1
00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:05,680
Speaker 1: M hm. You know, introducing a podcast is a little

2
00:00:05,680 --> 00:00:11,440
Speaker 1: bit like Megan Love. It's not it's not at all.

3
00:00:11,760 --> 00:00:15,200
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I'm Robert Evans failing to introduce my

4
00:00:15,280 --> 00:00:19,640
Speaker 1: podcast yet again. It's behind the bastards, it's about terrible people.

5
00:00:20,280 --> 00:00:22,959
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry everyone. I was. I was trying to

6
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:26,360
Speaker 1: open with my folksy wisdom, but I have none, and

7
00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:29,760
Speaker 1: I've got now I've botched the start of this episode.

8
00:00:30,920 --> 00:00:33,800
Speaker 1: Here to attempt to take away some of my shame

9
00:00:34,360 --> 00:00:37,600
Speaker 1: is Caitlin Duranti. Caitlin, how are you doing today? Oh?

10
00:00:37,800 --> 00:00:41,519
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just barely keeping it together at any moment.

11
00:00:42,880 --> 00:00:48,680
Speaker 1: But otherwise, think of any similarities between introducing a podcast

12
00:00:48,680 --> 00:00:54,680
Speaker 1: and making love? Well, let me think about that. Um oh,

13
00:00:54,760 --> 00:00:58,120
Speaker 1: I have one at home? One, I have one, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

14
00:00:58,440 --> 00:01:02,240
Speaker 1: The audio levels can go up until the audio levels

15
00:01:02,280 --> 00:01:04,240
Speaker 1: can go up and down. That's a good similarity, So

16
00:01:04,640 --> 00:01:08,640
Speaker 1: very much. Sure. Maybe an entire episode, not just introducing

17
00:01:08,640 --> 00:01:11,080
Speaker 1: an episode, but in an entire episode, I think you

18
00:01:11,120 --> 00:01:13,920
Speaker 1: could draw some parallels between because you've got you know,

19
00:01:14,040 --> 00:01:17,040
Speaker 1: there's like the intro is sort of like the four play,

20
00:01:17,120 --> 00:01:20,640
Speaker 1: and then you've got you know, usually a big climactic

21
00:01:20,720 --> 00:01:23,880
Speaker 1: finish to the episode. Well, there you go, everybody, if

22
00:01:23,920 --> 00:01:26,240
Speaker 1: you were we figured it out. You wanted to compare

23
00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:29,160
Speaker 1: a random episode of my podcast about bad people to

24
00:01:29,280 --> 00:01:35,800
Speaker 1: making love, Caitlyn Durranty has kind of made it easier maybe, Caitlin,

25
00:01:35,840 --> 00:01:38,880
Speaker 1: how are you doing today? All right? Um, you know,

26
00:01:39,200 --> 00:01:45,520
Speaker 1: I'm just you're in your closet recording and you're in

27
00:01:45,600 --> 00:01:49,040
Speaker 1: your closet. I'm looking at your luggage right now. Nice luggage.

28
00:01:49,080 --> 00:01:51,680
Speaker 1: I see you go with the hard shell. Thank you. Yes,

29
00:01:53,480 --> 00:01:55,760
Speaker 1: it is a really nice closet. If I remember from

30
00:01:55,760 --> 00:01:57,640
Speaker 1: the photos you sent me like it's it's a very

31
00:01:57,640 --> 00:02:00,600
Speaker 1: good sized closet. It truly is. Thank you so much.

32
00:02:01,120 --> 00:02:02,920
Speaker 1: You want to hear a little story about me, Caitlin

33
00:02:03,480 --> 00:02:07,760
Speaker 1: some an narcissist? Okay, So you know I travel a

34
00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:11,359
Speaker 1: lot to Caitlin, and I have refused my entire traveling

35
00:02:11,400 --> 00:02:15,000
Speaker 1: life to have like a hard shelled rolly suitcase, even

36
00:02:15,040 --> 00:02:17,160
Speaker 1: though they're much more comfortable to use at the airport

37
00:02:17,160 --> 00:02:20,520
Speaker 1: than a backpack, because as a young man with an

38
00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:25,640
Speaker 1: indestructible spine, I was like, only stupid old people use

39
00:02:25,720 --> 00:02:28,160
Speaker 1: the rollie backpacks. I'm gonna be I'm gonna be a

40
00:02:28,160 --> 00:02:30,840
Speaker 1: young adventurer forever and I just get to wear a backpack,

41
00:02:31,280 --> 00:02:33,120
Speaker 1: and now I just hurt myself every time I go

42
00:02:33,200 --> 00:02:36,640
Speaker 1: to the airport out of pride. And that's why men

43
00:02:36,720 --> 00:02:41,680
Speaker 1: shouldn't be allowed to hold political office. I couldn't agree

44
00:02:41,680 --> 00:02:45,320
Speaker 1: with you more. Um, yeah, you mean you you carry

45
00:02:45,320 --> 00:02:48,119
Speaker 1: around one of those like big backpacking, big old, big

46
00:02:48,120 --> 00:02:52,400
Speaker 1: old backpacking backpack. Horrible, horrible. Sometimes they carry a Duffel

47
00:02:52,400 --> 00:02:58,400
Speaker 1: bag even worse. That's absurd. Yeah, it's terrible idea, but

48
00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:00,680
Speaker 1: you know it does tie in with the theme of

49
00:03:00,720 --> 00:03:03,040
Speaker 1: today's episode, because what do you do with What do

50
00:03:03,080 --> 00:03:06,440
Speaker 1: you do with backpacks and Rowley suitcases, Caitlin, I mean

51
00:03:06,520 --> 00:03:09,520
Speaker 1: you bring them with you to travel, You bring them

52
00:03:09,560 --> 00:03:15,160
Speaker 1: with you to cross borders. Yeah, and today we're talking

53
00:03:15,200 --> 00:03:22,440
Speaker 1: about the motherfucking me grat the border patrol. Oh boy. Yeah,

54
00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:27,000
Speaker 1: it's been a long journey to starting the episode this week,

55
00:03:27,080 --> 00:03:31,080
Speaker 1: but I think we got there nicely. Yeah. Sorry to

56
00:03:31,200 --> 00:03:33,480
Speaker 1: everyone who's been Um, you know, this has been a

57
00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:35,520
Speaker 1: little bit of a weird run of Behind the Bastards

58
00:03:35,560 --> 00:03:38,760
Speaker 1: the Uprising episodes. Uh, we're still going to be doing

59
00:03:38,800 --> 00:03:41,880
Speaker 1: the Dictators and grifters, you know, that are bread and butter.

60
00:03:42,360 --> 00:03:45,920
Speaker 1: But um, I keep getting obsessed with different law enforcement agencies,

61
00:03:45,960 --> 00:03:49,320
Speaker 1: particularly the ones you know, shooting at me. Uh. And

62
00:03:49,400 --> 00:03:52,280
Speaker 1: so I started just kind of reading a bunch about

63
00:03:52,720 --> 00:03:56,040
Speaker 1: customs and border patrol this last week or so, and

64
00:03:56,080 --> 00:03:59,400
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop, And so I wrote a lot about

65
00:03:59,440 --> 00:04:01,280
Speaker 1: them and how we're all going to talk about border

66
00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:04,160
Speaker 1: patrol because Caitlin, did you know the border patrol kind

67
00:04:04,160 --> 00:04:08,880
Speaker 1: of problematic. Wait a minute, what do you mean? Yeah,

68
00:04:09,040 --> 00:04:13,480
Speaker 1: not nice dudes, as it turns out, Um, and have

69
00:04:13,640 --> 00:04:16,320
Speaker 1: kind of been dicks for like a hundred something years,

70
00:04:16,720 --> 00:04:18,599
Speaker 1: or like a hundred years. They've been dicks for a

71
00:04:18,640 --> 00:04:22,559
Speaker 1: long time, very close to a hundred years. Six years,

72
00:04:22,960 --> 00:04:26,120
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, which you know, they still have time

73
00:04:26,160 --> 00:04:28,880
Speaker 1: to change. You know, a lot of people have their best,

74
00:04:29,320 --> 00:04:33,560
Speaker 1: their best, you know, their second act after age ninety six. Yeah.

75
00:04:33,600 --> 00:04:36,240
Speaker 1: I would just say that applies to a large number

76
00:04:36,400 --> 00:04:40,960
Speaker 1: of people. A lot of tortoises, at least a lot

77
00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:43,400
Speaker 1: of tortoises go on to do very cool things after

78
00:04:43,480 --> 00:04:46,760
Speaker 1: age Yeah. Trees as well, there's a lot of old

79
00:04:46,800 --> 00:04:52,320
Speaker 1: trees that are border patrol could be like a sequoia. Yeah,

80
00:04:52,839 --> 00:04:55,400
Speaker 1: but I don't know how likely. I think that is.

81
00:04:55,520 --> 00:04:57,800
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about We're gonna talk about Lamiger

82
00:04:57,880 --> 00:05:00,839
Speaker 1: today because they're terrible, and I don't think most people

83
00:05:00,880 --> 00:05:04,120
Speaker 1: know how terrible they are. And their terribility is important

84
00:05:04,200 --> 00:05:07,839
Speaker 1: because it is tighten with a lot of horrible things

85
00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:12,240
Speaker 1: about this country and the very concept of whiteness. So

86
00:05:13,240 --> 00:05:16,320
Speaker 1: how are you feeling about that, Caitlin? You know, I

87
00:05:16,360 --> 00:05:20,120
Speaker 1: don't feel good about it. I really don't. That's good

88
00:05:20,120 --> 00:05:22,839
Speaker 1: because my cunning plan has been to blame you personally

89
00:05:22,880 --> 00:05:24,920
Speaker 1: for all of the historical crimes of the U. S.

90
00:05:24,960 --> 00:05:32,640
Speaker 1: Border Patrol. Well, I did invent them. You you you

91
00:05:32,839 --> 00:05:37,640
Speaker 1: launched the Immigration Act of nineteen twenty four. That's Caitlin Durantis.

92
00:05:37,200 --> 00:05:40,880
Speaker 1: That's resume. Yeah. I didn't want that to be my legacy,

93
00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:43,960
Speaker 1: but here we are. Yeah. A lot of people don't

94
00:05:43,960 --> 00:05:46,160
Speaker 1: know this, but you used to be all of Congress

95
00:05:46,160 --> 00:05:50,479
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen twenties. Yeah. Yeah, I mean pretty

96
00:05:50,480 --> 00:05:53,360
Speaker 1: impressive when you think of yeah, no, it really is. Yeah,

97
00:05:53,440 --> 00:05:56,160
Speaker 1: Congress Durante, Yeah you were instead of Caitlin, you were

98
00:05:56,160 --> 00:05:59,359
Speaker 1: Congress Tournto. Just true. If we're gonna talk about the

99
00:05:59,360 --> 00:06:01,760
Speaker 1: border patrol, we've got to talk about the border. And

100
00:06:01,839 --> 00:06:05,000
Speaker 1: given that the territory we currently know as like Texas,

101
00:06:05,120 --> 00:06:08,440
Speaker 1: New Mexico, Arizona, and even Mexico is all land that

102
00:06:08,480 --> 00:06:10,840
Speaker 1: was stolen from indigenous people. This is not like a

103
00:06:10,839 --> 00:06:12,839
Speaker 1: case where there's a lot of good guys to choose from.

104
00:06:12,880 --> 00:06:16,360
Speaker 1: If you're talking about like conflicts over the US Mexican border,

105
00:06:16,640 --> 00:06:19,440
Speaker 1: you're talking about like a bunch of different states that

106
00:06:19,520 --> 00:06:22,960
Speaker 1: kind of sucked fighting each other for land that wasn't

107
00:06:22,960 --> 00:06:28,800
Speaker 1: their Like that that that's the whole that's the whole deal, right, Um. So,

108
00:06:28,960 --> 00:06:33,120
Speaker 1: the US Mexican War of eighteen forty eight is the

109
00:06:33,160 --> 00:06:37,120
Speaker 1: conflict that gained our nation most of the modern Southwest. UM.

110
00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:39,880
Speaker 1: It was a naked war of imperialist aggression against another

111
00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:43,560
Speaker 1: nation that brutally subjugated indigenous people's um. One can argue

112
00:06:43,600 --> 00:06:45,920
Speaker 1: that Mexico was like a broadly better country than the

113
00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:48,640
Speaker 1: US at this point since it didn't allow slavery, But

114
00:06:48,720 --> 00:06:55,600
Speaker 1: both countries not not great to anyone any like indigenous

115
00:06:55,600 --> 00:06:59,599
Speaker 1: peoples or whatever, just just just bad, bad, bad governments.

116
00:06:59,640 --> 00:07:02,119
Speaker 1: So the end of the West Mexican War, the United

117
00:07:02,160 --> 00:07:05,000
Speaker 1: States wound up occupying Mexico City, and that nation was

118
00:07:05,040 --> 00:07:07,960
Speaker 1: forced to seed fifty of its northern territory and the

119
00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:10,520
Speaker 1: resulting treaty, and I think a lot of Americans who

120
00:07:10,560 --> 00:07:13,560
Speaker 1: grew up kind of outside of the Southwest. I don't

121
00:07:13,560 --> 00:07:17,640
Speaker 1: really have a clear idea of how much land UM

122
00:07:17,760 --> 00:07:19,600
Speaker 1: the United States got as a result of the US

123
00:07:19,720 --> 00:07:23,320
Speaker 1: Mexican War, but we took a shipload of land from Mexico.

124
00:07:23,480 --> 00:07:26,560
Speaker 1: It's fucking crazy how much of this country used to

125
00:07:26,560 --> 00:07:29,880
Speaker 1: be Mexico, like up into Oklahoma. Yeah. I don't have

126
00:07:29,920 --> 00:07:32,720
Speaker 1: a good gauge on that because I grew up in

127
00:07:32,840 --> 00:07:37,800
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania and that just wasn't something that they bothered to

128
00:07:37,840 --> 00:07:40,880
Speaker 1: tell us in history class. Yeah, we went like most

129
00:07:40,920 --> 00:07:42,960
Speaker 1: of the Southwest was kind of, at one point or

130
00:07:42,960 --> 00:07:48,080
Speaker 1: another um part of Mexico. UM. And so, yeah, we

131
00:07:48,080 --> 00:07:51,480
Speaker 1: took about fifty of Mexico's northern territory, and a new

132
00:07:51,560 --> 00:07:54,520
Speaker 1: US Mexican border was redrawn along the Rio Grand from

133
00:07:54,600 --> 00:07:57,240
Speaker 1: um the Gulf to El Paso and then along more

134
00:07:57,320 --> 00:08:00,720
Speaker 1: or less an arbitrary line further west up the Pacific. Now,

135
00:08:00,760 --> 00:08:02,680
Speaker 1: this meant that a huge number of people who had

136
00:08:02,680 --> 00:08:05,360
Speaker 1: previously lived in Mexico and had been able to travel

137
00:08:05,440 --> 00:08:07,800
Speaker 1: freely around territory that was all part of one nation

138
00:08:08,200 --> 00:08:11,840
Speaker 1: now found themselves living in between two nations. Uh. This

139
00:08:11,880 --> 00:08:14,520
Speaker 1: included roughly a hundred and eighty thousand members of indigenous

140
00:08:14,520 --> 00:08:17,160
Speaker 1: tribes as well as about a hundred and fifty thousand Mexicans.

