For all the volunteers I spoke to, the chance to
Speaker 6: be of service was empowering. Here's Natalie discussing that, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, like and so many times do you
Speaker 3: like feel overwhelmed with like so much suffering in this world,
Speaker 3: and like what can one person do?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: And so it did feel good that to actually see
Speaker 3: an immediate impact, like I'm doing this and this is
Speaker 3: a result, because sometimes you can just get discouraged, you know,
Speaker 3: like we're just one person. What can we really do
Speaker 3: and can we really make an impact? And just seeing
Speaker 3: that and being able to see directly how that one
Speaker 3: person can impact, you know, can rally. Like just see
Speaker 3: how my friends came together, you know when shopping, bought things,
Speaker 3: gathered money, collected money. You know, my really good friend Sam,
Speaker 3: she went to her local bar after she collected a
Speaker 3: bunch of money, went and dropped stuff supplies off at
Speaker 3: my house.
Speaker 5: She was just down at her local.
Speaker 3: Bar and just chatting with them and like, oh, what
Speaker 3: did you do today, And so she told them, oh,
Speaker 3: I collected money and I bought supplies, and then the
Speaker 3: people She ended up collecting about two hundred more dollars
Speaker 3: at the bar from people hearing her story. And so
Speaker 3: then the next day she went and bought more supplies
Speaker 3: and she actually ended up driving them out herself. She
Speaker 3: ended up doing like three trips just from her own
Speaker 3: talking to people and collecting. So just like the little
Speaker 3: impact that you know, everyone just kind of coming together
Speaker 3: and making a difference.
Speaker 6: Santa Sedro, a pretty diverse range of San Diegan's came
Speaker 6: to help. On the first night, I personally left at
Speaker 6: about one in the morning, after spending almost two hours
Speaker 6: trying to leave but needing to get charged phones back
Speaker 6: to their owners by loudly in Spanish and French, then
Speaker 6: English describing the backgrounds on the phone or the color
Speaker 6: of their case. It wasn't a great system, and by
Speaker 6: the weekend, Caber and others had seen that more help
Speaker 6: an organization was needed, and they decided to plan a response.
Speaker 6: Here's Caber describing how they prepared for.
Speaker 5: That are maybe I'll just grabs and you know, I
Speaker 5: was paying attention to people I knew who were doing
Speaker 5: and what supplies they were saying was needed. The particular
Speaker 5: store near me has like a wall of travel size
Speaker 5: like these giant times where you can basically just scoop
Speaker 5: out one hundred deodorant, hands and to paste and things
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 6: Capan met up with some other members of a local
Speaker 6: mutual aid group. I'll make sure to include donation links
Speaker 6: for all the groups I've mentioned at the end of
Speaker 6: this series, so please make sure to listen right through
Speaker 6: to the end.
Speaker 5: I met up with him and he had just received
Speaker 5: a bunch of donations through through mutually networks, so we
Speaker 5: we know even more of a travel size I got
Speaker 5: some truth Troo hygiene kits and deodorant and uh and
Speaker 5: and a bunch of friends and papers because because the
Speaker 5: kids that are between the walls don't really have actually
Speaker 5: do unfortunately, so so that those were those weren't really fast,
Speaker 5: and so we got a whole bunch of bags of
Speaker 5: all those kinds of supplies and then we done in
Speaker 5: the way from there.
Speaker 6: By the time they arrived, various organizations had organized areas
Speaker 6: along the wall for different kinds of aid to be
Speaker 6: passed through. Everything from clothes to food, to medical supplies
Speaker 6: and toilet paper was piled up given out.
Speaker 5: They renations and you know organized the toilet paper, food,
Speaker 5: everything like that, and people just come up to the
Speaker 5: wall and if their family needed something, they would just
Speaker 5: kind of going to it or ask us if we
Speaker 5: were able to you know, if there was a common
Speaker 5: language there. So yeah, we just kind of you know, hey,
Speaker 5: things as people needed them. I know that I helped
Speaker 5: give out some of the prints and tons of paper
Speaker 5: and those were those were a big hit. Tons of
Speaker 5: kids all came running over from the whole, all the
Speaker 5: parts of the camp when they heard that there was
Speaker 5: there were toys being given out, So that was it was.
Speaker 5: It was heartbreaking, but it was also you know, it
Speaker 5: made me smile to see them smile.
Speaker 6: And the smile because of the need to use c
Speaker 6: BP one and of course they need to stay in
Speaker 6: touch with families back home. There was a constant, an
Speaker 6: overwhelming demand for phone charging. News reporters took phones back
Speaker 6: to charge in their cars. Some people bought charge bricks
Speaker 6: and power strips, and mutual aid groups wrote names on
Speaker 6: the back of the phones using painter's tape and sharpie
Speaker 6: so they wouldn't get separated from their owners. By the
Speaker 6: second day it was a better system, but on the
Speaker 6: first day it was chaos. I let Kber, who spent
Speaker 6: a whole day charging phones, described the system that volunteers
Speaker 6: came up with to mitigate that chaos a little bit.
Speaker 5: And obviously they couldn't charge their phones if they're just
Speaker 5: in this kind of desert gap between between these walls
Speaker 5: that doesn't have any kind of minutes or anything. So
Speaker 5: we had a system where they would passed the phone
Speaker 5: through and we had we went, we went put a
Speaker 5: piece of tape on it with their name and give
Speaker 5: them a piece of tape with their name the same name,
Speaker 5: and then they would give us that if they came
Speaker 5: back to give us a tape back, and we would
Speaker 5: match their names and phone and and that was It
Speaker 5: worked well enough. I mean, it was still extraordinarily chaotic process.
Speaker 5: I mean we had we always had at least one
Speaker 5: hundred phones on our side of the wallet any given time,
Speaker 5: and and some people had you know, some people like
Speaker 5: chargers to people didn't. Some people had Android or Samsung
Speaker 5: or all the iPhones, and some people had well adapts,
Speaker 5: and some people didn't have the wallet estae adapters. So
Speaker 5: we kind of had to every phone that came through
Speaker 5: was we had to find a way to get it,
Speaker 5: you know, basically chained into the set of generators that
Speaker 5: we had, which was do we have a power strips
Speaker 5: and we have to write cables and and and we
Speaker 5: have space on those cables and and I think it
Speaker 5: was it was a bit of a puzzle the whole time.
Speaker 5: The only part of it that really overwhelmed me was
Speaker 5: we did overload. Someone brought a bunch of uh USBC
Speaker 5: power strips and we blew out one of them, and
Speaker 5: so there was now phones attacked, sure that they had
Speaker 5: to find new spaces for and I as I was
Speaker 5: just frustrated by the situation. And in addition of affair
Speaker 5: that charging, I think whatever happened to.
Speaker 6: It, it was chaos, but it was a good nature chaos.
Speaker 6: Over several days that migrants were attained in the open
Speaker 6: with no shelter and inadequate sanitation, just about two miles
Speaker 6: from the discount mall where you can buy cheap Ralpherend's
Speaker 6: shirts if that's your jam, people showed up in ever
Speaker 6: increasing numbers. The American Friends Service Committee helped organize volunteers
Speaker 6: into groups to distribute food, package up wet white snacks, medicines,
Speaker 6: give out tarps, and do just about anything else that
Speaker 6: they could or anything else that they could fit into
Speaker 6: ziploc bags that could be passed through gaps in the wall.
Speaker 5: At least.
Speaker 6: People who had been immigrants themselves or who were the
Speaker 6: children of immigrants were notably numerous and long the volunteers.
Speaker 6: I spoke to one of them.
Speaker 9: My name is Lon Chai.
Speaker 10: I'm part of Asian Soliday Collective grass With organization here
Speaker 10: in San Diego.
Speaker 9: I've been I've been coming over here since yesterday.
Speaker 10: I came here around five six yesterday, and then I
Speaker 10: came back through here this morning and been here since.
Speaker 10: I got home at twelve last night and woke up,
Speaker 10: dropped my kid off, and came right back with more supplies.
Speaker 10: I've been reaching out to family, friends and community to
Speaker 10: help donate supplies and things.
Speaker 9: Like that, food, whatever, whatever they may have.