141
00:08:17,680 --> 00:08:20,760
Speaker 1: So these three hundred thousandish non white folks owned most

142
00:08:20,840 --> 00:08:24,240
Speaker 1: of the land, and like the territories in the Southwest

143
00:08:24,320 --> 00:08:27,720
Speaker 1: that you know became Texas and some of the surrounding states, um,

144
00:08:27,800 --> 00:08:30,360
Speaker 1: and the decades after the US Mexican War are kind

145
00:08:30,360 --> 00:08:32,839
Speaker 1: of best viewed as a gradual process of white people

146
00:08:33,240 --> 00:08:36,320
Speaker 1: taking this land from non white people, some of it

147
00:08:36,360 --> 00:08:40,440
Speaker 1: through purchase, some of it through like violent threats and intimidation, uh,

148
00:08:40,520 --> 00:08:42,600
Speaker 1: some of it as a results of the reservation system

149
00:08:42,679 --> 00:08:45,640
Speaker 1: kicking indigenous people off of their ancestral land, and some

150
00:08:45,720 --> 00:08:47,600
Speaker 1: of it through just like good old you know, good old,

151
00:08:48,200 --> 00:08:51,319
Speaker 1: good old fashioned genocide, Caitlin, just like that, just like

152
00:08:51,400 --> 00:08:54,400
Speaker 1: really getting your boots in it, you know. I mean,

153
00:08:54,440 --> 00:08:58,040
Speaker 1: those are the main principles that the US was founded on, right,

154
00:08:58,240 --> 00:09:03,920
Speaker 1: white people stealing end from non white people and genociding them.

155
00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:07,040
Speaker 1: You gosh darn right, Caitlin, your gosh darn right. And

156
00:09:07,120 --> 00:09:10,000
Speaker 1: that's why when I get up in the I'm just

157
00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:12,320
Speaker 1: thinking of like a Folger's coffee commercial, you know, one

158
00:09:12,320 --> 00:09:14,199
Speaker 1: of those old ones who was like a cowboy getting

159
00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:18,160
Speaker 1: up on the range sipping a Folger's coffee and then

160
00:09:18,240 --> 00:09:21,200
Speaker 1: just like stepping into a pile of bones and just

161
00:09:21,280 --> 00:09:24,640
Speaker 1: being like, ah, nothing like a nice morning walking barethrop

162
00:09:24,679 --> 00:09:26,720
Speaker 1: through a pile of bones, the thing that I do

163
00:09:27,480 --> 00:09:30,559
Speaker 1: every day as a cowboy. Yeah. Why wasn't that their

164
00:09:30,640 --> 00:09:44,760
Speaker 1: ad campaign for Folgers, Well, murder everybody coffee helps. Oh

165
00:09:44,880 --> 00:09:48,600
Speaker 1: I was drinking coffee and it went down the wrong hole, Caitlin. See,

166
00:09:48,600 --> 00:09:53,959
Speaker 1: coffee can't be stopped from attempting genocide. Even coffee wants

167
00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:58,240
Speaker 1: to murder. A coffee wants nothing but to murder. So,

168
00:09:58,280 --> 00:10:00,520
Speaker 1: as we discussed in our last episod Zoe of the

169
00:10:00,600 --> 00:10:02,720
Speaker 1: Behind the Police mini series that we just did, the

170
00:10:02,800 --> 00:10:06,080
Speaker 1: Texas Rangers was kind of the first border patrol type

171
00:10:06,080 --> 00:10:09,559
Speaker 1: force UH in you know, the southwest UH And they

172
00:10:09,559 --> 00:10:11,760
Speaker 1: began their history as a as a group like a

173
00:10:11,800 --> 00:10:15,560
Speaker 1: paramilitary organization to provide to protect white settlers in Texas.

174
00:10:15,800 --> 00:10:19,040
Speaker 1: They were formed by a local mayor named John Jackson Tomlinson,

175
00:10:19,280 --> 00:10:21,640
Speaker 1: who was part of the old three hundred White families

176
00:10:21,640 --> 00:10:24,640
Speaker 1: who first settled in Texas with Stephen F. Austin. Now,

177
00:10:25,080 --> 00:10:28,360
Speaker 1: it wasn't a popular decision for these three hundred families

178
00:10:28,400 --> 00:10:31,920
Speaker 1: to settle in Texas, and the Comanches, Tangkawa's, Apaches, and

179
00:10:32,000 --> 00:10:34,920
Speaker 1: Karankawas who already resided in the area got kind of

180
00:10:34,960 --> 00:10:38,400
Speaker 1: angry and started murdering them. So Tomlinson ordered the formation

181
00:10:38,400 --> 00:10:42,240
Speaker 1: of a roving defensive patrol. This patrol became the Texas Rangers,

182
00:10:42,240 --> 00:10:44,240
Speaker 1: but Tumlinson never got to see it formed because he

183
00:10:44,280 --> 00:10:48,040
Speaker 1: was almost immediately killed by karen Kawa and huako In

184
00:10:48,040 --> 00:10:51,360
Speaker 1: indigenous people before he got off the ground. Um, well,

185
00:10:51,400 --> 00:10:54,200
Speaker 1: it sounds like karma to me. Yeah, it sounds like

186
00:10:54,240 --> 00:10:57,160
Speaker 1: it's fine. Like a shame they didn't get more people.

187
00:10:57,600 --> 00:11:00,600
Speaker 1: So the Rangers were kind of this country first border

188
00:11:00,600 --> 00:11:03,600
Speaker 1: patrol force, and the primary method of action for them

189
00:11:03,679 --> 00:11:06,240
Speaker 1: was just again really just straight up genocide. In the

190
00:11:06,320 --> 00:11:08,480
Speaker 1: early days, they were like a paramilitary army. They acted

191
00:11:08,520 --> 00:11:10,960
Speaker 1: as scouts for actual militias. They would swoop in and

192
00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:13,720
Speaker 1: force Indigenous people out of their homes and under reservations,

193
00:11:14,000 --> 00:11:16,480
Speaker 1: but would also just burn their villages sometime and murder

194
00:11:16,520 --> 00:11:20,480
Speaker 1: their women and children. Because you know. Whatever do you

195
00:11:20,720 --> 00:11:23,240
Speaker 1: Sometimes you coming to the office and you want to

196
00:11:23,559 --> 00:11:27,320
Speaker 1: do things different. Um, I don't know. Yeah. They also

197
00:11:27,360 --> 00:11:30,599
Speaker 1: engaged in the murder and intimidation of Mexicans and border communities,

198
00:11:30,640 --> 00:11:32,800
Speaker 1: and by the early nineteen hundreds of the indigenous folks

199
00:11:32,840 --> 00:11:34,880
Speaker 1: had mostly been forced off of their land, and the

200
00:11:34,960 --> 00:11:38,200
Speaker 1: Rangers have become a police force focused mainly on Mexicano

201
00:11:38,760 --> 00:11:42,760
Speaker 1: Mexicano communities on the border. The primary strategy was what's

202
00:11:42,960 --> 00:11:46,959
Speaker 1: known to historians as revenge by proxy. And for an

203
00:11:46,960 --> 00:11:48,839
Speaker 1: example of how that looked, I'm gonna quote from the

204
00:11:48,880 --> 00:11:53,960
Speaker 1: American Crossroads book Migra quote. On June's twelfth, nineteen o one,

205
00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:57,319
Speaker 1: and Mexicano rancher named Gregorio Cortez stood at the gate

206
00:11:57,320 --> 00:11:59,920
Speaker 1: of his home in Kirness County, Texas. There he was

207
00:12:00,040 --> 00:12:01,960
Speaker 1: us to arrest for a crime that he did not commit.

208
00:12:02,200 --> 00:12:05,200
Speaker 1: The sheriff persisted, drew his gun and shot Gregorio's brother

209
00:12:05,280 --> 00:12:06,959
Speaker 1: in the mouth. When he charged at the sheriff to

210
00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:10,200
Speaker 1: protect Gregorio, Gregorios shot back and killed the sheriff, an

211
00:12:10,200 --> 00:12:12,000
Speaker 1: act that was sure to bring the Texas Rangers to

212
00:12:12,080 --> 00:12:15,079
Speaker 1: his doorstep. When they came, Gregorio and his family including

213
00:12:15,120 --> 00:12:17,520
Speaker 1: his wounded brother, were gone. All that remained was the

214
00:12:17,520 --> 00:12:20,360
Speaker 1: dead body of the sheriff. The news of Gregorio's deadly

215
00:12:20,400 --> 00:12:24,720
Speaker 1: defiance quickly spread across southern Texas. UM and Yeah, for

216
00:12:24,760 --> 00:12:27,199
Speaker 1: ten days, the Texas Rangers and posse's numbering up to

217
00:12:27,240 --> 00:12:29,520
Speaker 1: three men hunted for him. When they could not find him,

218
00:12:29,559 --> 00:12:32,480
Speaker 1: they sought revenge by proxy, arresting, brutalizing, and murdering an

219
00:12:32,559 --> 00:12:35,320
Speaker 1: unknown number of Mexican yos. So that's like how the

220
00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:38,720
Speaker 1: Texas Rangers kind of worked for a while. Is Hispanic

221
00:12:38,760 --> 00:12:42,199
Speaker 1: person commits a crime or a perceived crime, and if

222
00:12:42,200 --> 00:12:44,680
Speaker 1: they can't catch him to murder him publicly, they just

223
00:12:44,760 --> 00:12:47,080
Speaker 1: kill a bunch of other random Mexicans so that like

224
00:12:47,160 --> 00:12:50,000
Speaker 1: people don't get up at it. That's the that's the

225
00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:56,199
Speaker 1: first border patrol. Horrible, pretty bad, Caitlin, pretty bad. Don't

226
00:12:56,240 --> 00:12:58,880
Speaker 1: like it. I don't like it one bit. Okay, So

227
00:12:58,960 --> 00:13:01,560
Speaker 1: you are you are on them. You are on the

228
00:13:01,600 --> 00:13:04,760
Speaker 1: record now about not being in favor of murdering random

229
00:13:04,800 --> 00:13:09,959
Speaker 1: people um as part of a fear based a system

230
00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:13,960
Speaker 1: of law enforcement. Yes, and I am. I am happy

231
00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:16,559
Speaker 1: to be on the record. State it's a bold stance.

232
00:13:16,720 --> 00:13:20,400
Speaker 1: That's a bold stance to lose your Some advertisers, Caitlin especially,

233
00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:25,560
Speaker 1: are big advertiser Raytheon. When you really need a group

234
00:13:25,559 --> 00:13:29,440
Speaker 1: of people intimidated by violence, there's no other option but

235
00:13:29,600 --> 00:13:35,200
Speaker 1: Raytheon a robot ad brick. You're just doing. I know,

236
00:13:35,320 --> 00:13:37,640
Speaker 1: that's a that's a free that's a free one. Raytheon

237
00:13:37,760 --> 00:13:40,000
Speaker 1: just had to lay off a lot of employees, Sophie

238
00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:41,960
Speaker 1: and I for one to have a sense of loyalty.

239
00:13:42,040 --> 00:13:44,720
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to help Raytheon out with some free ads.

240
00:13:45,440 --> 00:13:47,880
Speaker 1: So look, if you've got a couple of billion extra

241
00:13:47,920 --> 00:13:50,200
Speaker 1: dollars that you need to spend on missiles that are

242
00:13:50,240 --> 00:13:53,600
Speaker 1: filled with knives in order to assassinate, you know, insurgent

243
00:13:53,720 --> 00:13:57,000
Speaker 1: leaders in Yemen, Um, look, don't go to Lockheed Martin,

244
00:13:57,080 --> 00:14:00,200
Speaker 1: go to Raytheon. Okay there, it's just better knife missiles. Right.

245
00:14:00,400 --> 00:14:04,040
Speaker 1: That's that's all I'm gonna say. I have a sense

246
00:14:04,040 --> 00:14:08,080
Speaker 1: of loyalty. So for the first twenty years of the century,

247
00:14:08,160 --> 00:14:10,440
Speaker 1: the US Mexican border was policed by a mix of

248
00:14:10,440 --> 00:14:13,959
Speaker 1: Texas rangers and like local sheriffs. UH. Such enforcement was

249
00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:17,079
Speaker 1: always piecemeal, with hundreds of miles of borderland operating basically

250
00:14:17,080 --> 00:14:20,320
Speaker 1: autonomously as it had for generations. Like the idea that

251
00:14:20,360 --> 00:14:24,800
Speaker 1: we would police our border like didn't exist until pretty recently.

252
00:14:24,840 --> 00:14:28,080
Speaker 1: For most of American history, it was just like, well, yeah,

253
00:14:28,120 --> 00:14:31,200
Speaker 1: you've got this big empty chunk of country and eventually

254
00:14:31,240 --> 00:14:35,480
Speaker 1: it becomes Mexico and it's nobody's nobody really gives a ship. Yeah.

255
00:14:35,480 --> 00:14:37,960
Speaker 1: You see, all these communities had existed for forever, for

256
00:14:38,040 --> 00:14:40,040
Speaker 1: hundreds of years in a lot of cases, and you know,

257
00:14:40,080 --> 00:14:42,160
Speaker 1: they had family who would be up in Mexico or

258
00:14:42,200 --> 00:14:45,600
Speaker 1: up in the United States, and it would have seemed like, um,

259
00:14:45,640 --> 00:14:48,120
Speaker 1: it would have seemed like madness to try to, uh,

260
00:14:48,200 --> 00:14:50,360
Speaker 1: to try to split these communities up based on an

261
00:14:50,440 --> 00:14:56,720
Speaker 1: arbitrary border line that nobody could even see. Um. But yeah,

262
00:14:56,760 --> 00:14:59,960
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties that started to change. In nine

263
00:15:00,080 --> 00:15:03,000
Speaker 1: twenty four, the Immigration Act was passed and the Immigration

264
00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:06,280
Speaker 1: Act banned all immigration to the United States from Asia,

265
00:15:06,600 --> 00:15:09,520
Speaker 1: and it massively reduced immigration in from the Southern from

266
00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:12,320
Speaker 1: Southern and Eastern Europe. The goal of the Act was

267
00:15:12,360 --> 00:15:14,840
Speaker 1: for the first time to enshrine in law the federal

268
00:15:14,920 --> 00:15:19,320
Speaker 1: government's preference for Nordic whites above non white people when

269
00:15:19,320 --> 00:15:25,120
Speaker 1: it came to immigration. So basically set up a quota system. Ye. Yeah,

270
00:15:25,160 --> 00:15:26,920
Speaker 1: have you heard about this? This is when we decided

271
00:15:26,960 --> 00:15:29,240
Speaker 1: that only one kind of white people were allowed in

272
00:15:29,280 --> 00:15:37,160
Speaker 1: the country. Um, this is the Italians aren't white enough law.

273
00:15:38,760 --> 00:15:40,840
Speaker 1: But people used to really care about that right in

274
00:15:40,880 --> 00:15:43,520
Speaker 1: the Immigration Act. A big part of it was stopping

275
00:15:43,520 --> 00:15:47,560
Speaker 1: Italians or as they would have called them, Italians, uh,

276
00:15:47,600 --> 00:15:49,960
Speaker 1: which it used to be I think more racist than

277
00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:52,280
Speaker 1: it is and is now just a funny, old timy

278
00:15:52,320 --> 00:15:56,480
Speaker 1: way of making fun of Italians, which I'm always I'm

279
00:15:56,480 --> 00:16:00,200
Speaker 1: always in favor of Caitlin. How do you feel? You know?