Speaker 10: And I've pretty much been driving around city and collecting
Speaker 10: from folks that can't make it so I could bring
Speaker 10: it down here myself.
Speaker 9: So that's what I've been doing.
Speaker 6: Lunchai explained to me why it was so important to
Speaker 6: show up my community.
Speaker 10: I'm pretty sure they they they're sympathetic to this because
Speaker 10: I'm coming from I'm a first generation cambody in American
Speaker 10: here in the US, and when my parents and my
Speaker 10: family fled their country, they went through this as well.
Speaker 10: So somebody somewhere came and provided to support, provided to
Speaker 10: aid the donations for them to to be able to
Speaker 10: to make it to America to crossover, and and able
Speaker 10: to to to provide out here for for me growing
Speaker 10: up out here. You know.
Speaker 9: So it's just I just sympathize with it, with the
Speaker 9: whole thing. I mean, I mean.
Speaker 10: Everybody should should should feel the same way, because somewhere
Speaker 10: down the line, our families went through similar situations. If
Speaker 10: you're not an indigenous then then then your family somewhere
Speaker 10: down down the history went through the same thing.
Speaker 9: So you know that everybody should have a heart for
Speaker 9: this and be able.
Speaker 10: To come down here and and and donate or donate
Speaker 10: their time or supplies whatever the case may be, you know,
Speaker 10: come out in help.
Speaker 6: He also explained why he feels it's important to encourage
Speaker 6: empathy for refugees.
Speaker 9: Well, it's it's you have to you have to you
Speaker 9: have to be keep your mind.
Speaker 10: There's there's this families out here, there's this young children,
Speaker 10: there's babies. I mean, it takes a lot for for
Speaker 10: for a mother to pick up her infant child and
Speaker 10: to leave where she's coming from.
Speaker 9: So that just says a lot about where what's.
Speaker 10: Going on, where she's for her to trek and to
Speaker 10: go through this just to sit out here and the
Speaker 10: cold and stuff, because if she would rather endure her
Speaker 10: endure this and take the risk and the chances that
Speaker 10: means where she's coming from is not as you know,
Speaker 10: if she's wanted to take that risk.
Speaker 6: Later that night, I saw an Afghan family come to
Speaker 6: help the other Afghan families. Their kids talk to other
Speaker 6: Afghan kids separated by the border war. They passed crayons
Speaker 6: through the wall and coloring books, and the little daughter
Speaker 6: asked her dad if she could give her watch to
Speaker 6: the Afghan girl being held in the camp. Her dad said,
Speaker 6: of course, I don't record or photograph people's children, certainly
Speaker 6: not without asking, And I wasn't about to interrupt them,
Speaker 6: but it was a very sweet moment. The father of
Speaker 6: the family had worked in the Army Corps of Engineers.
Speaker 6: He'd been to the border before to build this section
Speaker 6: of the war. I didn't really need to ask him
Speaker 6: how it felt to see folks stuck behind it, but
Speaker 6: it said a lot that he and his family had
Speaker 6: taken the time to drive down, buy bags and supplies
Speaker 6: and then come face to face with the people who
Speaker 6: needed them and hand them out. Like dozens of other folks,
Speaker 6: they tried to pass whatever they could through little gaps
Speaker 6: in the war to make someone's day a little bit brighter.
Speaker 6: Another volunteer who we heard from yesterday came from a
Speaker 6: local group called Pana. Hermira, had been at the wall
Speaker 6: since five in the morning and it was getting on
Speaker 6: for five pm when we spoke. I normally ask people
Speaker 6: what they ate for breakfast, just to tune in the
Speaker 6: volume levels on the recorder a bit, but I'm going
Speaker 6: to include it this time, just so you can see
Speaker 6: how long her day had been and how hard she'd
Speaker 6: been working.
Speaker 2: Okay, do you know what do you want me to say?
Speaker 2: So that good?
Speaker 5: I mean, we have a breakfast again.
Speaker 1: I don't remember anymore French shast FRESD shosts, but my
Speaker 1: name is Harmaira Yusafi and I'm with a partnership for
Speaker 1: the Advancement of New Americans PANA, or an organization in
Speaker 1: San Diego that fights for the full incusion of refugees
Speaker 1: and those who come from refugee producing countries.