280
00:16:00,360 --> 00:16:02,240
Speaker 1: You do know that my last name is Durante and

281
00:16:02,240 --> 00:16:05,840
Speaker 1: the Diana I partly Italian? Yeah, so am I that's

282
00:16:05,840 --> 00:16:09,800
Speaker 1: why it's okay? Good? All right? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Are

283
00:16:09,840 --> 00:16:14,320
Speaker 1: we are? Are we white? How's that? How's that work? Uh?

284
00:16:14,360 --> 00:16:20,120
Speaker 1: I have heard slightly varying things, but I think by

285
00:16:20,160 --> 00:16:24,360
Speaker 1: and large Italian people are considered white. Yes. I was

286
00:16:24,400 --> 00:16:27,600
Speaker 1: looking at a Nazi cartoon the other day because I

287
00:16:27,640 --> 00:16:30,920
Speaker 1: do things like that for my mental health, and it

288
00:16:31,040 --> 00:16:33,240
Speaker 1: was like the point it was making is that like

289
00:16:33,320 --> 00:16:36,920
Speaker 1: social justice advocates are always white, uh, and fascists are

290
00:16:36,960 --> 00:16:40,120
Speaker 1: actually really diverse and so like it was a bunch

291
00:16:40,160 --> 00:16:45,240
Speaker 1: of white people lecturing Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirahito. But but

292
00:16:45,360 --> 00:16:47,920
Speaker 1: because it was drawn by a fascist, they drew in

293
00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:50,920
Speaker 1: Mussolini as a black man because they don't think Italians

294
00:16:50,920 --> 00:16:54,080
Speaker 1: are white. So it's just like there were a lot

295
00:16:54,160 --> 00:16:57,120
Speaker 1: of layers of wrongness there to pass through. It was

296
00:16:57,120 --> 00:16:59,560
Speaker 1: one of those things that looked very confusing to people

297
00:16:59,600 --> 00:17:02,240
Speaker 1: who don't immediately recognize, Oh, these are the kind of

298
00:17:02,320 --> 00:17:06,119
Speaker 1: racists who don't even think Italians count as white. Um,

299
00:17:06,160 --> 00:17:09,399
Speaker 1: it's very funny. But in the nineteen twenties that was

300
00:17:09,440 --> 00:17:12,640
Speaker 1: all of Congress, sure, and they were like, we gotta

301
00:17:12,680 --> 00:17:16,080
Speaker 1: pass a lot to stop these Italians from coming in. Um. So, yeah,

302
00:17:16,160 --> 00:17:19,960
Speaker 1: the Immigration Act in nineteen bands all Asian immigration and

303
00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:22,960
Speaker 1: tries to kind of restrict to only the right kind

304
00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:26,199
Speaker 1: of white people. And the one real exception to this

305
00:17:26,320 --> 00:17:28,560
Speaker 1: the only kind of like non white folks who were

306
00:17:28,600 --> 00:17:31,840
Speaker 1: allowed into the country under the Immigration Act without any

307
00:17:31,920 --> 00:17:36,560
Speaker 1: kind of um restriction, where we're Mexicans. Um. And this

308
00:17:36,640 --> 00:17:40,959
Speaker 1: is because of hardcore labor or lobbying by the agricultural industry, right,

309
00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:43,240
Speaker 1: because like basically you had all these ranchers and farmers

310
00:17:43,359 --> 00:17:45,919
Speaker 1: in Texas particularly and in the Southwest, who are like,

311
00:17:47,160 --> 00:17:50,280
Speaker 1: our entire industry doesn't work without these people, so you

312
00:17:50,320 --> 00:17:54,360
Speaker 1: have to let them in. UM. So the Act does

313
00:17:54,440 --> 00:17:57,480
Speaker 1: kind of make an exception for that. Um. It's very

314
00:17:57,520 --> 00:18:00,520
Speaker 1: heavily based on race science. And in fact, a big

315
00:18:00,600 --> 00:18:03,520
Speaker 1: factor in what got the Act passed was a bunch

316
00:18:03,520 --> 00:18:06,720
Speaker 1: of bogus studies conducted by the Eugenics Research Office at

317
00:18:06,720 --> 00:18:10,480
Speaker 1: cold Spring Harbor that kind of provided intellectual justification for

318
00:18:10,520 --> 00:18:12,640
Speaker 1: the law by arguing that the wrong kind of immigrants

319
00:18:12,640 --> 00:18:14,879
Speaker 1: would leave the surges and violent crime and declines in

320
00:18:14,960 --> 00:18:20,440
Speaker 1: i Q. Um, No, this is bad. This is bad.

321
00:18:20,480 --> 00:18:23,600
Speaker 1: And the nineteen four Immigration Act is what establishes the

322
00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:26,800
Speaker 1: US Border Patrol for the very first time. So this,

323
00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:30,800
Speaker 1: this fundamentally racist law written by people who justified it

324
00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:35,480
Speaker 1: explicitly with race like like bad, race science is where

325
00:18:35,520 --> 00:18:39,320
Speaker 1: the border patrol is initially established. So literally born in

326
00:18:39,359 --> 00:18:42,399
Speaker 1: an orgy of racism. Uh. And in fact, the the

327
00:18:42,520 --> 00:18:46,280
Speaker 1: nineteen Immigration Act that established the Border Patrol was so

328
00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:50,520
Speaker 1: nakedly racist that Adolf Hitler took inspiration from it. Uh

329
00:18:50,560 --> 00:18:55,000
Speaker 1: in nineteen Yeah, it's bad, It's really bad, Caitlin. This

330
00:18:55,080 --> 00:18:59,399
Speaker 1: is where border patrol comes from. Oh yeah, it's not great.

331
00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:03,520
Speaker 1: Um in n Hitler wrote this of the law, there

332
00:19:03,600 --> 00:19:06,199
Speaker 1: is currently one state in which one can observe at

333
00:19:06,280 --> 00:19:09,080
Speaker 1: least a week beginnings of a better conception. This is,

334
00:19:09,119 --> 00:19:12,280
Speaker 1: of course, not Germany, but the American Union. The American

335
00:19:12,359 --> 00:19:16,600
Speaker 1: Union Union categorically refuses the immigration if physically unhealthy elements

336
00:19:16,640 --> 00:19:21,359
Speaker 1: and simply excludes the immigration of certain races. So Hitler

337
00:19:21,760 --> 00:19:24,240
Speaker 1: in the twenties took a look at what we were

338
00:19:24,280 --> 00:19:28,160
Speaker 1: doing in the US and was like, I like the

339
00:19:28,200 --> 00:19:35,120
Speaker 1: looks of that. Let me be copy paste and do that.

340
00:19:35,119 --> 00:19:38,840
Speaker 1: That's exactly what happened. That's exactly what happened. That's exactly

341
00:19:38,880 --> 00:19:41,400
Speaker 1: And he wrote extensively about how inspired he was by

342
00:19:41,520 --> 00:19:44,119
Speaker 1: US immigration law, which was like the most racist in

343
00:19:44,119 --> 00:19:47,159
Speaker 1: the world at the time. Holy ship, you want to

344
00:19:47,200 --> 00:19:49,600
Speaker 1: know something else, cool, Caitlin, this is a neat story.

345
00:19:49,640 --> 00:19:53,120
Speaker 1: You're gonna love this. Please see the you know, El Paso,

346
00:19:53,280 --> 00:19:56,960
Speaker 1: great town, solid Tacos. A lot of immigration in Del

347
00:19:57,000 --> 00:20:00,560
Speaker 1: Paso right always has been because it's it's the pass right,

348
00:20:00,600 --> 00:20:03,240
Speaker 1: you know, that's just where it's located. Back in like

349
00:20:03,280 --> 00:20:07,159
Speaker 1: the twenties and thirties, when immigrants would come in. Racist

350
00:20:07,160 --> 00:20:09,720
Speaker 1: white people were so worried about how dirty they thought

351
00:20:09,760 --> 00:20:13,280
Speaker 1: Mexicans were that they would mandate de lousing bats for

352
00:20:13,320 --> 00:20:16,840
Speaker 1: everybody who entered the country, and they would just douse

353
00:20:16,920 --> 00:20:20,560
Speaker 1: them in uh pesticide. And the pesticide that they chose

354
00:20:20,880 --> 00:20:24,600
Speaker 1: was zyklon. B Wait what is that? That's what they

355
00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:28,640
Speaker 1: killed all the Jews with. And the yeah, yeah, that's

356
00:20:28,640 --> 00:20:30,760
Speaker 1: another thing. The Nazis were like, oh, this seems like

357
00:20:30,800 --> 00:20:33,000
Speaker 1: something we could modify a little bit to make better

358
00:20:33,040 --> 00:20:38,800
Speaker 1: for us. That's good stuff. It's not. It was super

359
00:20:38,800 --> 00:20:43,480
Speaker 1: flammable and sometimes people burnt horribly to death. Good stuff

360
00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:48,440
Speaker 1: on the border kind of always a nightmare, kind of

361
00:20:48,720 --> 00:20:50,679
Speaker 1: If you study the history of the border, maybe the

362
00:20:50,720 --> 00:20:55,000
Speaker 1: only reasonable conclusion is that borders are fundamentally toxic, but

363
00:20:56,080 --> 00:21:00,920
Speaker 1: and completely made up. They're just yeah, total of like

364
00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:08,199
Speaker 1: horrible usually racist ideology. They're just lines, racist lines we

365
00:21:08,280 --> 00:21:11,120
Speaker 1: draw on a map that murder tons of people. It's awesome,

366
00:21:11,320 --> 00:21:14,760
Speaker 1: it's really good. So yeah, the border patrol comes out

367
00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:17,400
Speaker 1: of is formed from a law that the Nazis look

368
00:21:17,400 --> 00:21:20,720
Speaker 1: at and go, that's a good law, says we the Nazis.

369
00:21:20,840 --> 00:21:27,600
Speaker 1: Um sweet stuff, Caitlin. So because the the Immigration Act

370
00:21:27,600 --> 00:21:30,240
Speaker 1: has passed alongside a surge of racist nativist fear about

371
00:21:30,240 --> 00:21:32,880
Speaker 1: those dastardly non white immigrants. It mandated that the new

372
00:21:32,880 --> 00:21:35,720
Speaker 1: Border Patrol be established quickly. The first version of the

373
00:21:35,760 --> 00:21:40,120
Speaker 1: force was basically built overnight from July one, so rapidly

374
00:21:40,160 --> 00:21:42,120
Speaker 1: that there was no time for the Patrol to actually

375
00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:45,360
Speaker 1: create any kind of qualification exam for its new recruits.

376
00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:47,560
Speaker 1: The first wave of men to where the services green

377
00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:50,920
Speaker 1: uniform were instead required to pass the railway mail clerk

378
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:56,520
Speaker 1: civil service exam, which I'm sure is basically the same thing. Yeah.

379
00:21:56,840 --> 00:21:58,760
Speaker 1: So as a result, and this is something we'll talk

380
00:21:58,760 --> 00:22:01,320
Speaker 1: about in part two, this this winds up being a

381
00:22:01,359 --> 00:22:04,080
Speaker 1: long trend in the Border Patrol is every decision they

382
00:22:04,080 --> 00:22:06,920
Speaker 1: make they have to like immediately adopt it, and they

383
00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:09,240
Speaker 1: never have time to train anybody to do the job

384
00:22:09,280 --> 00:22:12,040
Speaker 1: that they're going to do, and everyone's just fine with this,

385
00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:15,400
Speaker 1: and it persists for ninety six years. So the whole thing,

386
00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:19,480
Speaker 1: every like decisions are made all willy nilly people are

387
00:22:19,520 --> 00:22:24,320
Speaker 1: brought in with no training, no training implemented, with no

388
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:29,280
Speaker 1: thought given to it. They're just like, here's what we decided,

389
00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:32,840
Speaker 1: and we're not going to take a second, to examine

390
00:22:32,840 --> 00:22:35,720
Speaker 1: this at all, We're just going to do it. Yeah,

391
00:22:35,760 --> 00:22:39,480
Speaker 1: I mean, the current DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, has no

392
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:42,760
Speaker 1: law enforcement experience, was never in the military, and I

393
00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:46,399
Speaker 1: think went to college on like a tennis scholarship. Um.

394
00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:50,920
Speaker 1: So it's great and it's cool how things are always

395
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 1: exactly the same forever because yeah, again, if people ever

396
00:22:57,160 --> 00:22:59,920
Speaker 1: learn a single lesson from history, the world will explode.

397
00:23:00,119 --> 00:23:05,560
Speaker 1: So we have to not do that, um anyway. But

398
00:23:05,600 --> 00:23:08,000
Speaker 1: there's also a conundrum there too, right, because so much

399
00:23:08,000 --> 00:23:11,520
Speaker 1: of history that gets taught, at least in schools is

400
00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:16,880
Speaker 1: so horribly whitewashed and revisionists that like, how can anyone

401
00:23:17,320 --> 00:23:23,840
Speaker 1: learn anything from it? Yeah? Yeah, you know, that's a

402
00:23:23,880 --> 00:23:27,240
Speaker 1: good point, Caitlin. And that's that's why as I see

403
00:23:27,320 --> 00:23:30,240
Speaker 1: all these kids in the street who just aren't going

404
00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:33,760
Speaker 1: to school anymore and are instead spending their nights drop

405
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:36,080
Speaker 1: kicking the doors of a federal courthouse to try to

406
00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:40,240
Speaker 1: taunt the agents inside to attack them, I think it's

407
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:48,880
Speaker 1: probably fine, probably learning about as much, right. So, um yeah,

408
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:52,240
Speaker 1: the very first border patrolmen were mostly male clerks, and

409
00:23:52,320 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 1: obviously mail clerks maybe aren't super meant to be tromping

410
00:23:56,760 --> 00:23:59,800
Speaker 1: around the desert hunting people, and about a quarter of

411
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:02,360
Speaker 1: everyone in the Border Patrol quit in their first month

412
00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:06,000
Speaker 1: of the job. Turnover remained incredibly high for basically the

413
00:24:06,040 --> 00:24:08,960
Speaker 1: whole history of the organization, but particularly it's early years,

414
00:24:09,240 --> 00:24:11,239
Speaker 1: and this made it kind of impossible for it to

415
00:24:11,280 --> 00:24:14,119
Speaker 1: develop any kind of functional internal culture. At the start,

416
00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:18,199
Speaker 1: by the Border Patrol had been forced to hire inspectors

417
00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:21,720
Speaker 1: who could not even pass civil service exams. The agency

418
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 1: tried desperately to recruit military veterans and men with law

419
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:27,640
Speaker 1: enforcement experience, but the vast majority of their new hires

420
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:30,680
Speaker 1: were just unemployed men who lived in border towns. These

421
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:34,359
Speaker 1: were white, working class folks who had trouble keeping a job,

422
00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:36,840
Speaker 1: and we're kind of desperate for a leg up and

423
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:39,600
Speaker 1: the regular income that a law enforcement career would allow,

424
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: as well as kind of the respect in pride or

425
00:24:42,600 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 1: respect that you would get as a member of law enforcement. Right,

426
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:48,159
Speaker 1: Like they wanted some power. These were like poor working

427
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:56,000
Speaker 1: class whites. Don't give anybody power. It never goes well, No,

428
00:24:56,280 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: especially not poor white men in the country. Um. Yeah,

429
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:05,439
Speaker 1: So immigration from Mexico into the United States had not

430
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:09,080
Speaker 1: traditionally been like a major subject of national political debate.