Speaker 6: We spoke about the emergency that had kept her hair
Speaker 6: all day.
Speaker 1: So in terms of this morning, I mean I was
Speaker 1: I was very concerned because there was an asylum seeker
Speaker 1: who had an emergency and was rushed out of this place.
Speaker 1: Where now, like for example, where we are at right now,
Speaker 1: is people who are being detained and the most inhumane
Speaker 1: way possible. This is going against TBP's own protocols and
Speaker 1: policies as to how they're being detained with No they're
Speaker 1: not giving them food, they're not giving them bathrooms, they're
Speaker 1: not giving them basic basic things that they need to survive.
Speaker 1: And so that's why the community is out here today
Speaker 1: to do that.
Speaker 6: Sadly, not everyone who showed up at the makeshift detention
Speaker 6: facility were showing up in solidarity. Local anti migrant activists
Speaker 6: and blogger Roger Ogden showed up.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: Ogden might be familiar to some listeners due to his
Speaker 6: attempts to host he called a Patriot picnic and his
Speaker 6: advocacy for the removal of the historic murals in on
Speaker 6: A Park often organized gatherings in the park in twenty
Speaker 6: seventeen and twenty eighteen, and they resulted in a huge
Speaker 6: and overwhelming community response to defend the park, and this
Speaker 6: time Olden decided to keep to himself, but Natalie ran
Speaker 6: into some people who weren't quite as shy about their opinions.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of the people in the Hook community.
Speaker 5: Are you know, lower income.
Speaker 3: You know, they are struggling in their own struggle on
Speaker 3: their and so I know, you know, maybe I don't
Speaker 3: know it like for those people, I.
Speaker 5: Don't know, like, yeah, it's hard. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean towards the end, like when I was walking
Speaker 3: to my car, this man and this man in a
Speaker 3: car like pulled up and he's like, excuse me, what's
Speaker 3: going on over there? And I was like, Oh, we're
Speaker 3: gathering you know, supplies for the asylum seekers.
Speaker 5: And then I you know, like, if.
Speaker 3: You're from here, you kind of if you're in Hookumba,
Speaker 3: you kind of already knew what was going on, and
Speaker 3: so him asking me that, I was kind of like,
Speaker 3: m and then he just started laying into I've had
Speaker 3: illegals you know, have broken into my house a few times.
Speaker 3: Why are you supporting illegals? And I'm like, we're trying to,
Speaker 3: let like make sure that people don't die, and he
Speaker 3: just kept going off on me, and so he, you know,
Speaker 3: his the whole all the talking points that people have
Speaker 3: about not allowing people to seek asylum here, and so.
Speaker 6: I just walked away. Maurica didn't run into the same
Speaker 6: kind of vocal opposition, but she said in her conversations
Speaker 6: and attempts to process everything she'd seen, she ran into
Speaker 6: some of the sort of need jate responses. So people
Speaker 6: can only really make about immigration when they haven't looked
Speaker 6: the cruelty that they're advocating for in the face.
Speaker 7: It took me a little while to kind of work
Speaker 7: through just how I felt about it on an emotional,
Speaker 7: maybe a spiritual level.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: I spoke with family and friends about it, about my experience,
Speaker 7: and and it's it's difficult to I found it difficult
Speaker 7: to explain my experience because I don't know that somebody
Speaker 7: can really truly understand that unless they've actually been out
Speaker 7: there and done it themselves, because the arguments or or
Speaker 7: they're kind of.
Speaker 2: Debate, so to speak.
Speaker 7: What they would come back at me with when I
Speaker 7: was sharing that is, but we don't have enough food
Speaker 7: or housing to be able to support this that many
Speaker 7: people coming in, And I'm like, but we just had
Speaker 7: so many people and so much money put out there
Speaker 7: to help in a very short amount of time. Look
Speaker 7: how many donations were donated, how much money was contributed
Speaker 7: in a short amount of time from not that many people.
Speaker 7: I'm like, obviously we do have the money. Obviously we
Speaker 7: do have the food. So where's the where's the breakdown? Like,
Speaker 7: is it our system that just doesn't allow for that happened?