431
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:11,800
Speaker 1: People in Texas, you know, there were folks who cared

432
00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:14,440
Speaker 1: about it, but like, really, on a national level, if

433
00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:16,960
Speaker 1: you'd like run based on your plan to build a

434
00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:20,400
Speaker 1: wall around Mexico, Americans have been like, what the fund

435
00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:23,040
Speaker 1: is your probable? Like, why do you give a shit

436
00:25:23,119 --> 00:25:27,320
Speaker 1: about that? Everyone is dying of diphtheria and the economy

437
00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 1: is permanently crashed. Please please stop? Um, which I guess

438
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:36,000
Speaker 1: now we're back at so maybe that'll help. I mean,

439
00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:39,200
Speaker 1: I don't hear as many people giving a shit about

440
00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:42,359
Speaker 1: the border these days, I'll say that much. But maybe

441
00:25:42,359 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 1: it's because nobody wants to come here anymore. We did it, Caitlin,

442
00:25:46,119 --> 00:25:50,240
Speaker 1: We finally stopped it. Just turn the US into a

443
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:56,080
Speaker 1: disease written Hell, all it took was a runaway plague

444
00:25:56,320 --> 00:25:58,920
Speaker 1: that we completely give up any hope of every dealing with.

445
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 1: You know what, President Trump figured it out, Good for him.

446
00:26:06,359 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 1: Do you know what President Trump didn't figure out? Oh? Um,

447
00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:14,320
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast. That's right.

448
00:26:14,359 --> 00:26:18,200
Speaker 1: We keep them a secret from the president. Um, but

449
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: if you listen in, it can be a secret that

450
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:24,600
Speaker 1: you and I share and hide at all costs from

451
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: the administration, we're back. Oh my gosh, I for one

452
00:26:34,359 --> 00:26:37,920
Speaker 1: love that Trump for America bought up all of our

453
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:43,880
Speaker 1: advertising space. Um. When I think of President, I think

454
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 1: of the president anyway. Uh. So immigration from Mexico had

455
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:51,919
Speaker 1: not traditionally been a big, big political debate issue, right. Uh.

456
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:56,879
Speaker 1: The wealthy agribusiness owners in Texas preferred simple immigration from Mexico. Uh,

457
00:26:56,920 --> 00:26:59,280
Speaker 1: and they fought to ensure that Mexicans were not subject

458
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: to the same harsh immigration restrictions as other immigrants. In

459
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:05,880
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenty four bill, one business owner put it simply,

460
00:27:06,119 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 1: without the Mexicans, we would be done. Um, which hasn't

461
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:14,440
Speaker 1: really changed, you know. And it's like we'll talk about

462
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:16,080
Speaker 1: this a little bit later on, but it is. It

463
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:18,359
Speaker 1: is this kind of one of the things that you

464
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize was like really problematic when I

465
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 1: was a young person kind of dealing with. Um. The

466
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:29,959
Speaker 1: mix between outwardly hateful racists in the Southwest, UM and

467
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:33,159
Speaker 1: nice people who don't realize they're racist. Is like the

468
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:36,040
Speaker 1: nice people the outwardly hateful people are like you know,

469
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,159
Speaker 1: the Trump type folks that you know who want to

470
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:41,160
Speaker 1: build a wall and kick all the rapists Mexicans out. Sure,

471
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 1: they're easy to spot, yeah yeah, And then you have

472
00:27:44,359 --> 00:27:46,880
Speaker 1: this chunk of people who are like, well, I hate

473
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:50,960
Speaker 1: what Trump's doing, and like I'm happy to have Mexicans

474
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:53,720
Speaker 1: here because you know, they do great work and you

475
00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:55,639
Speaker 1: know they're they're they're great at this, and they're good

476
00:27:55,680 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: at that, and they're good at and it's this thing

477
00:27:57,440 --> 00:28:01,359
Speaker 1: where like especially like you know, you don't necessarily notice,

478
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:04,879
Speaker 1: especially as like a young white person was the eighteen

479
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 1: nineteen like what what what's actually being said there? Which

480
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:11,920
Speaker 1: is like the commodification of of non white bodies, um,

481
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 1: which is like not not cool. Um. But we're going

482
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:17,920
Speaker 1: to talk more about that later because this is where

483
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:22,400
Speaker 1: that all starts in an organized way, which is awesome. Um.

484
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:25,440
Speaker 1: So uh. The white working class and texts, so obviously

485
00:28:25,480 --> 00:28:27,560
Speaker 1: like these kind of these kind of landowners, the kind

486
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:30,399
Speaker 1: of aristocracy in Texas in this period, right like the

487
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 1: ranchers and stuff. They were broadly like they wanted more

488
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:36,760
Speaker 1: Mexicans and they could never get enough because like they

489
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:39,920
Speaker 1: needed people to to actually work their farms. But the

490
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:42,720
Speaker 1: white working class in Texas and the white working class

491
00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: even in rural areas really had nursed like a growing

492
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 1: hatred of Mexican people and had been for years. And

493
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 1: this was based on a mix of like fear that

494
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:53,200
Speaker 1: Mexican immigrants would take their jobs that was always like

495
00:28:53,240 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: a core part of it um and also based on

496
00:28:55,680 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: kind of like good old fashioned racism. One labor union

497
00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:01,280
Speaker 1: official in Texas at the time noted, quote, I hope

498
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:03,920
Speaker 1: they never let another Mexican come to the United States.

499
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:05,960
Speaker 1: The country would be a whole lot better off for

500
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 1: the white laboring man if there weren't so many inwards

501
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 1: and Mexicans. And then, yeah, well, and this is one

502
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:15,040
Speaker 1: of those things if you're like kind of squaring yourself

503
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:16,960
Speaker 1: with the history of labor. You know, I'm a big

504
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: fan of labor history, and I think there's a lot

505
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: of wonderful stuff there. You do have to square with

506
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:22,880
Speaker 1: the fact that like a lot of those dudes who

507
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 1: were right about a lot of important things were incredibly

508
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 1: racist and hated non white people because they saw them

509
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 1: as a threat to white working class people. Um well,

510
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:37,040
Speaker 1: I mean, which that all stems from capitalism more or less.

511
00:29:37,880 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: There was any um fairness or parody when it came

512
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: to income and labor. People wouldn't have to be worried

513
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:52,240
Speaker 1: about other people. There wouldn't be this fear of like,

514
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:54,960
Speaker 1: who is my job in danger? Who's going to take

515
00:29:55,000 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 1: my job? Um, because they're like a more just just

516
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 1: socialized economy would eliminate that fear absolutely. Yeah. So, the

517
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 1: the actual laws on the books in this period of

518
00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 1: time had been written largely by the rich landed gentry

519
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 1: who needed Mexican immigrants. But now that the border patrol

520
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 1: existed post the men enforcing those laws were working class

521
00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: whites who really just hated Mexicans and they honestly didn't

522
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 1: give a shit about the needs of farmers. And in fact,

523
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:29,840
Speaker 1: a lot of them saw kind of being able to

524
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:35,680
Speaker 1: police undocumented migrants as a way of kind of equalizing

525
00:30:35,760 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 1: their level of social power with farmers, because like, you know,

526
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 1: they were poor or than these guys. They didn't have property,

527
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 1: but now they had the ability to to arrest these

528
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:48,560
Speaker 1: dudes workers, and like that gave them a level of

529
00:30:48,600 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 1: power in their culture and a level of power of

530
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 1: these people who had kind of previously been the bosses um.

531
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: And you know, kind of for a lot of these

532
00:30:56,680 --> 00:30:59,120
Speaker 1: guys who became the first border patrol workers, these were

533
00:30:59,120 --> 00:31:01,400
Speaker 1: obviously these were white men but there were men whose

534
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:03,920
Speaker 1: kind of sense of whiteness had been hanging on by

535
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 1: a thread prior to this, this opportunity coming around, and

536
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote again from the book Migra quote. Early

537
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:13,520
Speaker 1: officers may have lived in white neighborhoods, worshipped at white churches,

538
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 1: and sent their children to white schools. But a salesman, chauffeurs, machinists,

539
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:19,280
Speaker 1: and cow punchers, they had labored at the edges of

540
00:31:19,280 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 1: whiteness in the borderlands. The steady pay and everyday social

541
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: authority of US immigration law enforcement work dangled before them

542
00:31:25,600 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: the possibility of lifting themselves from a marginalized existence as

543
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:31,920
Speaker 1: what Neil Foley has examined as the white scourge of

544
00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:36,080
Speaker 1: borderland communities. Policing Mexicans, in other words, presented officers with

545
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:39,520
Speaker 1: the opportunity to enter the region's primary economy and in

546
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:43,160
Speaker 1: the process shore up their tentative claims upon whiteness. As

547
00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 1: immigration control was emerging as a critical site of simultaneously

548
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 1: expanding the boundaries of whiteness while hardening the distinctions between

549
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 1: whites and non whites. The project of enforcing immigration restrictions

550
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:57,080
Speaker 1: therefore placed border patrol officers and what police scholar David

551
00:31:57,120 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 1: Bailey describes as the cutting edge of the state eats

552
00:32:00,320 --> 00:32:03,360
Speaker 1: knife in terms of enforcing new boundaries between whites and

553
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 1: non whites. So that is the border patrol in this period,

554
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 1: the cutting edge of the states knife, you know, cleaving

555
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:13,680
Speaker 1: the boundaries between white and non white people. It's a

556
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:19,720
Speaker 1: way to look at it, very picturesque. Yeah. Now this

557
00:32:19,760 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 1: has made a lot more complicated by the fact that

558
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: a chunk of the early border patrol were Mexican American

559
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:28,120
Speaker 1: UM and these guys in a lot of cases saw

560
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 1: their ability their career in law enforcement as a way

561
00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:33,960
Speaker 1: of separating themselves from non white people. The League of

562
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:38,560
Speaker 1: United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, specifically stated that Mexican

563
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: American association with colored races is what held them back

564
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:45,120
Speaker 1: from full acceptance by white society in this period of time.

565
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,200
Speaker 1: Um And the book Migra includes the story of one

566
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: early officer patrol, inspector Pete Torres, who was marked by

567
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 1: a colleague for being Mexican. In response, he shot at

568
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 1: the man's feet and yelled, I am not a Mexican,

569
00:32:57,040 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 1: I am a Spanish American. Um. Yeah, So this is like, yeah, internalized. Yeah,

570
00:33:06,920 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 1: it's a complicated history here. UM. And I I'm not

571
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 1: going to, Um, I'm not going to go into tremendous

572
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 1: depth about this aspect of the history because I'm just

573
00:33:16,920 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 1: I'm not at all the right person to do so.

574
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 1: The right person to do so, in fact, is probably

575
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 1: Kelly Kelly Little Hernandez, author of the book migra Um

576
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:28,400
Speaker 1: History of the U. S. Border Patrol. She does talk

577
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:31,120
Speaker 1: about this in in more depth, and I really recommend

578
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:33,360
Speaker 1: her book. Um, but you should know that's like an

579
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 1: aspect of what's going on here and and and as

580
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 1: a rule, one of the things that starts to happen

581
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 1: in particular around like the forties is kind of a

582
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: growing Spanish or Mexican American community who are very pro

583
00:33:45,560 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 1: immigration enforcement um and pro like harsher immigration laws and

584
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 1: laws against the legal immigration. They start to like solidify

585
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 1: as a voting block in the Southwest in this period too,

586
00:33:56,640 --> 00:33:58,800
Speaker 1: and they still are to this day. It's. Um, a

587
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:00,960
Speaker 1: lot of people are like shocked and they see Hispanics

588
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:03,120
Speaker 1: for Trump and stuff, and there's actually pretty deep roots

589
00:34:03,120 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: for a lot of that stuff. Um. Yeah. So uh,

590
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 1: most early border patrol men, though we were white dudes,

591
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:13,080
Speaker 1: and it would probably be fair to call them white supremacists.

592
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: And as the years went by, our government gave them

593
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 1: increasing powers to exercise racism with state of authority behind it.

594
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 1: From a right up in the intercept quote. While the

595
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:24,760
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty four immigration law spared Mexico quota, a series

596
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: of secondary laws, including one that made it a crime

597
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,439
Speaker 1: to enter the country outside of official ports of entry,

598
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 1: gave border and customs agents on the spot discretion to

599
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 1: decide who could enter the country legally. They had the

600
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 1: power to turn what had been a routine, daily or

601
00:34:36,560 --> 00:34:39,160
Speaker 1: seasonal event crossing the border to go to work into

602
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:42,880
Speaker 1: a ritual of abuse. Hygienic inspections became more widespread and

603
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:45,319
Speaker 1: even more degrading. Migrants had their head shaped and they

604
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:48,279
Speaker 1: were subjected to an increasingly arbitrary set of requirements at

605
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 1: the discretion of patrollers, including literacy tests and entrance fees.

606
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 1: The Patrol wasn't a large agency at first, just a

607
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: few hundred men during its early years, and it's reached

608
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:00,520
Speaker 1: along a two thousand mile line was limited, but over

609
00:35:00,560 --> 00:35:03,000
Speaker 1: the years it's reported brutality grew as the number of

610
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:06,279
Speaker 1: agents that deployed increased. Border agents beat, shot, and hung

611
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:10,080
Speaker 1: migrants with regularity. Two patrollers, former Texas rangers, tied the

612
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 1: feet of one migrant and dragged him in and out

613
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:14,200
Speaker 1: of a river until he confessed to having entered the

614
00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:17,239
Speaker 1: country illegally. Other patrollers were members of the resurgent Ku

615
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:20,520
Speaker 1: Klux Klan, active in border towns from Texas to California.

616
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:23,800
Speaker 1: Practically every other member of El Paso's National Guard was

617
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:26,640
Speaker 1: then the clan. One military officer recalled, and many had

618
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:33,120
Speaker 1: joined the Border Patrol upon its establishment. So not great ideally,

619
00:35:33,560 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you ask me, we keep

620
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 1: coming back to the k k K and how it

621
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 1: repeatedly infiltrated law enforcement. Someone maybe how to do something

622
00:35:43,160 --> 00:35:48,680
Speaker 1: about that. So for its first ten years of existence,

623
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:51,080
Speaker 1: the Border Patrol operated under the authority of the Department

624
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:53,720
Speaker 1: of Labor, and when FDR was elected, he appointed Francis

625
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 1: Perkins to be Secretary of Labor and she tried to

626
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:58,600
Speaker 1: curtail the violence of the Border Patrol and reform it

627
00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 1: um and this didn't really work out in the long run.

628
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:05,120
Speaker 1: She attempted to cut down and warrantless arrest. She mandated

629
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 1: that detained migrants had a right to receive phone calls.

630
00:36:07,239 --> 00:36:09,160
Speaker 1: She fought to provide migrants with at least some version

631
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:11,680
Speaker 1: of the civil rights they lacked as non citizens. But

632
00:36:11,760 --> 00:36:14,719
Speaker 1: before long FDR was pressured by the agricultural industry to

633
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:17,280
Speaker 1: put the border patrol under the control of the Department

634
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 1: of Justice. Uh. Now, this might seem surprising at first,

635
00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:22,759
Speaker 1: because like, these rich farmers were the same folks who

636
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 1: had fought to ensure Mexican immigrants wouldn't be subject to

637
00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:28,880
Speaker 1: quotas in the nineteen four immigration law. But there's a

638
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:32,680
Speaker 1: reason behind it, because these folks had wanted these you know,

639
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:35,760
Speaker 1: ranchers and stuff, had wanted Mexicans here to work their farms,

640
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: but they hadn't wanted these people to actually stay in

641
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 1: the United States. Lobbyist S. Parker Frazel had told Congress

642
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:46,800
Speaker 1: in nineteen the Mexican is a homer, like the pigeon

643
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:49,839
Speaker 1: he goes home to roost. And Frizelle's promise had been

644
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 1: that Mexicans weren't really immigrants, and thus they should be

645
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 1: exempt from the USA's white supremacist immigration laws. They were

646
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: birds of passage, he argued, just hanging around for a

647
00:36:58,719 --> 00:37:01,840
Speaker 1: little while to work. But by the turn of the decade.

648
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 1: As we hit like start going into the nineteen thirties,

649
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:07,200
Speaker 1: Mexicans had started to settle all across the Southwest, buying

650
00:37:07,239 --> 00:37:10,680
Speaker 1: homes and starting communities and places like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,

651
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:14,160
Speaker 1: and California. Uh. In nineteen hundred, only about a hundred

652
00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 1: thousand Mexican immigrants had lived in the United States. By

653
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:19,920
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, there were one and a half million Mexican

654
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:24,160
Speaker 1: immigrants in this country. Um. So this starts to freak

655
00:37:24,160 --> 00:37:27,680
Speaker 1: out a lot of white agriculturalists, right Um. And it

656
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 1: it kind of you know, they had been they had

657
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:33,680
Speaker 1: been okay with these people coming into work, but at

658
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: the end of the day there there were the same

659
00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:39,040
Speaker 1: kind of white supremacists as the border patrol men. They

660
00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:41,040
Speaker 1: were just a little bit more refined. And once it

661
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,319
Speaker 1: started to look like these these Mexicans were coming in

662
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,640
Speaker 1: and actually going to be contributing and changing the demographics

663
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: of the nation, they panicked. Um. And the only thing

664
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:52,600
Speaker 1: they could really think of to do was give the

665
00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:56,480
Speaker 1: border patrol more power to enforce how many Mexicans could

666
00:37:56,640 --> 00:38:00,279
Speaker 1: enter the country. Um. And there was a real big

667
00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:05,319
Speaker 1: like debate over this, right um, because uh, you you

668
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: still needed a certain as as these farmers, you still

669
00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:11,239
Speaker 1: needed a certain minimum amount of of of migrants coming

670
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:13,359
Speaker 1: in every year in order to actually like keep your

671
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:16,720
Speaker 1: farms working. Um. And the guy who kind of figured

672
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 1: out a solution to this problem with Senator Coleman Livingston Blie.

673
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:22,600
Speaker 1: He was a white supremacist congressman who first took office

674
00:38:22,600 --> 00:38:25,960
Speaker 1: in nine and his solution was, rather than creating a

675
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:28,840
Speaker 1: system of quotas and caps that would have reduced manpower

676
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:34,080
Speaker 1: in American fields, he just wanted to criminalize unmonitored border crossing. Um.

677
00:38:34,160 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: So this is the very first time that it becomes

678
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 1: illegal to cross the US Mexican border without doing it

679
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:43,480
Speaker 1: at a border station. Um. That's nineteen twenty nine. That

680
00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 1: law has passed. Um. And I'm gonna quote from an

681
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:50,360
Speaker 1: article in the Conversation explaining what happened here. According to

682
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:53,440
Speaker 1: Blize's bill, unlawfully entering the country would be a misdemeanor,

683
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:56,560
Speaker 1: while unlawfully returning to the United States after deportation would

684
00:38:56,560 --> 00:38:59,360
Speaker 1: be a felony. The idea was to force Mexican immigrants

685
00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: into an author rised and monitored stream that could be

686
00:39:01,560 --> 00:39:03,640
Speaker 1: turned on and off at will at ports of entry.

687
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:06,400
Speaker 1: Any immigrant who entered the United States outside of bounds

688
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:09,200
Speaker 1: of the stream would be a criminal subject defines imprisonment

689
00:39:09,200 --> 00:39:11,960
Speaker 1: and ultimately deportation. But it was a crime designed to

690
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:16,240
Speaker 1: impact Mexican immigrants in particular. Neither the Western agricultural businessmen

691
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:20,359
Speaker 1: nor the restrictionists registered any objections. Congress passed Blizes Bill

692
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:23,640
Speaker 1: the Immigration Act of March fourth, ninety nine, and dramatically

693
00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:25,880
Speaker 1: altered the story of crime and punishment in the United

694
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:30,080
Speaker 1: States with stunning precision. The criminalization of unauthorized entry caged

695
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:33,359
Speaker 1: thousands of Mexicans Mexico's birds of passage. By the end

696
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:36,360
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty, the U. S. Attorney General reported prosecuting

697
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 1: seven thousand cases of unlawful entry. By the end of

698
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:41,919
Speaker 1: the decade, US attorneys had prosecuted more than forty four

699
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:47,719
Speaker 1: thousand cases. Now Blazes law applied technically to like Canadians

700
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:50,880
Speaker 1: as well, but basically everyone prosecuted under it was Mexican,

701
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:54,000
Speaker 1: and it was mainly used as kind of a method

702
00:39:54,120 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: of non mostly non violent ethnic cleansing. Like I don't

703
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 1: even if I know if i'd say mostly non violent.

704
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 1: It was used for ethnic cleansing throughout the nineteen thirties,

705
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 1: Mexicans made up at least eighty five percent of all

706
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:11,319
Speaker 1: immigration prisoners. Sometimes some years they made up three new

707
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: prisons were built on the border to hold them all,

708
00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: and over the course of the decades, somewhere around one

709
00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:20,320
Speaker 1: million Mexicans were deported from the United States, and most

710
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 1: of these people were US citizens. Historian Francisco Balderama argues

711
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:28,000
Speaker 1: that sixt of the million people who were deported were

712
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:31,760
Speaker 1: US citizens of Mexican descent. Um and border patrol forces

713
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 1: would call the what was happening here repatriation to make

714
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: it seem voluntary, But what was really happening in the

715
00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:40,279
Speaker 1: thirties was border patrol was just rounding up all of

716
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:42,759
Speaker 1: the Mexicans they could get and throwing them across the

717
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 1: border and kind of accusing people of unlawful like crossing

718
00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:49,760
Speaker 1: of the border basically as a justification for for kicking

719
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 1: them out. Um, so that's cool. I just the resources

720
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 1: that get used and spent to uh like, enforce these

721
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 1: laws and build prisons and maintain the prison and just

722
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 1: like all all of that costs so much time and

723
00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 1: is so much effort. Why, like it would be so

724
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:22,480
Speaker 1: much easier if we would just let immigrants come and

725
00:41:22,520 --> 00:41:25,400
Speaker 1: then just let them live and be a part of

726
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:32,320
Speaker 1: the community. I mean, I know why because racism. Yeah, yeah,

727
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:37,480
Speaker 1: it's absurd. Yeah, the border patrols pretty lame. You know,

728
00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 1: this is like that. But like this, this is what

729
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:42,240
Speaker 1: it is from the beginning, Like one of the first

730
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: things the Border Patrol ever does is to port a

731
00:41:44,560 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 1: million people, more than half of whom are US citizens. Um.

732
00:41:48,080 --> 00:41:50,839
Speaker 1: And it just lies about what it's doing because it's

733
00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:53,960
Speaker 1: from the beginning. It's job has never been to actually

734
00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: enforce the rule of law or even protect the border.

735
00:41:56,680 --> 00:42:01,279
Speaker 1: Its job is to protect whiteness, right yep, souh the

736
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 1: very The primary method of action for Border Patrol agents

737
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:07,640
Speaker 1: from the beginning up to now was violence. Um. The

738
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:10,759
Speaker 1: force was always undermanned and underfunded. With a handful of

739
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:13,839
Speaker 1: officers responsible for thousands of miles of rugged terrain, there

740
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 1: was little to no oversight, and agents generally used violence

741
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:19,360
Speaker 1: at their discretion. As this anecdote from the book Migra

742
00:42:19,560 --> 00:42:24,160
Speaker 1: Illustrates Quote one Day in nineteen explains Stovall, who was

743
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:27,880
Speaker 1: a Border Patrol agent. He was patrolling alone near San Elizario, Texas,

744
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:31,000
Speaker 1: when he decided to drive through town Santa Lazario was

745
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:33,520
Speaker 1: this little Mexican town on the Rio Grand, said stove All,

746
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:35,279
Speaker 1: who remembered that when he got to town that day,

747
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 1: he saw a Mexicano come out from behind the bank

748
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: of a drainage ditch and then duck back. Stove All

749
00:42:40,080 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: admitted to knowing the man, but stopped the car and

750
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:43,840
Speaker 1: asked him, what do you have there in your bosom?

751
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:46,239
Speaker 1: The man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out

752
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:48,040
Speaker 1: two bottles of beer and put them down on the

753
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 1: bridge and broke them so he wouldn't have any evidence.

754
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:53,719
Speaker 1: Reflecting upon the incident, stove All wondered, why didn't I

755
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:56,800
Speaker 1: pull out my gun and fire at that Mexican. I

756
00:42:56,920 --> 00:43:00,200
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know why. Instead of reaching his

757
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:02,840
Speaker 1: gun and firing, stove All fled. I got in my

758
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:05,399
Speaker 1: car and got away from there, remembered stove All, because

759
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:07,400
Speaker 1: it was in daylight, about one o'clock. If I had

760
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:09,320
Speaker 1: pulled my gun and fired, there would have been fifty

761
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:12,760
Speaker 1: Mexicans around me that quick. According to stove All, God

762
00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 1: spared his life that day by taking charge of his

763
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 1: hands and preventing him from shooting at the Mexican. You know,

764
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: so this is this is nineteen and kind of a

765
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,480
Speaker 1: common addit like this border patrol agent approaches a guy

766
00:43:26,560 --> 00:43:28,719
Speaker 1: who's got a legal alcohol and the dude breaks the

767
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:31,920
Speaker 1: bottles on him, and the man's lingering question that he's

768
00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:35,200
Speaker 1: wondering for years afterwards is why didn't I shoot that

769
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 1: man to death? Like, yeah, some people think justifies killing

770
00:43:42,200 --> 00:43:47,360
Speaker 1: another person is something I will never comprehend. Yeah, I

771
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 1: don't think they thought they were people. Um, yeah, and

772
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:55,800
Speaker 1: it's it's probably worth noting how common brutality was, like

773
00:43:56,040 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 1: like open brutality was among US law enforcement officials, um,

774
00:43:59,719 --> 00:44:02,359
Speaker 1: even at like pretty high levels in politics at this time.

775
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:05,800
Speaker 1: In May of nineteen fifty four, Herbert Brownell, the Attorney

776
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:09,600
Speaker 1: General UH Eisenhower's Attorney General, gave a speech where he

777
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:12,200
Speaker 1: asked US labor leaders for their support and the event

778
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:16,000
Speaker 1: that border patrol agents quote shot wet backs in cold blood.

779
00:44:16,960 --> 00:44:19,239
Speaker 1: So again not saying like, hey, we might have an

780
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:21,640
Speaker 1: accidental shooting and I need your support because like what

781
00:44:21,719 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 1: we're doing is hard and you know, people are gonna

782
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:25,919
Speaker 1: mess up. He's like, you know, my guys might murder

783
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 1: some some Mexicans. You know, my guys are absolutely going

784
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:31,680
Speaker 1: to commit murder in cold blood, and I need you

785
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:34,800
Speaker 1: to like have my back, right. That's the Attorney General

786
00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:41,640
Speaker 1: of the United States. Cool stuff? You know what else

787
00:44:41,760 --> 00:44:46,960
Speaker 1: is cool stuff? Uh? Don't, Sophie. I can't imagine what

788
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:52,640
Speaker 1: you're going for here. That's fine, that's fine. I'll just leave.

789
00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:56,920
Speaker 1: You know who isn't the the Attorney General of the

790
00:44:57,040 --> 00:45:00,760
Speaker 1: United States. Hopefully the products and services that with this podcast.

791
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:10,960
Speaker 1: So racism's not good. You know who else isn't good?

792
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 1: The head of the Border Patrol in the nineteen fifties. Uh, yeah,

793
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:17,840
Speaker 1: a great pivot. So the guy in charge of the

794
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:20,480
Speaker 1: Border Patrol as we turned into the nineteen fifties is

795
00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:23,799
Speaker 1: an outright monster by the name of Harlan Carter. Now

796
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:27,360
Speaker 1: Carter was, by the time he became the head of

797
00:45:27,360 --> 00:45:33,600
Speaker 1: the Border Patrol, a convicted murderer. Yeah, in nineteen thirty one,

798
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:36,080
Speaker 1: is a teenager. He'd shot a Mexican boy in the

799
00:45:36,200 --> 00:45:38,880
Speaker 1: chest at point blank range with a twelve gage shotgun,

800
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:41,279
Speaker 1: and the two had been having an argument, and the

801
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 1: Mexican boy had a knife, but he was not actively

802
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:46,040
Speaker 1: threatening Carter, and in fact, he'd laughed at the boy's

803
00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 1: gun because he just kind of seemed to think it

804
00:45:47,760 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: was silly that they were having a fight at all,

805
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:52,400
Speaker 1: and Carter shot him to death because he was angry

806
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:54,759
Speaker 1: for being laughed at. He was convicted of murder and

807
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:57,160
Speaker 1: sentenced to three years in prison, but he was led

808
00:45:57,200 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 1: out after two owing to a technicality. So in nineteen

809
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 1: thirty one, by the way, you could shoot a man

810
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:04,720
Speaker 1: in the chest with a twelve gage and get three years.

811
00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 1: But that's neat. Um. I love laws, Yeah, just so

812
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 1: our justice system is cool. Yeah, he got rehabilitated. He

813
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:18,720
Speaker 1: went on to become the head of the Border Patrol

814
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:21,720
Speaker 1: and also was the head of the n R A. Oh,

815
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:25,920
Speaker 1: Harlan Carter is an interesting piece of shit. Um. So,

816
00:46:26,120 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 1: throughout the forties, apprehensions by the Border Patrol we're kind

817
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:31,800
Speaker 1: of ad hawc and disorganized, and they were mostly the

818
00:46:31,880 --> 00:46:35,760
Speaker 1: result of individual agents seeking out undocumented immigrants by catching

819
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:38,239
Speaker 1: them in transit. This meant that large numbers of people

820
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:40,400
Speaker 1: were almost never apprehended at a time. It was more

821
00:46:40,560 --> 00:46:43,080
Speaker 1: just like agents kind of going out and hunting people

822
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:45,440
Speaker 1: down and grabbing a couple of folks. This was an

823
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:48,399
Speaker 1: easy system for dumb violent men to like figure out,

824
00:46:48,520 --> 00:46:50,560
Speaker 1: you know, you just kind of it's like hunting basically

825
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 1: um and it appealed to the kind of folks who

826
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:56,239
Speaker 1: became Border patrol agents. But starting in nineteen fifty, a

827
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:59,919
Speaker 1: young agent named Albert Quillan began to change things. He wasn't,

828
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:02,719
Speaker 1: telligent and ambitious, and when the chief supervisor of Border

829
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 1: Patrol demanded that he and his colleagues increase apprehensions, Quillan

830
00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:09,640
Speaker 1: began experimenting with bold new strategies. At five am on

831
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:12,880
Speaker 1: February eleven, Quillan took a detail of twelve patrol men

832
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:16,200
Speaker 1: with two buses, one plane, one truck, and nine automobiles.