Speaker 7: I don't know, And that that's where like I don't
Speaker 7: I don't understand it enough.
Speaker 2: But I feel like.
Speaker 7: It just made me realize that I don't know that
Speaker 7: anybody that I spoke to afterward really understands it enough,
Speaker 7: either because their arguments or their defense and what they
Speaker 7: tried to share on the opposite side of me going
Speaker 7: out there and supporting just felt like it was just
Speaker 7: something to say, you know, and like what they what
Speaker 7: they hear from the general media out there, and they
Speaker 7: also don't really they can't quite grasp it, so they're
Speaker 7: just kind of throwing something out there, I guess is
Speaker 7: what it felt like.
Speaker 6: Paper also ran into some less and charitable San Diegans,
Speaker 6: this time down in Santasiedra.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I guess My first is why they might
Speaker 5: have or how they might have found.
Speaker 11: Us there, which is there's a a local news organization
Speaker 11: San Diego called PSI, which is kind of a I
Speaker 11: would describe as a local.
Speaker 5: Equivalent of something like one American News, which is really
Speaker 5: unfortunate because we already have more American news here. But
Speaker 5: they are are pretty well known for kind of a
Speaker 5: lot of like misinformation, kind of scare mongering about and
Speaker 5: has people immigrants, vaccines and and all that sort of
Speaker 5: sort of thing, but with kind of a local news
Speaker 5: sort of aesthetic to it. And they were, as far
Speaker 5: as I could tell, they were really the only identifiable
Speaker 5: media that were there throughout the day. I read articles
Speaker 5: eventually made me realize there were other reporters there, but
Speaker 5: they were identifying themselves the way that Hasy was. But
Speaker 5: they signed this one cameraman just shooting b role, I guess,
Speaker 5: and he was walking to all the different parts of
Speaker 5: the wall and like all the different sort of stations
Speaker 5: for aid and like trying to really trying to get
Speaker 5: as many faces as possible. You could kind of tell
Speaker 5: that that's like what he was doing. Everyone who I
Speaker 5: was around, I was I was kind of you know,
Speaker 5: oriented mostly with kind of the like sort of like
Speaker 5: analysts between people. And you know, when they saw the
Speaker 5: play with that truck, they're like, okay, point, it's their masking,
Speaker 5: you know, and killing in ninety five with me. So
Speaker 5: I'm where that and I am you know, slightly identifying
Speaker 5: logo on my struct shirt which I take over so
Speaker 5: that you know, that image wouldn't show up.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: KUSI have drifted further and further right since twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: Along with their relatively miniscule viewership. These days, they engage
Speaker 6: in fake news culture war stuff, like repeating the recent
Speaker 6: false accusations at Target was making tuckable swimming costumes for kids,
Speaker 6: or labeling everyone in the asylum process illegal immigrants. It's
Speaker 6: sadly pretty standard for right news organizations now. Okay, but
Speaker 6: thinks that some of the people who saw footage on
Speaker 6: k USI, or perhaps found the location posted on Obten's blog,
Speaker 6: came down to the border like.
Speaker 5: Several hours later that stuff when we started to see people,
Speaker 5: you know, kind of go buy and and and we
Speaker 5: could tell that they weren't volunteers because like peop when
Speaker 5: people like playing people who weren't even necessarily vounteer which
Speaker 5: are buy and so like, hey, I just heard watching,
Speaker 5: and I brought a pace of water, and they bring
Speaker 5: up the water and then they drive away. But the
Speaker 5: people who are doing who are like cute where I think,
Speaker 5: you know, kind of do some kind of intimidation where
Speaker 5: you know, they wouldn't approach directly. They would just kind
Speaker 5: of get out of their exceptionally large entivies and and
Speaker 5: just kind of just kind of watch, and they would
Speaker 5: kind of, you know, get a little bit closer at
Speaker 5: a time, and then you know, a little bit closer
Speaker 5: and kind of whisper to each other and you know,
Speaker 5: point at things, and you know, it's just kind of
Speaker 5: they were just watching, and you know, they got close
Speaker 5: enough that I could read their shirts, and and the
Speaker 5: shirts had a slogan that's associated with a Christian nationalism slogan.