833
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:19,760
Speaker 1: The men drove out to a small station in Real Hondo, Texas,

834
00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:22,719
Speaker 1: and then split into two groups to clean as well

835
00:47:22,800 --> 00:47:26,400
Speaker 1: as possible a certain section of illegal aliens. The plane

836
00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:28,320
Speaker 1: acted as a spotter while the buses were used to

837
00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:31,879
Speaker 1: quote hall wets to the border. A hundred people were

838
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:34,879
Speaker 1: apprehended in short order, and they were deported the next day.

839
00:47:35,520 --> 00:47:37,720
Speaker 1: Quillan soon moved on with his force to a series

840
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:41,080
Speaker 1: of farms near Los Fresnos, Texas. They found five hundred

841
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:43,839
Speaker 1: and sixty one wets, which is again always the term

842
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:45,279
Speaker 1: they used for that. Do you understand where that term

843
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 1: comes from I don't know that I actually know the

844
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:52,400
Speaker 1: source of it. No. Yeah, So basically the idea is that, um,

845
00:47:52,520 --> 00:47:54,840
Speaker 1: there were kind of tooth two options from Mexicans at

846
00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:56,960
Speaker 1: this time. There was the Briscero program, which was a

847
00:47:57,040 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 1: program by which they could kind of enter the country

848
00:47:59,080 --> 00:48:02,400
Speaker 1: quasi legally and get like legal working rights to to

849
00:48:02,560 --> 00:48:05,200
Speaker 1: be like a laborer or something like that. Um. And

850
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 1: then there was you could just cross the border right

851
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 1: illegally um. And that usually meant crossing the Rio grant

852
00:48:11,239 --> 00:48:13,799
Speaker 1: which is a river, right, so you wind up wet

853
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:16,359
Speaker 1: on the other side of the river. So they called

854
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:18,800
Speaker 1: the wet backs like that. That's that's still to this

855
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:22,680
Speaker 1: day a racist slang term for particularly Mexicans, kind of

856
00:48:22,719 --> 00:48:25,600
Speaker 1: all people of Hispanic descent, and a lot of Texas

857
00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 1: like you hear it a lot from raises there and

858
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 1: the border patrol. It is their standard term for these people.

859
00:48:30,920 --> 00:48:33,720
Speaker 1: This is like on all of their professional documents and everything.

860
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 1: This is what they call migrants. Yeah. Um. So Quillan's

861
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:41,560
Speaker 1: forces catch five hundred and sixty one wets on their

862
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:43,520
Speaker 1: second day, and on their third day they catch two

863
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:45,640
Speaker 1: hundred sixty four. On the fourth day they catch a

864
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty four uh. In less than a week,

865
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 1: they captured and deported more than a thousand undocumented laborers,

866
00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:54,040
Speaker 1: and this was like unprecedented. The Border patrol had never

867
00:48:54,120 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: caught this many people this quickly. Um It was seen

868
00:48:56,640 --> 00:48:59,480
Speaker 1: as an astonishing achievement by Quillan superiors, and they began

869
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,960
Speaker 1: setting up other raids in imitation of his. Border Patrol

870
00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:06,719
Speaker 1: supervisors noted that these new task forces as started being called,

871
00:49:06,760 --> 00:49:10,919
Speaker 1: we're quote pounding away on these wets, cool dudes. Soon

872
00:49:11,120 --> 00:49:14,400
Speaker 1: multiple task forces had been established throughout California and Texas,

873
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:18,040
Speaker 1: carrying out constant raids and netting huge numbers of undocumented persons.

874
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:21,320
Speaker 1: On some single days, more than five thousand Mexican nationals

875
00:49:21,360 --> 00:49:24,399
Speaker 1: would be apprehended and shipped to temporary detention camps before

876
00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:28,120
Speaker 1: being sent back across the border. Patrolmen handed deportees notes

877
00:49:28,200 --> 00:49:31,120
Speaker 1: that read quote, you have entered the United States illegally

878
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 1: and in violation of the laws of your land and

879
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:35,520
Speaker 1: those of the United States. For this reason, you're being

880
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:38,000
Speaker 1: returned to your homeland. If you return again illegally, you

881
00:49:38,040 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 1: will be arrested and punished as provided by law. We

882
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 1: understand that the life of a wet back is difficult.

883
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:44,759
Speaker 1: Wet Backs are unable to work for more than a

884
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:47,719
Speaker 1: few hours before they are apprehended and deported. Remember these

885
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:50,120
Speaker 1: words and transmit the news to your families and countrymen

886
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:53,760
Speaker 1: if you want to do them a favor. So that's fun, Yanks,

887
00:49:54,239 --> 00:50:01,480
Speaker 1: nice letter there. Terrified language. Also, you had said alien

888
00:50:01,600 --> 00:50:05,600
Speaker 1: that that was something that had been and still gets like.

889
00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: That language is still used and it's just the most

890
00:50:09,800 --> 00:50:20,160
Speaker 1: dehumanizing word. Yeah, to refer to simply someone who travels

891
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:24,400
Speaker 1: to another place and wants to stay there. It's pretty

892
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:28,960
Speaker 1: crazy because we don't use that word for uh, I

893
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:32,239
Speaker 1: don't know us. I'm I'm excited for when we have

894
00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:35,720
Speaker 1: finally the big civil war that we were all planning

895
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 1: to have and suddenly a shipload of people but continued

896
00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:46,440
Speaker 1: like yeah, I'm I'm excited for the people who treated

897
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 1: Syrian refugees and treat Guatemalan and Honduran and Mexican refugees

898
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:53,719
Speaker 1: like ship and I'm excited for them all to I

899
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:56,560
Speaker 1: don't know, get gunned down by Canadian border guards, um

900
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:00,560
Speaker 1: as we deserve as a nation. I don't know, I'm

901
00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: angry all the time. Cab, I'm sorry that's not right likewise,

902
00:51:05,160 --> 00:51:10,040
Speaker 1: am I yeah? Um? Anyway, it'll be up to Canada.

903
00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:13,640
Speaker 1: We racist then and then eventually Alaska and then the

904
00:51:14,600 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 1: biosphere will die. Um, so you know what won't die, Caitlin, Um,

905
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:27,399
Speaker 1: are you doing a necessary I know, I went off

906
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:30,800
Speaker 1: on a really sad rant. Uh, and so I decided

907
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:33,160
Speaker 1: to throw in a raytheon ad because everybody likes thinking

908
00:51:33,160 --> 00:51:38,320
Speaker 1: about raytheon. So back to the border patrol. Um. So

909
00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:40,600
Speaker 1: the border patrol would like pick up all these folks,

910
00:51:40,719 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 1: huge numbers, thousands in a day sometimes and they would

911
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:45,920
Speaker 1: put them in these like temporary camps um and then

912
00:51:45,960 --> 00:51:48,719
Speaker 1: would take them into Mexico, where the Mexican military would

913
00:51:48,760 --> 00:51:50,880
Speaker 1: basically dump them in the middle of the country as

914
00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:53,200
Speaker 1: far away from the border as possible. And these were

915
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:55,080
Speaker 1: generally places where there was no work and where these

916
00:51:55,120 --> 00:51:59,160
Speaker 1: migrants had no family connections, and it was just a

917
00:51:59,200 --> 00:52:02,040
Speaker 1: horrible situation for most people. As a result of these

918
00:52:02,120 --> 00:52:04,800
Speaker 1: new tactics, between nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty three, the

919
00:52:04,880 --> 00:52:08,440
Speaker 1: number of border patrol apprehensions nearly doubled, from four hundred

920
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:11,680
Speaker 1: and sixty nine thousand to almost eight hundred and forty thousand.

921
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:15,600
Speaker 1: This caused immediate problems for ranchers and farmers, who started

922
00:52:15,640 --> 00:52:17,839
Speaker 1: to realize that the new legal powers they had given

923
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:21,640
Speaker 1: the Border Patrol had vastly realigned the organization's power in

924
00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 1: a way that allowed the white supremacists who ran it

925
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:27,760
Speaker 1: to harm agrabusiness by wiping out their workforce. At stake

926
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:30,960
Speaker 1: was also a sort of cultural readjustment. Farmers and ranchers

927
00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:33,480
Speaker 1: were used to occupying a position at the top of society,

928
00:52:33,719 --> 00:52:36,320
Speaker 1: but now Border patrol men could exercise the power of

929
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:40,160
Speaker 1: deportation again and take away their workers. And Texas border

930
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 1: towns like Marfa farmers hired armed guards, hired lookouts, and

931
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:47,120
Speaker 1: booby trapped farm gates in order to protect their workforce.

932
00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:50,040
Speaker 1: There were gunfights with border patrol um with these like

933
00:52:50,120 --> 00:52:53,239
Speaker 1: white farmers trying to defend their workforce, and as the

934
00:52:53,320 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 1: conflict between the farmers and border patrol grew uglier, white

935
00:52:56,719 --> 00:52:59,880
Speaker 1: border town farmers suddenly found themselves facing off against the

936
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:02,600
Speaker 1: same men who had hunted their workers. The book Migra

937
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 1: tells the story of D. C. Newton, whose family were

938
00:53:05,120 --> 00:53:08,240
Speaker 1: border patrol farmers who posted guards to warn about raids

939
00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:10,360
Speaker 1: they went to sleep. They want to sleep. One night

940
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two and woke up to find that

941
00:53:12,320 --> 00:53:14,680
Speaker 1: dozens of Border patrol agents had snuck in with their

942
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:17,880
Speaker 1: headlights off and to surprise everyone sleeping in the farmhouse

943
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:21,440
Speaker 1: and adjacent quarters. The Newton's oldest son was faster, though,

944
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:24,520
Speaker 1: and he succeeded in warning the undocumented migrants staying on

945
00:53:24,640 --> 00:53:26,640
Speaker 1: the farm, which gave them the time they needed to

946
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:28,880
Speaker 1: run like hell and hide in the trees. When the

947
00:53:28,920 --> 00:53:31,640
Speaker 1: border patrol men came up empty in their search, they

948
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:34,719
Speaker 1: went after the white folks who actually owned the farm,

949
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote from the book Migrant Now. They

950
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:40,160
Speaker 1: entered Newton's parents bedroom and began shining the flashlights in

951
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:42,400
Speaker 1: my mother's eyes and my father's eyes, telling them to

952
00:53:42,800 --> 00:53:44,520
Speaker 1: get up. We're gonna go out and find where your

953
00:53:44,600 --> 00:53:47,359
Speaker 1: Mexicans are. With my father and his pajamas, my mother,

954
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:49,680
Speaker 1: his mother in a nightgown, and no one wearing any shoes,

955
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:51,879
Speaker 1: the officers forced the family out of the house while

956
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:54,719
Speaker 1: pushing physically pushing my mother in the back, pushing my

957
00:53:54,840 --> 00:53:56,719
Speaker 1: father in the back, and demanding to know where the

958
00:53:56,800 --> 00:53:59,480
Speaker 1: wet backs were. Most of the workers had fled, including

959
00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:02,400
Speaker 1: Newton's nanny, Loupe, for whom the officers claimed to be searching.

960
00:54:02,440 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 1: In particular, she had heard the arrival of the patrolman

961
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:06,919
Speaker 1: and climbed out of the window on the second floor

962
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,280
Speaker 1: of the farmhouse, rolled down onto the roof of the garage,

963
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:11,799
Speaker 1: and run off to the southeast and was gone. Although

964
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:14,360
Speaker 1: the Newton's believed they had outsmarted the Border patrol by

965
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:16,960
Speaker 1: alerting the migrants to the raid, the head Border patrol

966
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:21,040
Speaker 1: inspector still led fifty three apprehended workers away, saying, see

967
00:54:21,120 --> 00:54:25,440
Speaker 1: how you handle your groves? Now, Now that's like a

968
00:54:25,560 --> 00:54:29,600
Speaker 1: bad story and everything. What's interesting here is, um, I

969
00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:34,040
Speaker 1: guess how horrible Newton's family is here too, um, Because

970
00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:36,400
Speaker 1: the interview with him goes on and he makes it

971
00:54:36,520 --> 00:54:39,200
Speaker 1: clear that when he kind of when his dad explained

972
00:54:39,200 --> 00:54:41,360
Speaker 1: to him what was happening with the Border Patrol, his

973
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:44,640
Speaker 1: dad compared the conflict to the Civil War. Um, and

974
00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:48,800
Speaker 1: the side that he identified with was not the good side. Quote.

975
00:54:49,360 --> 00:54:52,040
Speaker 1: Newton's father believed that by taking away their workers, the

976
00:54:52,239 --> 00:54:55,520
Speaker 1: damn Yankee Border Patrol were splitting up a household. As

977
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:58,280
Speaker 1: he explained it to his son, the South Texans protected

978
00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:00,400
Speaker 1: their homes, their families, their property and their way of

979
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:02,960
Speaker 1: life from the border patrol raids. He was the master.

980
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:06,000
Speaker 1: The Mexican illegals were equivalent to the black slaves, and

981
00:55:06,080 --> 00:55:08,800
Speaker 1: together they formed a household, a system of labor relations

982
00:55:08,880 --> 00:55:11,840
Speaker 1: in a world of tightly bound intimacy and inequity. The

983
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:15,000
Speaker 1: Border Patrol threatened their household by reducing the farmer's control

984
00:55:15,080 --> 00:55:18,640
Speaker 1: over Mexico's unsanctioned migrant workers. So as the Southerners had

985
00:55:18,640 --> 00:55:22,040
Speaker 1: rebelled against intrusions upon their labor relations and plantation lives,

986
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:24,680
Speaker 1: the Newton family had to defend itself against the US

987
00:55:24,719 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 1: Border Patrol. Newton's brother took the lesson to heart. When

988
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:29,759
Speaker 1: the border patrol rated on another night, he stood in

989
00:55:29,800 --> 00:55:32,360
Speaker 1: the family driveway with a shotgun named at the officers.