Speaker 5: So as this whole family is kind of kind of
Speaker 5: sad that the kids were wearing the shirts too, and
Speaker 5: and so I kind of, yeah, I figured out that
Speaker 5: that's what was going on, and I never talked to them.
Speaker 5: I didn't approach them, but I stood when I was,
Speaker 5: you know, seeing they closer clos or I kind of
Speaker 5: positioned myself in between the rest of the volunteers and in
Speaker 5: this group and and just kind of, you know, didn't
Speaker 5: really start at them, just kind of looked at them
Speaker 5: and and just made it clear with my body language
Speaker 5: that I, like, I knew, you know, they were doing
Speaker 5: like they weren't, you know, they weren't doing any kind
Speaker 5: of secret agent thing or whatever, like they were being
Speaker 5: really really obvious, and and I just you know, stood
Speaker 5: and positioned myself in a way that indicated that you know,
Speaker 5: I know what you're doing, and you're not going to
Speaker 5: get close, You're not going to interfere with you know,
Speaker 5: what we're doing, and you're not going to contact any
Speaker 5: wine drill anyone or like what everyone did. And eventually
Speaker 5: one of the people who is either volunteer or work for,
Speaker 5: like one of the engineers, can definitely tell there was
Speaker 5: something going on. So she went over and had a
Speaker 5: conversation with them that I could hear, and eventually they
Speaker 5: decided to move. And I think she was just kind
Speaker 5: of trying to be diplomatic but just sort of like
Speaker 5: asked them if they wanted to help, and if they
Speaker 5: don't want to help, and you know, yeah, go be
Speaker 5: somewhere else, I suppose, And and it was I mean,
Speaker 5: the sort of one amusing part of people like that
Speaker 5: was that they apparently complained to this person about me
Speaker 5: because they said that I had been watching them and
Speaker 5: I was I was racially profiling them because they were white.
Speaker 5: And I realized now that this is an around this interview,
Speaker 5: but just for the listeners, I am very very white myself.
Speaker 6: I think it's important when we discuss volunteering to honor
Speaker 6: how hard this kind of experience could be on people. Obviously,
Speaker 6: the trauma associated with seeing people brutalized by the state
Speaker 6: and capital. It's not the same as being brutalized by
Speaker 6: state and capital yourself. But that doesn't mean it's easy.
Speaker 6: I asked an athlete to reflect a little on children's
Speaker 6: toys we found in the shelter when we were cleaning
Speaker 6: up the camp.
Speaker 3: Like as a mom, like I have my own children,
Speaker 3: and it just really it was emotional.
Speaker 5: It's like it's just.
Speaker 3: Like I'm like, who's who what child was playing with this?
Speaker 3: You know here in this space, and you know that
Speaker 3: no child should be ever in, you know, an encampment
Speaker 3: like that or it just no one should be living outside,
Speaker 3: no one should be doing that. But also it's like
Speaker 3: kind of like the humanity in a way like that.
Speaker 3: You know, even a child's going to play wherever child's
Speaker 3: going to play, and like that little toy of little
Speaker 3: hopefully it brought that kid some joy in that moment,
Speaker 3: you know, if it was there a little piece of
Speaker 3: home or someone gave it to him or what, you know,
Speaker 3: it was Yeah, the reality, it was like it was
Speaker 3: like a person, you know, like a little artifact of
Speaker 3: someone who was actually there. You know, like it was
Speaker 3: a little more tangible than you know, a sock. You know,
Speaker 3: that's not that's not I'm not think you know who
Speaker 3: wore that sock, but think of who who was playing
Speaker 3: with that dooy?
Speaker 5: You know? Was it a little boy a little girl?
Speaker 5: At hold?
Speaker 3: Were they did they bring up home? Are they missing it?
Speaker 3: When they When I saw they have that, she needed
Speaker 3: people to clean up. It was like Okay, I took
Speaker 3: a day off of work and went out there and
Speaker 3: just felt overwhelming almost. I mean, just one day of
Speaker 3: me working out there was really emotional. I can't imagine
Speaker 3: how you know, Melissa and all the people that were
Speaker 3: on the ground just dealing with it, and I know
Speaker 3: they're just struggling a little bit and just processing it
Speaker 3: all has been really hard, you know, really hard. It's
Speaker 3: just just just how how privileged we are. You know,
Speaker 3: like no one leaves their country because they want to.