990
00:55:32,600 --> 00:55:35,040
Speaker 1: Startled by the hostile twelve year old boy, the officers

991
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:38,279
Speaker 1: left the property and returned on another day. So, yeah,

992
00:55:39,760 --> 00:55:43,640
Speaker 1: this is what's happening here is really complicated. Right. There's

993
00:55:43,640 --> 00:55:46,600
Speaker 1: an important thing to remember here, which is that even

994
00:55:46,760 --> 00:55:53,439
Speaker 1: of the like white ranch farm owners who are maybe

995
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:59,800
Speaker 1: not in favor of their workforce being sent back to

996
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:05,800
Speaker 1: their country of origin, they are still exploiting these workers,

997
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:10,760
Speaker 1: these migrant workers, um and you know, probably not paying

998
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:17,840
Speaker 1: them well, probably not offering them you know, good benefits,

999
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:23,360
Speaker 1: so and probably like keeping them in very primitive living situations,

1000
00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:26,320
Speaker 1: often like little more than a shack, often like like

1001
00:56:26,520 --> 00:56:30,200
Speaker 1: like kind of nightmares situa like these guys did. These

1002
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:33,440
Speaker 1: migrants often did live very similarly to slaves. Right, it

1003
00:56:33,560 --> 00:56:36,000
Speaker 1: wasn't quite that bad, but it was bad. Um. And

1004
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:40,239
Speaker 1: these these farmers are like the border patrol agents want

1005
00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 1: these migrants out because they're racist as fuck. Um, and

1006
00:56:43,560 --> 00:56:47,080
Speaker 1: these farmers are also racist as fun. They just want

1007
00:56:47,160 --> 00:56:50,160
Speaker 1: the migrants to stay because because they can exploit the

1008
00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:53,840
Speaker 1: basis of their power exactly. So again, no one to

1009
00:56:53,920 --> 00:56:56,960
Speaker 1: root for here other than like these migrants, but they

1010
00:56:57,120 --> 00:56:59,600
Speaker 1: seem to mostly get just sucked over by everybody, and

1011
00:56:59,719 --> 00:57:05,320
Speaker 1: that's not fun. Yep. So yeah, it's important to remember

1012
00:57:05,360 --> 00:57:07,440
Speaker 1: that kind of the struggle between border patrol and these

1013
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:10,240
Speaker 1: border farmers in Texas was a struggle between two different

1014
00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:13,680
Speaker 1: groups of white supremacists, and one group of white supremacists

1015
00:57:13,800 --> 00:57:16,880
Speaker 1: was broadly in the right because I guess it's it's

1016
00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:20,680
Speaker 1: worse to round up thousands of people in cattle cars

1017
00:57:20,720 --> 00:57:22,720
Speaker 1: and busses and throw them back across the border for

1018
00:57:22,840 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 1: no good reason. But there's no one you should be

1019
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 1: rooting for here. But what's really interesting, what's kind I

1020
00:57:30,480 --> 00:57:33,560
Speaker 1: find fascinating about this whole conflict is that these racist

1021
00:57:33,640 --> 00:57:37,840
Speaker 1: plantation owning, white border farmers wound up like fighting the

1022
00:57:37,920 --> 00:57:40,520
Speaker 1: Border Patrol by kind of co opting the language of

1023
00:57:40,600 --> 00:57:44,680
Speaker 1: social justice. Um Starting in the nineteen fifties, ranchers began

1024
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:48,800
Speaker 1: to argue that Mexican nationals were being unfairly targeted for deportations.

1025
00:57:49,160 --> 00:57:51,520
Speaker 1: They complained that the buses, planes, and trains used to

1026
00:57:51,560 --> 00:57:56,040
Speaker 1: take migrants away were cruel, in human and outrageous practices

1027
00:57:56,160 --> 00:57:58,960
Speaker 1: trading in human misery. They began to argue that hiring

1028
00:57:59,000 --> 00:58:02,560
Speaker 1: Mexicans was an act of kindness by American ranchers. Mexican

1029
00:58:02,680 --> 00:58:05,080
Speaker 1: laborers deserve the chance to win a better life by

1030
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:08,240
Speaker 1: working low paid jobs as domestic servants and laborers. The

1031
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:12,160
Speaker 1: Border Patrol was in fact actually fostering communism by sending

1032
00:58:12,200 --> 00:58:14,440
Speaker 1: these men and women back to the interior of Mexico,

1033
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:17,040
Speaker 1: where there would no doubt live on in miserable poverty

1034
00:58:17,120 --> 00:58:23,680
Speaker 1: and join some leftist guerrilla movement. So because their lives

1035
00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:28,280
Speaker 1: being exploited farm hands in the US was so much better.

1036
00:58:28,560 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 1: What Oh my gosh, yeah, it's pretty cool. How naturally

1037
00:58:33,520 --> 00:58:38,080
Speaker 1: that came to these farmers. I like it. So the

1038
00:58:38,160 --> 00:58:41,000
Speaker 1: Border Patrol obviously didn't listen to the protest against them.

1039
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:43,800
Speaker 1: They continued to, in their own words, pound away in

1040
00:58:43,880 --> 00:58:48,720
Speaker 1: the borderlands, raising apprehensions UH. The increased workload necessary uh

1041
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 1: necessitated more men and facilities, and in nineteen fifty three,

1042
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:54,439
Speaker 1: the Border Patrol attempted to hire two dred and forty

1043
00:58:54,440 --> 00:58:57,760
Speaker 1: additional officers and made plans to build two new detention

1044
00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:01,680
Speaker 1: centers at the Lower Real Grand Valley. This enraged local farmers,

1045
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:04,640
Speaker 1: and one quote threatened to arm his wet back laborers

1046
00:59:04,680 --> 00:59:07,240
Speaker 1: against the Border Patrol, threatening that there is liable to

1047
00:59:07,280 --> 00:59:10,040
Speaker 1: be a couple of dead border patrolmen. Death threats against

1048
00:59:10,080 --> 00:59:12,560
Speaker 1: patrolman became a daily occurrence, and farmers in the Lower

1049
00:59:12,640 --> 00:59:15,880
Speaker 1: Rio Grand lobbied their congressmen to deny the appropriation request

1050
00:59:15,960 --> 00:59:19,120
Speaker 1: necessary to fund the new men and facilities. These farmers

1051
00:59:19,160 --> 00:59:21,600
Speaker 1: insisted they weren't lobbying for their own benefit, but for

1052
00:59:21,720 --> 00:59:23,800
Speaker 1: doing we're doing it from migrants who were victims of

1053
00:59:23,880 --> 00:59:27,520
Speaker 1: the patrols. Cheap vindictiveness, a great hunger to ruler ruin

1054
00:59:27,800 --> 00:59:30,960
Speaker 1: to control to govern anything to carry a point reckless

1055
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:33,560
Speaker 1: of the consequences to the poor workman, which they heard

1056
00:59:33,640 --> 00:59:36,040
Speaker 1: around as cattle, and they weren't wrong in this. The

1057
00:59:36,120 --> 00:59:38,720
Speaker 1: facility the Border Patrol wanted to build was essentially a

1058
00:59:38,800 --> 00:59:43,240
Speaker 1: concentration camp. Eventually, Congress listened and the appropriation crest request

1059
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:45,439
Speaker 1: was denied. So like the protest of all these guys

1060
00:59:45,480 --> 00:59:47,760
Speaker 1: in Texas worked, the Border Patrol had to send its

1061
00:59:47,760 --> 00:59:50,280
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty men back home and cancel construction.

1062
00:59:50,920 --> 00:59:54,160
Speaker 1: According to the book Migra Quote, one month after losing

1063
00:59:54,200 --> 00:59:57,880
Speaker 1: the supplemental appropriation, Chief Kelly announced the Border Patrols withdrawal

1064
00:59:57,960 --> 01:00:00,520
Speaker 1: from the Rio Grand Valley to a new defend line

1065
01:00:00,560 --> 01:00:02,920
Speaker 1: ten miles to the north of Kingsville. Fall furious and

1066
01:00:03,000 --> 01:00:05,959
Speaker 1: Hebronville rather than fight a losing battle in the lower

1067
01:00:06,040 --> 01:00:08,160
Speaker 1: Rio Grand Valley at the Border Patrol decided to pull

1068
01:00:08,200 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 1: out of the area because with limited forces we can

1069
01:00:10,680 --> 01:00:13,600
Speaker 1: best control the wet back invasion as at the line

1070
01:00:13,680 --> 01:00:16,480
Speaker 1: farther north. It's one of those things, I guess, like

1071
01:00:16,560 --> 01:00:18,840
Speaker 1: I always kind of debate when you've got like something

1072
01:00:18,920 --> 01:00:21,400
Speaker 1: that is essentially a slur or is a slur um.

1073
01:00:21,560 --> 01:00:24,080
Speaker 1: In an episode of like this how often to say it?

1074
01:00:24,560 --> 01:00:26,280
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things where I kind of

1075
01:00:26,360 --> 01:00:30,280
Speaker 1: feel like cleaning up the Border Patrols official statements in

1076
01:00:30,400 --> 01:00:34,120
Speaker 1: the matter would be, I don't know, making it seem

1077
01:00:34,200 --> 01:00:36,400
Speaker 1: like they were less of a naked force for white

1078
01:00:36,440 --> 01:00:39,560
Speaker 1: supremacy than they were, Like if you, if you, if

1079
01:00:39,560 --> 01:00:42,520
Speaker 1: you replace that with Mexican nationals, that's not really what

1080
01:00:42,640 --> 01:00:46,480
Speaker 1: they're saying, right, Yeah, I don't know, that's yeah. I

1081
01:00:46,560 --> 01:00:50,080
Speaker 1: mean that puts you in a pretty tricky position. Yeah,

1082
01:00:50,240 --> 01:00:53,560
Speaker 1: I I don't know. Yeah, they use it a lot. Um,

1083
01:00:54,280 --> 01:00:57,600
Speaker 1: it's the Border Patrol are cool guys, And we're about

1084
01:00:57,640 --> 01:01:01,000
Speaker 1: to hear it used again in another big way. Um. So,

1085
01:01:01,280 --> 01:01:03,440
Speaker 1: the men of the Border Patrol did see the immigration

1086
01:01:03,480 --> 01:01:05,680
Speaker 1: of Mexicans into the US as an invasion, and they

1087
01:01:05,760 --> 01:01:07,920
Speaker 1: sought to repel it with military force, as kind of

1088
01:01:08,000 --> 01:01:10,120
Speaker 1: that language above, right, referring to it as a defensive

1089
01:01:10,200 --> 01:01:13,280
Speaker 1: line and stuff, like they're defending whiteness again, and they

1090
01:01:13,400 --> 01:01:17,800
Speaker 1: see the encroachment of these, um, these undocumented migrants as

1091
01:01:17,880 --> 01:01:21,800
Speaker 1: like an assault on on white blood more than anything else. Um.

1092
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:24,480
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty three, with the rebellion of the Texas

1093
01:01:24,560 --> 01:01:27,800
Speaker 1: Ranchers in full swing. Harlan Carter, who's again the murderer

1094
01:01:27,880 --> 01:01:30,120
Speaker 1: who became the head of the Border Patrol, sat down

1095
01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:32,800
Speaker 1: with two US generals to ask for their help. He

1096
01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:35,480
Speaker 1: wanted the military and the National Guard to assist the

1097
01:01:35,520 --> 01:01:40,280
Speaker 1: Border Patrol in a nationwide purge of undocumented Mexican nationals

1098
01:01:40,600 --> 01:01:44,120
Speaker 1: called Operation Cloudburst. The first step for this would be

1099
01:01:44,240 --> 01:01:47,000
Speaker 1: an anti infiltration campaign to seal the border with the

1100
01:01:47,040 --> 01:01:50,920
Speaker 1: help of eight troops Border Patrol wood station soldiers at

1101
01:01:50,960 --> 01:01:54,080
Speaker 1: strategic locations and build several long fences to block areas

1102
01:01:54,080 --> 01:01:57,120
Speaker 1: of heavy traffic. This part of the operation is fairly standard,

1103
01:01:57,160 --> 01:01:59,840
Speaker 1: aside from the presence of US troops. Part to the

1104
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:03,160
Speaker 1: would be a containment operation, which would involve roadblocks on

1105
01:02:03,320 --> 01:02:06,240
Speaker 1: every major highway from the southwest to the interior of

1106
01:02:06,360 --> 01:02:09,680
Speaker 1: North America. These checkpoints would be used to search vehicles

1107
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:12,720
Speaker 1: for illegal migrants around the clock. Part three was the

1108
01:02:12,760 --> 01:02:15,280
Speaker 1: mopping up phase, and this would involve a massive series

1109
01:02:15,320 --> 01:02:18,520
Speaker 1: of raids in northern locations. Places far from the border

1110
01:02:18,600 --> 01:02:21,800
Speaker 1: like San Francisco where groups of migrants were believed to

1111
01:02:21,840 --> 01:02:24,040
Speaker 1: have gathered. Businesses and camps would be rated and the

1112
01:02:24,160 --> 01:02:26,680
Speaker 1: arrested migrants would be airlifted or sent by train to

1113
01:02:26,760 --> 01:02:31,040
Speaker 1: the interior of Mexico, now again using the military. This

1114
01:02:31,200 --> 01:02:34,320
Speaker 1: was essentially he wanted to to bring in the army

1115
01:02:34,440 --> 01:02:37,720
Speaker 1: to carry out a military action to purge the United

1116
01:02:37,800 --> 01:02:40,480
Speaker 1: States of Hispanic people. That that's what the head of

1117
01:02:40,560 --> 01:02:42,920
Speaker 1: Border Patrols trying to do here, and all of the

1118
01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:45,080
Speaker 1: military guys he talked to are like, this sounds like

1119
01:02:45,160 --> 01:02:47,880
Speaker 1: a great idea. We'd love to help, um, but it's illegal,

1120
01:02:48,120 --> 01:02:50,960
Speaker 1: right Posse commatatas means you can't use the army for

1121
01:02:51,080 --> 01:02:54,040
Speaker 1: ship like this. Um. The only way around it is

1122
01:02:54,080 --> 01:02:58,000
Speaker 1: a presidential proclamation. And Dwight Eisenhower was actually initially all

1123
01:02:58,120 --> 01:03:01,400
Speaker 1: on board with issuing that proclam a asian um, but

1124
01:03:01,520 --> 01:03:03,680
Speaker 1: in the end he kind of backed away, uh, and

1125
01:03:03,800 --> 01:03:06,600
Speaker 1: instead he appointed a General Joseph Swing to be the

1126
01:03:06,680 --> 01:03:10,280
Speaker 1: new Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and was

1127
01:03:10,320 --> 01:03:15,000
Speaker 1: basically like, we can't use soldiers for this because it's unconstitutional,

1128
01:03:15,280 --> 01:03:17,400
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna promote a general to be in charge

1129
01:03:17,520 --> 01:03:20,320
Speaker 1: of the I n S. And you figure out a

1130
01:03:20,400 --> 01:03:22,720
Speaker 1: way to do the same thing with the resources border

1131
01:03:22,760 --> 01:03:25,720
Speaker 1: patrol has, like us your yeah, yeah, I still want

1132
01:03:25,720 --> 01:03:29,440
Speaker 1: a military operation to clear out these Hispanic people. Um,

1133
01:03:29,840 --> 01:03:34,400
Speaker 1: I just can't use soldiers, so that's good grief. Yeah,

1134
01:03:35,000 --> 01:03:41,520
Speaker 1: the mental gymnastics. That what these people do to justify

1135
01:03:42,560 --> 01:03:46,920
Speaker 1: their horrible actions. Anyway, Sorry, go ahead, Yeah it's pretty great.

1136
01:03:47,400 --> 01:03:49,600
Speaker 1: I don't know. So. One month after joining I n S,

1137
01:03:49,720 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 1: General Swing announces that he's going to be leading the

1138
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:55,240
Speaker 1: Border Patrol in a new paramilitary campaign based on the

1139
01:03:55,440 --> 01:03:59,640
Speaker 1: tactics pioneered by Albert Quillan. The new operation is given

1140
01:03:59,680 --> 01:04:04,880
Speaker 1: the name Operation wet Back. Again. That's the Border Patrol's

1141
01:04:04,920 --> 01:04:07,400
Speaker 1: official name for it. That's what all these guys call it.

1142
01:04:07,520 --> 01:04:11,560
Speaker 1: That's what it's written up in in the documents and stuff. Yeah,

1143
01:04:11,800 --> 01:04:15,160
Speaker 1: they just didn't have a fund to give on this matter. So,

1144
01:04:15,560 --> 01:04:18,080
Speaker 1: true to form, Border Patrol was only given four weeks

1145
01:04:18,120 --> 01:04:20,480
Speaker 1: to prepare for what would become the largest operation in

1146
01:04:20,560 --> 01:04:23,680
Speaker 1: their history. The plan was to engage in an unprecedented sweep,

1147
01:04:23,720 --> 01:04:26,760
Speaker 1: deporting hundreds of thousands of people. No one received any

1148
01:04:26,840 --> 01:04:30,440
Speaker 1: training or specialized equipment to actually do this, though. All

1149
01:04:30,560 --> 01:04:33,160
Speaker 1: that most agents had on June nine, nine fifty four,

1150
01:04:33,200 --> 01:04:35,680
Speaker 1: when the operation began, was a letter from General Swing

1151
01:04:35,920 --> 01:04:39,959
Speaker 1: ordering them to purge the nation by removing the huge

1152
01:04:40,040 --> 01:04:42,440
Speaker 1: number of Mexican nationals who were in this country in

1153
01:04:42,560 --> 01:04:46,479
Speaker 1: violation of the immigration laws. Always good to hear about

1154
01:04:46,480 --> 01:04:51,560
Speaker 1: a purge. Yea. Yeah. So in its first day, California

1155
01:04:51,640 --> 01:04:54,080
Speaker 1: and or in the first day of this operation, California

1156
01:04:54,120 --> 01:04:57,880
Speaker 1: and Arizona agents apprehended nearly eleven thousand migrants. The flood

1157
01:04:57,920 --> 01:05:00,480
Speaker 1: of people only accelerated after that, and the year number

1158
01:05:00,520 --> 01:05:03,720
Speaker 1: of deportees overwhelmed the Border Patrol's capacity to hold or

1159
01:05:03,760 --> 01:05:07,400
Speaker 1: carry them. People were left in primitive, exposed concentration camps

1160
01:05:07,480 --> 01:05:10,680
Speaker 1: for days. The Border Patrol turned Alesion Park in Los

1161
01:05:10,720 --> 01:05:16,520
Speaker 1: Angeles into an open air concentration camp. Um. Yeah, that's nate.

1162
01:05:16,680 --> 01:05:21,680
Speaker 1: Go to Allegian parks. I've been there before and I'll

1163
01:05:21,760 --> 01:05:24,000
Speaker 1: never go again. A lot of the men who were

1164
01:05:24,040 --> 01:05:26,520
Speaker 1: in turn there, men and women, got sick and sometimes

1165
01:05:26,600 --> 01:05:29,360
Speaker 1: died of sunstroke because there was no care given to

1166
01:05:29,480 --> 01:05:33,480
Speaker 1: their health and it can get very hot down there. Uh.

1167
01:05:34,960 --> 01:05:37,720
Speaker 1: Of all, deportees were transported by boats, many of which

1168
01:05:37,720 --> 01:05:40,440
Speaker 1: were so cramped and filthy that their occupants later compared

1169
01:05:40,480 --> 01:05:45,800
Speaker 1: them to slave ships or penal hell ships. Um. So,

1170
01:05:45,920 --> 01:05:49,360
Speaker 1: that's great. The Mexican government's capacity to take and transport

1171
01:05:49,400 --> 01:05:51,880
Speaker 1: all these people broke down almost immediately, and they were like,

1172
01:05:52,120 --> 01:05:54,640
Speaker 1: we need you to to not send these people to

1173
01:05:54,800 --> 01:05:57,000
Speaker 1: us so quickly because we can't handle them. And the

1174
01:05:57,080 --> 01:05:59,880
Speaker 1: US government said, we don't give a fuck um and

1175
01:06:00,480 --> 01:06:03,919
Speaker 1: kept just shotgunning people on over there, and the sheer

1176
01:06:04,040 --> 01:06:07,040
Speaker 1: scale of deportations began to funk with American industry. But

1177
01:06:07,120 --> 01:06:09,360
Speaker 1: Border patrol didn't really give a shit about this either.

1178
01:06:09,480 --> 01:06:12,800
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote again from the book Migra. Between June

1179
01:06:12,920 --> 01:06:17,040
Speaker 1: seventeenth and July fifty four, two thousand, eight hundred and

1180
01:06:17,080 --> 01:06:18,840
Speaker 1: twenty seven of the four thousand and four hundred and

1181
01:06:18,880 --> 01:06:21,480
Speaker 1: three migrants apprehended by task the task force assigned to

1182
01:06:21,560 --> 01:06:24,320
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles area had worked in industry. After border

1183
01:06:24,360 --> 01:06:26,520
Speaker 1: patrol raids during the summer of nineteen fifty four, three

1184
01:06:26,600 --> 01:06:29,520
Speaker 1: Los Angeles brickyards were left without sufficient numbers of workers

1185
01:06:29,560 --> 01:06:33,520
Speaker 1: and temporarily closed down their operations. Similarly, border patrol officers

1186
01:06:33,560 --> 01:06:36,240
Speaker 1: paid close attention to the hotel and restaurant business, which

1187
01:06:36,320 --> 01:06:40,160
Speaker 1: routinely hired undocumented Mexican immigrants as bus boys, kitchen help waiters,

1188
01:06:40,240 --> 01:06:43,560
Speaker 1: et cetera. Officers reported apprehending such workers at well known

1189
01:06:43,680 --> 01:06:47,440
Speaker 1: establishments such as the Builtmore Hotel, Beverly Hills Hotel, Hollywood,

1190
01:06:47,480 --> 01:06:50,720
Speaker 1: Roosevelt Hotel, Los Angeles Athletic Club, and the Brown Derby.

1191
01:06:51,000 --> 01:06:53,520
Speaker 1: At times, the Border Patrol raids created moments of chaos

1192
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:56,480
Speaker 1: at popular restaurants when migrants attempted to escape by running

1193
01:06:56,480 --> 01:06:59,680
Speaker 1: through the serving area. The raids were public and regularly

1194
01:06:59,760 --> 01:07:02,120
Speaker 1: drew significant attention from the press, and this was part

1195
01:07:02,160 --> 01:07:04,760
Speaker 1: of the point. The reason the Border Patrol focused so

1196
01:07:04,920 --> 01:07:07,880
Speaker 1: much on Los Angeles on like raids in big Hollywood

1197
01:07:07,920 --> 01:07:10,160
Speaker 1: locations is because they were trying to make a point

1198
01:07:10,200 --> 01:07:12,720
Speaker 1: to these like these ranchers who were still fighting them

1199
01:07:12,760 --> 01:07:15,600
Speaker 1: in South Texas. And the the message was, if we're

1200
01:07:15,640 --> 01:07:18,160
Speaker 1: willing to do this ship in fucking Hollywood, you'd better

1201
01:07:18,240 --> 01:07:19,880
Speaker 1: believe that one day we're going to come to your

1202
01:07:19,960 --> 01:07:21,920
Speaker 1: ranch and fuck you up, right, Like if we'll do

1203
01:07:22,040 --> 01:07:24,080
Speaker 1: this to the built More, will ruin you, Like we

1204
01:07:24,160 --> 01:07:26,280
Speaker 1: don't give a ship where the where The Border Patrol

1205
01:07:26,880 --> 01:07:30,280
Speaker 1: um and in the end, Operation wet Back was responsible

1206
01:07:30,280 --> 01:07:32,320
Speaker 1: for the deportations of somewhere between a quarter of a

1207
01:07:32,400 --> 01:07:34,919
Speaker 1: million at the low end, uh and about one point

1208
01:07:35,000 --> 01:07:38,400
Speaker 1: five million people at the high end. And you know,

1209
01:07:38,480 --> 01:07:40,720
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. Yeah, it kind of

1210
01:07:40,920 --> 01:07:43,680
Speaker 1: ended in retreat by the Border patrol. UM. Part of

1211
01:07:43,720 --> 01:07:46,400
Speaker 1: this was that around the same time, the US government

1212
01:07:46,480 --> 01:07:49,560
Speaker 1: reformed to the Broscero program, which allowed Mexican nationals to

1213
01:07:49,600 --> 01:07:52,360
Speaker 1: get legal working status in the US, and that became

1214
01:07:52,440 --> 01:07:54,520
Speaker 1: much more popular after this time, So a lot of

1215
01:07:54,600 --> 01:07:57,640
Speaker 1: these these ranchers and farmers started making sure that their

1216
01:07:57,640 --> 01:08:00,200
Speaker 1: workers kind of went through a legal path to gain

1217
01:08:00,280 --> 01:08:03,080
Speaker 1: working status in the United States. UM. And some of

1218
01:08:03,160 --> 01:08:06,000
Speaker 1: it was just that, like there was blowback to this program.

1219
01:08:06,160 --> 01:08:09,160
Speaker 1: It wasn't very popular, all of the massive public raids

1220
01:08:09,640 --> 01:08:13,000
Speaker 1: UM and kind of as a result, border patrol apprehensions plummeted.

1221
01:08:13,040 --> 01:08:16,160
Speaker 1: The next year in nineteen fifty five, the task forces

1222
01:08:16,200 --> 01:08:18,280
Speaker 1: that had once captured thousands of migrants in a day

1223
01:08:18,320 --> 01:08:21,519
Speaker 1: were disbanded and demobilized, and for a little while it

1224
01:08:21,600 --> 01:08:24,679
Speaker 1: seemed as if the Border Patrol had gone into hibern nation.

1225
01:08:25,160 --> 01:08:28,439
Speaker 1: Of course, that Caitlin was not the case. And in

1226
01:08:28,560 --> 01:08:30,920
Speaker 1: part two, we're going to talk about the fact that

1227
01:08:31,200 --> 01:08:32,920
Speaker 1: we haven't even talked about any of the worst ship

1228
01:08:33,040 --> 01:08:35,839
Speaker 1: that the Border Patrol gets up to in this episode,

1229
01:08:35,960 --> 01:08:40,639
Speaker 1: because that's how much worse it gets. Oh, they can't

1230
01:08:40,680 --> 01:08:45,200
Speaker 1: wait to hear about it. So how are you feeling? UM,

1231
01:08:45,360 --> 01:08:48,040
Speaker 1: I feel pretty terrible. That's good. I love it when

1232
01:08:48,080 --> 01:08:52,559
Speaker 1: people feel terrible. Every I'm always like, oh, I can't

1233
01:08:52,560 --> 01:08:55,160
Speaker 1: wait to be a guest on Behind the Bastards, And

1234
01:08:55,200 --> 01:08:58,639
Speaker 1: then every time I do it, I'm like, oh, yes,

1235
01:08:58,760 --> 01:09:04,800
Speaker 1: I'm reminded how horrible people have been to each other. Yes,

1236
01:09:04,880 --> 01:09:06,560
Speaker 1: and you were the one who picked this topic with

1237
01:09:06,640 --> 01:09:09,080
Speaker 1: a text message L O L. I think the Border

1238
01:09:09,160 --> 01:09:21,080
Speaker 1: Patrol sounds fund that did never happen. UM. But yeah,

1239
01:09:21,439 --> 01:09:23,599
Speaker 1: I mean it's good to be informed about these things.

1240
01:09:23,840 --> 01:09:29,439
Speaker 1: So I appreciate UM learning and being further informed about it. UM.

1241
01:09:30,479 --> 01:09:35,759
Speaker 1: So yeah, thank you, thank you for that. Yep, you're welcome, Caitlin,

1242
01:09:35,960 --> 01:09:38,960
Speaker 1: thank you for coming on. Is there a place as

1243
01:09:39,000 --> 01:09:42,760
Speaker 1: people might be able to find you, listen to you,

1244
01:09:43,439 --> 01:09:49,120
Speaker 1: ways to support your work? Why? They're certainly are places

1245
01:09:49,240 --> 01:09:52,439
Speaker 1: to do that starting with UM. You can follow me

1246
01:09:53,080 --> 01:09:57,439
Speaker 1: personally on Twitter and Instagram at Caitlin Darante. You can

1247
01:09:57,479 --> 01:10:00,360
Speaker 1: also check out my podcast right here on this network.

1248
01:10:00,680 --> 01:10:03,400
Speaker 1: It's called The Bechdel Cast. I co host it with

1249
01:10:03,840 --> 01:10:08,719
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus, and we talk about the representation of women

1250
01:10:08,800 --> 01:10:12,880
Speaker 1: in film and just film in general, examining it through

1251
01:10:12,920 --> 01:10:18,840
Speaker 1: an intersectional feminist lens. So that is what we do.

1252
01:10:18,960 --> 01:10:22,960
Speaker 1: And you can yeah, check out screenwriting classes right now.

1253
01:10:23,640 --> 01:10:26,200
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, I am, thank you so much for

1254
01:10:26,479 --> 01:10:30,719
Speaker 1: bringing that up. I also teach screenwriting um on account

1255
01:10:30,800 --> 01:10:35,120
Speaker 1: of a master's degree in screenwriting that I absolutely hate

1256
01:10:35,240 --> 01:10:39,960
Speaker 1: to mention or ever just bring up. But UM, it

1257
01:10:40,040 --> 01:10:43,040
Speaker 1: does allow me to teach online classes. So if that's

1258
01:10:43,600 --> 01:10:46,439
Speaker 1: of any interest to anyone, UM, go to my website

1259
01:10:46,520 --> 01:10:51,040
Speaker 1: Caitlin Toronte dot com slash classes and UH. I usually

1260
01:10:51,160 --> 01:10:56,479
Speaker 1: have news sections coming up starting soon at any given point.

1261
01:10:57,120 --> 01:10:59,880
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn from me, I don't

1262
01:11:00,000 --> 01:11:03,599
Speaker 1: teach screenwriting, but I do teach screamwriting, which is where

1263
01:11:04,240 --> 01:11:06,200
Speaker 1: you sit down with a pencil and paper and I

1264
01:11:06,320 --> 01:11:08,880
Speaker 1: scream at you and then eventually you give me money

1265
01:11:08,960 --> 01:11:14,560
Speaker 1: to go away. That's sounds very educational. We all have

1266
01:11:14,720 --> 01:11:21,439
Speaker 1: to have an extra couple of grisons, So either pay

1267
01:11:21,720 --> 01:11:25,880
Speaker 1: Caitlin for an actual service or pay me to abuse you. Um.

1268
01:11:26,040 --> 01:11:33,280
Speaker 1: Either way, you know what, Sophie, look, everybody, look, you

1269
01:11:33,400 --> 01:11:35,400
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta be mean to the audience. Sophie, you

1270
01:11:35,479 --> 01:11:37,719
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta really kick their I don't know about

1271
01:11:38,280 --> 01:11:44,800
Speaker 1: I love them, I appreciate them, and Robert so kindness.

1272
01:11:46,000 --> 01:11:49,120
Speaker 1: Is there any way in which you think that, like

1273
01:11:49,280 --> 01:11:52,840
Speaker 1: closing out a podcast is similar to making love, just

1274
01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:58,000
Speaker 1: to bring things full Here's how closing a podcast is

1275
01:11:58,080 --> 01:12:04,439
Speaker 1: like making love. Both of them are inherently disappointing. And uh,

1276
01:12:07,280 --> 01:12:10,240
Speaker 1: you can follow Robert and I write on Twitter. You

1277
01:12:10,280 --> 01:12:12,639
Speaker 1: can follow us at Boust and spat on Twitter, on Instagram.

1278
01:12:12,680 --> 01:12:16,840
Speaker 1: We have a key public store. Uh that's it. Bye

1279
01:12:18,439 --> 01:12:23,680
Speaker 1: bye bye m M