Speaker 3: They leave because they have to, but they feel like
Speaker 3: they have to. And you know, it's I mean, it's
Speaker 3: respecting and honoring and understanding the privilege that you're in
Speaker 3: and not taking for granted because it's very.
Speaker 6: Easy to both. Katie Marisa said they don't really identify
Speaker 6: as political, and that they wanted to be there as people.
Speaker 6: Sometimes often politics can become a complicated game of numbers
Speaker 6: and statistics, but it's important to remember that what this
Speaker 6: is really about is organizing in such a way that
Speaker 6: we can take care of one another, and that the
Speaker 6: most important politics of war is the politics of feeding
Speaker 6: hungry people and maybe bringing a sad child of stuffed animal.
Speaker 6: Here's Katie talking about the community response.
Speaker 8: I think I'm a really compassionate person and I'm not
Speaker 8: very political in the sense that, like, I don't.
Speaker 2: Really participate.
Speaker 8: My life, in my community's life is solution oriented. So
Speaker 8: I saw like that on a large scale, the like
Speaker 8: when people come together, we create solutions when and you
Speaker 8: don't wait for someone like the government to show up
Speaker 8: and fix it, because then people will die. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 8: I mean that's the reality is if that community didn't activate,
Speaker 8: there would have been a lot of dead people in
Speaker 8: the desert.
Speaker 6: Katie shared with me that she's been having a difficult time,
Speaker 6: feeling guilty for not having the language skills to do
Speaker 6: more and questing her own worthiness to be there helping.
Speaker 6: But in the end, she said she felt that what
Speaker 6: she'd done was right and important. I'll leave you with
Speaker 6: her thoughts and tomorrow I'll be back to talk about
Speaker 6: the people who put everyone in this situation in the
Speaker 6: first place, the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 8: I think an important thing is like so many times
Speaker 8: we hear about things and we say, isn't that awful,
Speaker 8: and we kind of shut down because we don't feel
Speaker 8: empowered or we don't know how to help.
Speaker 2: And literally a smile.
Speaker 8: Makes a difference, a feeling of like I see you
Speaker 8: and you belong on this planet makes a difference. And
Speaker 8: you know, little kids packing up canned goods and fruit
Speaker 8: snacks for other little kids. They didn't see those kids,
Speaker 8: but when the adult said they're going to be so
Speaker 8: happy to get that package, they felt like they made
Speaker 8: a difference.
Speaker 2: And those little girls are.
Speaker 8: Gonna grow up and not be afraid to step up
Speaker 8: and make a difference. I think a lot of people
Speaker 8: think like they can't do enough, so they don't do anything.
Speaker 8: And if we all just do a little bit or
Speaker 8: what you can, then I think we would see a
Speaker 8: very large impact. Hakumba is a town of five hundred
Speaker 8: and they just fed thousands, house thousands, closed thousands, hugged
Speaker 8: and welcomed thousands of human beings. And those people in
Speaker 8: that town don't have much excess and they made a difference.
Speaker 2: And I was proud to be a part of.
Speaker 8: That community in a way that I'm on the fringe
Speaker 8: of it, and it made me want to be even
Speaker 8: more a part of it. My feelings an intuition about
Speaker 8: that town, we're confirmed by watching the simplest action make
Speaker 8: an incredible impact on real lives and real people, and
Speaker 8: that this isn't demographics. It's real bodies that have beating
Speaker 8: hearts and breathe and we all share the same air,
Speaker 8: in the same water.
Speaker 2: And we're all connected.
Speaker 8: And when you make one little drip in the bucket,
Speaker 8: it actually does make a difference. And I think that
Speaker 8: stops us sometimes when we think what we have isn't
Speaker 8: enough to give, but when someone has nothing, what you
Speaker 8: have is more than what they can imagine.
Speaker 6: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 4: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 4: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 7: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 7: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.